Recent reviews by Pyronoid!

Card Shark has drawn many comparisons, at least as far as I've seen, to WarioWare, and I think it's a comparison with a lot of merit to it in some way: cheating at card games is done in a multitude of ways, and there are a lot of techniques you get taught throughout the course of the game, such as various ways of shuffling, dealing, how to mark a card for yourself, or how to signal valuable information to another player. One way of conceptualising these is as a set of independent mini-games, requiring specific inputs to succeed; you are taught a technique and given as long as you like to practice it, before stepping into 17th Century France to attempt to pull it off for real, with the additional pressure of real people and their scrutinous gaze. The difference here is that you will use one technique for one "level", repeating the technique the requisite three times in order to successfully strip your mark of as much gold (or, I suppose it would be livre?) as you possibly can while avoiding detection. It's tempting to suggest that there should have been a bit more variety in these techniques - really, each one you learn and catalog is a combination of smaller techniques, and I think there could be *some* room for expression and creative combination to make your own full techniques - but the method presented helps to keep you on your toes as you pivot from strategy to strategy while trying to generate funds.

I will readily admit that I found the intersection of narrative and gameplay absolutely gripping; to briefly get you up to speed on the narrative premise, you play a peasant boy from a small village who is swept up by the Comte de Saint-Germain into the French aristocracy, whereupon you and your new partner intend to lie, cheat and steal your way to both financial and political success. Along the way you meet various significant historical figures, and become enveloped in plots and intrigue. The story plays out in little snippets of dialogue in between rounds of the popular card game of the era, the specifics of which are completely abstracted away from you, the player, to much benefit. Playing Solitaire with Voltaire would be frightfully boring; taking all of his copper, on the other hand? Exhilarating.

Presentation is really the keyword for Card Shark, which feels very appropriate given that it's all about cheating at cards; it's all well and good knowing and understanding various forms of cheating cards, but you need to know how to do it discretely, use distraction, subterfuge, seize the smallest windows of opportunity to give yourself the upper hand and, if you're feeling especially confident, your opponent the lower hand. Something I really like about Card Shark is the double impact of both the lovely painterly aesthetic, evoking baroque paintings - of the very era in which we find our protagonist - and the visual presentation resembling a stage play with you in the audience for it all; often times a character will enter another room, which will then be transitioned as a parallel to the former, which looks superb and really evokes the idea of a stage play. It's even backed with a beautifully composed soundtrack; one highlight is the piece which plays when learning a new technique from your mentor, a suitably think-y tune that matches the atmosphere of preparing for a night of deception in high society.

It's a really nice combination of all the various aesthetic choices which combine with the gameplay to make a really compelling experience altogether; there's a moment early in the game where a fatal accident results in the Comte profiting financially, which is presented by the UI akin to as if you had just won at the card game you had been playing moments earlier; might have just been a convenient way of signifying you had earned money, but there's something I really liked about this way of presenting the information, like everything was nothing more than a game to Comte, and so you must too embrace that mindset. There's an even greater example of this sort of narrative design, that I really don't want to spoil, so I'll just tell you: Death is not the end.

I played Card Shark over the course of four nights, stopping for the night each time I reached the end of a chapter - it's funny to think of each break like an intermission - and was thoroughly engrossed the entire time. You won't learn much about French history, despite the presence of real historical figures, but you might learn a thing or two about cheating at cards, even if its just knowing you'd be terrible at it, like me.

Goodness, what an absolute treat this game is! Played through the entirety of just Hana's story, took about 4 hours, including all collectibles (but not all S ranks). Will definitely be going back to play as the other two characters in full to round off the game in the future.

It's rare to play a game that just feels so complete, so absolutely tight and focused, like a person wrote out their specification, picked up their tools and set to work, and not only crafted exactly what they had outlined, but that what they ended up with translated so unbelievably well from paper to product. There's not a foot out of step, every aspect of the game feeling so carefully considered and constructed, a really impressive passion project! The core of the experience truly has to be the incredibly tight control system, Hana feeling like an absolute dream to control from the moment you start playing, and only feeling better and better as you master the tiny intricacies of the system; I find myself not playing a lot of 3D platformers, and I've no idea why that is, but Lunistice instantly hooked me with its great movement and sensible controls (if putting Jump on one of your shoulder buttons becomes an industry norm, I will be immensely pleased).

Each world beyond the first one introduces some new mechanic which changes the way you interact with the levels, but crucially, your core set of skills remains the same throughout, which results in a really nice organic increase in challenge as you go through - a particular favourite of mine is the dessert-themed world which uses music and rhythm for environmental challenge - it might lack the sort of replayability that comes with taking new skills back to old stages like an ULTRAKILL or OlliOlli World but it makes for a compelling first-time run (and, additionally, there are other characters who bring that sort of challenge if you like, which I think is a nice way to diversify the game!) With each new world comes a new theme, both visual and musical, and I'd like to highlight the soundtrack in this regard; nicely crafted tunes for each world and, really, just a wonderful soundtrack all over! I love the different visual styles of all the worlds and, in general, the game, too - it's clearly meant to be played on a CRT, but there's a filter for that if you need it - an appropriately dream-like landscape with random elements jutting out of the clouds, it's really beautiful, and really capitalises on both the limitations of a small development team and captures the spirit of the era of games it tries to evoke.

