Recent reviews by Zephyrtf

The game crashed and deleted my save 14 hours in. It's an okay game, but not good enough to justify that being a problem that late in the game. I'm pissed.
Update: rebuilt from that, made it even further in, crashing is pretty much constant and seems tied to the autosave except when it isn't. If it crashes during an autosave there's a good chance it'll nuke you. Find the saves folder and make sure you make a regular backup copy of it, because it seems to happen to me a lot.

This will remain a thumbs down until I see an update that makes that stop.

The good:
Absolutely gorgeous pixel art, very VERY tight movement and level design, and an exceptional soundtrack.
While I found some of the leveling to be a bit extra at times (frankly, the game stops being difficult after a point, and I highly suggest sticking to attack power leveling) I never felt like it was particularly wasting my time. A notably backtracking-light metroidvania if you're thorough, something I consider a bonus.
Overall, the game should take a couple of afternoons to chug through, though I do reccommend taking some time to just appreciate the artistry on display. There's quite a lot of love poured into the pixel art here, and its hard not to be impressed by that!

I think if there's a sequel, dropping the level system in favor of something else might be a good idea. Perhaps a gear system, something a bit more mechanical in nature to reward exploration instead of marginal gains that stack up to a difficulty reduction so severe it actually impacts the payoff of the final boss.
I give that a free pass though, since that's a problem in a lot of level-focused metroidvanias.

The bad:
The story is mediocre and pulls from some pretty rotten places, though gaslamp fantasy IS prone to reiterating on imperialist concepts, the story still hinges on a eugenics ubermensch plot and monarchist inclinations. There's even a bit of Perfidious Minority in there, just for good measure.
Also, for all the game's splash page talks about corruption, it never actually shows any of it. At best you get a bit of implication resources are being strained and there's some wacky trade laws. I chalk this up to technical limitation though, chartering art of a good guard beating can be difficult to fund for indie games.

Few of the characters had any stand-out personality traits, with the exception of Ren's suave yet loyal spymastering. He's barebones, but he does stand out! The crazy scientist also feels properly menacing and pompous, though I do hope we get to kill him later in the sequel for all the implied atrocities. Last thing we want is another Mengele type wandering about, yeah? The crazy dude in the scrap sea was also interesting, but died before his character could really tug at the heartstrings. Feels like he was a missed opportunity to explore dementia and how it can destroy people, as most of the characters just wind up moderately annoyed by their cagey attitude instead.

The main character is not so lucky though, being weirdly sauceless for how much personality is implied in her animations. You'd think someone who dresses like a victorian witch-hunter would at least be a bit harsh, but outside of optional dialogue, she's so businesslike as to be dull. I think she's a casualty of a writing instinct I call "oh man she's so cool guys, she is incredibly focused on her work as a mercenary and values her freedom above all else!" which then results in the same character every stifled teenager comes up with and puts into their first bit of writing. I've been there, I sympathize.

Consider making them a bit crazier in the sequel, she's almost died and that messes with people's heads. You have leeway to fix that sauce!

I attribute a lot of that to the game's short length, however.

Rotten theming and lackluster character writing aside, I do think the gameplay and brisk pacing both make up for it. This is worth full price, if for nothing more than the art and gameplay. It really is that gorgeous to look at.

This is a very small game with some limited modding support and a hell of a lot of potential. There's rarely a point I died where it felt like anything less than my own damn fault, and I died a LOT. if that sounds like a good time to you, and you have no small amount of gunwank lurking in your soul, give it a shot.

Easy Anticheat is a bloody cancer that causes a bunch of stability issues with this game because it detects DISCORD of all things as a security violation. This, for a game I want to play singleplayer! Absolutely hate this always online nonsense, #stopkillinggames can't come fast enough.

A decent, if very short, metroidvania-esque dig-em-up. for the price, you're getting a decent game. Just don't expect too many frills.

This is so close to being good, but it gets done in by a few inches of bad ui and terrible pathfinding.

In particular, the pathfinding lost me more than one game as my units failed to navigate around an obstacle to reach an emergent breakout in time, and several of the single-unit mission failures were because of characters getting stuck on obstacles or, worse, completely unclear visual range on explosives. I don't think there's anything more frustrating than the lack of proper visual guidance in the build mode, you have to effectively guess the range of several building types and explosive ordinance ranges since there's no information provided by the interface as to what that range might be once they're placed. EXTREMELY annoying lack of quality-of-life there, especially with how strict some of the goals can feel even early on.

The voice-acting is also so bad that I had to fully disable unit voice in the settings. It feels like the actors were professional enough, but didn't have any direction whatsoever. Lines that are meant to be sassy or enthusiastic all come off as flat or too quiet, like someone trying to voice a character without waking their parents in the other room.

ON THJE GOOD SIDE: I like the strict goals mentioned earlier. Even early on, the game is teaching through failure. Walls aren't optional, for example, get those up quick or they're just going to go around them. And you better be segmenting your society, or one munched tent is going to quickly become a horde of infected. The cascade failures are a wonderful element of the game, and it really sells the concept. More ways to HAVE cascade failures likely would have made this game work a bit better, too, since a key aspect of steampunk is having to manage inefficient technology. As it stands, it's little more than set dressing, and comes off as a somewhat derivative warhammer-like setting, complete with shoutouts of "for the emperor!"

I think if they can fix the pathfinding this game would be worth playing, but as is, I think these small frustrations outweigh the promise this has.

aside from a painfully slow run speed, this is a very charming puzzle game about building and re-building your mansion inherited from your somewhat sketchy dead uncle. If you're put off by adventure book tropes like mild racism and imperial politics, there's a bit of that in here you'll have to tolerate, but the fiat of the story makes it come off less as genuine author presentation and more a consequence of you exploring a dead old baron's mansion.

That aside, the puzzles are well-put together outside of a couple that feel a bit too arcane or RNG based for their own good. Make sure you take notes as you play, and don't be afraid to look up some guides if you've more or less solved a puzzle but completing it calls for some acceleration, you're rarely missing out on much. I reccomend the IGN guide since its split into individual aspects.

Look outside is fantastic, and if you like horror-comedy that doesn't skimp on the horror element I highly suggest getting into it. It's not perfect, but it's VERY enjoyable and I found myself immersed hard into it in very short order.

The pros: the game has a gorgeous art style, clever writing, and some truly fascinating moments to share. All of your recruitable party members are memorable freaks, be it the Janitor that treats his job as a life purpose fight against entropy or the pair of rude punks that kick you out of your own bedroom when you give them shelter. It's also getting regular balance adjustments currently, which have mostly improved the game.

The cons: I think the game can be deterimentally arcane in nature at times. The disc puzzles, for example, are a lot of trial and error if you're not taking notes for yourself on what values they have, and even finding that information is a bit tricky. This arcane design is intentional and rewards experimentation more often than it doesn't, but definitely feels like it makes the game inaccessible to those not deep into games to begin with.
I think some quality of life elements are hard to do in an RPG maker joint though, so there's only so much they could accomplish there.

There's also a number of small bugs and some unfinished assets still in there, but they don't hold back the game nearly as much as you'd imagine. Great stuff!

Post-apocalyptic magic soccer game with excellent narration and character writing. Don't expect a lot of gameplay complexity, but if you're good at juggling character controls you'll have a great time with this.

This is just... kinda basic in a way I don't think works against its contemporaries.
Really good stylization, decent enough platforming flow, but it's basic to the point of being shallow. It's a very early-indie-gaming title in that way, feels at home among games like Fez or Braid but doesn't offer enough complexity to hold me unfortunately.