Recent reviews by Tirful

In a nutshell - Planet of Lana is like Limbo if it had been made by Studio Ghibli.

It swaps out the dark horror theme with a more wholesome one, still keeping plenty of peril but balancing it out with a cute pet and beautiful environments. It also has a score worthy of a Ghibli film and very evidently influenced by Joe Hisaishi's bittersweet piano and string sections (e.g. Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away)

Gameplay-wise, it's a must for anyone craving more Limbo-likes in their life. The movement and controls aren't quite as fluid as the Playdead games (both the creators and masters of this genre), but Lana makes up for this by introducing its own unique mechanics in the form of Mui - a loveable cat-monkey companion you learn to command and is integral to puzzle-solving. Mui is also integral to making Lana stand on its own as a fresh experience and saves it from feeling too derivative of its influences.

As you'd probably expect from any Limbo-like, some of the puzzles are tough, and there are moments that require precision that can be frustrating when you fail too many times in a row. I think this difficulty level is what fans of this genre want, but for me - someone who loves these games mainly for their art and storytelling - there were moments I decided to use a guide because I wasn't enjoying being stuck.

Conclusion - Planet of Lana is a 10/10 for visuals and audio.
Story is a 7/10 - Mui is a great character with a lot of charm, but the human characters and the overarching narrative are bare-bones - the score is brought up to 7 by the excellent visual world-building, giving the impression of an ancient, lived-in world (I'm a sucker for a good post-apocalyptic or far-future world, seeing these elements were in the game was the main reason I bought it)
Gameplay - 8/10 - really satisfying when things are going smoothly, but some moments felt too punishing for my taste and pacing is sometimes slow (unskippable cutscenes put me off replaying levels to find the secrets I missed). Controls could also be a little more fluid, but I know I'm comparing the game to an extremely high standard due to its contemporaries being Limbo and Inside.

Final score - 8/10

A borderline thumbs down - about half the games here are decent, but there were several I found really bad. Seems like the better ones are from devs who have since gone on to either release expanded versions of this minigames as separate titles, or have simply made newer, more fleshed out games that are more excited (such as Dread Delusion!)
Overall, I spent less than half of my time with this collection enjoying myself due to the inconsistent quality. The only game here that really stands out in my opinion is Shatter.

whoever thought putting "mash Q" in every scene is fun gameplay has a diabolical mind.

(Thumbs up as the story is decent, but quicktime events with button mashing need to go away forever now please)

A great "jank" shooter- essentially an old school, low budget Half-like. The story isn't anything special, but it's a fun adventure with a surprisingly long campaign for the genre. There's a lot of cool Y2K scifi design and I can see that a lot of love and effort was poured into this game.

The highlight of Exodus for me was when you first get access to a vehicle and you take it with you for a few levels, hopping in and out to clear obstacles - it's a gameplay style highly reminiscent of the excellent "Highway 17" part of Half Life 2.

There are a few levels with confusing moments where I wasn't sure where I needed to go that stopped the game from being the smoothest ride, but if you have the patience to push through these moments (looking at a guide occasionally saves frustration) it's a very underrated 00s FPS!

An excellent hidden gem. It plays kind of like a metroidvania, but has a linear story. The combat reminded me a lot of Cortex Command - satisfyingly weighty with great physics and lots of destructible environments (and body parts). Despite having quite cozy illustrated visuals, the combat is surprisingly brutal - this contrast also reminds me of the 2D Worms games.

Considering the majority of the game was developed by one person, the level of polish on this title is very impressive. The visuals are extremely well crafted and everything works very smoothly.

It's a fairly short experience at around 6 hours, but I thought this was about right for the gameplay style - I prefer quality over quantity, and a shorter story left me wanting more rather than getting bored of anything.

I hope Ant makes more games soon, this one is awesome!

A fun, visceral Quake-like FPS with charm, but also some rough edges.

I really enjoyed the campaign and felt the length was about right. The rough edges are mostly due to bugs - for example, when I first beat the final boss, the game softlocked me, so I had to go back and replay it. Also, I played on Hard from the start, but beating the game didn't give me the medium and easy completion achievements.

All my negative moments came right at the end, so this has coloured my review a little, but until then, I loved the rest of the game and fully recommend to anyone that loves retro inspired shooters :)

An underrated gem with a unique play style - half point & click puzzler, half detective interview simulator with an impressive amount of fully voiced dialogue options with divergent outcomes (it was actually a precursor to LA Noire, which I believed to be the innovator of this gameplay style before I discovered Culpa Innata)

The setting is also unique - a post-post-apocalyptic future, where society fell apart but was rebuild with a new world order living by different codes of law and morality to our present. The game does a good job of exploring the differences of the new world with nuance - there are elements of the World Union that seem oppressive to citizens, but also benefits and security greater than we know today.
Even after finishing the game, I can't fully tell the intended perception from the writers' point of view - sadly the game leaves many questions unanswered intentionally, presumably in the hope they would make a sequel that never came to pass.

One aspect of the philosophy of the World Union that didn't make sense to me was the Ayn Randian "greed is good" mantra - this phrase is used several times throughout the game, but an explanation as to why the Union believes this was never presented. So, despite being a compelling nuanced world, parts of Culpa Innata do feel underdeveloped (or at least under-explained).

