Recent reviews by GermanyKun

You should be able to hold F on the SAA to control how many of the each 4 clicks you want when pulling the hammer, would be so much more satisfying!

I think the game would benefit from at least one more speed level where you just go flat out with jumps etc. instead of only relying on only tricky low speed balance puzzles, but otherwise a nice game with mostly diverse challenges that doesn't overstay its welcome

Saw this game on youtube btw

Crafting an Iron Battle Axe:
35 Iron Bars: 420 Kg
30 Ancient Bark: 60 Kg
4 Leather Straps: whatever

Battle Axe: 2.5 Kg

How about not making me mindlessly farm a ton of heavy arse iron in a boring, empty dungeon with buggy tunnels and walls just to get a crappy micro upgrade, is this an MMORPG??
And now (aside many many other flaws and emptiness) you announce a DLC??

For people who want to enjoy Tekken Ball, I wouldn't recommend it.
-No online play from the main menu
-you have to go to Arcade Lounge - Beach section and sit on a machine and just wait
-its only first to 2 rounds (instead of 3 like in Ranked)
-Its also first to 2 matches and then you can't rematch anymore (even though there are no rank points)
-once the matches are over, you have to go back to the character selection screen (???) and enjoy loading times again

Tekken Ball should be like player matches in Tekken 7: Selectable from the main menu, infinite rematches, 3 rounds
That would save like 60%+ loading times

I love GACHfield KACHT

Map of Materials is a wonderful little gem in the ocean of RPGs which proves that you neither need a gigantic, empty open world nor a large developer team to craft a quite joyful experience. This game is about a man who got stranded on a dangerous island with many different biomes and enemies that needs to collect various materials for his escape from the island.

This game is mostly a classic third person RPG with little survival elements which end up fitting the game well enough. Perhaps this game would have also been perfectly fine without thirst and hunger bar, but it's a nice way to implement valueable loot on the map. Every coconut, mushroom and plant you pick up feel a little more rewarding than most other games, especially considering you get a little bit of EXP for each picked up item.
You can farm some stones, ores and wood with your pickaxe and hatchet. With them you can craft arrows or make a fire to cook some meat. Neat.

The RPG elements are done in a very tasteful manner. You don't have a stamina bar per se, just a thirst bar. And you run quite hastily, so this game doesnt feel sluggish or even clunky at all. With each level up you get 10 skill points which you can use for either strenght or dexterity (called agility ingame). Your damage output scales (almost) lineary with the sword or the bow respectively. So each level up, each skill point and each bit of experience feel like you're progressing in the game. Becoming stronger than you were just moments ago. The enemies don't scale with your level, but there is a variety of them all over the world so it doesn't get repetetive. They also mostly don't respawn aside from a few specific playthrough related "ambushes" here and there when progressing through the game. You have a bit of crafing, most importantly upgrading your sword, bow and armor (if you find one). And here it's actually really nice how the model of your sword/bow always gets better and a bit bigger. You don't simply "sharpen" it, it doesn't become "sword +2". It visually looks better and even that little detail made me very excited to upgrade all my equipment.
Seems like a lot of those good RPG design principles were properly borrowed from the Gothic RPGs and the first Risen, which still to this day many games unfortunatly don't come close to its immersive and rewarding gameplay loop.

I personally find the world design of Map of Materials quite beautiful. You're stranded on an island at first, but going further inwards it doesn't feel like your boring generic open world RPG which plays on an island because they needed a plausible world border. You actually have 4 different biomes in Map of Materials: peaceful and cheery grassland, a melancholic open forest in autumn, a dangerous desert and a frosty yet homely snow world. All four seasons basically. And considering the fact it's the first game of a single developer and perhaps using a lot of assets from the unity store, the design is actually very possionate and immersive. No need to argue about bad looking unity assets or bad post processing effects or whatnot. It is very clear the the dev took a lot of consideration, time and effort to make each world look just right. Because a lot of games that you can find on steam have a rather blocky, repetetive design: Its a square plane world with trees in a line, a straight river, minecraft cubical houses and paths that zig zag in 90 degree angles. Here, even though you are almost always enclosed by steep rocky walls, it feels a lot more natural and plausible. Now add some lovely details here and there, some pretty flowers, some birds, 15 hidden chests you have to find (mostly by climbing around) and there you have a compact, dense open world. Of course it's not as dense as say Gothic, given the speed you can zoom through the world and it only being a single developer, but exploring the map is genuinely fun. Everything that seems climbable you want to climb. Everything that seems pick upable, you want to pick up.
On top of that each biome has a really well fitting soundtrack. The beach quite funnily doesn't have any music tho. Perhaps to give you some mental clarity on what just happened. Once again the autumn biome shines with it's emotional, deep string instruments.
The beginning of the summer biome didn't shine that much to me because perhaps I was expecting an open desert but ended up in a linear maze of stone walls with some sand on the ground. I understand that the dev wanted to have a maze somewhere in his game so I can appreciate that. At least we got some cacti :)
But what I find super interesting and actually a key element of this game is that there are no NPCs. You get only one main objective, a map and the rest is up to you! And it actually felt really awesome. I do what I WANT on MY pace. No stupid fetch quests, no stupid 2 liner NPCs and definitely not working your arse off for somebody else. It gives this slight feeling of comfort that you don't start up this game to do quests or work for other people but that you're on your own all the time. A parallel to the game Getting Over It where nothing really tells or forces you to climb the mountain or do anything at all. But it is your will, your motivation that pushes your hero forward. In this day and age we get bombarded with sooo much information and 8 second videos and 100 NPC fetch quests that it actually feels really good to relax in a video game where NO ONE tells you what to do.

