Recent reviews by Noka

I was going to give this game a good review with happy smiles and good tips, but I'm mixed, now.

The game does not understand what constitutes a "lie" when it comes to locations, specifically when time is not a factor (only 01).

I've seen multiple culprits *honestly admit* their location in their opening message. I have to completely disregard location.

Play Gnosia if you want an interesting puzzler type game like this but with more elements of social deduction and argumentation.

If you still want to give this game a shot, here's how to break it: Max out on Culprit cards, SKIP everything else. The AI does not consider what has been said previously.

If there is 1 killer, and they accuse 2 people? Murderer. If there is 1 innocent, and they say 2 people are innocent? Murderers. The AI is incapable of throwing its ally under the bus. This applies to ANY uneven group, but it is harder to pull off.

Remember: if someone says someone else is innocent, they are always on a team with that person.

If someone says someone is guilty, they are always the opposite alignment.

The strategy is incredibly simple: Determine teams as fast as possible. When you're forced to kill someone, if you don't feel confident, kill the decisive testimony for grouping people up. If the result is unexpected, invert your qssumptions.

Once you determine the group that told you the truth, if you've grouped everyone up effectively, you win.

Remember that location, eyewitness, and all that other ♥♥♥♥ are next to useless unless the outcome is impossible. "I was with E", Z? But literally none of you were together. Murderer, spotted.

The only other useful eyewitness pairing was "I was with (other person)" with both corroborating each other.

The only time location/eyewitness work is when another person corroborates. You want to seek contradictions. Locations and eyewitness statements have way more variables than culprit choices. Make everyone declare culprits and see where it leads you.

I really, really wish this game was worth it.

If you've ever played stuff like this, I suggest steering clear. If this is your first time, have fun!

The game is clearly someone's first foray into this game style without any of the bells and whistles that really make this sort of game appealing.

First, each recipe is hardcoded - you can't preemptively add flour, you have to select the recipe you intend to make, and then add the ingredients. This is immediately not the best sign: this means you're always going to be committing when you make things. But it'd be fine, if not for the second issue.

Second, there's no 'workspace' to place items. If you bake a baguette, you can't set it down (assuming upgrades don't provide one, but if they do, that's REALLY pretty bad) - it's either going into a customer's mouth or the trash. This is a very weird choice, especially since that means a "prep" phase is really just a "clean up any crap you ran around yesterday" phase.

Third, this game was really overtly designed for the sort of person who liked MySims' aesthetic, but wanted them to look like adults. Which would be fine, but it means the designs make me feel like I'm playing as chibi Bayonetta. There's nothing gameplay-wrong with this, but it meant I got personally tired of my character OBSCENELY quickly. The game really just has something off with its proportions. Look at the stuff in the trailer - the only option missing from there is short shorts (no they don't look very good) and a skirt. Everything else is there. It feels... I'm not going to lie to you, it's unappealingly childish. It probably doesn't help that while I like this kind of game, I am a dude who likes to play masculine characters, and it just didn't feel like there was an option for that here.

If you're looking for other things in this genre, there are other, more advanced versions of this concept you would get more mileage out of and less initial stress from.

Book of Hours is great, but it's very much just Cultist Simulator with more waiting vs. more time pressure.

There isn't a way to cleanly skip days or seasons, and the fast forward system stops after every day passes. This is great when you're playing normally, but if you're trying to pass time, it's absolute dogwater.

This wouldn't be a huge issue, except for one thing: You can complete the game in about two year cycles if you know what you're doing and trying to accomplish at least one thing a day. "Complete", in this sense, being that you:
- Fully explore Hush House
- Obtain some or all of the Numen (I'm sure it'd have taken longer if I didn't get a little fed up and look up the other locations, but I was only grabbing them all for completeness. I found about 5 by the time I finished the Hush House.)
- Are in a position to supply the necessary Aspect to obtain an Ending.

Here is the first problem: You have no control over language acquisition. In fact, if you do pick up the game, here's a tip: Once you reach the bottom of the main stairwell in the Hush House, examine the couch. You'll get a spintriae that will cover your first language or two. Get them ASAP and slam them into the first slots of your knowledge chart.

Languages are dead simple: You have the Incident step proc every new season (Numa included), and you have the choice of either offering a relevant book to the visitor who comes along, or spending Spintriae to have them tutor you in their language of choice. However, languages are strongly associated with people's aspects they're interested in - which means for one specific incident, you might ONLY see people repping one or two of the like 8 different languages.

