Recent reviews by Ezra

I do not say this lightly, and I'm sorry to say it, but I have never hated a game so fast. This game is so riddled with bugs that it's a chore (possibly just slightly better than impossible?) to play. Here are my main notes.

• The pictures are cute
  
• The music is nice and I can imagine it doesn't get annoying very fast if you're doing pro mode and taking a while to place each piece
  
  
  The Bad
• Most important first: this game completely misses a MASSIVE part of doing a puzzle: being able to connect pieces to each other. This issue alone makes this game almost unplayable, and I'm only on the second difficulty so far. I cannot IMAGINE how this will impact pro difficulty. You can only snap pieces to their place on the board; they will NOT connect to each other. This is the exact opposite of how real puzzles work...
  
• There is regularly an issue with picking up pieces. A piece will have 70% of its surface area unclickable and you have to find where it will let you pick it up. I assume this has something to do with overlapping with other pieces improperly, but the unclickable parts don't clearly line up with pieces underneath it, so I'm not positive
  
• The pieces, right off the bat, had a visual glitch. The first puzzle, on kid mode (I've yet to play enough to see if this is mode related or random) had a single line of pixels floating a short distance above each piece, leaving the piece field littered with lines that looked terrible and interrupted the good vibes of the game
  
• The music quickly becomes repetitive and almost monotonous if you place pieces with some regularity, because each piece placement adds a note to the song in the background. Cute concept, could be slightly better executed.
  
• For some ungodly reason, each puzzle starts with every piece in place and you have to manually click the spread out button. Or, if you enjoy getting all of the achievements without suffering through the whole game, you can just go through and click each piece once and it will snap immediately into place ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  
• The holes and arms on each piece are all cut exactly the same with no variation. Not only that, the placement of the arms is extremely regular/predictable. On the current pro puzzle I'm doing, the entire bottom row goes back and forth, 3/3 arms, 0/3 arms. In fact, now that I'm looking closer, it looks like every other row is like this and the other half are an alternation of vertical arms/horizontal arms... Yikes.
  
• The pieces snap to the board from way too far away, leading to tons of instances of setting a piece down and accidentally having it snap in place half a space below, which, combined with the inability to snap pieces to each other, leads to the most annoying combination of too difficult/too easy you could get out of a puzzle game, making the gameplay feel senseless and pointless.
  
• Perhaps paired with the line glitch mentioned above, another visual jankiness is that you can see through the spaces between pieces. If you have a solid background selected, like black, you will see black spaces between many rows/columns where others don't have them, making the picture feel torn apart awkwardly.
  
• While the pictures are nice, they're digitally drawn in a coloristically minimalist style, which, unfortunately, pairs very badly with all of the bugs and jank listed, because there's very little way to differentiate two pieces of almost the same exact color aside from just trying it in every single possible spot until you find the right one. Excellent gradient color vision is a plus, because any help the gradient in color would be is very subtle.
  
• There is an achievement for every puzzle on every difficulty. So, it doesn't matter if you do them all in pro, you can't 100% the game unless you go through and do each picture 5 times. Literally, why. Please, for the love of god, set the achievements so that completing on any difficulty will check off the achievements for all difficulties below it.
  
  I'm very sorry that this game wasn't as good as I expected as I had high hopes. If anyone reading this is searching for a good puzzle game, I have put in over 300 hours on Super Jigsaw Puzzle Generations, which is free and adds a new free puzzle with each DLC they put out, which are many and often. I highly recommend it.

Based on the modern classic by Zynga, this version is really annoying in comparison. While the premise is the same, here are my issues with it:

- The UI is unintuitive trash compared to the mobile version by Zynga
- The three pieces you're offered float up and down passively at the bottom of the screen which is really annoying and there's no way to turn that off
- The volume has no slider, just on or off
- The piece placement noise sounds like a car door being slammed shut which is such an aggressive noise for a game like this, especially with everything else about the aesthetic seeming to angle more toward magical and cute
- There's no noise when you clear a line like in the Zynga mobile version, which has a cute little discordant jingle that's fun to listen to. This version, line clearing is just dead silent

If you enjoy mobile games, get the one mentioned or use a different PC version. This one isn't worth the dollar, especially when you can get similar online for free.

This is like Factorio for people who like factorio for its system-making and don't like it for its combat and rocket building. It's all of the puzzle elements without the obnoxious running around.

For those who haven't played factorio, this game is a lot of logic and system building.

You'll like this if you enjoy:
- Organization
- Puzzle solving
- Perfecting what can be better
- Puzzle strategizing

You won't enjoy it if you:
- Dislike improving things that technically work
- Couldn't care less about efficiency
- Dislike finding things to do in-game while you wait for a number to slowly go up (there are things to do if you're the target audience)

I thought it was a bit slow at first but, after an hour, I got hooked

This is fun! If you like puzzle games, it's a good way to kill a few hours. I found it pretty easy - most levels I got on attempt 1, but those that were hard didn't take more than 4 tries. My only complaint is that I found the settings/UI a bit janky. I also feel like a few quick tooltips when the game first starts up, to show what part of the UI is representing mistakes/number of mines left/etc would have been nice. Otherwise, good game.

