Recent reviews by Zephyrtf

Astoundingly, someone actually managed to make a first-person hotline miami game work, and work well.
I've little else to say, the only critique I really have of the game is that some of the challenges are pointless drudgery like stomping all the cockroaches in a level.

This game has... a LOT of bugs and quality of life problems. Notably, scrolling doesn't work properly in the social media ui, and there's a chance the dialogue will just softlock you sometimes.
It should mean a lot about the quality of the art and writing that I'm still putting this as a recommend in spite of that!
Plus, the autosave is incredibly generous, and makes it a negligible issue when these problems do arise and you have to restart the game to progress.

A great lite-tactics game in the vein of Into the Breach.

Solid dialogue, very focused on comedy and character psychology!

I really quite like the way they tie character progression into unique puzzle levels taking place in the dreams of the various characters, and the game often surprised me with witty bits of dialogue and human moments of stupidity that made the competence of the characters feel grounded in just enough imperfection to feel right.

It reminds me of a time when smarmy horsemanure was fun, socially aware, and refreshing rather than an overbearing crutch used by hack writers. It manages to walk that fine 2000s nerd comedy line that, while certainly not to everyone's taste, will be more enjoyable to people with a taste for good banter.

I think this is probably the most authentic love-letter to the jet set radio franchise I'll ever see, right down to the low-poly visuals and idealized graffiti society goin' on here

this rules, and you should play it. it's a pretty breezy game and the only challenge comes post-game, but that isn't a mark against it at all.

This game has exactly 4 levels and a boss, it feels like there should be more of it given how fun the movement is but for the price I paid I feel like I got what I paid for for sure. I would love a sequel that builds on this and maybe gives the arm some utility, everything feels very fast and responsive in just the right way to me and there's an excellent bed to work from here.

This seems like an EMINENTLY speedrunnable game, the movement doesn't try to balance itself too severely so there's a lot of ways you can just bypass intended challenges in a way that feels weirdly in character for the beleaguered office drone you're playing as.

I do so love when mechanics mirror a character like that.

Crow Country is an excellently assembled survival horror game that would be perfect for newcomers to the genre, while still providing some excellent touches for oldheads to enjoy.

The gameplay itself is very streamlined, focusing on making the tank controls and limited firearm combat as smooth as they can. I'd even go as far as to say the game is easy, even on its hardcore difficulty mode, due in part to how forgiving the map's layout is and how simple the gameplay can be. This isn't a point against it though, since it's focusing on providing an atmospheric experience instead, something it EXCELS at.

Everything about this art direction is gorgeous, from your highly-stylized psx character model to the lavishly detailed environments that somehow manage to feel like resident evil pre-renders despite maintaining full camera control.

The storyline is sensible, the characters are memorable despite limited appearances, and there's plenty of reward for poking around and exploring these detailed environments. At times too much reward even, haha, for a survival horror game I never really felt at risk of running out of supplies and ammunition. That may just be my familiarity with the genre though, since I was naturally gravitating towards min-maxing my resource spending in a way I don't think the game wanted to demand of me.

Overall, highly reccomend this game!

This is a pretty bog-standard survival game in terms of mechanics.
Grab materials, craft things from various bits of scrap, deal with your unreliable weaponry breaking on you mid-combat, etc. It handles the balance of these rather well, with the exception of some grinding requirements in later areas that can make sourcing proper armor a bit of a hassle without a group to work with. The game is VERY tuned around team play, though it's still plenty doable solo.

That isn't what makes this game _GREAT_ though, which is its absolutely spot-on atmosphere. In trying to replicate the feeling of half life 1's dingy induistrial lab environments, it's created a very well-done world that hits on that same sense of discovery and early-era cinematic gameplay that defined half life as a franchise. With the exception of some slightly dodgy voiceacting that fails to bring the same energy as the half life scientists it aims to replicate, it feels like it's really nailing what it's going for while still having enough unique flavor to be its own thing.

That isn't to say its without technical bugs, however.
Loading gates are slow, resulting in massive slowdowns in a game that looks like it should run at 120 fps on a slide rule. However, this seems to have improved significantly, with many of my previous technical complaints completely absent in the new versions.

You're also GUARANTEED to see the seams in the map as you enter loading gates, they aren't very well cordoned off so you'll turn a corner into the void and be paralyzed for minutes at a time as the map pops in, often spoiling some of the upcoming level features in the process.

Technical chugs aside though, I'm enjoying the mechanics and find the skill grind to be well-paced and balanced, with the exception of some skill-gated weapons being disappointing at best.

