Recent reviews by MkayShock Madness

Twelve Minutes is a point’n’click game, which is mostly played from the top-down perspective.
The big twist of the gameplay is that you are stuck in ten-minute time loop; yes the game is called Twelve Minutes, but the main loop is ten minutes long.
The story starts with you coming back home to your apartment, where you wife waits for you, has made a dessert and has something special to tell you. While this happens, a cop visits you and accuses your wife for a murder from eight years ago and it ends with him killing you.
After he killed you, you start the loop from entering your apartment again and now you try to uncover what really happened eight years ago and how you can exit this time loop.
The puzzles weren’t extremely hard, but you can easily overlook things or you have to wait for things to play out over and over again to find the little information to get progress, because the game has no manual save option; that can easily end in you “wasting” a lot of time looking at the same dialogues/scene again and again. The only good sides are that you can advance seen dialogue and you can reset the loop if you exit your apartment.
The biggest problem why I gave the game a thumbs down is the story though, some things you uncover and do end in actions from the other persons that don’t make sense at all, because they contradict what they just heard/learned from you. Also the big story twist, after you uncovered what really happened, is such ♥♥♥♥ that it made me kinda hate the game even though I like point’n’click and time loop/time travel games; I could live with the flaws the game had with these, but the twist, which I won’t spoil, is something that I can’t tolerate at all and drags the whole game down.
So if you really want to know what that big twist is, just watch a playthrough of the game or read about it, because buying and investing your time in this game is not worth it.

Ling Hun is a puzzle platformer; it's twist is that you can't exactly control your jump - your jumps always be in a 45 degree up in the direction you are facing, but you can change your direction once to down in a 45 degree when you "jump" again in midair.
So with that mechanic you have to find out where and when to "jump" to get through a level. Also the game adds a new mechanic to the existing gameplay like switches or extra "jumps" in each of its zone (a set of multiple levels).
You have to complete a zone from start to finish to complete it; if you quit while in a zone, you'll have to start the zone from the beginning next time.
The game also features two options for game pace: one is slower paced, so you have more time to react what is happening and one is faster paced, which is great if you are used to such games or want to speedrun it.
Are you already wondering about the story of the game? Well it's really simple: a fox stole your soul and you want to take it back.
Also the sound/music of the game is not something real special, but also not bad - so even if you have to try for an eternity on a level, it won't get annoying ... well if you don't have a problem with the fox laughing at you for every death you take.

I really liked the game and I even did all zones with zero deaths, which I'm normally not a big fan of, but I really had fun figuring out the levels and it wasn't extremly hard or unfair so I even went for those achievements. Well, except for one level, which annoyed me a lot, because the jumps were to tight a one point; the dev answered my post in the forum to look into it and fix it though - so maybe it's already patched if you play it. :)

So if you are in for a little puzzle platformer, which lives through its gameplay, then I can really recommend this game even for it's full price.

TRUFFLE is a precision "puzzle" game. In this game you control your player character with moving your mouse and have to navigate often maze-like levels, with optional collectible eyes scattered across the level, to reach your goal (I think it's a truffle and the reason for the game name) - so it is pretty much a glorified buzz wire game and that is the biggest problem of the game.
The corridors in this game are often way too narrow and you have almost no room for error while navigating through there: In the earlier levels it's less a problem, because the maps aren't that big; so the actual "maze" is displayed bigger for you and you have to move your mouse more to even collide with the walls. But in later levels you literally just have to cough to shake your character too much to collide with the wall and die.
Also later levels are bigger, so you have to navigate more to reach the goal and some of them have diagonal corridors, with even tighter room for error, and at least two of them (I haven't seen the last bonus level yet) have rotating elements - navigating small corridors with rotating elements with almost no room of error; sounds like fun, yes? Oh and did I mention that the game has no checkpoint system in a level? So if you die, you have to do all over again to reach the point where you died. Yes, that's pure insanity especially for the very long levels towards the end of the game and especially level 20, which has all of the hard things: very big level, diagonal corridors and a big rotating part ... oh and moving obstables that can kill you, which I forgot to mention before.
To give the insanity of the game a little more perpective, my finish times for level(block)s with all collectibles:
- Level 1-9 + bonuses about 15min
- Level 10 about 45min
- Level 11-16 + bonuses about 20min
- Level 17 about 25min
- Level 18 about 15min
- Level 19 about 50min
- Level 20 about 80min and counting ... I never managed to do 25% of the way through it in that time (and the rotating part is about the last 50% of the level)

