Recent reviews by Eric_Kei

Whaaaaat stares down bears? Alone or in pairs?
Puts up with you like a bud?
What watches your back, and fires right back?
It's Qud Qud Qud!
Quuuuud, Quuuuud,
It just turned you in~to wood.
Quuuuud, Quuuuud,
It's better than bad, IT'S GOOD!

(with profound apologies to John Kricfalusi)

Yeah, great game, oodles and oodles of well-written text and backstory (even the Markov/procedurally-generated books are good), deep, DEEP systems, and absurd hours of gameplay. The decade and a half of work these folks put into this wunnerful little Roguelike really paid off. Go watch some Let's Plays, come back and buy it, and thank me later when you're repeatedly slamming your head against the wall with this game and then coming back for more.

I may not have adequately-conveyed my meaning – head trauma, you know – but I like it!

That poor wall...

warning BLEEP crash KRUNCH rrrrrrr

"Kaylee...Was that my primary b-"

"No, no, everything's shiny, Captain! Just a microasteroid collision!"

"...Then why did I just see one of my shuttles...You know what, never mind. Just fix it."

TL;DR: I like it, and I'm having fun banging my head against the wall.

This is set in a post-apocalyptic scenario, with a "hard" sci-fi setting with some elements of other genres sprinkled in (including a wee soupçon of eldritch horror). You play as a "shipbreaker" - an independent salvager - who takes their little deathtrap boat out to find derelict spacecraft in hopes of stripping them clean of any and all valuables...Whether that be a nice EVA suit with a shiny gun and some booze, a ship's reactor and batteries, or literally the walls and floors themselves.

This is a game with lots of procedurally-generated content about setting out into space from your cozy little home base on a station to make your fortune...and, more importantly, pay off the mortgage on your salvage boat. Or, ya know, try not to get killed by the criminals you stole it from. Either/or. Wander around the space station, chatting with and befriending/pissing off the locals. See the sights! Hack the secured doors! Break and Enter! Steal appropriate stuff or just drag the entire storage bin over to your ship! Hell, you can even hack the airlock and cough wheeze ...there are so many gasp...stars...

You can use the salvaged stuff to sell, or to fix up and expand your own ship. You can also purchase derelicts you find if you've got the dough. Inventory management also matters, as different gear has differing amounts of space to hold stuff -- and, at least for your ship, weight matters; make sure you have enough thrusters duct-taped to the hull and the bits and bobs inside you need to move that hunk of junk around. The game is intended to be difficult, so fair warning there. There are some stations and ships to visit and shop at/steal from/chat with people, ways to improve your character over time by training or study, nosy space cops, and of course, pirates out to take what you rightfully stole salvaged.

It has a steep learning curve when it comes to spaceflight, but it's well-documented. That manual on the title screen isn't just for show ^_^ The game also has in-universe books, pamphlets, and hastily-scribbled notes to find. That being said, the flight interface is downright obtuse, so read that documentation and maybe look up a guide or two. A game manual of sorts is right there on the title screen, and has a bunch of useful info.

The atmosphere and style is informed by media such as space operas, space westerns such as Cowboy Bebop and (quite visibly) Firefly, and many others. There are also some creeptastic bits of lore and quests to find...if they don't find you first.

ProTip: On the bottom-right of the ship control screen: Drop the throttle slider really low in order to avoid having the G-forces from using the thrusters screw over your character. Adjust it upwards in tiny increments to find a safe level to use.

All in all, a solid game with plenty of potential, and I'm looking forward to its eventual 1.0 release in the future!
ver: 0.14.1.3

In short: Full. Contact. Tetris. But with an actual story!

Fun game, colorful and detailed 16-bit-esque graphics, clever writing, and a solid soundtrack, to boot! I've been playing this one since an early beta years ago, and it was well worth the wait! The combat is essentially as described above, with a much broader variety of pieces to use on the board (you can customize your selection), puzzled using said pieces, gear, usable items, special powers such as turning any one piece into a 5-block-long bar, and so on. It also features nice little bits that help you to track your progress (e.g., bars that track how much of any given zone you have completed), mining for items, expanding your core/hub town, and a bunch of decor items you can plop down wherever it suits your fancy.

This wonderful little indie RPG comes from Zircon, one of the minds behind Tangledeep and the wonderfully weird Dungeonmans. He's also one of the better-known folks over at OCRemix, so check him out there for some great tunes!

A wonderful collection of add-ons, QOL, bugfixes, et al, that is a must-have for the game.

A wonderful, absurdly deep and complex new game in a genre never before see--- OW! Who threw that?!?!

...OK, OK.

This game is the great grandpappy of an entire genre. Is it the first game ever to have so much detail and depth, it would make an ancient archivist throw his hands up in frustration? No. Is it the first game that challenged you to create a civilization/town/stronghold from pretty much scratch? No. Is it the first game to use ASCII graphics to such great effect? Hell no.

But here's the thing: This classic, 2+ decades old game does all of that and more, really really well. There's a reason it's still around and going strong after all these years. As much as it owes to those who came before it, other great games such as Rimworld, KeeperRL, Keplerth, and a slew of others owe DF a great debt. If this is your sort of thing, give the dev team some love!

Pspspspspsps...Heeeeeere, fishy fishy fi--- OH CARP, WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥ IS THAT?!? SWIM FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!

Great little game, solid core gameplay loop, wonderfully silly, over-the-top in-engine cutscenes. Clever dialogue and a huge variety of fish/other aquatic critters to capture and serve. Well worth it even at full price!

A solid city/empire builder with a deep focus on efficient production chains, exploration, and trading. Recommended!

(note : Reviewer received this copy as a reward for backing the KickStarter)

It's a neat little action/platforming game with some RPG and Metroidvania elements that has plot/backstory relevance for the main game (EC), as well as a few minor unlockables for same if you carry the save file over. It looks and sounds nice, it plays well with the ability to swap among the three characters at will and link their attacks together (shades of Trine, here). It also has some post-game content; reaching that point also unlocks Hard Mode and lets you enable it immediately, bringing some welcome challenge back to the game if you're been over-leveling your characters.

My only real gripes are that the (optional) sidequests are repetitive and that the menu system is a bit rough – e.g. Characters cannot swap Accessories and elemental Runes with one another; you have to manually remove the old one from the first character if you want to give that piece of gear to someone else. Note that the dev team for this game is apparently NOT the same as the one that made the main game.

That being said, the game itself is fun and well-written, and definitely worth giving a shot!

A great little mishmash of Dungeon Keeper and Dwarf Fortress with a lovely soupçon of roguelike. Basebuilding, exploration, making equipment, the occasional ----ing kraken oneshotting half of your team, cute, but detailed characters, and all of that stuff. It also has fairly broad variety of choices for what faction you want to play as, with some essentially being variants with a few differences, while others (e.g. Necromancer) requiring a notable shift in gameplay style. It was in Early Access for a good while (I've had it for years), and the hard work shows through in the improvement over time. Worth trying!

It's simple. It's dirt cheap. It's serotonin in digital form.

And it's *good*. Give it a try!