Recent reviews by palimpsest

Eternal Threads is criminally underrated. This might be one of the best time travel games I've played, and I've played (and loved) Life is Strange.

In this game, you're interacting with events that already happened. You're a silent visitor from the future, trying to solve a mystery - what happened in this house during one specific week? Can you successfully manipulate the events to save everyone who would have died otherwise, and more, can you help their life take a turn for the better? This quickly gets complicated as new events get added and old ones become inaccessible as you change the timeline.

The time travel aspect is really well executed, as are the characters. The UI is really well-designed to help you navigate the multiple events that happen - the game takes place over a course of a week, and each day, several things happen that involve one or multiple characters. The house feels alive and the characters feel realistic, and I immediately got sucked into their stories and problems. This might feel boring to some, but if you like mysteries and story-rich games, this is an amazing game. The only issue I had with it was the ending - there's a big cliffhanger that I didn't like, but it indicates that there might be a sequel coming. I really hope so, because I enjoyed the game immensely, and I would love to play more.

A lovely and relaxing game that's also a really nice direct sequel to Coffee Talk. Runs great on the Deck, too.

I'm really surprised that this game is not more popular. Love Tetris? Love organising things? Love grouping things together by category? I guess I'm all of those because I loved Wilmot's Warehouse.

Pros:
- Great gameplay - it didn't feel clunky or weird once.
- Replayability - you won't get to see all the different item types in one playthrough, which doesn't sound like a plus but believe me, it is!
- Local co-op - so few games have this anymore and I really appreciated it. Nothing like cooperating to reach a tight deadline while arguing if the camel should go with animals or with yellow things.
- Not too stressful - yeah, you're pressed for time, but it's not too crazy. You also get a stock take round where you can organise your warehouse for as long as you can, which I loved.

Cons:
Honestly can't think of a single one.

This game is short, but pretty sweet if you like interactive storytelling with some puzzles thrown in the mix. Beware: this is not a relaxing or particularly happy game, even though it looks really cute from the screenshots.

Pros:
- Great story that makes you think a bit to put it all together. The game definitely doesn't hold your hand when it comes to figuring out what's happening, but I think that's a part of its charm.

Cons:
- The little rooms can be clunky to turn around.
- I ended up playing the game on a touchscreen laptop because the keyboard and mouse controls felt really strange - the game looks very much like it was designed for mobile.
- In my opinion, it's overpriced for what it is. Get it on sale.

It's a cute short walking simulator, but I wouldn't say it's particularly memorable. The setting is gorgeous and the voiceovers are nice, but the story itself didn't feel very special. It's like a small vignette where you have to fill the gaps in yourself, and depending on the player, this might be a good or a bad thing.

Two of the biggest minuses for me: slow walking speed, and the invisible walls. The world of this game looks really cute and promising, but there's no way to explore more than just a small slice of it, and the game design could reflect that better instead of having you run into empty air.

I do recommend this game for people who enjoy walking simulators in particular, but barely - if you want to play a game about exploring your childhood home, you're better off with Gone Home or What Remains of Edith Finch.

It's cute, it's free, it has puzzles. What more could one want?

Senna and the Forest is a short game where you talk to various plants and solve logic puzzles. The controls can be a bit clunky from time to time, but not enough to significantly disrupt the gameplay. There are four short levels of slightly different puzzles, which are pretty decent; my only issue was that the game expects you to guess some of the solutions instead of giving you enough information to solve the riddle without guessing. But at this price, I can't really complain.

This game was a huge disappointment. It started off really well, with great graphics, an immersive story, and a multitude of choices that lead to different outcomes, but the second half becomes an insufferable mess story-wise. The game establishes some basic rules for its universe only to completely disregard them in its later stages. Trying to appeal to the player's emotions, it comes up with a series of increasingly illogical events and details, to the point where it would be easier to just rewrite the in-game universe than to patch all the plot holes, which is unforgivable for a story-rich game such as this one.

Visually, the game is great, and I didn't mind the quick-time events (although sometimes outside of quick-time events, the controls could be kinda clunky and annoying). But unless you're willing to turn all critical thinking skills off for the second half of the game, or are willing to suspend your disbelief a LOT, I can't honestly recommend it to anyone, especially not for the full price.

I really wish I could recommend this game, but I can't. It's very, very short, the quick-time events are clunky, and the dialogue/storytelling aspects of it are very stilted. The atmosphere is great, and I can see a lot of potential here, but when there is nothing to do in a game but walk around and look at things, the story behind it all should be solid enough to support the game on its own. Here, it looks like someone took a half-baked idea about lucid dreaming, and built a game around it without ever developing it further. There are some cheesy points being made about how family is more important than work, but at the end, I was definitely left feeling like this is a demo and not an actual game. Other games, like Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch do a very similar thing infinitely better.

This game is absolutely beautiful, and the atmosphere is amazing. It's both relaxing and gripping at the same time; definitely one of the best games I've played in 2018.

I can't really recommend this, even though it's free. On paper, it sounds like a game that's right up my alley, but in practice, it needs either some more work, a better story, or both.

The game opens with a puzzle that has an ... unusual solution, and the font used is terrible for the purpose (1 and l look exactly the same). Once you get in, the user interface remains an annoyance. There's a calculator that doesn't work - I mean sure, it's used to input stuff to unlock journal entries, but surely it could function like a calculator as well? - and a minigame with super counter-intuitive controls. There are also journal entries, which are very realistic, but as a consequence also very boring. There is no scroll bar on windows either which makes the whole thing even more annoying.

The main hook of the game is supposed to be this whole mystery of what happened to the owner of the laptop, but honestly, after unlocking three journal entries, I couldn't really care less about the guy. If you're going to make the puzzles abstruse and the interface wonky, at least give the game a good story. But with 0/3, there really is no reason to play this.