I understand that this game wants to be a challenge, but that's the wrong way. If people don't quit at the level 10 difficulty then they will at level 20, which is the last level not counting the bonus level for all collectibles.
Also it could be somewhat easy to add a checkpoint system to the game - in the game you can click to rest your character so you don't move him by accident, because you have to rest your hand, grab something to eat etc. - what if resting your character would count as a checkpoint? Just limit the maximum use of it; like zero in the early levels and maybe a maximum of three times in the last few levels.

Due to those mentioned points I can't recommend this game and you should stay away if you aren't as masochistic as me and can keep a steady hand to even finish it.
If the game somehow gets a checkpoint system, I might change my review of the game.

The Adventures of Tree - Journey to Zormaghetti is a DLC that adds a new endgame area (with a new ending) to the game.
Overall it's more of the same game you already know and like (with its ups and downs) if you buy this DLC.
This new DLC adds a new planet (Zormaghetti) to the game, which you can visit if you complete the questline leading up to it.
Several new enemies (including bosses) and two friendly peoples will populate this planet, but it also adds a new boss, which you can summon on the home planet of Tree; the enemies hit a lot harder and need a new form of damage (Alien Damage) to fight them on equally terms otherwise you make your life a lot harder. Also there are enemies that need a special way to defeat them at all.
Furthermore like in the main game you can do quests, which often give you just the new currency used on Zormaghetti, from several inhabitants of the two peoples and find many secrets on this new planet.
As I mentioned earlier the DLC is endgame content and you'll have problems with it if you aren't familiar with the game, but if you are, you'll probably finish it with its seven new achievements in about 7-10h.
So if you liked the main game and want more of it then I totally recommend buying this DLC. :)

Hogwash!

Below The Ocean is puzzle platformer with interesting mechanics and your goal is to reach a certain treasure in each chapter.
First of all the game is obviously under the sea, so you have water movement. Second you wear a diving suit, which is connected to oxygen tanks, which limits your movement area to a certain range; so you have to get from one tank to another to get further.
Also each chapter has a unique mechanis, but that's for you to find out. ;)
These mechanics are pretty intuitive and besides a few hickups work really well.
The puzzles mostly aren't that hard, so you can pretty much breeze through the game without much time to think about it.
The difficulty lies more in maneuvering around obstacles like crabs, jellyfish and spikes.
The game is also pretty short, probably around 1 - 1.5hours if you don't collect all diamonds or try the no death challenges.
That also makes it a great game to speedrun and it even has a speedrun mode if you are into that. :D

All in all I totally recommend this little platformer, I had so much fun with it that I completed it with all achievements in one day and normally I hate no death challenges, which speaks for itself. :D

The Longing is a pretty hard game to recommend, because the whole gameplay is pretty slow. You explore a cave system while you wait 400 REAL TIME days for the king to awake.
While you explore the cave you come around several areas, where you have to wait a certain time to progress further; it even has a few little puzzles to solve.
The whole game is centered around it, so do yourself a favor and don't let yourself spoil anything, because exploring it and finding secrets is the experience, which makes the game so great in my opinion.
Also you can find things for your home cave that makes time progress faster than real time if you stay in your home cave.
You can even find books like Moby-♥♥♥♥ in the game that you can read there.
So all in all I would recommend this game to everyone that likes a unique "gaming" experience and like to explore a game on their own.
Ps: The game has quite some depressing themes to it, so if you don't like that then you should stay away from it.

I'm a backer of this game, so this review could be somewhat biased.
I backed it, because it looked interesting. I never played the demo or saw a trailer before backing it and only started playing it after both story parts were done.

