Recent reviews by Lothy

Wouldn't deem this a game, nor fun.
Not good for beginners due to lack of instruction and teaching.
Not good for reviewing because it's more ineffective than flashcards.
Music gets annoying, no volume control in-game, just on or off.

Sometimes I wonder what developers think about when making a game that makes them go… “yeah, I’ll totally sell this game!” even if the price is under $4.

Domestic Dog by Surreal Distractions is one such game. A dog-sim of sorts wanting to masquerade for something with actual substance (as I suppose most “something simulator” games are… ), you will be greeted with absolutely no tutorial and no idea of what the hell you’re supposed to do. Survive, I suppose.

Basically you manage a dog that grows out of some sort of egg – the dog you get is random, and when you die, another one appears (not the same one, so you lose any “progress” made). You have food, water, dog money?, sleep – a few other stats to keep track of, basic stuff. You need to keep those up or you may pass out and/or die in the process. Tip of the day, in case it’s not obvious: You also have to mind cars, since they may run you over.

What to do in the game? Well, be a dog, maybe? Eat, drink, poop, pee (sorry, I mean, ‘fire your weapon’) , bark at other dogs, eat said poo… you have a minuscule map, a shop with pointless things, and pretty much that’s it for the game.

Boring doesn’t even begin to describe it.

There is really nothing to salvage for me in this game: the graphics are terrible, pixelation has never looked so bad, and outdated (sorry, I mean, ‘retro’) bright colors are sure to blind you. Because we all know if we refer to a game as “retro” it automatically must forgive all design flaws. Yup!
The UI feels cluttered and messy, everything seems to be moving, or too bright, or otherwise vying for your attention. The dogs themselves look rather ugly, even for alien dogs.
To crown the beauty, the quite matching but horrifying 8-bit styled music and sounds effects (which are really loud, by the way!) are hideous. There is no semblance of a menu that I could see, thus I could find no way to lower the volume, and quite frankly I didn’t even bother to look beyond the esc key, I just muted everything while I played.

If you enjoyed this then that's great, but it was absolutely NOT the game for me.

So, would I recommend this? Sorry, but no. Steer clear.

Developed by Locked Door Puzzle, who seem to like putting the sound that goes with their logo really, really loud; Cosplay Maker is a time management/dating sim game.

As the rather unoriginal but quite aptly descriptive name says, the game revolves around making cosplay and all the drama and things going on around it. The game starts with you at a convention (and you can’t customize a single thing about your character), getting all ready to start on the cosplaying world. You make two friends there, a cosplayer and a photographer, who you will (if you so choose to) keep in contact with during your gameplay and meet in future conventions, and they will in turn give you ‘advice’ and introduce you to other characters as you progress through the game.
Any of your friends you’re able to eventually date provided your friendship is high enough, a stat you will have to maintain by taking some “friend time”. This is the dating aspect, which if I’m to be honest I didn’t care to try. Why? Because the characters all fell rather flat and uninteresting, and I just couldn’t muster enough interest in the storyline.

The time management aspect of the game comes in the cosplay making part. Every so many months you will have conventions to enter, and in them cosplay competitions you can enter into in turn. In order to make your costumes you need to get ideas (unlocked by buying things, relaxing with some TV, socializing, etc), and materials (which you need to buy). In order to get money for the materials, you have to work – which causes your “energy” to go down. Energy can only be recovered by “relaxing”. So far so good: it takes typical stats to do things, so you have to manage your time carefully.

The problem starts in the scheduling. Your schedule is bunched so that Saturday and Sunday are bunched together as one big “Weekend” chunk, and your days are all bunched together in “day” and “night” of the week. You can not micro-manage day by day, which is absolute bullcrap for many reasons, the most blatantly obvious of them all being that when you get your costume to 100% completion in the middle of the week, you are still stuck “working” on it the rest of the week just because you can’t pause and modify the schedule.
Likewise, the rate at which you gain and lose stats, although manageable, is annoying and would benefit greatly from some micro-management choices.