Aside from the racial stereotypes, which haven't aged super well, this game is extremely polished, well-rounded, and fun to play. The challenges are pretty challenging, but possible with practice and time, which is exactly how I like my challenges to be. If you enjoy strategy puzzle type games, this is a classic that's absolutely worth the buy!

If you're typically an art snob like me, you might think you shouldn't buy this game because the character design is so uncanny and awful to look at. However! For the most part, you won't really be looking at the characters all that closely, and the gameplay absolutely makes up for the people models.

This game, so far as I've played, is extremely well-balanced, has a lot of variety to offer, and is really rewarding. There are plenty of ways to play imperfectly which leads to a bigger success the second time around when you really know what you're doing.

One of the things I enjoy and find really balanced is the reward system. You have to unlock new items with a special currency that's given as an achievement and goal reward. This helps really stagger out the new items and keep things interesting many hours into the game. Plus, the achievements and awards come fairly regularly with consistent play. I never feel like the game is truly stagnating until I've really overstayed my welcome on a particular map.

The game is very forgiving about money. You get the same price back when selling things, which makes decorating fun and stress free. The rooms can be picked up and moved around, meaning very low stress when a new game first begins and you need to throw down some stuff to get going but don't necessarily want it all to stay where you put it. Additionally, rooms can be copied. So, if you don't enjoy decorating rooms over and over again, this makes adding more rooms quick and painless.

My biggest gripe with this game is that it has a lot of minor bugs and jankiness when editing rooms. However, I don't find the bugs are aggravating enough to outweigh the really cool quality of life features in the building functionality.

The bugs/jankiness are:

- You can't set anything down where it would block other items, even if you're paused and in editing mode. This can be really annoying if you're working in a tight space and need to rearrange some things. You end up having to sell one or two items instead of just shuffling them around. However, since you sell them for the same price as you buy them, this isn't really a big deal - just annoying.

- You can't remove a block of room space if the door is on it, even if you're in edit mode. However, you can add a block of space where a door is. When you add a block, it simply leaves the door where it is and says it's no longer a valid position for it. Then you move it to the wall of the new block. I really wish it did the same for removing a block, because this can end up having really, really obnoxious consequences.

- When removing some blocks of space from a room's overall size, I regularly have the bug that all of my windows will become invalid for no reason. So when I save the room, it asks me if I want to sell all invalid items. There's no way around this but to let it sell them and then to replace them.

- When building along the property border, you aren't able to put windows into the wall spaces attached to the corners. I think this has to do with the curve in the property line corners. It's annoying but not really that big of a deal in most cases.

- Some items are not allowed in some rooms that they should really be allowed in. For example, the herb garden box is available for the hallway and bedrooms but not in the kitchen classrooms where they would be most functionally useful. You also can't put rugs in student union rooms, even though you can in student and teacher lounges, nor can you put couches in libraries. I find all of these to be a bit of a bummer in terms of interior design.

All of the bugs and jankiness are in this vein of severity.

However, on the flip-side, you can also do things like hold control to place on a tighter grid, rotate items normally on cardinal directions into diagonal positions, and really customize a space. So, if you're like me and find building design to be a huge part of your playing experience, it can be extremely fun. Even better: each item that needs access specifically accounts for, and shows, needed walk space while placing it, so you can put things in as weird and tight of positions as you like without them becoming unusable.

Overall, I've enjoyed this game a LOT and plan to play it much more in the coming days. If you enjoy any kind of management gameplay, interior design, etc., this will probably have something to offer you.

It's a classic, but I would still recommend Bejeweled 3 over this one. It's the same game, but more modern, has Steam achievements, and so on.

I am a big fan of bejeweled, don't get me wrong, but this isn't the one to buy. While it was fantastic when new, it hasn't stood up well to the test of time. The animation for jewel matches is much slower than modern games would have, the balance of matches to level-up is poor and no longer fits with the general standard and, overall, the game feels very much like it drags on without a purpose. If you see it on sale for a dollar (which happens - that's how much I got it for) and you want to collect them all, go for it. Otherwise, pass this one up in favor of 2 or 3. 3 is the best and also has Steam achievements, which I find to be a bonus.

This is a classic I played a lot in my childhood. If you like connecting-pieces puzzle games, you'll probably enjoy this. I don't think I've ever seen another game use the sliding row/column aspect this game does. Instead of simply switching two pieces, you slide a whole row or column, somewhat like a rubik's cube, creating challenges you don't come across in gem-switching connect games.

