Recent reviews by Jinsai

If you think Stranded: Alien Dawn looks like "Rimworld, but 3D graphics," you are not far off. That is more or less what it is. If you have played Rimworld (itself a kind of "Dwarf Fortress, but 2D graphics"), you'll feel right at home with the interface and how to get stuff done, some of the gameplay challenges, and overall vibe.

However, Stranded: Alien Dawn lacks the scale, depth, and polish of Rimworld. S:AD has simpler systems, smaller game areas (there's no real planet map, just your local crash area), and a much smaller array of everything, from the tech trees to survivors to resources, critters, and things to do. You will end the game with a much smaller number of survivors. The systems feel less precisely balanced. S:AD is flat-out easier, too (though not "easy", particularly as you are learning the specifics of the game) since there's less to manage and balance as a player.

The biggest disappointment is the standard endgame, which is absurd: your survivors are rescued, one at a time, slowly (over many days). This removes the survivors from your base and world (with all their gear) while you face wave after wave of critters. The first time you experience this, you will almost certainly lose. But once you know it is coming, you just have a lot of tedious tooling up and building to do so you can "wait it out". Personally, I just quit once that part starts.

Ultimately, I'd describe Stranded:Alien Dawn as a more casual gaming Rimworld-ish experience. That's not bad, and arguably worth it: Rimworld itself can be kind of insanely long and deep. Stranded: Alien Dawn, as a lighter experience with 3D graphics that you can complete in a few nights seems like a win to me. And unlike other promising contenders, S:AD is finished, complete, and playable.

Recommended with some reservations.

Icarus is a game undermined by its unusual design choices and poor balancing.

It’s a survival/crafting game, but rather than giving you a persistent world, in the "main game mode" you are repeatedly sent down with everything except your skill progression and tool unlocks reset.

In typical survival game fashion, making items requires a bunch of prerequisite materials. You pick up sticks and rocks to make stuff to acquire better materials to make better stuff to acquire better materials.

But those tools also require unlocking a progression tree with skill points. And almost all items require one of many special benches to make, and the benches themselves require unlocking and materials.

As is often the case with these games, some items have a chain of items and builds that borders on the ridiculous, for what can feel like minimal improvements.

Icarus is also mission-based, so you get thrown down to the planet with nothing, start from scratch every time, and can take nothing back with you.

This means every time you start, you’re almost certainly going to spend your first 15-30 minutes doing the same things – picking up sticks, rocks, and chopping down trees to make the basic things you need to survive.

The missions have timers. Originally, these were real-world timers that ran even when you weren’t playing the game. Start a mission with a 24 hour limit, and if you didn’t complete it within 24 hours of real time, you failed. Fortunately, the devs realized this was an unpopular design path and switched it to being “in game time” only. But this has the effect of making the current time limits a non-issue.

Most of the time the tension seems to be “how much grind do I want to do before I start the actual mission goal?”

Icarus understands that the “scrabbling to survive” part of survival games is often the most fun, but making you replay exactly that every time on every level and every mission gets old quick. There are no real shortcuts to get past this repetitive start, either.

Unlike some other games (Valheim, for example), there are no ruins to discover, no items to find, no treasures to seek. You’re in nature, up against regular animals. There aren’t many types in each biome (and it’s the standard forest/desert/snow, too).

The combat is not great. Even at a high level, if the wrong kind of animal gets the drop on you, you are probably going to die, and probably with your inventory or loot windows open as you frantically try to close them. Combat is mostly sniping from far away, hoping for a stealth kill, and then running like hell or exploiting terrain.

If more than one creature is aggroed, you’re also probably going to die. Even at Level 50, I am carefully sneaking around and completing many missions by running and hiding, rather than doing things “properly”.

Combat tends to be either trivial, or “oh, ♥♥♥♥ this”.

There is a punitive death penalty when you do die. Plus you have to run back to your corpse to get your hard-earned hand-built stuff.

You can build elaborate bases, but given the inherently disposable nature of them in missions, you’re going to build the smallest possible thing, usually out of wood, since any of the other materials require a grind completely not worth the benefits for a specific mission. This is also the problem with most of the upper tier objects – the benefits don’t seem worth the grind.

Even if you build a nice base, a storm might blow it (and the benches inside) to bits, or lightning might set it on fire and burn it to the ground while you are on the other side of the map questing away. Fun or frustrating? You decide.

Some missions are deliberately opaque, and require you to have unlocked a particular technology to complete the mission. The game does not tell you this, however, you just find out on your own once you’re down there. So you either abort and fail, or stay down and grind until you unlock the thing you need to win. Or you can read a Wiki and get instructions before you launch.

On that note, the world map is fixed. Most of the items always spawn in the same place, and once you know where caves are (for example), you know where to look. But the game does not mark things on your map for you, nor does it let YOU mark things on your map, other than placing a single target waypoint. (My heuristic is anything I can do with a paper and pencil, the game should be doing for me, so give me a persistent map I can mark up, guys!)

The “metagame” progression of unlocking items at the base also feels unnecessarily difficult and expensive. You have to “research” items for one cost, then “buy” them after researching them for another cost. The majority of these items seem to be only slightly better than the 2nd tier (of 4 tiers) items you can craft, and you can generally get to that level of crafting after a few minutes on each run.