There ARE characters who do not offer ANY language, either. It's immensely frustrating. It basically means that if you're done with the game but want to translate the necessary books to see the endings available (which there's one for just about every language, at minimum), you need to wait to get all languages, you need to sit on your hands.

Now. You can just play that part by ear and just let yourself get what you get and stop when you want - you don't have to be a completionist like me who stubbornly chose to stick to his guns on wanting a specific type of ending. That leads to the second problem: Once you have fulfilled the conditions for an ending, you have to WAIT. FOR. NUMA.

E: This has changed, apparently! Numa wait is nerfed, but I'm leaving the text here for posterity. It sounds like there is SOME method to get Numa. I am not replaying BoH to find out. Maybe when the DLC hits.

Numa, for reference, is a season that randomly appears for 1 day, every 9 seasons. It's grab bag style, where you may go 4 months, get the Numa, and then have another 4 months of peace - or, like my experience, go 8 months, see Numa, and then get ANOTHER Numa the next day. It's completely random, and RNG can play out where you go up to 17 seasons without a Numa to your name.

The game will proudly tell you when you do finally write things down that you will "trigger endgame", but I haven't seen any evidence that anything changes. In fact, I was kind of hoping that something would happen - some unseen force coming down to create even a smidgen of time conflict. I have not seen it on this run.

Instead, you just need to wait for Numa. I have so far waited 3 hours of just letting days pass just to try and put a clean ending on BoH so I can go on and play other games I really want to play without feeling like I've just left a run hanging. I went in with a lot of love for Weather Factory, and I think I still like them as a company, but there is a very real difference between making a game that doesn't put in time crunch, and making a game that outright does not respect your time. I can't even just take the basic ending anymore - triggering endgame forces me to wait for Numa! The only thing I thought to do at this point was to hurl the journal into trash to try and get a bum ending, but thankfully, they outright tell me that it does not supply an ending. Phew! How nice.

Anyway, I've waited about 10 seasons out over these last 3 hours - enough time to completely write this review - and still no Numa! I've completely lost track of the Numa deck, too, so I have no idea how long I might be waiting for the next Numa to arrive. I might genuinely have gotten the worst possible luck and wind up waiting another 2 hours to finish this game.

If you still want to buy this game after reading this, I do not blame you at all, but just remember: Do not be stubborn, do not waste time, track your Numas, and if you have downtime, write your journal as fast as possible so that you're always ready to end your run when the Numa comes. The fact you can't get the game to register as "finished" without Numa, compounded by the fact there is no way to skip days efficiently, can lead to anyone who wants to be able to cleanly end a game at any time to go actually as batty as a Lantern-lover staring straight into the sun.

E: Cautiiously flipping my rec to Yes, reflective of the Numa change, but please feel free to comment if the Numa change is not nearly in scope and I have accidentally wasted your money. I will revise, promise.

a love letter to dark souls, breath of the wild, fortnite, and tower defense, as written by virgins

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more seriously, this game has super clunky controls and ui design. the menus are slick but the health bars and etc lack any flair at all. they seriously look like developer graphics. the one with the most flair is the sprint bar and honestly it depletes far too quickly so i dislike it for different reasons

the crafting is deliberately abstracted in several different directions and the fun has been succed out of most of it. armor is usually a fun way of expressing yourself; surprise! armor's all or nothing. you can't put on a silly hat along with your weird absolver-esque armor.

the game actively uses movesets from breath of the wild; the bident's lclick is the spear's chargeup on botw, the right click is a charged version of the running thrust, and the running attack is just the running thrust again. the hammer is literally an amalgam of the animations of botw's heavy weapons with your ulti being the spin. the only unique weapon - the glaive - feels like hot garbage because it mixes slow swings with very weird movement.

fortnite is what i bring up here because this semi-clunky bright cartoony style makes me think of it, but it might be fairer to say "actually, it's more like no man's sky". it's kind of a fusion aesthetic.

gathering resources includes botw style item grabbing. except you get a weirdo glove you can upgrade that lets you just... suck stuff into it? this would be a cool addition except it isn't actually CLEAR what the hell the range is or zone is on it so i would always find myself wasting at least 15 seconds on stumbling around a set of rocks trying to put everything in it in the sweet spot. that just isn't necessary.

