Recent reviews by BabblingFishes

A lot of these reviews complain about grinding, and I have to say -- if you're grinding for candles, you're not playing the game correctly. I've been playing this thing for four years. The correct way to play Sky is as follows:
- Hop on for about an hour once a day. Ideally after school/work, before bed, on lunch break, or whenever is a good time to relax.
- Turn off the in-game music and blast some music of your own.
- Fly around doing the daily quests and gathering wax in whatever way is most fun for you.
- If you see people clowning around, clown with them.
- If you see someone who needs help, help them.
- Enjoy the view. Maybe take some photos.
- If you get bored, go do something else.

It's that simple. You might feel pressured to do and get everything at once, but that's not what the game is about.
It's a free MMO art game. It has a massive beautiful world, fun flight controls, functional instruments, enough emotes to put on a stage play, and a handy translate button so you can connect with people from all over the globe. It's not a challenge to be won -- it's a world for a specific kind of explorer, and it rewards patience.

Why is this free?

STOP WRIGGLING SO'S I CAN PUT YOUR NOSE ON STRAIGHT!!!

This game is a car-based procedurally-generated survival-crafting rogue-lite. I would describe this as "Subnautica for mad scientists who love their jank 1980's station wagon", and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes driving, crafting, rooting around in dumpsters, managing a satisfying inventory, reading SCP articles, being threatened by badass octogenarians, wandering around in the dark, messing with tourists, or "flooring it".

The accessibility & difficulty settings are fantastic and extensive, and while I can't go over all of them, I'll note that you can disable time pressures, highlight items, hide some types of motion/flashing, and more. All dialogue is captioned as well as saved in your logbook to re-read or re-listen. Many of the complaints I'm seeing in other reviews down here are easily fixed in these settings.

You will also see people complaining in these reviews that the game is not scary enough. I believe they were expecting a "survival horror". I would not personally consider this game a "survival horror", as this typically implies you are being hunted or jumpscared. The horror in this game is largely atmospheric, and frequently comedic. (I recommend streaming it to friends -- everyone gets a kick out of me yelling "NO NO NO" as some wretched thing drags me off a cliff while my station wagon rolls away in the opposite direction.) While it's technically possible to be caught off-guard by hazards, nearly all of them glow and are easily avoided.

There is tetris-style inventory management. It's pretty simple and gives you lots of tools for working with it (such as a "transfer all" button and a "sort" button). You have limited space initially, but can upgrade to have more storage than even I (scrap hoarder supreme) will ever need. Crafting is straightforward -- nearly all of it is done in the same place, and it will automatically pull from most types of storage.

The graphics are gorgeous, and the game includes a camera mode for screenshots. (Which I have taken full advantage of. Tasty lighting.) The game does run hot, but I'm running it at the bare minimum system requirements. Once I dropped the graphics settings, it still looked gorgeous and ran very nicely. Any stutters I've gotten have been predictable and didn't harm gameplay.

As far as procedural generation goes, there are a limited number of things to encounter, but I think they're shuffled and combined in such a way that it remains interesting and believable for at least the length of the main storyline, if not longer. I've finished the game, and I'm still discovering weird things I either haven't seen or didn't notice before.

There are a frankly insane amount of customization options for your lovely car. I won't get into this. Just know that I'm currently driving a striped patchwork menace with a potato battery strapped to my antenna. You don't need the DLC in order to have plenty to work with (but if you want to pay the extra few bucks, it's very cute).

Last but not least, the storyline. You can take it at any pace you like. It's well-written and fully voiced. The characters are a delight -- they are well-fleshed-out, and I love all of them dearly. In addition, there are all kinds of written entries that you can pick up and read for more lore. As much as I'd love to say more, I'd hate to spoil anything. The story is my favorite part of this game.

I do not say this lightly: this game is a work of art and should be in a museum.

I went in blind, expecting the story to be grimly nihilistic, but instead it was eminently hopeful. It can be hard to follow at times -- it can be abstract and trippy, and some of the scenes go by quickly, so it did take a second play-through for me to fully take in -- but it was well worth it.

The visuals and audio are honestly more stunning than what little is shown in the trailer. The gameplay has no instruction and not much challenge, but I still found it fun to play (and replay), and did not need a guide. You're rewarded for exploring, messing around, and taking your time. I did face a few major bugs, but restarting the level typically fixes them.

I think Terraria might be the most genuinely fun game I own, and I own a lot of games.

It starts slow and has next to no story, but continues to have the most delightful, flexible, and rewarding progression I've ever seen in a game. The controls are excellent. The visual effects in fights are fantastic. By halfway through the game, I feel like one of those weird demons in medieval folklore who shows up riding a shark, commanding an army of bees.

It's best with friends, but it doesn't have many systems in place to discourage cheating/stealing/running ahead, so make sure you're all going at the same pace and sharing the loot. I also recommend Expert instead of Classic mode for multiplayer, as Expert mode makes bosses have more health and loot depending on how many people are playing.

I've been putting off writing a review for this for literally years, because I have no idea how to describe it any better than anyone else has. But Kentucky Route Zero has been my biggest source of inspiration ever since I stumbled upon it seven years ago. In that span of time, every act released was better than the last, every character more in-depth, every location more mysterious. So let's start there: I'm in love with this game, and have been from the start.

You play as a number of drifters in Kentucky. All of them are homeless, some have debts, most don't have much family. Your job is to get them to Dogwood Drive, an address that is incessantly difficult to locate, and is only accessible by a route that takes you deep, deep underground.

Along the way you'll discover all kinds of supernatural things, ranging from fantastic to horrifying to just kind of weird. You'll hear stories that are both real and fictional. The game comments on major issues of today's society like predatory debt, lack of healthcare, and eviction; but it also brings up the conundrum of decorative graveyards, the dangers of running a restaurant sustained by elusive cave fish, and the difficulties of sharing your community broadcast signal with a ghost.

The word "pretentious" gets thrown around a lot in other reviews, and while I won't deny it's heavy on literary themes, I would not describe Kentucky Route Zero as snobby, stuffy, or humorless. It is, admittedly, more of a story than a game. And it meanders. If you try to play this with some kind of direction or time limit, you may not find it satisfying. It's not a game to be won, it's a series of places and events to experience and explore from different angles.

Additionally, unlike most games, the player's main point of control isn't big turning points with dire consequences. Instead, you control the disposition of characters and the context of their actions. For example, instead of choosing whether to stop at a key plot point, you might choose whether a character is more focused on the road ahead or the road behind on the way there. You can ask a gas station attendant about his day or get straight to business. You may choose to be polite or rude to dismissive bureaucrats. This doesn't make your choices less meaningful -- in fact, I can even say it is a game well worth replaying, as you'll find deceptively small decisions having interesting impacts long after you make them -- but know that the key points of this tragedy are unavoidable.

All in all, any fan you ask will tell you this game is about something different. I would say its main themes include loneliness, poverty, community, folklore, and tragedy. But what's most important to me is, Kentucky Route Zero is a game about the fact that, despite everything, we keep going. Whether we've found a home or never will, no matter who or what we have lost, whether we are emerging from the darkness or digging deeper into our own grave, for better or worse, God or none, despite EVERYTHING: we find something to eat and a place to rest, say a prayer, and find a weird rock with a cool bug. Despite everything, we're still here.

Completely insane, but very, very good. Think of this as the most intense, difficult, dark version of Oregon Trail you have ever played, complete with stunning dialogue and amazing graphics. At the very least, it's worth Irving's horrible jokes.