Once you’ve scheduled your day, you hit play and the week passes with a few repetitive, boring animations, but quite upbeat music. Despite the lack of interesting animations (you never actually see yourself working on the costume, you only see yourself wriggling your arms and head), the first couple of times you see this it’s alright. After the first couple of times though, the slow speed at which the week progresses before your eyes is tedious at best, and though there are events that break up the week pop up (requiring an ‘ok’ to close, so that you can’t even go do something else meanwhile), most of the time they are a boring and inconsequential interruption. Such is the case of one in particular:
“Another day of steady progress in your costume.”
Geez, how… ground breaking. Can we speed this up, please?

What is more infuriating is that there is no way to skip or speed through the week. Okay, there IS a way, but you have to purchase it… can you see how ridiculous that sounds? How can something that should be base game need to be purchased?
At this point I should mention that while there is a tutorial to the game, it’s a rather lame one, and mine got stuck for quite a bit, too.

Another annoying thing is that the cosplay costumes seem to take forever to do. I mean, seriously, I’m no seamstress and I’m pretty sure I could do something faster than this girl…

As for the rest: there is some progress and goals, the goals seem a bit far in between (from “make an outfit” straight to “win competition”) and the progress seems pretty pointless. It also seems you’re unable to sell either your old costumes nor your excess material (if you bought something by mistake, for instance). The variety style on cosplay outfits to choose from though seems okay.

That pretty much sums up all of the gameplay aspect. Moving on to the small technical bits, the game felt unnecessarily sluggish for something so 2D and plain. Sometimes switching from regular week to event seemed to take a bit too long, and the loading of my file or new costume ideas also took unnecessarily long. The loading screen also seemed to have no indication of just how long it’d take to finish loading, which was rather annoying.

The menu is plain, the music in the menu pretty bad, but surprisingly I found myself quite liking the rest of the songs on the game – all upbeat and fun. They didn’t seem to match the game a whole lot for me, but they were nice, up to the point where the same 3-4 ones started to play over and over and over on the week playthrough. Good thing I liked them…
The intro video was interesting and nice, but absolutely unneeded. The whole bright color scheme of the game with the fancy old style music seemed to want to remind you of Persona, only it didn’t quite make the cut.
The graphics aren’t he worst I’ve seen, but they are definitely not what I’d personally consider “nice” or of sufficient quality to match the price tag.

All in all, Cosplay Maker seems like a very good game idea executed a bit poorly. You do get some fun out of playing it, don’t get me wrong, and it can get a bit addictive to do just one more upgrade on a cosplay or one more outfit or one more week… but it’s not really worth the price to me in its current state. Basically the only thing you’re truly paying for here, to me, is the music.

Capsule is a very short (1 to 2 hours at most) immersive game that comes with quite a few warnings, and I can understand why. The developers warn anyone with claustrophobia, misophonia, or other similar phobias not to play the game. And why? Because this is truly one game best played in the dark.

If I had to put it in a category, I’d say Capsule has a slight feel of a minimalist puzzle game; but the truth is, there’s really no puzzle to it – at least not gameplay wise. The story, however, does make you wonder even though it is at its core an immersive survival game.

The story goes as follows: You wake up trapped in a capsule, only able to experience the outside world through the radar on it. You don’t know what’s happened, but you have an idea of where to go to start the journey into finding out…

Although you’re thrown into the game with barely an idea of what to do, for this particular case the lack of a proper tutorial beyond how to move is actually not hindering, because controls and story are so minimal you really can’t go quite wrong… even if it did take me a while at first to get my bearings.

You have oxygen and power to worry about, a radar burst, a bearing, and a distance to your target. Each level you reach a destination, where you have more of the story develop in the form of messages which often give you a new direction in which to go. You have to be mindful of the hostile environment while making your way to the next destination, but watch out for your power and oxygen! You might fall short and die of asphyxiation!

The look of the game is ultimately minimalistic. You can only see the radar of your capsule, a pixelated screen through which you move with the arrows and send a sonar wave with the space bar. The blueish color is very pleasant to look at, and the flicker of the screen manages to make it quite immersive, particularly if you do play with headphones and in the dark!

