Recent reviews by Lightbringer

To be honest, roguelikes (and -lights) are not my thing. I often find them too grindy and too "hardcore" to be actually enjoyable. I bounced off Slay the Spire hard, mostly due to its difficulty and the bazillion cards you meed to find in order to succeed.

But I gave Spellrogue a try after they've won the GOTY award, and it's actually quite enjoyable. A run is short, and I was even able to win a few. The spell dice mechanic is very addictive, and the deck crafting complex enough (but not too complex) to understand the different approaches with each character.

Like most these games I played, the focus seems to be hard on the game mechanics, so don't expect a narrative à la darkest dungeon here. The production value is good for an indy game, and I really appreciated that I didn't need to look at yet another pixel art game. There might be more flashy games out there, but let's not expect insane things from a three man team.

tldr; it's a fun roguelike game for a casual player like me

Lake Ridden ist ein First-Person Adventure game, irgendwo zwischen "Myst" und "The Room". Allerdings ist die Puzzledichte wesentlich geringer. Die Puzzles, die sich aus der Umgebung ergeben, sind durch interessant. Jedoch kommt das Spiel nicht ohne die klassischen Verschiebe-, Memory- oder Kombinationsrätsel aus, die sich auch noch wiederholen, worauf ich gut hätte verzichten können. Ein Tagebuch, was alle relevanten Inhalte speichert, und ein Hint-System helfen manchmal.

In der Geschichte geht es um ein altes Anwesen auf dem die Schwester der Protagonistin verschwunden scheint, Schnell wird klar, dass hier übernatürliche Kräfte am Werk sind. Obwohl hier es um eine Geschichte mit Geistern geht, enthält das Spiel keinerlei Grusel- oder Schockmomente. Alle Rollen sind jedoch aus dem Off gesprochen, was es etwas schwierig macht der Geschichte zu folgen. Am Ende ist der Plot jedoch kohärent und ich sich abgeschlossen. Man sollte jedoch keine Mind-Blowing Twists erwarten.

Die Umgebungen wirken zweckmäßig, jedoch nicht hässlich. Hier merkt man das Indie-Budget jedoch am meisten. Erschwert wird das Erkunden allerdings dadurch, dass viele Gegenstände interaktiv wirken, die jedoch nicht sind. Zumal in der Spieltwelt etliche Schränke herum stehen, die man zwar öffnen kann, die jedoch nichts Relevantes enthalten. Hier wäre eine etwas klarere Designsprache hilfreich gewesen.
Auch etwas hinderlich sind die matschigen Kontraste der Umgebungen. Gerade die Außenbereiche versinken in blassen Braun- und Grüntönen.

Der Sound enthält schöne Melodien, die sich nicht aufdrängen. Soundeffekte und Klangwelt rangiert eher auf dem Niveau "ganz okay, aber nicht herausragend".

Unter dem Strich ist Lake Ridden aber ein solides Spiel für Freunde des Genres. Eine Spielzeit von ca. 7 Stunden und einem Preis zum Zeitpunkt des Kaufes von 8€ ist durchaus fair. Mit den richtigen Erwartungen bekommt man gute Unterhaltung.

You can safely ignore the complaining reviews about grindyness and lack of meta game and end goals, etc. - it's an EA game. What does once expect? The base core loop is there. The visual style is interesting, and there's even a bit narrative in there.

Why the thumbs down then? Well, the core loop is just not fun for me: if you don't get it from the videos and screenshots, the act of brewing potions is transformed into a spatial problem, where your mixing moves equals laying tiles on a game board, e.g. like Domino bricks or Carcassonne, and you need to lay down certain patterns to achieve certain steps on the map. This would make a decent puzzle game, I think. But the problem is that, like in Carcassonne, it's almost completely random what puzzle pieces you have available, which makes potion making very frustrating. You have some control over it, by chosing which ingridients you buy, apart fromt he random things from your garden, but what merchants are offering you is also randomized. All in all, the whole explorative process doesn't feel very directed and therefore quite uninteresting.

Kudos for making something original! It just doesn't work for me. I think, I expected more something similar to the Zachtronics games (Space Chem, Opus Magnum, etc.) to be honest.

The second game in the narrative. Chances are very little that you play this without having played the predeccessor. It's definitely a step up in terms of production quality, e.g. animations are less static.
The play time with 5 hours is ok for the price, given that the puzzles aren't very challenging. On the other hand, they brought in a muhc needed quick-travel function, because the game makes you previously visited locations again and again to see if you can scavenge again through a hidden object puzzle.

Cute little causal puzzle game. I'm probably not the core audience of this title, as it takes 5 hours for an average adult to finish this game. But since I bought this in a bundle and practically payed 3€ for, it's just fair time of entertainment.
The plot also seems rather kid friendly, but is still midly amusing for adults.

Only the technology sparks a few frowns: the FMV used for most animations are horribly compressed and don't scale well on higher resolutions. Animations are sparse and lip sync with the voice over practically not there - but hey, did I mention this costs 3€?

It's an adventure game from 2004, best compared to "Myst" and alike, that has aged surprisingly well. I'm writing this in 2017.

You spent most of your time clicking yourself though locations at which you can rotate the view around 360°, above and below, and finding hotspots for things to pick up or combine to solve puzzles. The interface is from a previous era of interface design, and meant to work well for lower screen resolutions, but manageable. Once you reached a certain point in the game, it will offer you hints for things in your inventory, which make some puzzles way to easy (you can't turn of the in-game encyclopaedia). On the other hand, the game offers to comment or hints on most of the hotspots you find in the game world, so you either know what to do there or resort to Trial & Error pretty quickly.