the game's sweet and wellmeaning, i think, but when i say as written by virgins? i don't mean literal virgins, i mean game design virgins. it's pretty clear to me that a lot of the game composites the parts of other games it likes without doing the appropriate polish to make them blend & feel GOOD to play in

the controlscheme, the most important part of ANY game, feels like attempting to slog through molten lead

all the open world mechanics reminescent of botw have clunky executions that lack the smoothness and polish to make them feel good

the speed is permanently slow-moving with most of the sprint-improving techs apparently locked behind paid access (i get it, developers - it's easy to do, but locking away QOL stuff is inadvertently going to create a paywall situation) and it's just not fun to play solo because unlike most good tower defense games you can't easily create death lanes due to higher power requirements and lower output from turrets.

the game practically requires you have at least 1 player per 2 active lanes which is definitely not fun, and it has that style where it's like "IF YOU WANNA REDUCE THE GRIND, INVITE YOUR FRIENDS!" like ok, hated that sh-t in haven & hearth, don't like it here either

i'm just gonna note, also - the lack of character creation at all is like, kinda fine, and all... i just was hoping it'd be more intricate than slapping some skin colors and hair on a Lady and just going with it. y'all know a major part of why people stay and play mmos is for fashion, right? like, those comments about "glamour being the true endgame" are actually seriously descriptive of a section of mmo players.

overall would not recommend. even if you slog through the poorly polished initial experience i am not sure the game will have any staying power on a major portion of the MMO-interested community in this state.

Lovely game, amazing music, visual style that's out of this world... what's not to love?

This game ♥♥♥♥♥♥ me up. I am ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up because of this game. I have had it beaten for a week. I cannot bring myself to replay it because I got the best possible ending. When I rewatch the final boss fight, I cry every time.

This game ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥ me up. Play it.

I'm ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up because of this game.

Play it.

A lot of like the Zeldas of yore, Hack 'n' Slash can be fun, but falls flat on the premise of story.

I'm not talking about the stuff that were the brick-builders for Zelda, I'm talking about the first one: where Link was simply an explorer in a dangerous world, not even armed with a sword until you acquired one. This game harnesses that exploration mechanic, and does it well.

My problem is exactly that, however. It makes no attempt to really explain itself to the player, and plays against logic to enable puzzles that I shouldn't have to deal with. I spent the first 30 minutes exploring aimlessly, until I found the sprites and was given a goal - fix the pollution. Okay. So I explore the complete area of pollution, and find only one potential progression point - a place where you walk on sleeping... turtles, I guess. Anyway, the puzzle comes in when your sidekick appears and just decides WOW I'M GONNA SING ON THIS. I died at least 5 times when what I SHOULD have been able to do was, I don't know, tell the little bugger to shut up, or hack him mute.

Unfortunately, the player character never seems to think of these solutions, when the player themselves has only been taught to hack and move. Swing sword-thing. Hack object.

I honestly stopped there because I was completely stuck. Maybe I would have gotten different results if I made it night, or if I went back to the sprites and got a comically large cork to shove in my sprite's big mouth.

But I didn't. Because I already wasn't enamored with the game: the writing felt flat and the mechanics were stale. Yes, I can make a block move 20 times in a milisecond with a single nudge of my Link-shaped hat. But I have to do that to every single block I come across with a cute puzzle to it. Or I waste about the same amount of time just... pushing it. The only creative application was when I had to put a delay and reverse the push of the block, and even then that was clearly "advanced puzzling 101", because it only ever hid excess content I thought didn't matter. The game doesn't expect much out of you, in other words.

If you want to get this game, and like what I'm saying, go for it. If you don't, great. Glad I could help.

By the way, I got this for free when SBDF-9 flopped. I cannot remotely understand why that would somehow make me feel better about Double Fine. You fail one game, you give me another one with poor storytelling for free? Thanks, Double Fine. Thanks.

Abandoned by its developers while riddled with bugs, Spacebase DF-9 isn't worthwhile in the least. Poor direction and very little finesse to the game's controls make it frustrating from the perspective of the player, and the constant bugs that can block progress and lack of any real story mode make it so that this game has no real playability at all, and anyone who would want to would quickly be dissuaded by the tutorial, which is SO poor that it can outright glitch and block your forward progress.

My rating? 0 inexplicably depressurized stations out of 10. Do not buy.