This game is a classic point'n'click adventure, so you travel locations, gather items and solve puzzles to progress further in the story. Almost no interaction to solving a puzzle was absurd, I only had two or three instances of "combining everything with everything". I don't know how that is for people new to this genre though, because I play games in this genre for about 20 years now and so you get used to certain things about how puzzles work. Nevertheless I would say the game is not a hard game in this genre; so you might get stuck a few times, but never to the point that you are stuck for hours.

The story is about our protagonist Lazarus 'Lars' Bundy solving a murder case in Miami. In his investigation he stumbles upon a kidnapping, which leads to a way bigger case than he imagined. Due to help of Alice, an intern, who works for his former boss, they end up in San Leo, where they uncover the intentions behind a bigger plan and try to stop it. In the end this doesn't end as well as planned and they have to chase after the culprit ...
The story is divided into two parts (one for Miami and one for San Leo) and has a few twists here and there, which I didn't see coming and even hit me emotinal sometimes.
Overall the story is nothing ground breaking new, but I love detective stories and the twists and turns got me so much that I wanted to know what happens next. I have to say though that the last part of the story felt a bit rushed compared to the big build-up to it.

The characters were quite enjoyable, you got a few stereotypes here and there, but that's quite normal for a game, which has comedy in it. Also some puzzles are centered around the characteristics of certain persons.
Another thing to mention is, that you can see how Lars character shifts from part 1 to part 2 after a reveal of a certain story twist. Before he was a character, who made jokes here and there, but after that he got more serious and didn't make so many jokes anymore.

The sounds/musics used fit pretty well and helped to make the game more atmospheric. There was only voice, which bothered me. This probably happend due to the COVID-19 situation, because I guess everybody had to record from home; so the voice of Gaia used a microphone very different from the others and you can hear that pretty good in the game.
Also the background music used in the catheral bothered me, but this can probably be fixed easily. The problem here is the loop used ends abruptly - so you know, when it starts repeating.

So overall I would recommend the game to everybody that likes point'n'click adventures and everybody that likes detective stories with comedy parts in it, it doesn't matter if you are new to the genre or not, because it's not a hardcore adventure game like older games.

Ps: Even though the story of this game is done, the devs made an ending, which can more than easily result in a potential sequel sooner or later.
Pps: I haven't played the Broken Sword or Gabriel Knight series yet, so I can't compare it to them like others did.

I bought that game as soon as I saw it on the new release, because it kinda reminded me on Limbo.
I instantly installed it and finished it already in about 30min.
So it is a pretty short game, it had only a few level (seven if I recall correctly) and most of them are pretty straight forward rushing through them. There was only one level that took me a bit longer than just running through it.
Also the level doesn't seem to have a real connection between them.
The story ... well it wasn't really there; you start in a cage and end up back at your parents at the end of the game, but besides a few sentences here and there the game has no real story, besides getting back to your parents.
Addionally the ambience wasn't that great, because you have a few sound effects here and there, but that's all as far as I remember, I don't even remember the game having any music. (maybe it had, but it didn't really take notice of it)
So it was nowhere close to being something like Limbo.
That takes me to the point that I can't recommend the game at all, it would have been better as a free game or a demo to a bigger game, but for the 1.99€, where I live, it is way too much to ask for such a short pretty boring game.

This was one of the first games I ever played.
I played every other entry in the series, but I never had as much fun as I had with the first one.
Besides the obvious reasons for not liking the third installment (3D-ish and such) , some might say:
What about the second game? It has everything from the first game + new rides and everything.
Well that's somewhat the truth, but for me it wasn't enough new things to justify a new game instead of an addon. Also unlocking new parks in the first game was a nice goal and made the replay value higher if you failed a goal of a park, because you can another one if you manage it. :)
Another big problem with the second game for me is that the new rides (especially in the addons) are just reskins of existing rides, so the number of real new rides isn't that high.
Well if you like a nice theme park game than stick with this one, because you still have the goal for unlocking new parks and not just a semi-sandbox game like the 2nd.
Ps: Please don't ask about the weird "World" game. xD