Recent reviews by ThreeSon

A perfect example of what a $5 game should be. There are plenty of additions we could wish for: online multiplayer, more enemy types (there are only two), more environments (only one), a map editor, etc. Maybe those could appear in a sequel someday. But what's already here in this game is easily worth the asking price.

Art, music, and sound are all pleasant. Nothing that stands out to me either exceptional or terrible. Really the only significant complaint I have is that there is no mouse support in the menus. You have to use the keyboard or a controller.

You'll definitely want to use mouse and keyboard for gameplay, The developer "heavily recommends" a gamepad, but that's baloney. Using the mouse to aim not only gives you much better precision (gamepad only gives you directional aiming), but it also lets you pan the camera around so you can see upcoming threats. I tried both control methods, and trust me that unless you want to increase the difficulty of what is already a challenging game, stick with the mouse.

The game is designed around local multiplayer, and I imagine it would be pretty awesome if you can get 4 players together, but I only played solo. I completed the campaign, played a few "rogue" maps, and fought a couple of rounds in the coliseum. I got 3 solid hours of enjoyment and I'm very satisfied.

I would recommend Oath to the Stars primarily to dedicated bullet hell fans - those who like to replay these games over and over, chasing high scores or a 1CC on the highest difficulty. It's not really that hard to simply finish the game (I managed it on my third attempt on normal), but you will die plenty and burn a lot of continues until you take the time to learn the enemy and bullet patterns.

Oath is very tough. It's probably the toughest shmup out of the several dozen others I've played on Steam so far. Unlocking any of the higher-level achievements would be a major accomplishment. But it's also fair, and the design is sound enough that I felt I could always avoid death, with enough practice and better reflexes.

If you're not the type of shmup player that craves a stiff challenge, then it may not appeal to you much. I bought this game for $4 during the summer sale, which is a good deal, but I wish the developer would flesh it out a little more, like by adding more story illustrations because the ones that are there now get repeated too often (and sometimes there's just a black screen with text).

A bigger problem is that the enemy patterns are also recycled frequently, especially in the latter stages, so a little more vairiety overall would be nice. Since it's pretty short even by shmup standards (around 10 to 15 minutes), I think it's important for the whole game to feel unique and memorable, and that quality is what's lacking here more than anything else.

Overall though, Oath to the Stars is solid. It's satisfying to play, with well-designed boss fights. And there's enough replayability to make it worth a buy for the type of player it was created for.

This is a very basic, very easy auto-runner with a few good chuckles in it and nothing else. It's cheap but you'll almost certainly play it just once and then forget about it. There's no achievements or leaderboards either, though I wouldn't recommend it even if there were.

The brief bits of gameplay shown in the trailer are the entire game. All the stages look identical and the gameplay never changes - just press the right button at the right time and end the stage with a button-mashing minigame. The music is all farty chiptune arrangements of classic Christmas carols (no metal mixes like the one in the trailer). Again, kind of funny for a few moments but that's it.

I'm generally a fan of twin-stick shooters but I guess I'm just not hardcore enough for TxP. Great style and personality, but too much of this game bothered the hell out of me. In an hour or so of play time I went through about 50 runs and I don't think I'll be coming back to it, other than idling for card drops.

I have no idea why people are comparing this to Devil Daggers. Other than both games taking place in a single arena, they are nothing alike. A more obvious comparison is the UBERMOSH series. TxP is basically a better-looking, more chaotic version of those games minus the melee component.

I like that the heroine in TxP curses up a storm through the entire game, being a big fan of profanity myself (I'd love to see a video of the recording session), but there's not a lot of variety there. She just says f**k a lot, like one of the South Park kids after they snuck in to the Terrance and Phillip movie. More creativity would have been nice.

The gameplay is where I have the biggest problems though. Number one on the list: You can't pause this game. And if you should instinctively tap the Start button at some point, as I did twice, the game will immediately quit to the main menu. I don't care if that's an engine limitation or a design decision, it's idiotic. So hopefully you won't ever be having a good run and suddenly have to scratch your nose or answer the doorbell.

My personal best run came on my 5th attempt, with a score of 75,000. Through my next 40-plus runs, I didn't came close to that again. I never felt that I was getting better as I played more, even after stopping half-way through to read the comprehensive guide that Andrei wrote. There is so much noise and distraction while you're playing that it's very difficult to see attacks and bullets before they've already killed you (one hit deaths). This gets even worse when the bosses start appearing, as debris and other hazards start dropping from the ceiling and flying in all directions. Luck seems to play a bigger role in survival the deeper into the game you get - too much for me.

Another match-3 game from SakuraGame, mixed with short visual novel segments. I assume it's similar to Hell Girls, although I don't have much time playing that one so I can't make good comparisons. I'm writing this review after playing the first 2 1/2 chapters of Mirror (out of 8 total in the current build).

Bottom line: For a day-1 Early Access game, this is easily worth two bucks. Even if development stopped today, I would have expected to pay between $5 and $10 for what's there now.

