Recent reviews by Mundungu

This game is great, and the app implementation is really well done. Ladder is fully free to play now, most of the negative reviews are outdated as of the latest patch.

The game is basically what you would get if you made MTG cube gameplay fully from scratch without the all MTG baggage. I'd say it's closest to forgetful fish / dandan from MTG, which makes for incredibly quick and interactive games. The game is designed so all cards are really powerful, but twice per game each player can steal the opponent's play. That means you need to navigate games carefully and craft for one sided threats that don't backfire.

Highly recommended for anyone into fast paced card games, especially since you can play it for free.

Solforge Fusion is an excellent game, but Stoneblade threw it in the gutter this week after announcing integration with Solana. They are planning on using NFTs to mint digital decks to the blockchain.

It's a fun game if you can get your hands on some decks for kitchen table games. Stay away from this app though, it's not going anywhere good.

This is a Pokemon clone through and through. Everything from the 6 mon party, to the 10% freeze chance, to the zubat gauntlet caves. Your starter even has tackle and tail whip, and there’s rare candies.

I want to play something fresh in this genre. I don’t want to play the same experience Nintendo released 12 other times. Please stop the copy pasta of mediocre games that people used to like. We can do better.

There are some incredible things this game does right, but they don’t make up for the core game loop. I want to call special attention to these:

• Built in nuzlocke feature
  
• Built in randomizer
  
• Unbelievable breadth of in game options, including custom difficulty, much needed animation speed settings, and color blind support
  
• Online multiplayer support for 3v3 and 6v6
  
• Incredible pixel art, the game looks amazing
  
• Not Nintendo

For anyone who is looking to play the same Pokemon formula again for some reason, you’d probably like this game. I really wish we could see something with the same shell and more innovation / thought underneath. There’s really no reason to have a lot of these awful Pokemon mechanics anymore. No one likes a 10% freeze chance, come on.

The game is kind of fun for a while, but its a free to play online game, so its built around gacha garbage / engagement metrics. This is a mobile game on PC, so that should tell the story. Highly recommended against, don't get sucked into this FOMO trap, the game isn't worth it. It also has a big problem with power creeping new cards to sell the battle pass each month.

Basically everything about this game is great except for 5e combat. I couldn't really stomach playing much more of the game because I hated the combat so much, but if you don't mind d20 rolls in your quickload simulator I'd highly recommend this game. It does everything right except copy wotc combat design. I really wish the just ported over DOS2 combat, but still a great time.

If you haven't ever tried a crpg, this is the one you should play to try out the genre. It's an incredibly long game, so don't be worried about finishing it. Even the first chapter is worth the investment.


Pros

• Amount of ways to solve narrative checkpoints
  
• DOS2 elements system
  
• Physics engine allowing for lots of emergent gameplay patterns, like stacking boxes to traverse walls, pushing actors off of ledges, jumping in general
  
• 5e modifications to add meaning to weapon types and giving players more static bonus action options
  
• Good character development overall, and lots of flexibility in the narrative to accommodate options you’ve chosen
  
• Coop works really well, and simultaneous turns on the same initiative plays smoothly

Cons

• 5e combat (specifically d20 system is a horrible fit for a 1p RPG)
  
• Shoehorned 5e spells that just don’t translate to a video game (Minor Illusion is a huge example of this)
  
• Rest system requiring food consumption, which leads to
  
• Pixel hunting for hundreds of crates to farm for food and small bits of gold
  
• “Difficulty”
  
• Several jarring moments where NPCs turn hostile for no apparent reason (ex. After resolving the goblin fort)
  
• Game pushes romance way too hard, it would be nice to be able to play the game without party members constantly hitting on you
  
• Way too much killing required
  
• Use of D&D IP might limit things Larian can do with the game especially if it competes with the wotc VTT

Capcom really crushed it with this one. This is the first fighting game in a long while that doesn’t have anything major wrong with it (except maybe Strive). It has all the bases covered:

Good

• Online netcode is excellent
  
• Comprehensive training mode complete with frame data and hotkeys
  
• Fantastic starting roster with diverse playstyles and mainstay characters represented
  
• Engaging new mechanics with the Drive system to keep the game fresh
  
• Actually playable solo player mode
  
• Modern controls provide a substitute to the archaic capcom controls to help new players
  
• Incredible turnaround time for important bug fixes (usually a day or less)
  
• Cross platform play to make it easy to play with friends

For anyone looking to get into fighting games, this is probably the way to do it. It’s still Street Fighter, so you’ll still have the usual things that come with that (ground based footsie combat, jumping is really risky, lots of zoning fireballs, etc). There are a lot of tools and explanations in the tutorials available to teach new players the basics.

There are a couple downsides to the game, but I had to really look for them. Mostly the game is going to appeal to anyone who is interested in a Street Fighter designed game at all.

