Recent reviews by Pyetech

Certainly worth 50 cents, but don't expect any innovation from this bare-bones space shooter. I would have liked to have seen ships with different movement physics, and the ability to skip the easy first couple of minutes in a round. A more fleshed-out upgrade system would also have been welcome.

If you are looking for a similar type of game, I would recommend Downwell instead.

I don't even like the original PAC-MAN that much, but I enjoyed PAC-MAN Champion Edition DX+. The gameplay has been revised (for the better, I think), and it offers a bunch of short time trials and a handful of new maps.

In this version of the game, ghosts will begin chasing you once they spot you. A trailing train of ghosts will eventually form, creating an element of gameplay reminiscent of Snake. Sleeping ghosts dot the map, which will awaken and join this train if you pass by. Once you collect all the pellets on one side of the map, a collectable (such as a fruit) will appear, and once you collect that, the completed side of the map will refresh with new pellets, sleeping ghosts, and possibly even a new map layout.

The game speeds up so long as you perform well, which is where much of the challenge comes from. That said, it will enter slow motion mode if you are about to run into a ghost, giving you time to change your direction. You also have a limited number of bombs that you can use to blast nearby ghosts back to the center of the map. Since using these penalizes you just like if you were to die, I felt the bomb mechanic was redundant. Overall, the game is not as difficult as it should be because you accumulate plenty of bombs and extra lives as you play. I can't confirm it, but I also doubt the ghosts have their distinct AIs that they had in the original PAC-MAN; I felt like the ghosts who had not spotted you yet would almost never choose a path that would pen you in.

I wish there was a simultaneous multiplayer mode, and I didn't appreciate being asked to connect a Facebook account to get all the achievements. The DLC model for this game is also pretty ridiculous. Most of the map skins are a pleasure to play on, but a few of them are atrocious.

Worth picking up when it's on sale!

Pleasant to play through but rather unremarkable. iZBOT reminds me of Super Meat Boy, except it has much less content and it only becomes difficult in the last world. It took me about two hours to 100% the game, so definitely wait until it is on sale to purchase. I think a level editor would be a welcome addition in the future.

Meh.

I can't really recommend this game in good conscience. It took me just over an hour to beat, and I was never challenged mentally or reflexively. I tend to be a completionist, too. I mean, it's not bad, it just wasn't very inspired.

The store page is perfectly happy to name drop both Cave Story and Super Metroid, despite those two games being nothing alike. Out There Somewhere is way, way more heavily influenced by Cave Story than Super Metroid. Expect an extremely linear adventure with a few relatively unimportant collectables lying one or two screens off the beaten path.

Almost nothing about this game is focused. The NPCs you meet almost never have anything interesting to say, and the environments you wander through are inconsequential. The core game mechanic is needlessly muddied when you get a gun that lets you kill enemies. 100%ing the game is impossible to do on your first playthrough.

La-Mulana pleasantly surprised me when I first started playing. Here was a Metroidvania in the strictest sense of the word, with an expansive hand-crafted map just waiting to be explored. Pivotal items could be found anywhere, so you were constantly rewarded for investigating every nook and cranny. These upgrades also allowed you to intuitively access new areas--for example, once you acquire an item that lets you breathe underwater, you can progress further in a watery area.

At this point, my only complaints were that save points are few and far between, and are often not located anywhere near bosses.

As I progressed through the game, I grew more and more frustrated. Upgrades stopped being intuitive since the obstacles they got past became too obviously artificial. For example, some items interact with arbitrary symbols found throughout the ruins, which you had no reason to believe were important at all. This leads to a lot of directionless backtracking.

Eventually, I got stuck, looked at a guide, and was shocked at the number of required items that were hidden in unfairly obscure locations. Stuff like "once you do X, a ceiling in an unrelated area that you've already explored becomes breakable with your whip". Maybe a tablet somewhere contains a subtle hint that would point you in the right direction, but I feel this level of opaqueness is bad game design. Super Metroid had plenty of hidden secrets, but there was almost always something unusual about the area to prompt you to scan it more closely with your X-Ray Scope.

I'm unsure whether I will continue playing La-Mulana, but if I do, I expect to have to rely on a guide. Despite this, I do see why the game was so influential, and I still think it has quite a lot to offer.

Very disappointing. The gameplay is little more than luck management, and none of the metagame elements grabbed me. I would ask for a refund if I could.

A walking simulator desperately in need of a run button. Go watch a movie instead.

I admit I didn't get far, but I clearly don't "get" the game at all.

A masterpiece.

Toki Tori 2+ is like Metroid, except the enemies are replaced by puzzles and you never learn any new abilities. The entire map is available to you from the minute you start, and the only thing standing in your way is your brain.

I want to shake the hands of whoever designed this game. I've read that the developer went out of business due to poor sales, which is absolutely criminal.

10/10. Play it, especially if you enjoy exploring.

If you are a fan of quirky indie RPGs, LISA is worth playing through. Even though it was clearly made in RPG Maker, the game doesn't really suffer too much from it.

The story of LISA is enigmatic and the humor is at times bizarre. The level design is polished and there are plenty of secrets to find. Since a fair amount of these secrets are bonus party members, completionists will end up with way more characters than they can use.

Expect to make some very difficult decisions, and for your actions to have some unintended consequences. However, also expect to be screwed over by RNG, such as when party members will randomly up and leave you. I found it to be impossible to resist save scumming, so for the full experience, I'd recommend playing on the harder difficulty where this is discouraged.

Since there are plenty of opportunities to kill off your party members, I would have liked to have seen some sort of acknowledgement during the ending sequence for taking the high road and keeping them alive.