The sound effects, though simple as well, help further the atmosphere of it all, and the feeling of immersion. The breathing, the static, the beeping… Even when on my first round I played it with the lights on and during daytime, I could easily forget that I wasn’t actually in the Capsule.
I have to say that because of its immersive aspect, it adds a whole level of ‘horror’ to the game that you shouldn’t overlook. Dying the first time was truly terrifying.

However… and there is a small con: it’s that the game becomes a little bit boring once you get a hold of the whole bearings/distance and when to restock oxygen and power not to die. So basically, once you get the hang of it. But the game is so very short that, honestly? You won’t even mind.

I think this a very nice, atmospheric game – simple and minimalist, if you’re into psychological type of horror you will definitely enjoy the hour of play. If you like jump scares in your horror, steer clear. This is real horror right here.

If you’ve been following my reviews for any amount of time, you know I love Hidden Object games, and that some of my favorite have been done by none other than Artifex Mundi. Even the previous games in the Nightmares From The Deep series I really enjoyed. However, for some reason I can’t quite pinpoint (and perhaps it was a mixture of several things that ended up having me dislike it), Nightmares from the Deep 3 didn’t quite make the cut for me.
In Nightmares From The Deep 3 you take on the role of Sara, who along with her daughter is kidnapped by none other than Davy Jones. Sara is then tasked with saving her daughter from Jones and a dark pact, and helping lost souls along the way. This is the last installment on the series, and the most disappointing to me.

The audio and video were of the expected quality: the character’s looks keep slowly improving as time goes by, the backgrounds are as beautiful and detailed as ever, and sounds and music keep improving as well.
Like in other games of theirs, they added collectables in the way of seahorses and pirate cards. The difficulty of finding them was reasonable- they were sufficiently hidden not to be obvious, but not all extremely hard to find, making for a nice extra challenge if you are into collecting stuff, or are a completionist.
They also made use of pets again. The dog, which is the choice pet this time, is truly adorable, and I loved that you could pet him, but compared to the reviewed Clockwork Tales, the functionality of it as other than a fetch tool and a companion was lacking.

Some of the cutscenes were also lacking a little – the most memorable one was a boat rowing scene were the rows moved but there were no hands on them. Hey! Magic! For a company that likes to pay so much attention to details in most their games, this was… surprising. It’s such a little thing, but it takes so much away.
My other big complain is that, unlike in some of their previous titles, their find-by-picture Hidden Object scenes were very forced. The items you were to find were force-blended with the background, such as by just changing the hue from what it was supposed to be, instead of having it just be lost among a bunch of similar items; this was a rather cheap move, made it difficult in all the wrong ways, and I didn’t like it at all. Besides, I generally find the find-by-icture scenes a lot more tedious than the ones were you’re given a list.

As far as the rest of the hidden object scenes and puzzles, they were fairly average for the company, which is a good enough thing. Puzzles, logic, and extras were of a decent difficulty and pleasant to play. I particularly liked having to play a board mini-game with one of the characters as way of moving forward, as it was different and inventive.
Onto more technical aspects, I was having a lot of troubles this time around keeping it from crashing while alt-tabbing on windowed mode, which I never had a problem with before.
As for the story, it was not too bad, but the whole Davey jones thing didn’t entirely “click” with me. The whoe thing felt longer than previous games, and not in a good way. I think it was more boredom that made it seem longer, than actual length in play time.

That said, if you love Artifex Mundi and hidden object games, and if you’ve played the previous two games of the series, Nightmares From The Deep 3: Davy Jones is a nice final installment to it and definitely a mus-have from a fan/collector’s point of view. For everyone else, there’s nothing overly special about this one, even if it’s not a bad game per se.

Would I recommend it? I do think I would still recommend this to other HOG players.