Bad

• Soundtrack is pretty bottom tier, but makes for a good OST muted game
  
• Some noobcrusher mechanics, including Drive Impact, Drive Rush, and E Honda

I'm pretty medium on playing this game overall, but really happy it exists. It's probably the best community story generator since Eve Online, another game I liked to engage with at a distance. The biggest thing getting in my way with enjoying the game fully is a functional UI / better user experience overall. If that doesn't bother you, I'd strongly recommend this as the best in class colony sim.

Pros

Incredible detail / depth added to the game
This game is still unmatched in this category, and shows that something built to be as complex as possible can still be successful in the industry. I like the amount of depth in the game too, but a lot of it is buried behind hours of grinding.

The colony sim is generally just fun for a while
I had a lot of fun with Rimworld before I spent a lot of time with Dwarf Fortress. I got into it for a while and it was a nice experience. The big problem for me is it's a “play one play them all” sort of game, and I just don’t want to play this formula anymore.

Great to see other people’s creations / sandboxes
One of the things I enjoyed most about the game is popping into random peoples’ streams to see the forts they were building. There’s so much uniqueness in almost everyone’s fort layout and priorities, so it was cool to see the game’s breadth that way. The toylike design also promotes this kind of creativity / uniqueness since no one is trying to optimize anything, they are just building sand castles.

Some of the most fun I had with this game was just popping into random peoples' streams to see how they built their fortress. There's no incentive to try to optimize any sort of play, so people are free to be as creative as they want to throughout the game.

Cons

The UI / UX is still horrible
This is by far the biggest reason I don’t want to play the game anymore. More in this below.

The first hour of any new fort is incredibly tedious / repetitive
I found myself wanting to restart multiple times after learning better layouts and what I wanted in a plot of land. I did this twice after the tutorial, and never made it past the first hour the second time. This is a lot different from most of these toylike games where the beginning feels like a chore and it gets more interesting as you go. It also meant I had to stick with my cobbled together mess of a fort or suffer through the first year of a new one, and I generally managed with the former.

The random name generators create a string of gibberish
The names are meaningless and non memorable. They might as well just not have names at all, since I’ll never remember anything by a name. I wish there was a bit more care into the random name generators for dwarves, religions, instruments, etc.

On Bad UI
The more I play games in general, and especially this sort of sandbox toy game, the more I value good UI and usability. This game’s biggest problem has always been the UI / player usability, and even though it has gotten better it’s still awful. It’s a chore to build a door for a new room. Even the hotkeys are tedious to input, since they are all over the place.

Building furniture with B -> U -> R is not intuitive. It would have been a lot nicer to have all the hotkeys with each menu on the left side of the keyboard so I don’t need to hunt around for random letters with my mouse hand. It seems like no part of the UI was made with ease of use in mind.

I can imagine a world where the devs took a full year to work on the UI / usability of the game instead of adding some niche story scenario that happens 112 years later to a distant land into the game. For me I would just mash Rimworld’s UI on top of this game and have the ideal colony sim.

TLDR
At this point a sandbox game’s UI just makes or breaks the game for me. DF is in strong contrast with Against the Storm which has incredible UI design and a lot of innovation in usability especially in the city builder genre. It’s one of the biggest reasons I like the game so much. Despite all the nice things about DF, I just can’t get over the awful UI barrier enough to enjoy the pros. For anyone that doesn't have that issue, I highly recommend the game. I'm super glad this exists and it's good to see the game get it's fair exposure now with the steam release.

Pretty frustrating game overall, if you want a game like this just play Synth Riders instead.

Reasons I don't like it
- Really strict timings, especially with the directional inputs
- Bafflingly horrible menus, it's really difficult to navigate. The menus are all VR physics instead of point and click, which makes it even worse to navigate with your left hand since you need to reach across everything to the right side
- Massive difficulty spikes between levels, I couldn't find the right pace for me (could also be related to the first issue)

Pros
- Looks nice
- Great song selection
- Integrated custom song support

This game is great, its as fun as it looks. It's the best new platformer I've played since Shovel Knight.

The game has it all. The controls are tight and smooth, the graphic style works great for the game, the soundtrack is fantastic, and levels are detailed and fun to explore.

The game was a lot longer than I was expecting it to be. It took about 6 hours for a rushed playthrough, and I didn't explore a lot of the bonus levels or anything past the credits. The difficulty also ramps up each world, and it can get pretty tough in the later part of the game.

I'd highly recommend this to anyone looking for a new polished platformer. There's a lot more content here than you would normally expect for this style of game too.

Pretty much the best you can get for a minimalist platformer. I'd highly recommend this to anyone interested in the genre. This game in particular is great value since it includes the first 2 games (and the remaster to love 1).

The difficulty is about as tough as you want it to be. The default infinite lives mode lets you put down checkpoints wherever you want in the level along with an optional slow down button. The difficult end is a yolo mode where you only have 1 life for the run.

Love 3 lasts for a bit under an hour to finish the 25 levels. The whole experience is smooth from start to finish with new mechanics in just about every level as well as a great new song for each. Each level also has a collectable item like meat boy bandages.