The missions seem to fall into a few standard types: Gather materials, go scan at a location, kill some critters, or build a base.

Some of these missions are unnecessarily tedious, like requiring you to build a tower 10 stories high, and having to do it in a particular way so it doesn’t collapse under its own weight (which you can either figure out, or go look up on the internet). Perhaps the designers thought this would be a clever and fun puzzle. Maybe. But then you have to do it twice, exactly the same way. There was another one that required me to set up two different farms at opposite ends of the map, and run back and forth between them waiting for things to grow.

There’s a lot of narrative inconsistency. You have a space suit, you have to fill it with oxygen, the atmosphere isn’t breathable…but you can get pneumonia in caves. You can’t bring stuff down with you, until you can bring some stuff down with you. You can’t bring stuff back, except for the stuff you have to bring back. You have a space suit, but no flashlight. And so on.

The game does a few things well, though. Icarus feels like it was balanced for multiplayer, and accommodates single-player by having a whole separate “Solo Skills” tree you can unlock, providing boosts for single-player runs only. That’s a clever solution, even if Icarus still feels excessively difficult solo.

The world looks decent, with lots of detail. There’s plenty of stuff to build. The biomes each present unique challenges, even if the weather is punishing no matter where you are.

I haven’t played multiplayer yet, but it seems like the game could really shine here.

Some of Icarus’ problems are fixable with some balancing and quality of life improvements. Beyond that, the devs added game modes so you can have your open-world sandbox or a lightweight "permanent" world without missions, and a paid DLC with what sounds like a proper campaign.

The base game is hard to recommend as it is, and yet there is something compelling about it. Still, it is ultimately a frustrating experience more than a relaxing or challenging one.

Vamp-heim! Clearly informed by Valheim's gameplay, V Rising adds fancier graphics, swaps in vampires for vikings, and mixes in a bit more frantic action. Polished, but I found it to bee a bit too grindy and arcadey for my tastes. Valheim has a kind of tranquil bliss to its exploration, and even when there's combat, it is somewhat relaxing. V Rising is a much more amped-up, high-action game. You might like it. I enjoyed my time, but I stopped well short of completion.

A blast of co-op gaming goodness. Runs are fast end-to-end and hectic during. Suffers from some of the grindy mechanics of these other games, but has a large community and plenty to do.

I wish some stuff was better explained in-game, but that's what YouTube and Steam Guides are for, I guess. Polished and fun, though you may want to turn off the head-bob if you are prone to motion sickness.

A different kind of game, from a unique voice and talent. If you like power fantasies and shooting things in the face, this isn't for you. If you like surprising, novel experiences (in every sense of the word), this is well worth it.

Brilliant. Simple. Fun.

A cleverly-designed casual turn-based game with interesting story mechanics.

Many of the other reviews have focused on the dynamic story system. It provides interesting back stories, and the way those stories stack up over time and affect current and future plays is intriguing.

The game itself is fairly straightforward. Navigate a world map with some limited strategic decisions. Your main resource is time: Enemies will periodically storm across the map. Do you spend your days building up defenses to protect regions, training up new people, or taking the fight directly to the bad guys (and recovering)? Do you attack immediately or patrol first to make your fight easier?

On a grander scale, the game also asks you if it is better to use resources today for your current heroes, or stockpile them for their descendants.

The tactical combat is a kind of simplified modern XCOM, with basic flanking, skills for different classes, and limited actions. Combat works fine and is only occasionally frustrating. There's even limited "undo" if you misclick or regret an action. It is engaging, if ultimately heavily dependent on raw force strength rather than tactical brilliance.

The art style is distinctive and features a neat combination of flat cut-outs and 3D perspective.

A great achievement for a small team. If you like RPGs and/or turn-based tactical games, you will likely enjoy Wildermyth.

A solid, if somewhat simple, co-op shooter.

It lacks any in-game voice, which is a mixed blessing whether playing with friends or internet randos, and the lack of voice comms means coordinating efforts can be tough.

The difference in challenge and fun between difficultly levels is significant -- get to "INTENSE" as soon as you can, as that is where the game shines.

It can be a bit grindy, between leveling classes and weapons.

The classes themselves offer good variety, with none that seem overpowered and only a few that seem marginally useful. The skills system allows for substantial customization and complexity and is cleverly implemented.

The guns themselves are also quite varied, allowing nearly each weapon type to cover a full spectrum from pistol to shotgun to rifle to sniper. All are reasonably balanced, with some notable areas -- heavy weapons seem ineffective and not worth it for higher difficulty levels, and the flamethrowers are good ways to both obscure your own vision and kill your teammates.

The weapon attachment system is strong, and so is the customization.

The game would have greatly benefited from more unpredictability -- random layouts, more random wave spawns, etc -- and perhaps fewer, more focused guns. The color palette is also fairly uniform, which is on-brand for the universe, but gets a little monotonous after repeated plays.

Easily worth the purchase price, particularly if you have a few friends you can get on board.

A DOOM-y hard-core rogue-like (absolutely nothing carries over from run to run). Satisfying in implementation, with a refreshing, bare-bones design. You will die. a lot. Chance matters. A lot. Enough to keep you interested but not overwhelmed. A good weekend distraction.

A strong deck-builder with rogue-like elements. Great graphics, solid gameplay, and good writing pull you in. The variety of play styles offered by the different classes will keep you around. Recommended.