The makers of Grim Legends do it again with yet another lovely Hidden Object game. Released in 2013, Artifex Mundi’s Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink is not one of their earlier games… and yet, it kind of plays like one.
Clockwork Tales is an adventure/hidden object game. If you’ve never played one of those, Artifex Mundi’s are, in my opinion, some of the best you could pick to play. Their dedication to making the games visually stunning and the stories compelling is quite amazing, and they’ve been known to listen to the community and improve on their games. That said, it’s still a far from perfect game, and it was one of my slightly least favorite ones from them.
In Clockwork Tales you play as Evangeline Glass, a spy of sorts, a special agent working with Intelligence, who goes in the search of her friend, who had disappeared while on the field, working to find out what was causing some mysterious earthquakes. Like in most hidden object games, the story is nothing overly special, but I did like the touch of it being set in a steampunk world, as I feel we’re severely lacking in variation for themes. I do wish the story was slightly less formulaic though, and not just with Artifex Mundi’s game, but with Hidden Objects one in general: Person disappears, other person goes fetch, illogical things happen, evil is shown, evil is defeated.
I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I was rather disappointed with it. There is advice in writing that says, “Show, don’t tell.” This is especially true of visual media such as videogames. The ending, then, failed this advice. It felt like it came to an abrupt halt, followed by a long winded expositionby Evangeline that didn’t explain anything of what was left unexplained, but that let us know that the bad guy sure got what he deserved! How? Why? We might never know.
As far as the technical aspect goes, it plays fairly smoothly.
You have “steambugs” as collectable items. What was a bit different from their other games here was that, while in most games you have x goal amount for the whole game, this one was a goal amount per area. They were also far more noticeable than in other games, which made them quite easy to find.
The art is decent, though as usual in their older games, some of the characters can look a bit creepy in some of the scenes when the body is drawn oddly. The backgrounds are detailed and gorgeous like in all their games - one of their strongest points.
Another thing I liked was the use of the pet (a steam-pet this time) to fetch and manipulate items, record movies and sound, etc. The usage of the pet system as more than just something to “fetch” items was a breath of fresh air, and I hope they will use it in more of their games.

The access to the map was just a bit more annoying than usual, for you have to go into the notebook each time as opposed to directly clicking on the map; plus, each time you fast travel, the map doesn’t close itself. It’s nitpicking a little, I know, but I got used to the ease with which later games handled the map ad fast traveling.

Clockwork Tales is also a little ‘harder’ in the logic department. Most the hidden object games follow some rather weird logic at times. Say for instance (not a scene taken from the game, mind you, just for illustration purposes on what I mean) you have a pile of ash, and something underneath it. In real life you could use your hands, or whatever item lays close by, to poke and sift through the ash. In a normal hidden object game you’d want some kind of brush, or cloth, or broom, even if you have a perfectly acceptable item for the job nearby. In Clockwork tales, you’d probably have to climb up a flagpole to rip down a flag to then find scissors to cut a piece from it so you can use it on the ash. What? That perfectly acceptable piece of cloth right next to the pile of ash? Oh, we can’t use that!

Later games of Artifex Mundi allow you to skip items on hidden object scenes, or skip the scenes all together, by playing a game of mahjong. Not here. I was sad to be unable to switch it up and play a bit of Mah Jong now and then.

Another thing I wasn’t as fond of, but this one was more due to personal preference rather than a fault with the game, was that the mini-games were a lot more often the switch and slide games, or the ones were pressing something requires you to do it in the exact order. It was like they had picked all the mini-games I like the least to put them in here. If you do like those games, however, then you will definitely have a better time playing this one than I did!

Lastly, I found a small bug where my inventory would get stuck at the bottom when I finished some puzzles and returned to normal view, which required me to exit and enter the game again to unlock. Not game breaking, but annoying.

Would I recommend it? Yes. Despite the downsides, I had fun playing it.
There are far worse hidden object games around, but there are also better ones from Artifex Mundi itself.