The artwork is very high quality, both for the characters and the backgrounds, and there's a lot of variety for both. The visuals overall are the best part of the game, on par with some of the more expensive VNs on Steam - Example (SFW). The only fault I could see is that the style isn't always consistent - some backgrounds have a watercolor-style appearance while others are crisp and CG-like, but it didn't bother me at all. Music is okay - mostly unmemorable but it fits the game fine. The title track is a standout.

The English translation is not great, but it's better than most other games published by SG on Steam. There seems to be at least some human involvement in it - not completely done by machine. I didn't have any trouble understanding what was being said 80% of the time. Hopefully they will make another pass or two and by the final release it could be relatively polished.
Edit (23 Nov 2017): The English translation has already been significantly improved from the initial release.

Each chapter of the game appears to be a self-contained story, with unique characters and plot. Although the gameplay is primarily match-3 in the style of Puzzle Quest and the like, there are also short visual novel vignettes before each battle. They are a few minutes in length, and each one has a dialogue choice that results in gameplay modifier (e.g. -10% enemy health, +20% enemy attack, etc).

The modifiers don't seem to have much impact so I wouldn't worry about making a bad choice. This is because there isn't a lot of strategy involved in the battles. There are only 4 primary icons on each 8x7 board, so you'll be getting a lot 5x and higher combo chains without really trying. These battles are the weakest aspect of the game. I hope they take the time to add some more variety and make them less luck-based, but I don't think that's likely to happen by the time the game is finished.

There is an in-game shop where you can upgrade stats and get new abilities, but I haven't spent much time experimenting with it because I've only lost a single battle so far. Again though I don't think it would make a difference.

At the end of each chapter is a slightly longer VN section with a sex minigame with the opponent you defeated. The sexual content appears to be mostly bondage-related - nothing unusual for these sorts of games. The explicit portions are censored and there's no patch to undo it at the time I'm writing this, but pretty much every other SG release has one so I would expect it to appear before too long.

tl;dr - Great game aside from a couple of control issues.

I backed this game on Kickstarter. I played a couple hours of it during the early access period and a few more hours today after it was released.

I'm not a veteran of any of the Road Rash games. I think I played a little bit of one of the PlayStation 1 version but I barely remember any of it. That said, I'm really enjoying Road Redemption. There's nothing else like it on PC; I think the closest relative would be something like Carmageddon (which I also love). So if you have played and enjoyed Carma I'd say there's a good chance you'll like RR.

The best part about the game is the combat variety. There are 4 weapon categories (blunt melee, swords, guns, explosives) and each category has two or more different variants. I pretty much always used all 4 types of weapons at some point in every race. Different enemies called for different weapons depending on their strength or weakness and also whether they are next to you or at some distance, so plan on doing a lot of switching around while you're riding.

On that note, the game can be played with either mouse/keyboard or with a gamepad. I tried both, and both options have downsides. The controls are the game's biggest shortcoming right now.

The mouse has a major advantage in being able to use much more precise aiming when using guns, but I prefer the gamepad since it's more comfortable to switch weapons using the d-pad rather than the mouse wheel or keyboard keys (for me at least). If you do use mouse/keyboard it would help to have a mouse with at least 5 buttons, because there are a lot of controls you'll need to access quickly.

Unfortunately, although the mouse/keyboard buttons can be rebound, the gamepad controls cannot. That leads to the biggest problem with the gamepad which is that Nitro is bound to double-tapping the right trigger. Nitro is a critical component of the game that you'll be using constantly, both to catch up to the other riders or to boost past them. But double-tapping RT doesn't work very well - it seems to randomly require a triple-press sometimes, while other times it will engage on only one press. So that's annoying.

Hopefully the controls will be improved with a patch or two. Even if they aren't though, I would still absolutely recommend Road Redemption. The single-player campaign is worth $20 by itself, but there is also both split-screen and online multiplayer. I tested a few matches online and everything seemed to work smoothly - no lag or anything like that. Online opponents are a lot tougher than the A.I. though, so be ready for a challenge.

The graphics are a little basic but it looks well enough to me. Nice physics though which is surprising for a Unity game. The music is not very memorable but fits the mood of the game, and I also liked the voice-over dialogue. It's cheesy but funny and suitably vulgar, and everyone has an Australian accent which feels like a bonus for Mad Max fans.

Buggy, poorly designed crap. Even a straight-up clone of Lunar Lander would have been far superior. Ignore my play time - I only played this game for about 30 minutes before giving up, and idled the rest of it for the card drops. I'm embarrassed to have left the game running that long.

I guarantee you won't make it even 5 minutes before running into a bug that causes multiple landing pads to spawn, with at least one of them buried inside the terrain you're supposed to avoid crashing into. I know this because in a half-dozen attempts I ran into that bug every single time by the second or third stage. That means the developer didn't even bother with the bare minimum amount of playtesting to see if their game worked before selling it.

All of the other problems mentioned in Karuil's review also apply: Poor physics. Broken scoring. Dull levels. I'll also add a terrible camera system as well. There's no minimap, and as you drift down towards the terrain, the camera won't start scrolling until you've reached the bottom third of the screen. So by the time you see how close you are to crashing, it's probably too late to do anything about it.

