Polite Whale 🐳 님이 최근에 작성한 평가

Dome Keeper feels like a modern flash game. Beyond the very clear comparisons and inspirations from the classic Motherload, this game excels at something the classic web games excelled at, by actually living up to their goal of being a game that you can pick up and play at any time. I've often felt that other roguelikes and arcade styled gameplay sometimes struggled with how to balance the amount of content that you need to unlock on the long-term and how much they ask you from each session, something that Dome Keeper is able balance with flying colours.

Going back to the previous reference to Motherload, if you've ever played that flash game back in the day, then you'll immediately understand Dome Keeper's gameplay loop. You drop down with your dome into an alien planet, and must mine resources (Iron, Water and Cobalt) in order to upgrade your dome's defence capabilities and mining abilities. The deeper you go into a mine, the harder the terrain gets, and unless you have improvements to your mining abilities, the longer each individual trip down bellow will take. Every few minutes you'll have to pop out back to the surface to defend your dome, using either the laser or sword domes at your disposal to vanquish various enemies trying to destroy it. Likewise to mining, waves become harder the longer they go on.

It's absolutely nerve wrecking (in a positive way) how you have to balance decisions between mining and defending your dome, such as trying to find that last piece of Cobalt before popping back up to the surface to repair your dome and defend it at the very last minute. Relics and caves that you can find as you continue playing also spice up the gameplay, introducing favour-turning elements to your current run, from resource elevators, a pet dinosaur named Drillbert which helps you mine through the mines (when not asleep), to seeds that you can plant for resource trees. There's enough small but consequential decision making on every run to make each playthrough feel similar, but still unique.

Sessions can last as short as 20 minutes on the small map, up to 2 hours or more on the bigger-ones. Beyond map size, you can also adjust the difficulty, modifiers, and starting relic to your liking. While some players might find it undervaluing for Dome Keeper not to have as much unlockable long-term progression as other games, I think the small unlock of new map sizes, relics, and even modifiers to those relics give the game small goals to work with, but without ever forcing you into a given direction where you're completely stuck out of something you have to grind for hours to unlock too.

And of course, it also needs to be said, but the presentation of the game is also fantastic, with crisp pixel-art, changing palettes on each run, as well as ambient music (that you can customise the frequency off in the settings) for each of both unique characters that you can play as. The latest update also introduces small life-forms to the cave, so there's plenty for your eyes to look at as you explore!

I'm really glad to have grabbed this game right once it went on sale, and I'm eagerly looking forward to what other future content is planned for the game. The Assessor at first felt like a gimmicky character, but has quickly turned into my favourite character to play as, especially with its unique soundtracks and the way they power up as you upgrade their abilities. Thank you very much for the developer Bippinbits and the publishing team at Raw Fury for such a great time. Played primarily on the Steam Deck.

As someone who played thought the GBA and Nintendo DS era of Harvest Moon games, I have a certain nostalgia when it comes to farming games, spending countless of hundreds of hours farming, handling animals and forming friendships with other villagers.

Stardew Valley manages to capture all of the magic I recall from that time, with all of its quirky nature and memorable characters, gorgeous pixel art and it’s repetitive – but never really mundane – gameplay. Not only that, it also iterates on it with a level of excellence that breathes new life and depth into many returning features as well as introduces a slew of new touch-ups and quality of life features that improve on the different sorts of tasks. You can tell ConcernedApe’s goal was to capture the same magic that makes the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons specials, but also breath their own life and love into it as an indie developer.

In addition to an already fantastic time playing through the game in single-player – which has a small ‘campaign’ of it’s own – the game also features real-time online multiplayer, where four or more (if you mod the game) players can join-together and share the same farm, dividing tasks between each-other as you all work together to recover the community centre at the heart of the valley’s town (or by sponsoring Joja’s Mart but at that point you’re just heartless by supporting such corporation).

If for some reason you believe that you still don’t have enough reasons to support this game and it’s fantastic developer, the game is still getting updates that introduce new content across both single-player and multiplayer modes, with new side-quests, additional quests and events and, on top of it all, even more quality of life features. In fact, at the time of writing of this review, Update 1.4 just came out and I am extremely eager to start it and play through it once more.

For both veterans and newcomers to the farming game simulation genre, Stardew Valley is a work of love and a fantastic experience all-together, making it one of the must have indie-games of all time.

Although being a mod, Portal Stories: Mel is an excellent follow up for those who desire for more portal after having played the first two official games. In fact, the whole mod has a overall great level of quality as you would expect from an official game. It's not perfect in any means, but tries its best at it.

It's too be warned tough, as negative reviews point out, this mod is indeed pointed towards more experienced portal players by using several mechanics that don't tend to be that obvious at first. Sometimes you might get stuck in some chambers trying to figure something that's actually pretty obvious. You probably should play some easier mods or workshop maps before attempting a challenge like this. In case you are up to the challenge, chances are you will actually enjoy it and feel very rewarded by the end.

Despite the difficulty, some of the things I found the strongest in the whole game was the overall presentation. The chambers in their specific architectures were very well done as well as the whole details and secrets that's the developers left on it. Soundtrack and Voice Acting are also top notch, and although one or another might sound off-placing at the times, they eventually build up your momentum to continue exploring the chambers. Voice Acting is really a plus, as it makes Virgil really feel like a more solid and stronger character than he already is. It's also a big plus that the developers found a way to make the game fit into the main lore without breaking or making anything official be non cannon.

In overall, I have to recommend this mod to anyone who wishes to have a bigger challenge at Portal's mechanics meanwhile enjoying a very decent presentation.