There's a nice little bit of narrative going on, which is dished out to you as a reward for exploring the levels fully and finding all the collectibles; its a nice incentive to dig through the game proper if the intrinsic satisfaction of fully exploring the levels didn't work for you, and I have to say, there's some really interesting ludonarrative stuff going on that I don't want to spoil. I'd say run through without worrying about collectibles, then go back through and go for 100% for maximum satisfaction.

Honestly, this might be a boring review, I just can barely think of any criticisms of this game - Hana's footstep sounds get a bit annoying, there you go - it's just been an absolute delight to play through. This is a proper little bitesize treat of a game and I can't wait to see more from this developer.

Remember manuals? They were nice, huh? Where you'd buy a brand new game with your hard earned cash and on the trip home, before you even booted up the game for the first time, the instruction manual would be there. Offering you a wealth of information about the game, ranging from ostensibly useless to explanations of crucial mechanics, maybe even some stuff that's not in the game itself!

See, the thing about manuals is - and this isn't a criticism of people who love them a whole bunch, it's totally understandable, nor the concept themselves - they do *kinda* spoil the experience in a way. Not in a way that totally ruins the experience, that would be an absurd suggestion; but, you could argue, a manual written in a certain way with certain content can rob the player of the *discovery* that comes with the experience of playing the game. They almost create a difficult relationship between the game designer and the player - the designer can spend all this effort making sure the mechanics are the game are explained via their gameplay, but the player might just be reading the manual to get the full understanding themselves, so it's a bit of a weird stand-off.

TUNIC is a game which clearly draws a lot of its design from the sheer love of instruction manuals, but transforms that love into one of the freshest and most interesting mechanics I've seen in a game in years. Quick explainer, for the uninitiated: TUNICs manual is an in-game encyclopedia which is slowly put together over the course of the game by collecting its pages. You can think of it like, say, the collectible diaries in Bayonetta, but rather than offering supplemental information which leans harder on narrative than gameplay, TUNICs collectible pages *are* the games manual!

There's an interesting dynamic at play, thanks to this set-up: obviously, a game designer always has control over how and when you collect new items, learn new abilities, encounter new enemies, and even the pace and order of tutorials given to the player, if any. The game designer reaching past the player character to speak directly to you, the player, and explain mechanics, is nothing new, but there's something unique and charming about the implementation in TUNIC and how it ties into your experience of the game. Over the course of your first play-through, your understanding of the game will develop through a tandem of your own exploration and experimentation, and gentle nudges along by the manual, written in a foreign language but for the odd keyword, intended to use your existing understanding of "how a video game works" to lead you to conclusions about how *this* one works.

Even with this arrangement - being given a literal handbook to reference within the game at your command - it's a game of real depth, which only opens up more and more with enticing secrets and insisting nudges. You might be forgiven, if this is the only review you read, for thinking TUNIC is just a game about walking around and finding stuff: it *does* have combat, multiple weapons, spells, boss fights, everything you expect from a game wearing it's Legend of Zelda influence on its sleeve so proudly, but honestly, it's probably the least interesting part of the entire experience for me. Not that this makes me knock any points off of it, and really, it's probably essential - what good are swords and spells without a plethora of beasties to use them against? - it's just that, well, the game features an entire suite of accessibility features intending to make combat *less* of a thing, and I think that was a really wise decision. It makes a lot of sense to use combat as the bone, but this is a game with some really impressive meat on it.

I'm mindful that I might end up writing something that takes longer to write and/or read than it would take a person to just play the entirety of the game in question, so, short and snappy. Here goes!

ElecHead! It's a puzzle-platformer which establishes a tiny handful of core mechanics in the first, like, 4 minutes, pats you on the back and throws you at a series of challenges which are solved through the clever use of electricity. I really like this style of game design: nothing against the alternatives, of course, but I really enjoy games which hand you a small number of central mechanics at the start and test your growing understanding and mastery of them over time by only changing the environment in which they are challenged, rather than serving you a slowly expanding set of skills.

Nama, the game's developer and designer, clearly established the central mechanics available to the player early on, because it's really impressive how incredibly well designed the challenge in this game is. The game is given a genuinely satisfying and enjoyable difficulty curve through level design alone, gently introducing new environmental hazards and mechanics at a pretty even pace, which all tie in to the central electricity mechanic that the player has direct influence over.

ElecHead is really a masterclass in how to do so, so, so much with so little; I felt like I was still learning more and more about the game right up until the finish, and having an absolutely wonderful time with the process of learning the entire time. Also, it needs mentioning, Nama has a really delightful sense of humour that comes across in the mechanics and some of the smaller details of the game (including one particularly devious puzzle that I won't spoil).