I AM recommending this, but not without some criticism and caveats.
First, the good:
-the story is well-done, if predictable, and the voice-acting adds a lot of emotion to the story that wouldn't be there otherwise.
-the visual presentation has some interesting ideas, and a couple of levels do actually challenge deductive skills

Next, the bits I found needed work:
-the overall gameplay loop is... a bit easy, once you figure out how to scan for time chunks. There's an easy exploit I discovered where changing days back and forth resets your action rolls too, taking away a significant amount of the meter management challenge since you could easily do this until you get the lowest possible time expense.
-In fact, the only resource that TRULY matters here is time. Everything else can be managed or reset, and I feel this limits the design a bunch.
-The actions and revelations feel a bit disconnected and nonsensical. Why would stealing someone's medical records reveal their grocery shopping habits, for example? It all feels like very loose flavor text over a very basic numbers game, and eventually I stopped reading what I was doing and just scanned for the lowest numbers.
-the mask resource you get from a couple of the recover actions further simplifies gameplay, effectively removing attention gain in a way I think held back the difficulty.

Less fair criticisms:
-I feel like focusing entirely on timeline management was a bad idea. It limits how invasive you feel, and the ui implies files and documents to flick through that you can't actually open or peruse. This alone would have added a lot of invasive sleuthing options to the gameplay loop, and I could have easily seen this taking on a similar approach to Papers, Please or Hypnospace Outlaw where you have to match private information on a time budget.
As is, all you're really doing is playing a simple tile guessing game with a weekly planner.
-The ui visuals felt out of place. The main character looks a bit older, and I feel a more analogue UI design may have fit better than the cyber-hacker futuristic paranoia thing we had. Grimey crts, old desktop towers, more of a glaring/otherworldly/retrocomputer green vibe than the calming digital blues. Granted, this would run the risk of leaning too hard into the somewhat played out trend of analogue horror, but it may have fit the characters and concept a bit better and added some good tension-building.
-the characters you stalk could have had their blankbody portraits slowly -fill up- with details as you grow more familiar with them using some simple png overlays on the limited paranoia poses they take. This would have added a lot, but been somewhat of a burden to add since keeping track of the various necessities like age in the generative system may have been a bit of a puzzle to figure out.
-The intended emotion as stated by the developers was to feel like you were invading people's lives, doing something truly wicked to the people you stalk. To that end, I think adding some kind of response system would have added a lot. EG, if you get paranoia too high, perhaps they start ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up at work, making them harder to track as they erratically try to dodge your pursuit. Something like that, where your victims are more impacted by your actions, would have sold the sickness of what you do a bit more. As is, it's only really evident in the cringing character portraiture, which is depersonalized to such an extent that you feel alienated from these characters even as you circle in for the kill.
-The ritual component of the game feels a bit strange at times, it's a very direct memorization game but sometimes there's very little in the way of information to glean from what's right or wrong, especially whether or not characters live with others. It's fine with the single mistake you can make, but it is odd how limited it feels. The animation for puncturing the heart could also have used a bit more impact, but that's more of a personal quibble I'm having as an animator.

OVERALL, however, this is a pretty interesting concept. I do hope they build on it going forward to create something more elaborate!

If you're going into this for time management puzzles, you're unfortunately not going to find much to tickle the brain. There's the bones of a great concept here, but it feels limited by its execution.

This is a really cool game! Contrary to criticism I'm seeing, the gunplay and traversal are all very responsive and fluid, and relies pretty hard on good reaction times and figuring out good rotation. I'd say the block area of your bike is unclear at first since it seems to be slightly smaller than your bike, but other than that I'm finding this very enjoyable so far.

There is one caveat in that the speed feels a bit sluggish at times, but I suspect there will be changes to that as I play more and upgrade my weaponry. This is SOMETHING of a metroidvania, after all, so there's bound to be some upgrades.

The art is also positively gorgeous, the apocalyptic setting and desperation of the world reminds me heavily of LISA: the Painful RPG, but drawn by a far more accomplished artist. Characters are all memorable designs, ranging from a one-armed man playing guitar with his foot to the wisened old town chief in his wheelchair of bone and car parts.

There's also an interesting mechanic where eating/cooking meals gives you timed buffs that do small things like increase combat rewards or combo multipliers.

The level design is also fantastic, there's a clear intended flow at all times and some of the platforming challenges it asks are a good challenge. It makes it a point to never ask too much of you, always making it clear where you should be going. If anything, the level design only clashes in how gorgeous it is as you zoom by it. There were several moments where I just wanted to stop mid-combat and appreciate the background I was currently orchestrating a tornado of carnage through, but alas that momentary distraction would be enough to scatter myself to that tumultuous wind.

Play this, it's quite good and if you're an artist you'll see a LOT you can learn from. This is a master class in effective use of art!

This honestly isn't very good. The only matchmaking you have access to is quickplay, which doesn't work well. The game is poorly optimized despite limited graphics, with framerates regularly tanking. All of this might be excusable if the game itself was fun, but some poorly thought out elements of the video-recording gameplay means you don't often get footage of truly funny, surprising moments unless you're let's playing the thing.

A simple emergency-record button may be of use for a game like this, sort of like how motion-activated trailcams or dashboard cameras keep the last few minutes of footage in memory so you can record them if you miss something.

As is though, the game just... isn't there.