Recent reviews by Corleth

Lovely little Zelda-like game, but with a tiny rocket ship instead of Link. In essence it is a twinstick bullet hell shooter, but the world exploration and upgrades make it so much more interesting and appealing. There are few issues, like being teleported to the map centre after death instead of dungeon checkpoint is just pure annoyance, and sometimes the enemies hide under overflowing graphics of trees or other structures, but overall it's fun and should keep you interested until you finish it in one sitting.

Absolutely amazing game. There are 8 subgames: 2 solitaire games, 4 puzzle games, 1 action puzzle game and 1 plastic model building simulator. Each polished to an absolute maximum. My personal favorite is the Chipwizard Professional and surprisingly the Steed Force Hobby Studio, followed by X'BPHG and Food Court. But I am sure that if you liked any of the prior Zachtronics games, you will find something which suits you as well. So stop reading the reviews and just buy the game already - you know you want it!

Nebuchadnezzar is a modern successor of games like Pharaoh or Zeus. The user interface is extremely polished and streamlined, so much better than the games that inspired it. And I love that the focus is on the logistics and building side of things, without having to be worried all the time about nasty things like fires or malaria. Additionally, you are in complete control of your workers and caravans, as you can set exact path for each of them they should follow, instead of relying on the awkward roadblocks. The feature of designing your own monuments is pretty cool, too. Add to it great graphics, inspiring sound track, slick tutorial, modding support, and you have a package that will please many. Definitely recommended!

Edit: the developers are very active and brought us new features, such as wages and taxes, or crime, fires, and diseases. Fortunately, they did it just right, so these are welcome additions which do not detract from the logistics aspect of the game. Looking forward to see what next is coming - we were promised festivals and deities. Nice!

The visual style might not appeal to everyone, but the puzzles themselves are great. They will twist your mind before long. Tough but rewarding, at least if you can persevere.

It's like a puzzle version of Advance Wars, similar to what Fire Emblem Heroes is to normal FE games. You play on a small grid, with just 3 mechs, and the challenge comes from devising a plan for destroying the enemies which outnumber you easily.

The whole game is extremely well polished, and there is quite a lot of replayability thanks to different squads, which you unlock in a similar way you unlock ships and layouts in FTL. Don't expect much of a story, but other than that, there is not much to complain about. Recommended to anyone who likes turn based games like AW or FEH.

Well, this game is a mixed bag. There are things I love but also many things which are just plain wrong. Let me recap:

Good:

- The puzzles themselves are pretty good. It's fun to discover and learn each new mechanic and they all work nice together. It really is a brilliant and tight design at its best.
- The environmental puzzles are the best - the play with perspective never gets old.
- The graphics are pretty nice, with their own unique art style.

Bad:

- No narrative whatsover. This is the game's biggest flaw, but a major one. You get the smart quotes from audio logs and boring as hell movie segments, but those have no connection to the game, other than celebrating the greatness of human intelect. With no story to tell, the whole experience feels very shallow in the end. Even a crappy story would have been better than this. If you compare it to Talos Principle, it's obvious how completely missed opportunity it is right there.
- The Island opens up pretty quickly and you initially spend lot of time travelling around without actually achievening anything, as you have no idea how to solve most of the mechanics. In comparison, navigating the corridors of Antichamber provided much better scope for learning each mechanic. Fortunately, once you find the boat with the map it's smooth sailing.
- The normal puzzles themselves become tedious pretty quickly. Once you learn the mechanics, solving the more difficult puzzles just takes more time but gives little joy in return. There is an occasional new twist thrown in from time to time, but eventually you start to wonder "why exactly am I spending my time with this?".
- The most anticlimactic ending I have experienced in a long time. Like for real? In Talos Principle, even the "bad" ending had a strong meaning as it was part of the story arc, but in this case, it just emphasized how meaningless it all was. After watching it in disbelief for couple minutes all I felt was the strongest sense of complete waste of time. Even though I did all the lasers already, I couldn't be bothered to hunt the remaining puzzles anymore and will just uninstall the game with bitter aftertaste.

So, is it worth the purchase? If you have enough time and enjoy puzzles, I guess it is (on sale), but if you are looking for a Myst-like or Talos-like experience, you won't find it here. I give it a thumbs up anyway, but it pains me greatly that with little changes it could easily have been a true masterpiece.

Amazing game for anyone interested in programming and/or electronics design. Step up from TIS-100 in every aspect. In TIS, the tasks themselves were simple, the difficulty came from the obscure parallel architecture and the (intentionally) limited assembler. In Shenzhen I/O, OTOH, you get involved in development of products which you can meet around us every day: digital scale, networking router, coin counting machine, traffic lights controller, etc. And the assembler is actually pretty well designed for the microcontrollers used in the game. So you don't feel limited by the environment you have to use anymore, just your imagination and experience... If designing your own digital clock sounds intriguing, don't miss this gem.

If you have ever programmed in an assembler in the old days and enjoyed saving T cycles and bytes wherever possible, then you will love this. Optimizing the programs for this weird parallel architecture will test your skills, but once you come up with the best solution, it is extremely rewarding. Not for the feint of heart, though. Are you up for the challenge?

Amazing little gem of a game. It captures the feel of old games perfectly, while subtly incorporating more modern design features. The controls are spot on, the level design is very good with just the right amount of back tracking, the difficulty is just right to make some parts challenging but not frustrating, and it's long just enough not to become tedious. Not to mention the marvelous CGA/EGA retro presentation. You should definitely try this game - winning it makes you really feel SUPER!

Awesome game. For smart peoply only, though. It reminds me of the Portal test chambers or The Cube movie, except that instead of avoiding devious deadly traps you need to overcome devious puzzles by using many of the interesting in-game mechanics which you gradually learn. All in a non-Euclidean space which feels like you are inside of one of the many M.C. Escher paintings. If you are a computer geek, this is a must have.