Many puzzles can be solved with different items - what I found highly irritating because your inventory quickly becomes cluttered with items that are meant for puzzles you have already solved. However, complexer solutions give you a higher score - meant to increase the replayability of the game.

Which I found zero - don't get me wrong! This is a cute little game with a compelling enough story to entertain me for a few hours, but the narrative wasn't complex enough to keep me playing after I saw the epilogue after nearly 7 hours. Charming nevertheless, though I expected a few more actual puzzles (math games, levers, etc.).

Ich habe das Spiel als Beigabe auf DVD beim Kauf einer Spielezeitschrift bekommen, und zum Zeitpunkt, an dem ich diese Review schreibe, ist es im Sale. Das heisst, meine Kaufempfehlung bezieht sich auf einen Gegenwert von um die 10€. Letzendlich muss natürlich jeder selbst wissen, wie viel "Wert" ein Spiel hat. Ich fand jedoch, dass keine der kürzlichen Reviews dem Spiel nicht gerecht werden.

Das Spiel kann man wohl als Mischung aus "Die Siedler" und einem Dungeon Crawler bezeichnen. Das Wirtschaftsmodell stammt aus ersterem (Baue Holzfäller, der liefert Stämme zum Sägewerk, yad yada yada .. baue Eisenproduktion für Kämpfer. You know the Drill! Alles schon 1:1 gesehen), jedoch gibt es keine Kampagne, sondern alles läuft auf prozedural generierte Karten hinaus. Der Kartengenerator, und die verfügbaren Gebäude und Waffen, passt sich dabei dem Spielfortschritt an. Dadurch ensteht auch ein interessantes Gefühl an Progression. Interessanterweise ist der Reiz im Mittelteil am grössten: für jemanden, der seit 25 Jahren diese Art von Spielen spielt, ist der Einstieg absolut simpel, und das das Meta-Endgame (siehe unten) ziemlich uninteressant. Der Ansatz ist aber durchaus interessant.

Sonderlich kompliziert wird das dabei aber nie. Was zum einen an den sehr zum Vorteil geratenen Karten liegt, und daran, dass die Gegner auf der Karten keine nennenswerte Gegenwehr liefern; allerdings gibt es noch einen "hart" Modus, den ich mir geschenkt habe.

Denn nach etwa 20 Stunden Spielzeit habe ich das Gefühl, dass ich alles gesehen habe, was das Spiel zu bieten hat. Ich habe alle Optionen freigeschaltet, und alle KArtenvarianten gesehen (es gibt jedoch noch zwei DLCs). Doch müsste ich jetzt noch weitere 50.000 Punkte "grinden" um das Gesamtspielziel, meine Wikinger nach Valhalla zu bringen, zu erreichen. In den 20 Stunden wurde gute Unterhaltung geboten, jedoch sollte man resistent gegenüber repetativem Gameplay sein; auch wenn die Basisbau optimierung mittelfristig den Ehrgeiz weckt.

Das super lazy Storytelling und die fehlende Herausforderung führen aber dazu, dass ich mich nicht langfristig mit dem Spiel beschäftigen möchte. Ergo: interessanter Ansatz, aber insgesamt nur "okay". Größere Bugs sind mir keine begegnet, die Grafik ist hübsch und zweckmäßig. Bei größeren Siedlungen skaliert die Simulation ziemlich gruslig, und es kommt zu Hängern (jedoch nur auf den größten Karten).

Charming Point & Click adventure that is carried by its game world and bizarre characters. The main plot is a bit predictable but well staged. Puzzle difficulty is suitable for beginners.
Note though, that the playthrough time is rather short with 6 hours, and that the game loses a bit of its humor when played in English. Preferably, play the german version.

The game is not very deep in the sense that its pace and variety of game elements are designed to be more of a board game nature. On the positive side, that makes matches not as long drawn out and the mechanics easy to learn. The campaign is more a set of challenges the game generates, e.g. you can't build this building or that particular resource is very expensive.

Fair enough. Brownie points for originality.

But what really turns me off this game is the lack of traceability of why you lose a match.. Suddenly the AI just buys you out and that's it for you, while you stare at your ever growing debt, and wonder how the hell the AI keeps spamming out buildings and upgrades so fast even at the medium difficulty levels. It's very hard to recover from a bad start, no real gradient of improvement because once you optimised your base, the match is already over

It really feels like "Super Meat Boy" became a tycoon game. It's made for masochists, who want to start over and over again.

It's Portal 2 without portals. Instead, your weapon of choice is a magnetic gun that works pretty much like the gravity gun in Half-Life 2. The story follows pretty much the same pattern as Portal 2, with the twist that the developers apparently got inspired by The Stanley Parable and gave the game nine different endings for you to discover. That being said, it took me about three hours to find one ending, and I didn't feel very compelled to find the others. After all game elements had been introduced, and I made it through a batch of hard levels, I felt that I've seen everything the game had to offer, and the story isn't intriguing enough.

Can I recommend this game? I guess so, I wasn't bored for three hours. I got this from a Humble Bumble though. So I had no expectations at all and my Entertainment-for-Money feeling was more than satisfied. I'd probably feel different, had I paid the full price in the Steam store (15€ at the time of writing). Would I venture out to get all endings, I guess my play time would be about 5-10 hours. Of course, you have to make up your own mind what that's worth to you. There's always a Steam sale coming.

Pros:

• can't make much wrong with copying the Portal 2 formula and adding/replacing some game mechanics
  
• story is intriguing enough to keep you going for a playthrough or two
  
• enough content to keep you entertained for an afternoon
  
• production quality (graphics, sound effects, voice acting etc.) is good, considering this is an indie game.

Cons:

• if you haven't played Portal 2 yet, play that instead. This game "inspired" by that game, to put it mildly
  
• The controls (courtesy of the Unity engine) are horribly clunky