Neue Rezensionen von HalvedDead

first idle game where going idle for a long time still gives you great amounts of progress

what an innovation, what a concept!

GET THIS GAME RIGHT ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ NOW AND START FISHING!!!!!!!!
GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

ok im gonna write a serious review now

so basically i think mouthole is really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good and i havent played anything like it up until now. not only is the hunting for endings really cool, but also finding the secrets, even though the secrets are just a secondary thing. its kind of like how, you feel you always know what design decisions the dev has made, and it gets all boring, but in mouthole you're always getting surprised by the directions the game goes in. this game rewards curiosity like it knows what goes on inside your head, it knows what players like to do, and it rewards them for actually being creative rather than sticking to the boundaries that every other game has put them in. i feel like if youve played games long enough then you resonate with what im talking about.

the atmosphere is also perfect. the environments and especially the music that sometimes plays really FEEL like taking whatever joy in the world you can before you perish in a tragically short timespan. the characters are weird but not for the sake of it, the things they say are actually thought provoking and not just le funny comedy dialogue, which i thought was really charming about this game. i especially liked the worm and the mechanic.

its one of those games you WISH you could play for the first time again, you wish it so bad, but in the end its ok because i feel satisfied enough having experienced it all once. if you like exploring a lot, this game is a gem, and if you like exploring to the point where you want to see what pieces of lines of dialogue changes when you do this specific thing instead of something else, this game is a treasure. if you've ever felt like you don't know what the ♥♥♥♥ you're doing with your life and constantly feel like wanting to hide from the world, then this game is for you.

fear

better than undertale
i mean it

Aria: *breathes deeply and sadly*

pretty wacky game, its a bit disjointed and all over the place but that's part of the fun in my humble opinion. the final storyline kinda blows it especially considering you need information outside of that story to complete it and you don't get any indication of it, but i think that one ending with the martian in another story more than makes up for it. funky dude.

schism is another entry into the roguelike genre that is still in its infancy, but somehow manages to hit all the dopamine receptors just right to create a significantly more fulfilling experience than many other fully released games in the competition these days.

it does a handful of unique things on its own, most notably the graphical style that is reminiscent of those very old DOS games from eons ago, but one of the best qualities by far is how the game takes inspiration from other successful roguelikes to improve the overall experience.

that might not sound so innovative on the surface, but then you realise that schism has carefully and surgically taken the BEST parts of those beloved roguelikes such as isaac and nuclear throne, and made sure that each and every mechanic present in this game works together, to create a beautiful mosaic of resource management and combat that leaves you itching for just one more run to see what happens.

some items are more desirable than others, but there are no downright objectively useless items bloating the pools like how isaac does it; every item is top tier in a certain build somewhere. you may pick a god to boost your power in one aspect but also disadvantage you in another, but there are no gods that objectively make the game harder for very little benefit, like how some crowns in nuclear throne work. everything just makes sense!

but by far, the best part of the game is how it keeps game breaks in and actively encourages the player to seek them out. you have cards that double your money, which synergize with items that increase your money cap and give you more damage the more money you've got. you have an item that lets you occassionally keep keys, bombs and most importantly cards after using them, based on your luck stat. you have items like the chaos sigil and invoker sigil which lets you sometimes double cast a spell for free or even have a chance to regenerate mana whenever you use mana.

if you seek it, you will be able to break the game in some way, whether you just need to pick the right items in your run, or whether you risk it all on the brink of death trying to minmax that one item that increases your intelligence the lower health you have, which boosts all the items in your inventory and... you see where this is going already.

this game actively dares the player to get the game break that wins the run, and in a world where developers are always trying to shut them out with duct tape, it is HIGHLY refreshing to play a game from a developer that knows how fun they are and keeps them available for the most resourceful players out there.

i was so happy about the game that i went ahead and bought it for a handful of my friends, because i wanted to support the development of this game however i could and get the word out. this game is heavily underappreciated, and it shows with the very low reviews (13) at the time of writing, that nonetheless all recommend the game and give a thumbs up. im excited to see where schism ends up a year from now. ill be waiting with high hopes.