Gameplay wise each biome with the required material consists of 3 parts: the beginning where you run around/explore a bit. The middle "challenge" part where something deadly awaits. And the ending where you can gather your needed materials. Whacking the enemies with your sword seems easy enough, there are no combos, dedicated dodges or hyper over the top rolls with i-frames for days. You also get a bow tho which was implemented a bit above averege compared other indie games with a bow I would say.
You have to get used to jumping a climbing tho, since you seem to have a lot of fricting when on your legs when running up to a stone and trying to jump on it. Better to leave some space and try to "land on top of it" rather.
The animations are truly whacky tho. You swing your head quite violently left and right when running unarmed. The animals jump quite a bit in place when attacking you. And everything else doesn't look thaat fancy either. I don't mind tbh, I also don't mind missing animations for cooking, picking up items and crafting. But its mildly unfortunate that there wasn't a dedicated animation for opening your map, missed opportunity here to give the title of the game more weight.

I had some other minor tidbits in this game, like that your hero always does the exact same grunt when getting damaged or the camera shaking when attacking and stuff. But you can easily adjust those things in the setting.
What I also have to criticize are some UI elements. The font and everything look a bit outdated. If you hit multiple enemies with your sword all the time, the middle of your screen fills with damage numbers and actually obstructs the view. The game itself needs a bit more GPU power than justified imo.
The game lenght was okay I guess? Definitely not a long game but it would perhaps have been nice to get keys or something to go back to older biomes to open new parts of the map and explore more. Because once you leave a biome, there is virtually 0 reason to go back to it, which is a bit sad. Especially since they are so nice.

But all in all Map of Materials offers an immersive, unique experience for everyone who wants to enjoy a classic RPG again. Game feels rewarding, biomes are creative and the design beautiful. Some usual Unity jank here and there but if you've seen the gameplay and screenshots and don't mind, the game is worth it. I also believe that if you want to see more of this type of game, 15 Euro are justified. I would love to see a same-ish but bigger Map of Materials 2!

Obama Prism

Really nice to see quarterly progress updates as a free to play Arena mode to try out new weapons, mechanics and controls whille still being able to give direct feedback to the developers.
Unlike many other "work in progress games", you can actually PLAY the progress instead of getting a lazy monthly status update with maybe one or two new things to show off.

The competition in the Arena mode to become first place to "immortalize" yourself in the final game itself + the raffle that every registered Discord user who plays through the arena once takes part are really cool extras!
That just shows that the devs are serious with this game and I am really keen to see what it will become in the next years!

P.S.: There will be more arena seasons in the coming months, too. So consider joining the Discord and competing for the first place if you also want to put your own quest/weapon/whatever into Drova :P

My father came in my room and asked "Oh are you playing a new game?"
I said yes and showed him the title screen.

His first response was: "ARSCHLOCH!?"

10/10 would recommend every father to try out Arschloch

Perhaps the best Tower Defense Game out there, it actually feels like a fully fledged game with surprisingly much content compared to most other TD games.

My only small criticism (as someone who played since BTD3) is that there aren't any special high priority bloons to pop, like I dunno magical bloons that make surrounding bloons faster or stronger or even make your own towers weaker! It would fit very well if you also included special targeting options like telling your tower to target lead bloons or camo bloons or those special high priority bloons as example.
The DDTs are pretty cool imo, I prefer those types of targets over *add another bigger blimp that carries 4 lower class blimps*
Because other than that the gameplay always revolved around placing tower, earning money and placing more towers. It would be nice to see Ninja Kiwi adding some extra challenges here and there to force you out of your comfort zone ingame. Like making a special type of bloon that can only be popped when they are in a frozen status, or when burning or glued. This would shake "the usual meta" up because as of right now, yes there are many ways of beating a level on hard difficulty. But why would I switch to something other than Submarina Commander + Sub Spam or 6 Druids + Obyn if it works perfectly well even in Chimps mode? Instead of nerfing those towers/buffing the other towers (Buccaneer is pretty good now, competing with subs on maps with little water), why not make special bloon/moab types where those "meta" towers are a bit useless?
But TBH I am really nitpicking here, this game offers enough game modes (half cash/double HP MOABs/alternative bloon rounds especially) which do challenge you to do stuff differently so all in all I am really happy

TL;DR 9/10 game, only wishing for more bloon types instead of MOAB types in next installment