Visuals and music are great - it feels very retro but in an atmospheric way, reminiscent of point & click classics like The Longest Journey and Syberia. The game's world is a creative and expansive vision of a near-future city, full of "Y2K futurism" interior and clothing designs that will be enjoyably nostalgic for anyone who remembers those times. The music is also very of the time with electronic dance tracks and some experimental use of samples and heavy industrial elements. It feels like music from a Berlin night club, in a good way!

Final thoughts - a compellingly unique and surprisingly in-depth experience for its genre - far less "on rails" than most p&c titles and with a huge amount of dialogue. I really enjoyed the immersion of the interviewing system, however, I did also get fatigued by the number of times I needed to revisit the same characters to continuously cross-reference new findings. In a sense, the detective experience here could be called "too realistic" in subjecting the player to the repetitive and tedious side of the job.

Small complaint aside - this is a game that got me thinking more than most and I wish it had got a sequel!

A pretty fun deep-cut Y2K aesthetic fps, if you don't mind unpolished/janky games. This is one of my favourite eras for scifi aesthetics so I had to give this game a spin - sadly I wouldn't say it nails the vibe, but is has its cool moments!

There's an energy management meta-game that adds a bit of depth to the gameplay too - instead of health and ammo pickups, everything regenerates over time, but you have to share a single power source for all your weapons, abilities and health - you can customise exactly what percentage everything gets allocated and I found myself needing to use this a lot to get through different scenarios. It's an immersive sim-esque touch that I appreciated - and once you're familiar with it, it can be satisfying in a similar way to Resident Evil's inventory system.

The story is simple but effective and I like the way the gameplay systems are designed around it, making the experience feel cohesive. In a nutshell, it's your archetypal "destroy the mainframe" infiltration mission inside a digital world like the Matrix where most of humanity is trapped.

Music - there is some interesting experimental dark electronic/industrial background music throughout Utopia City that felt genuinely ominous and oppressive, as well as a handful of the EDM club tracks that seem to be in every 00s scifi game. Good stuff.

Combat - this is the least satisfying part of the game, although it is challenging and forced me to think about each encounter. But the actual gunplay and enemy variety are the weakest parts of the game. The rocket launcher enemies are overpowered as the rockets fly super fast and can one-shot you - however this may have been intentional as it forces the player to make use of non-combat abilities you could have otherwise ignored such as invisibility, speed boost, overshield and time freeze.

Visual Design - there are some great moments, but Utopia City lacks a cohesive art style. The menu/UI and weapon designs are all really nice, with that glowy "cybercore" vibe combined with a touch of "biopunk". The guns remind me of the ones in Operation Matriarchy (which is an absolute design fever dream in the best way). Sadly, a lot of the environments and characters are less aesthetically pleasing - either through blandness or garish colour combinations.

Final thoughts - an inventive game with a lot of cool elements. I feel like, with a little more focus or budget, this could have been developed into something really exciting in the vein of System Shock or Deus Ex. Utopia City's biggest mistake was identifying itself as an FPS - if there had been less action and more dialogue, exploration, some rpg elements - it would have been really great, as the handful of these touches are by far the strongest part of the game.
It's worth a play for anyone who enjoys odd and obscure indie scifi.

Imagine The Last Of Us with twin stick controls combined with a roguelite progression system - that's TLS:A in a nutshell.

The attention to detail and level of challenge in this game are impressive - I believe this is an underrated hidden gem, but I can also understand why it isn't super popular. It's hard, and the learning curve can be punishing, particularly in the first few runs where you will most likely think you're doing great one moment, then make one wrong move and find yourself dead in the blink of an eye.

The brutality of the game gives is an additional souls-like flavour; precision and alertness are everything and you'll need to get very familiar with dodge rolls, melee strike speeds and stamina management to stand a chance in close combat (this is essential due to sparse ammunition)

No other game has made me feel like I'm in an episode of The Walking Dead as much as this - the sneaking, looting, risk assessment/judgement calls, high-stakes combat, figuring out how to escape alerted herds.

The crafting system is highly reminiscent of The Last of Us, so if you enjoy the survival horror/crafting loop of TLOU, you will most likely enjoy TLS:A too.

It's not a game for everyone - I had a few rage-quit moments where I died to something frustrating like a trap and lost a bunch of progress, but thankfully this frustration is balanced out by the levelling and "supply" systems that allow you to carry over character progression and not make the run feel like a total loss. XP is gained permanently, so you can upgrade your character between each run, and if you carry supplies back to your car while in the field, these will be "banked" as currency you can spend at the start of your next run to unlock items, classes and XP boosts.

I still haven't finished the game, but I think I'm fairly close at almost 17 hours in - so it's a reasonably long game - this length will vary a lot depending on your skill level. I'm ok at shooters but not the best at crafting/survival games, so I'd say my skill level is about medium for reference.

All-in-all, I think this game deserves more love than it gets. Con Artist Games are amazing developers and I've had a lot of fun playing every release they've got on steam. I hope they keep making more!

This is a great remake of a classic flash game - both graphics and gameplay have been enhanced with a whole new campaign added in addition to the first two games. It's a satisfying and challenging RTS with a unique gameplay mechanic that I haven't seen in another game.

However, I do have a small frustration with the Battle of the Bulge campaign - once you've completed it, there's no option to replay specific missions with the upgrades you've unlocked. I wanted to go back to certain missions to get an achievement I missed, but it seems that once you finish the campaign, you only have the option to start it again from the beginning. It's a trivial problem overall, but I wanted to 100% the game so please, if the devs see this review - adding a post-completion level select option would be great.

Aside from that, everything is done beautifully, highly recommended!