The puzzle mode is really fun to complete. Once you know the logic behind how to move and switch chuzzles' positions, puzzle mode can get monotonous in the last quarter of the puzzles, but there aren't so many that that's a problem. I believe I beat all of puzzle mode in a couple of hours or something like that.

This game doesn't have achievements built into Steam, but it does have in-game achievements/trophies. So, if you enjoy a game with goals built into it, don't worry; it has those in the game itself.

My only complaint with this game as it comes on Steam is that it was built for computers with a significantly lower resolution. When playing in fullscreen, it seems the workaround was that the computer effectively zooms in on the game. The poor resolution in fullscreen mode doesn't bother me, but the speed of the cursor. the mouse cursor appears to move much faster because the fullscreen mode zooms in on a small section of the screen, therefore making the distance your cursor covers much bigger for a much smaller movement. I chose to play in windowed mode to avoid this, which wasn't my favorite, as the window is about a quarter of the size of a standard modern screen. This is a pretty mild bother for such an old game.

Chuzzle really stands up to the test of time. It is a well-made game from a time before you could continue patching after release, so it's polished and, as far as I can tell, completely bug free. Plus, it comes with some fun little easter egg interactions that give it that old-game charm.

I enjoy this game a lot! It's definitely worth buying, especially if it's on sale. However, if you can find something like Rimworld on sale for a similar price, go for Rimworld. I enjoy this game as a colony builder, but I find it offers a lot of the same things other colony builders do, but in poorer quality.

I joined the Founder's Fortune Discord server to make a few small quality of life suggestions and was informed by a dev that the game is finished and not being worked on anymore. This was pretty disappointing to me, since the game is fun but does not seem finished by any means. There are a lot of basic quality of life updates it would need to feel finished and there are a number of bugs that serve to add to the games overall jankiness. It's not so buggy that I avoid playing it but, enough that, when I've played through a few times in different ways and gathered the achievements, I won't feel compelled to keep playing it.

Some examples of existing bugs:

- When colonists are given tons of free time in their schedule in order to prevent burnout and the like, they use it to keep working even when their fun meter is way down, often leading to burn out when they should have been able to self regulate.

- The piano, one of the items used to boost the fun meter of colonists, will continue playing the sound of terrible, novice piano playing even once a colonist has stopped playing, and will continue playing until the audio file ends. Notably, this bug was reported in the Discord bug report server and seen by devs like 9 months ago. I have to assume this means they're also "done" with fixing bugs.

- Occasionally, doors will simply stop working and colonists will get trapped in a room and you'll have to instruct them to move the door so that the door is rebuilt and reset

Quality of life issues:
I know there is a general attitude of "If you can mod the thing you want, mod the thing you want," but, personally, I'm of the opinion that if it belongs in the base game it shouldn't fall to mods to fix.

- There is no way to prioritize which subcategory jobs a colonist does under their main job. (e.g. mining stone, iron, or crystals under the mining job). You can check or uncheck items to mine, but you can't make them prioritize without unchecking the ones you don't need right now. With the farming job, this is an issue because they will completely ignore harvestable apple trees in favor of tending fields. However, you can't just uncheck tending fields because harvesting apples only takes a minute and their help is necessary on the fields. Thus, you're forced to manually make them harvest the apples which will often lead to them leaving after doing one tree when there are two more to harvest.

- There is no special priority to manual actions. Therefore, if you have auto-eat turned on (a necessary selection if you don't give them an hour to hour schedule (which is a bad idea most of the time because they won't follow it well and then they'll get pissed because their needs aren't met)) and then tell them to go far away to harvest cotton or something, they'll walk almost all the way there and then, if you're not watching vigilantly, they'll turn around after getting all the way there to go home and eat instead of just finishing the two-second job and Then going home to eat. IMO manually given direction should always get done without auto-eat or auto-sleep interfering. This has been one of the biggest frustrations of my gameplay experience.

- There is no way to disable planting in a certain set of farm plots. So, if you want to skip planting potatoes one year because you have too many and need to focus on something else, the only way to prevent them from planting potatoes is to have them "deconstruct" every single potato plot. Mind you, each potato plot grows one or two potatoes each, so you need like 50 of them. Then you're left with an empty plot of grass and you have to rebuild the plots the following year. It's an insane amount of work because a simple mechanic wasn't implemented. I say simple because this kind of "selection" mechanic is present in many other parts of the game, like in selecting an area where your animals stay or selecting only certain trees to cut down. A selection tool for disabling or enabling farm plot use should have been included in the base game.

As I said, I do actually really enjoy this game despite its flaws. The characters are easy to give personality to and spark some interpersonal creativity in you if you enjoy that kind of thing and the graphics are very cute - one thing many other colony builders don't have. If you find this game on sale or don't have a tight game budget for the regular price, I do recommend buying it, just be informed that it's not as nicely polished as you might hope.