Recent reviews by [DbS]Amazing_Mr_Hedge

Great little factory builder focused on building shapes. I played shapez 1 and shapez 2 is similar yet worthy of a sequel. If you only play one, play shapez 2. It's technically in early access but it's got enough content to justify full price, and after the latest patch I haven't seen any bugs. If you go as far as building the MAM (the Make-Anything Machine) it'll last you for 40+ hours, and that's even without trying the hex mode.

This is a logistics and optimisation game, in the vein of Settlers, Against the Storm, Satisfactory. To move goods between buildings you must use trains. The struggle is usually about how much money you have and how many trains and rails you can cram in. And as you get further along, you start having complex networks of buildings with up to 4 levels of building A supplying B supplying C etc.

Personally I prefer the campaign to a sandbox mode (which I think has now been adding). Getting the basic rating on the campaign missions is relatively straightforward if you prefer not to stress. Getting the highest rating on the campaign can be quite tense, but it is a bit uneven. I played one mission I needed to complete within 90 minutes, and finished in 60 without rushing. Then the next also required 90 and I narrowly made it in 87.

I'm 20 hours in and somewhere around halfway through the campaign, I think, so there's plenty of content. I haven't found it get too samey yet due to missions designed with variety around the basic concept, although I'm not sure if I'll manage through the 2-hour long missions I am anticipating at the end of the campaign. If you like logistics and pipelines and optimising production speeds, plus building train tracks, this is definitely recommended.

I'm a fan of Zachtronics automation puzzlers, and Satisfactory. I picked up Shapez on sale to try. Initially I thought it seemed a bit simple but I'd just continue for a bit... and then suddenly several hours had passed. It's a nice little factory game with a few nice touches. I appreciated that copy/paste is unlocked later, and also that you have to make tokens to use it with. I liked the end objective of the "Make Anything Machine" that completely automates the factory; I managed this after about 30 hours, and then ran it forward for a while to reach level 100.

If I had any gripes it's that some of the stacked shapes are a bit hard to comprehend properly. I also didn't quite understand the level vs upgrades thing properly at the beginning, so I played for a while before realising I should have been upgrading my tech more. After initially pointing it out early, if you don't happen to have accidentally made an upgrade available, you can completely ignore upgrades after that point unless you click on the icon.

Recommended for anyone who likes factory builders but is wary of trying Factorio in case they lose their entire life to it.

A nice little puzzle game that has more complexity than the block-pushing design initially suggests. Quite mind-bending at times, especially some of the levels with the later character, "the guard". It does a good job of explaining its mechanics through puzzles, and it doesn't outstay its welcome. It took me 6-7 hours to complete and that was just about right for me.

This game is crazily good value. I've played 40+ hours and only just finished the standard set of puzzles, having bought this for under a pound in the sale. It's like Minesweeper turned up to 11; you have to use increasingly complicated logic to work out which cell you can determine next (mine or not mine). All the puzzles are handcrafted to be solvable without guessing. This is a puzzle game that requires you to be smart, and rewards patient reasoning.

For those who do buy it, a few things that aren't immediately apparent. You get a blue marker in the menu if you solve a puzzle without making a mistake, which is the real challenge, and a white marker if you made a mistake on the way. If you do click a mine then there's no downside to just guessing your way to the end of the puzzle since you'll always get a white marker no matter how many mines you uncover. But what's not made clear is if you click Reset to start again, you can achieve the blue marker if you don't then make a mistake. Also, there are settings in the launcher (in the "Options" tab) that make a lot more sense than the default once you understand the basic mechanic. Make sure to tick the top four options: Darken finished tiles, Revealed tiles count down, Column hints count down, Treat grey like other colors. It's slightly confusing the moment after you switch, but it makes the whole puzzle experience much smoother.

Trackmania is a driving game based around time trials. Each track comes with a bronze/silver/gold/master time to beat, and you race round solo to beat those times. Sounds lifeless, but it is addictively more-ish, in the manner of games like Super Meat Boy or N++. You fail often, but restart is only a single keypress away. You slowly shave seconds and then milliseconds off your time until you get that medal. The courses take you through twisty turns and crazy jumps.

The handling while you're on the road is tight, forcing you to drift or let off the accelerator at just the right moments to make it round the turns or to line up the next massive jump. My main complaint is the off-road sections. The car becomes skittish (especially in Valley and Lagoon settings), and hitting unseen bumps can send you flailing off-course. Games like this work when they feel fair, not when it feels like they are just making you fail for no reason. It's not quite as bad as it was in Trackmania 2: Valley, but some of the later courses can feel pointlessly frustrating.

The game has mixed reviews, which is mainly because of old Trackmania power-users bemoaning the lack of customisation. If you don't mind about that, ignore most of the negative reviews here. (I'm reviewing single-player here; I haven't tried networked multiplayer. I did try Double Driver, which is a lot harder than you'd think...)

I spent hours and hours back in the day playing N, the free Flash game that preceded N+ and N++. For that alone I would have passed some money the developer's way, but N++ is definitely worth it by itself. It's a tough, unforgiving platformer in the mould of Super Meat Boy (or vice versa, given how old N is). It has a peculiar momentum-based approach to platformer (screw physics!). Once you get the hang of it, you'll be performing incredible walljumps and near-flying around levels. There's a huge amount of levels to play; 9 hours in and I've barely completed half of them.

If I have one complaint, it's the adjustment in approach from N. In N and N++ you have gold which you can collect to extend your forever-reducing timer. In N, you had to go out of your way to collect gold to give yourself enough time to complete episodes (sets of 5 levels). The only question was on which level you were going to divert to make sure you had enough time for later levels. In N++, you can complete every episode (that I've played so far -- including several in E, the toughest category) without worrying about the timer. You collect lots of gold easily on your way round, and you never have to worry about the time. The gold is just if you want to get a high-score. I can understand that this is a new approach: always completable but you can go back for high scores, but it means an episode is just an independent set of 5 levels. I miss the tension that the timer added in N.

Still, recommended if you like games that kill you brutally every 2.3 seconds, but after one button press you're up and running again. This time, you can avoid that mine. This time, you can jump over the missile. This time, you got killed by a machine gun. But next time, next time was the mine. Then past the mine, but killed by the missile. Then the mine again. Then the machine gun once more. Next time though, next time...

Really enjoyed this. It's a detective game, where you sit at a search prompt. Each term returns up to five (short) video clips, and you have to jump from one to another, making notes and piecing together what happened. It sounds a bit lame, but I was hooked within five minutes, and here I am several hours later having completed it. (Over 75% of clips viewed, and I think I have a reasonable idea of what happened.) It's quite short (took me under 3 hours), but I think the price reflects that fairly.

Reminds me a bit of Gone Home, but faster paced: with no need to wander around, you can experience the story fragments quicker, and the video segments are well acted. If I have any complaint, it's that I'd have liked a definitive summary at the end of what happened. I don't want to put any spoilers here, but there's one or two details that I still wasn't completely clear on.