Kaiju Panic by Mechabit is one of those games that mix tower defense with action/strategy, and it does it fairly well. Yet I had troubles liking it fully. Why? Well, Kaiju Panic is a kind of fun, kind of boring type of game. I know, I just confused you, didn’t I? That’s okay, that’s how I felt about it at first too.
The story follows the aftermath of an asteroid crash. Within this asteroid were these little monsters called Kaiju, which are apparently coming to destroy us. Your job is to mine the asteroids for resources while avoiding the Kaiju and also gathering survivors to bring them to safe places. The places are only as safe as you make them, though, and this is where the tower defense kicks in: you will have to build towers to defend it (and the people you just saved) from all those monsters coming to get you.
Simple enough, right? Of course, as you go through you get to improve buildings, research, gain perks, etc. Some survivors won’t want to go with you until you complete a requirement (ie. Find their dog first), which gets a bit annoying.
I rather enjoyed the visual aspect of the game, even if it has a bit of a ‘mobile’ feel to it. The cutesy cartoony graphics are lovely if you’re into that type of art style, the variety of Kaiju is enough to keep you entertained, and the colorful atmosphere will make you forget you’re essentially in one of those aftermath games.
The maps are interesting, though nothing out of this world. After a while they all more or less start to look alike.
That said, the controls were a bit confusing at first, but once you get used to them, they’re only moderately annoying. You use a combination of mouse and keyboard, where the space bar pops up the build menu and the mouse is mostly used to look around and select buildings.
The music is annoying as hell, but the sound effects were decent for the type of game - pretty much what you’d expect from a mobile-looking game.
My biggest pet peeve with the game is that while it’s really entertaining to play when you just start, after a while it just gets repetitive and boring. And I did enjoy the first few levels of the game - but as I progressed, turret placing became a bit of trial-and-error as you have no clue until you’ve played it where monsters will be coming from, and with an already repetitive style of gameplay, having to re-do entire levels can get really frustrating.
Mechabit has recently added a co-op option, which I haven’t had the chance of trying, but I think would really add some to the entertaining factor if you’re not playing it on your own.
Would I recommend it? Eh, I give it a very hesitant yes, particularly if you’re into tower defense, but I would certainly not pay full price for it. Better wait for a sale or a bundle.

Partickhill Games brings us Tricone Lab, a deceivingly simple, quasi-minimalist looking puzzle game that will make you use all your lateral thinking abilities in order to proceed though the increasingly difficult levels.
In Tricone Lab you interact with microscopic organisms in what appears to be a cellular-like environment. Your goal? To create as many “tricones” as the level needs to let you proceed. Tricones are created by joining three colored cones (red, green and blue) into a master template, but several things will get in your way: not only the membranes, but also other organisms that might either aid or hinder you in your quest to complete the levels.
The graphics of the game might be quite simple, but there’s a certain charm to the simplicity of the game, and I greatly appreciate the almost monochrome tonality of most of the game, for these type of puzzle games tend to end up in bright colors to make up for the lack of “proper” graphics. Not here! The graphic style seems to fit perfect with the game.
The music and sounds are pretty good, almost relaxing, I rather enjoyed them even if I kept them at a very low level.
Playing it is simple enough – you mostly will use your mouse to connect things and navigate, but there are also keyboard shortcuts should you not want to go entirely with the mouse.
The levels, as I’ve already stated, appear to be quite simple when you begin, but as you progress they get increasingly difficult, and often times I would get stuck by not thinking things through properly before launching into what looked like a simple puzzle, but ended up being something more… even when the difficulty was marked as low. So the game really makes you pay attention to what you’re doing.
There are neither tips nor guides in-game (there are tutorials though, like with every puzzle game, introducing you what new items do), though I’ve found often the level names are tips on their own.
As you get through the levels you will unlock keys that will allow you to open even more levels for a whooping total of 100. Yes, you read that right. Tricone Lab boasts of 100+ levels, and if that were not enough for you, they also have a level editor. You can upload any maps you create with it, and others will be able to play them. Can you see the possibilities here? I can.
And the game is still in development!
Tricone Labs is an entertaining, challenging game that, although it might not be a graphical masterpiece, is truly worth your time. I’m the kind of person that gets easily frustrated with games, and I have to say, while I did get stuck here and there, Tricone was never stressful nor frustrating to play through.
Do I recommend it? It’s a sound YES! You’re sure not to regret the purchase.

If you don’t know Dishonored at least by name, then, my friend, you’ve been sorely missing out.