There's some really nice environmental narrative stuff going on, and a particularly entertaining secret ending that's a reward for some fairly enjoyable secret hunting. The soundtrack is really nicely composed, and complements well with the process of thinking your way through some of the trickier puzzles that might have you stumped for a little bit; but it's never a tiresome experience, overall. There's even some leaning into some interesting meta-mechanics which I feel were used sparingly, and really show an interesting lens on game design. It all comes together and, in a sentence, produces a really interesting and compelling gameplay experience with so little chaff and a huge amount to love!

Nama is absolutely a game designer you ought to keep your eye on.

Unpacking feels like a very pure distillation of the idea of an "experiential" game; lots of games implement "inventory management" as a small part of a larger picture, but its rare to find a game where that is basically the sole mechanic. One example you could come up with would be Wilmot's Warehouse, but even that has a little more going on thanks to the time restrictions and upgrade system which add a little bit of mechanical depth (but it's a helpful example for our purposes here!).

This could probably be read as quite negative so far, but when utilised well, I think an absence of mechanical depth can be beneficial when something else is there to pick up the slack, and there is definitely enough going on in Unpacking to give you an engaging experience. The main goal of Unpacking's design is to give you a sincere, intimate view into the world of the games central character, who we are ostensibly playing as as we unpack boxes and arrange the contents. Her life is presented to us in a series of vignettes, wherein she has just moved into a new living space; childhood moving, university, then entering and navigating adult life, all significant bookmarks in a persons life.

Unpacking presents its story not with words, but with its environments and with our protagonists personal belongings, some of which travel with them through life, and some of which don't; be it a childhood stuffed animal that one could never see themselves parting ways with, or consumables which always end up being replenished before the next big move. Through the course of the games 5 or 6 chapters, you, the player, develop a surprisingly personal relationship to, and understanding of, our lead, and all of this is done via the simple act of (clever titledrop incoming) unpacking all of their cherished belongings.

I won't go into too much detail here, because part of the enjoyment of the experience is in uncovering and noticing these details for yourself, but I will say that Unpacking is a game with an awful lot of care invested in its crafting. I'd wager about 95% of the total of all the items you unpack in the game are totally unique, pixel-art assets (the other 5% being things like coasters), and they are complemented with a sound bank of over 14,000 files just for picking them up and putting them down on a variety of surfaces - even if a combination would make no sense for organisation, like dinnerware on a bathroom counter. You're not only free to organise the belongings however you're like, but you're encouraged to experiment, just like you might when you move into a new living space - and while progression through the story is gated by items being in the "correct" place, the game does offer accessibility options to make that process easy, or even trivial.

All in all, it's an enlightening experience and a great lesson in ludonarrative for those curious about the many, many ways in which games can be an interesting and unique story-telling medium in a way other forms of media simply can't. Highly recommend.

Don't separate the chicks; that would be cruel.

TTS has a global chat system which is (apparently) auto-moderated to prevent off-topic discussion; "off-topic" hasn't been made terribly clear by moderators themselves or their Global Chat Rules (published here[kb.tabletopsimulator.com]) but the short version of it is that a player was banned from global chat for mentioned that they are gay. When prompted, the moderator who issued the ban, Jorp, suggested that the reason was self-evident with the defense: "Maybe you didn't understand them [the rules] correctly".

Upon request for clarification from the moderation team in the Discord server, another moderator, CHRY, offered the explanations: "If your message is offensive of disruptive then it will be met with a kick and/or ban.", "Discussing sexuality has no place in global chat.", and "Tabletop simulator is about playing tabletop games, not a place to discuss sexuality, fetishes, politics." - that last point is important because "fetishes" and "politics" have not been relevant up to this point until, unprompted, a community moderator mentioned those topics alongside "sexuality" as inappropriate topics for discussion.

The charitable reading is that the (apparent) auto-moderation has been implemented in the way that it has to prevent terms like "gay" being used in a derogatory fashion - unfortunately for TTS, auto-moderation isn't sophisticated enough to distinguish between contexts in which a word is applied, so it's insufficient as a moderation tool. Additionally, it seems that in their desire to ensure that global chat is as potentially free from drama as possible, the TTS community management have curated an environment in which any self-identification or expression that differs from heteronormativity is "inappropriate".

Their own moderation guidelines have created the perfect environment for anti-LGBT rhetoric and sentiment to thrive - regardless of whether this is how they actually feel or not - and this is reflected in the surge of positive reviews for this game, containing everything from a simple "based" (which is almost certainly a dog-whistle at this point) to full on anti-LGBT screeds. It is deeply disappointing, additionally, that in the wake of the increased discussion and reviewing of this game, that the developers themselves have done virtually nothing to clarify their stance, moderate their playerbase, or even apologise to the community that they have caused so much harm. In fact, they haven't even offered an apology to the player in question who they banned.

TTS is a massively, massively social game; sure, you can probably use it to play some board games that are single-player, but its intention is clearly to be a multi-player board game engine - it is unfortunate, then, that they have decided to not address the fact that they are cultivating an audience of players who regurgitate harmful rhetoric (ironic or not) and generally create an environment that is toxic to any demographic of player. I sincerely hope the developers pull themselves together and do something about this issue, because if they don't, it's literally a slippery slope from here.

Trans rights are human rights.