i will say yes to this game. i originally played this developer's birdgut game and i loved it, and even better, it was free. this one wasn't quite as good but it was still pleasurable to play through to the end, which is to say that it holds up as an indie game.

the game can be boiled down to travelling to different worlds each with different mediums, and matching themes to support their artstyles. the cold and dark charcoal world has an ominous dungeon, the vivid watercolor world is about underwater puzzles etc. this game does it well enough, no world in this game is better in terms of visuals than the others, they are all equally good to stare at for a while which is a pretty neat achievement.

what about the gameplay though? its just okay. its probably as barebones as it gets when it comes to 2d platformers, you have the pushy boxes, the levers, the moving platforms, so on and so forth. its good that the game inserts its own unique mechanics into each world but it isn't really enough to be awe-inspiring and fresh gameplay.

the least great thing about the game is how there is a final chase or fight at the end of like 2/3rds of each level. for example, the tranquil and acrylic mountain level with really great music would have been a perfect, relaxed climb up to the top, but then the yeti at the end was inserted abruptly and felt forced.

the story is also just okay. my main issue with the story was that it was turned into a 'being a hero' kind of deal halfway through the storyline, which didn't feel deep at all when contrasted with the awesome concept of travelling between worlds with all these different cool artstyles. the last few minutes of the game being about accepting what has happened and just having the desire to return to the comfort of your home was a pretty meaningful ending however.

the dialogue itself suffers from this; the lines from the protagonist are painfully generic, there isnt any concrete personality-defining trait for them besides being courageous i guess, which isn't nearly enough to set them apart. the dialogue from other characters in the story is more acceptable though, you can feel the mannerisms and traits in what they say far better. i especially enjoyed the interactions with the king in the pen & ink world, and the meteor monster in the collage world.

if i had to rank the levels it would be something like this:

1. collage. the realistic style of the entire world was a shock and felt very VERY unique, i loved every second! the chase sequence was spectacular, the audio design in particular was awesome.
2. acrylic. the whole mountain climbing journey and aesthetic combined with the music was very pleasurable, i teared up from the beauty of it all at one point.
3. pen & ink. i enjoyed the factory/industrial environment, even if i did not enjoy the undertones of the plot here i really liked the setup and introduction to the king at the end.
4. charcoal. pulled off a dark atmosphere well enough, the design of the huge hand creature at the end was very unique.
5. gouache. the simplest level but it does not detract from the experience, it was a breath of fresh air compared to the box/lever platforming that the rest of the game had.
6. graphite. even if it was a tutorial it was great at setting up the plot immediately, it was cool to see what the protagonist's home world is like so we could have a frame of reference with the future levels.
7. colored pencil. it was nothing special, i guess the redirection of the flower pellets was neat, the chase at the end was one of the better ones too.
8. watercolor. underwater levels in games are notorious for being bad, but this wasn't a bad level nor was it dragged down simply by being underwater, its just that the puzzles took a while to complete even if you knew the solution. the fight at the end and the reason for the fight in the plot was ehhhhh.
9. oil pastel. other people might have really liked this level but i really didn't enjoy it at all. there were too many levels themed around nature and wildlife at this point, having another one of these was not pleasurable. i also felt it dragged on for too long and the puzzles also suffered from taking too much time to complete. the second half with the bee and spider wasn't that bad though.

as a footnote, the artifacts around the different worlds felt okay to explore for and collect, but some of them were hidden behind walls that didn't look different from all the other walls in the level or didn't even have hints to allude to the fact that they were fake. the watercolor level suffered the most from this, only the collectable coin had some form of hint. given that the difficulty of the game isn't really that high, it would have been great if collecting these artifacts involved some kind of hard-mode challenge subsections instead of just being hidden behind walls every time.

anyways, its still a good experience but there are some elements of the game that drag it down a bit, namely some pieces of the plot and the gameplay of a few levels. regardless, id like to personally thank the developer for really going all-in on the realistic collage level, there are VERY few games that take advantage of the trope in which a game is almost fully cartoony, and then transforms into grotesque, realistic graphics somewhere down the line. it was a 10/10 level, thank you for that.

McPixel is the hero I trust the most to save me from danger.