Arkane Studios and Bethesda brought to us one of the most amazing stealth games I’ve ever played. Biased? Maybe a little.

I don’t think I need to start with what Dishonored is about, as it’s such a well-known game already, but in case you’ve been living under a rock (admittedly as I was until I got it, haha), then here: Take on the role of Corvo, the late Empress’ bodyguard, now framed for her murder and deemed an assassin. As you search for the ones who are truly at guilt and try to regain your good name (or make a new name for your own), as well as get revenge, you go through the most amazingly crafted story and world, finding out about the plague that has struck the city, as well as many other things I shall not spoil for you.

Onto a more technical aspect: Dishonored is a first-person stealth/action game set in a steampunk type of world with some fantasy/magic/supernatural elements in it; I found it quite reminiscent of Bioshock in some ways, and it is an amazing, amazing] game. And this coming from someone who normally doesn’t like first person games that much, and who really sucks at stealth. The only thing that would make Dishonored any better to me right now would be if it had an option for third person.

So, what’s so great about this game, you ask? For starters, the graphics are breath-taking, even in the lowest settings; and it works on lower end PCs without a hitch, which goes to prove you can have pretty cool graphics without sacrificing playability on toasters.

The sound in the game and the voice acting too, is beautifully done. The voice, the music, everything seems to fit just perfect with the setting and characters. What’s more amazing is that the sounds your character makes when moving aren’t just filler for your enjoyment. If you’re far too loud, enemies will hear you, and will find you.

Dishonored provides you with a varied style of gameplay, not the least of which is the supernatural aspect. It has many powers to choose from, and using them is not as hard as it appears at first. Once you get used to the controls, you find they’re reasonably comfortable, although not all of them precisely handy.

But my favorite thing of all has to be the many ways you can play this game, and many ways you have to approach a mission, which just ups the replayability up to a hundred; you can try different power combinations on different playthroughs, approach everything in a rather YOLO kind of way or try to stealth your way around and be a ghost, you can even mix and match! Choose to use or even not use your supernatural powers at all, and make several moral choices that will determine what kind of ending you get after all, and what kind of person Corvo becomes. Every moral choice you make, every person you kill or not, will change how people perceive you, how you as Corvo see yourself, and the ending you get. You also have more than one path to choose for each mission, which makes it feel far more like an open world, even if it’s not really an open world game.



I would definitely recommend everyone to play it at least once; it’s too much of a fantastic game, you simply can’t miss it.

An Assassin in Orlandes by Tin Man Games is a text adventure/choose your own adventure game that mixes the dice rolling of RPG with the path-choosing style of CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure) books.

If you’ve read my previous review I’ll be repeating myself here, but: Mixing dice in with this means you will also be rolling for stats, and that most fights and encounters are purely luck based. That said, I quite enjoyed the mix of these two game styles, it makes for very interesting gameplay that mimics the board RPGs quite well, and reminds you very fondly of CYOA books.

If you’ve never read a CYOA book, it works like this: You reach a point in which you’re given two or more choices, and it indicates what page to turn to continue the story on the proper path. There are several different endings, some failure, some death, and a ‘true’ one.

Controls are simple: You just flip pages by clicking and click choices as they appear (some might be obscured if you are missing an item or certain knowledge, but otherwise you're free to pick and choose). Should you need to, you have a bookmarking function to return to a previous point in the book, maps, etc.

At the start of the story you may also pick up the difficulty. Unlike The Forest of Doom, this one offers only two settings: A regular difficulty mode and a “casual” (cheat) one. The cheats are the same as in Forest: you can heal yourself or uncover options you might have not had otherwise, in order to get through the book.

The story is better written than in The Forest of Doom, though the main premise and how the character comes to be in troubles is still lacking a bit. Still, it’s a story I would definitely recommend for a younger audience. The fight style I found a bit more confusing than in the previous game, but it was otherwise equally luck based and mostly simple to learn.

The graphical aspect of the book was a bit more typical, but the images (in black and white) were so much nicer to look at, and the maps were also much better drawn.

Would I recommend it? Yes. But again, I’d recommend you grab it for at least half price.