Recent reviews by Invader Brinks

It's the perfect game to chill out and play for an evening during the Christmas season, and it's free!

I'm old, so I was around during the beginning of and during the "golden age" of PC FPS games back in the 90's and it was glorious. I'm loving this new resurgence of the old-school "boomer shooters" at the moment and this is easily one of the best of them. The fact that it's made by one guy is truly amazing.

It has a similar visual style to the original Blood game, which I'm a massive fan of, so much so that I even loved the 2nd one, and no one likes Blood 2. But it doesn't have the pure wacky, craziness of Blood, it's a bit darker, serious, and honestly probably a bit more fun as well.

It's very rare that I buy a PC game as soon as it's released, as I usually wait until a sale to get them cheaper. But after following this game for some time and playing the various demo's I had to buy it day one and I'm so glad that I did. If anything, I really wanted to support the developer, who by the way is doing lots of updates and fixes all the time, the guy is a champion.

This game has everything you want in a single player retro shooter: awesome atmosphere, interesting story, plenty of good weapons, heaps of secrets to find, great soundtrack, and good solid action.

Quin is a really nice, simple version of the Crazy Eights card game (the more well know commercial version of Crazy Eights is Uno). I'm a big fan of Crazy Eights and Uno, so I thought I'd give this a shot.

I really like the art style in this game, it's simple yet functional and overall the game plays really well. My only gripe is that the muliplayer has no matchmaking system, so the only way you can play other people is playing someone you know who also owns the game. This isn't a massive issue as it is a cheap game and all, and when it's one sale it's a no-brainer really. But if there was online matchmaking I'd be on it all the time and I really do hope they add it one day. As it is, I mainly just play against the bots, which is still lots of fun. If I have a bit of time to kill, I load it up for a few quick games, which is really what this game is designed for and does that really well.

Overall, it's a really well made, relaxing digital card game. If it had online matchmaking this would be a killer game that would easily outclass the official Uno game. Which as it is, the single player already does.

It would be a crime for this game not to win the "Sit Back and Relax" 2020 Steam Award as it is literally the most relaxing game you can possibly buy, ever

I’d been watching this game on Steam for some time because I’m big fan of toy games like the original Army Men and the Toy Soldiers games and this looked right up my alley. I think it’s the nostalgia thing that gets me, the fond memories of playing with toys as a kid and setting up big elaborate battle scenes. For some reason I never got around to buying it though, then one day my 10-year-old son saw it on the Nintendo Switch eShop and really liked the look of it and kept asking me to buy it. I thought it would be better on PC, so I stalled him. Fast forward to the 2020 Steam Winter/Summer sale and I noticed it was in sale and showed my son who so excited about it that he used his leftover birthday money to buy it. I’m so glad he did, as we have been having a blast playing it ever since and even my 8 year-old-son has now joined in for 3 player split-screen action. I literally have to stop them from playing as the 3 of us would happily sit there and play it all day if we could, we’re totally obsessed, curse you responsible parenting! I’m using my keyboard and the boys are both using controllers (Xbox One and Xbox 360) and the controls work perfectly.

The game’s main mode is a first-person shooter/tower defence hybrid. The levels are a mix of everyday rooms in a house and in a toyshop where you have a set time to explore to collect money to use to build your defences around the “Hypercores” that you need to defend. One of the things that always sucks me into games in unlockable content and goals/achievements and this game has heaps of them. Each level, on top of the hidden coins, coin packs and gear you need to find, there are also well-hidden collectable items. Your money can also be used to buy weapon upgrades in shops or you can take a risk and gamble with a slot machine, which is unlocked after finishing a level over a certain rating for awesome loot (strangely, both my boys get obsessed with these machines and spend far too much money on them). It’s a lot of fun jumping around the level searching for stuff, especially as the developers have added a heap of little details and jokes throughout each level. The level of detail is impressive, for example on the back of some of the toy boxes there’s full readable text.
Your character can only build 3 different defence structures at a time, which you can change and customise before you start a game. As with most things in this game your choice of 3 structures is very limited at the start as you need to unlock more as you progress. This also helps when playing co-op to make sure everyone has a good combination of defences at their disposal. The other unlockables in the game are various characters and cosmetics for them. I also like how you unlock a custom title for you character using 4 different slots that have various names you can combine to make you own 3 word title that appears above you in-game, mine is currently: “Sir Mighty Eagle”. There are a couple of other game modes, including a Deathmatch and an Infected style mode, which I have only played briefly. They’re good, but just not as fun as the tower defence co-op mode in my opinion.

Everyone starts with a basic rifle weapon, which, depending on the level, will start with one function. You can often find weapon attachments scattered throughout the level and in the in-game shop and slot machine. You are limited to 2 weapon types to change between at once and in some cases with the more powerful and rare weapons like the flamethrower and minigun, only one. The other attachments are items that add accuracy to you weapon, like sights, bipods, and stocks. There is a decent enough variety of weapons, like shotguns, grenade launchers, lasers and machine guns and you soon discover that some weapons are more suited to killing certain enemies that others. This once again comes into co-op strategy as it works well if your team has a good mix of weapons to help take out certain enemies quicker and easier.

Speaking of enemies, they are a cool mix of old-school and newer toys that attack you in waves. There’s classic army men, bouncy balls, robots, zombies, and Beyblades just to name a few. They each have different ways of moving and attacking and once you learn their strategies it is a lot easier to dispatch them. And there’s even larger bosses on some levels that take a fair amount of damage before you kill them.
You can play this game by yourself and it is still fun, if not a bit harder to defend the cores all by yourself, but this game shines playing co-op with friends without a doubt. The lasting appeal of this game is redoing all the levels and trying to find all the collectables and then increasing the difficulty to try and get some more unlockables. I’m really excited to see what the developers have planned for the future of this game, some more content and DLC packs would be amazing.

PROS: Great retro theme, awesome level of detail, great couch co-op, tonnes of unlockable content, great for split-screen
CONS: Could use some more levels and modes (which it looks like the dev’s will add in at some stage), not as much fun by yourself

I give the game a 9 out of 10
My 10-year-old gives it a 9 out of 10
My 8-year-old gives it a 10 out of 10 (he says it’s the “best game ever!”)

EDIT: Since I posted this review the dev's have added so much more free content and they continue to do so, making an awesome game even better!

The best fun you'll have with one finger ever

I love this game, it's a perfect multiplayer game. You can't really cheat and do something unfair, you lose it's usually because the other team played better, that's it. It amazes me the levels of skill there are is this game, I don't think you could ever fully master them all.

The best Christmas album EVER. I got this last year and I listened to it so much and this year I'm doing the same, it's just that good. I can't get enough of it. If it wasn't for the fact I have young kids I think I'd be playing this all day long during December. Is it weird to listen to Christmas music in the middle of the year?

You will die, over and over and over and still come back for more. Simple, addictive fun

Wow, it only uses 2 buttons but man it is so much fun! Almost like a rhythm game in how it's all about timing and high scores....and of course, addictive as hell!