It's not worth a dollar, or any amount of money at all. There are far better options on Steam if you're looking for a Lunar Lander-style game. Hardcore players can go for Lunar Flight. People looking for a more casual challenge should try Crashed Lander. The awesome Gravitron 2 mixes moon physics with arcade shoot 'em ups.

Or better yet you can get the genuine article in the Atari Vault, which has a well-emulated version of the Lunar Lander arcade game included, complete with Steam leaderboards.

Difficult but fair, with a generous amount of diverse, well-designed levels. There's a video here (not mine) if you want a good idea of what the gameplay is like.


Here's a few important starting tips if you decide to buy this game (which you should):

- The default level pack on the main menu is "OfficialPack1." That is the expansion. Click once so that you are starting with the "Standard" pack, which are the levels from the initial release. Otherwise the game will seem very difficult to start with.

- Use your shield. It will deflect all standard bullets and is a lifesaver in tight areas. By default it is bound to the middle mouse button; I suggest rebinding it to a more reflex-friendly key like the spacebar, or use a controller. All controls can be rebound from the options menu, which is available after starting the game. You can also adjust the mouse sensitivity there.

- You can land on any flat surface, including walls and celings, and you will not take damage from landing at high speeds, as long as you are correctly aligned.


Gravitron 2 is a near-perfect game for me, with only one significant flaw: There are no online leaderboards. There were at one point, hosted on a third-party server, but that server is down for good. Steam leaderboards would be a major benefit, though there is little hope of that happening now.

Still, that lone drawback should absolutely not stop you from picking this one up. Don't bother waiting for a sale - it hasn't dropped in price since 2013 and likely won't ever again. Plus at $5 it's already a steal.

Casual shmup meets waifu fantasy, in a Hotline Miami-style universe. Not enough gameplay variety and several minor bugs, but nice presentation and low price.

(Edit: The dev has been great about fixing reported issues.)

Heavily inspired by While's 2001 PC game Sentimental Shooting. There are two objectives in each stage - shoot down ships to gain score and unlock more stages, and break apart the girls' clothing piece by piece.

The artwork is censored by default, but there is a quick fix available, which worked for me.


The best part about the game is the overall art style and presentation. Although it's derivative of Hotline Miami, it works well here and creates a pleasant, dreamy atmosphere which fits the mood of the game nicely. There are also some cool animation details - I liked the way the girls' hair flutters when shot by the player's ship, for example. I wish there were more of that.

There are English and Japanese language options, but the voice samples are all in English. The voices are not unique for each girl (just one for all of them) which is disappointing, but since they don't say much it wasn't a big deal for me.

On the plus side, the English translation is pretty good. This is seen in the Tinder-like profiles for each girl in the menu. They are brief but well-written and funny.

There's not much music - only 3 or 4 tracks total I think - but it's high-quality stuff. It would be a nice bonus to have these songs available outside the game, if possible.


The actual gameplay is mediocre at best. Shmup veterans will not be satisfied - it's too easy and the mechanics are too simplistic. There's almost no variety and only about 10 enemies total through the whole game, including bosses.

There are also a lot of little graphical bugs that I encountered - corrupted stage backgrounds and misaligned sprites and such. The game will need a patch or two.

(Edit: Not anymore.)

Controller support is okay, although you can't pause the game with the controller - you have to hit ESC on the keyboard. I'm using a Dual Shock 4 so maybe XBox gamepad owners won't have this problem.

In any case, the keyboard and mouse controls work fine (the mouse can only be used for firing, not ship movement).


There are Steam achievements but no leaderboards. Normally leaderboards should be a requirement for any shmup on Steam, but in this case it wouldn't do much good because the scoring is too basic for it to matter.

It will not take long to get 100% of the achievements if that matters to you. It took me just shy of 3 hours to unlock all of them, and that included a profile reset about half way through. For most players it should take a little over 2 hours.


So then, weak gameplay but I still liked it overall. There aren't many other sexy shmups like this available, at least not on Steam. The only other one I know of is Heartomics which I haven't played yet.

The uniqueness and the $2 price are ultimately why I think this is worth picking up. I hope it sells well enough that the devs consider a more ambitious sequel, with greater complexity and an expanded story.

The Steam version of From Dust runs just fine without Uplay. If that's the only thing preventing you from buying it, then don't let it keep you from experiencing what is a very unique and enjoyable strategy game.

It will only take you 5 minutes, at most, to create a firewall rule so that From Dust will run just like any other non-Uplay Steam game. You don't need a Ubisoft account either, and you can play in offline mode.

After downloading From Dust, but before starting it for the first time, install Ubisoft Game Launcher from the From Dust\Support\Ubisoft directory. Then use Windows Firewall to block the Ubisoft launcher from using the internet, which will prevent it from updating to Uplay when you start the game.

That's all you need to do. If you aren't familiar with how to use Windows Firewall, there is a short guide that will show you how to create a rule for From Dust right here: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=703553959