Recent reviews by PyroFalkon

Received for free from a friend. Lovely little logic puzzle game with no time limits and no star-ratings or other goals. Aside from the achievements, there are only pass/fail conditions as you try to arrange the little shape people into their preferred arrangement. Simple, elegant, cute, and chill. Can't ask for anything more.

The Roottrees Are Dead is an A-. A blend of Obra Dinn and Analogue: A Hate Story, the gameplay loop has you searching in-game websites for information to solve a mystery and piece together a family tree. The game takes place in 1999, which is a convenience for the gameplay loop: the investigation could be done in like five seconds with a few Facebook searches if the setting was more contemporary.

Otherwise, it's a huge thinkpiece. No violence, no time limits, no threats. Just you, a keyboard and mouse, your in-game notepad (though I took so many notes I used Steam's note pad too), and your brain. The game comes with a mini-expansion pack or "Part 2," and the combined experience took me about 20 hours to finish. I'm a slow reader, so your mileage may vary on that.

The presentation is excellent, with moody music and excellent graphics with JUST ENOUGH late-90s vibe to give a little nostalgia without being a game that screams the decade. Also, all information (minus like one achievement) can be found within the game itself, so you won't need to scramble around real-life Google or Wikipedia for any answers. There is no difficulty-based achievement, and the hint system doesn't compromise achievements either, so you can play however you want to as you complete your investigation.

While the bar is arguably low for such investigation games (and I would absolutely buy one that is less than optimal quality), The Roottrees Are Dead stands on its own as being an excellent game without qualifiers. An in-game easter egg has the developer saying that "Lucas Pope [who made Obra Dinn] ran so he could crawl," but I reject this, because Roottrees is so damn good that it deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as that masterpiece.

I grade The Operator A-. This is an excellent investigation game with a great premise and fantastic presentation, including the music. While it doesn't have Hollywood-style hacking, given that its setting is in 1992 and you're working in a government alphabet agency, the developers nailed the look and feel of a stripped down government UI. Even right down to a part where you use an even older computer and the visual area changes from 16:9 to 4:3. Nice touch.

The story is very well written. I didn't detect a single typo or weird turn of phrase. A lot of detective games here on Steam are made by non-English developers, and so they tend to get wonky in localization. The Operator does not have that issue. The story is almost entirely logical and internally consistent, and it was fun to experience.

The only thing is the story's wheels fell off at the very end. While the story beats and twists were a bit obvious, the final hard twist -- though it was presented really well -- makes absolutely no logical sense even within the context of the world that is presented to us. I come away from it with a lot more questions, but not the good "What are they going to do next?" kind. It's more the "Why did the basic premise happen in the first place?" kind. Unless there was some subtlety I missed, I can think of a thousand reasons why the first step of the plot shouldn't have happened, and that sort of makes the ending a little bit of a letdown.

But don't let that dissuade you. I'm happy to have bought the game and supported the developer, especially because the gameplay was excellent. I really enjoyed the act of investigating as a government agent and having tools like face-scanning and an omni-database just a mouse click away. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy games with hacking -- whether Hollwood hacking like Orwell or more script-based hacking like HackNet -- but it was really fun to be an agent for the "other side" and just have some improbable tools at my fingertips. If there is a sequel, while I hope the writing makes a little more logical sense, I really encourage the devs to keep the gameplay just as it is.

I grade Keyword: A Spider's Thread an A-. It's an excellent detective game that is mainly about using social engineering and logic to find the protagonist's missing daughter. The story is solid and internally consistent, and it features a few dark themes without going too far into the deep end of depravity.

There is no "gameplay loop" per se, unlike other investigation games. It's better to think of this more as an escape room, where each puzzle's solution is either in your apartment or can be logicked out by careful observation. 95% of the game takes place in your large living room or your computer, although things get pretty weird about halfway through.

The presentation is fantastic and the music (when it plays) is especially moody. I was tense a lot because the setting and music lent themselves to a jumpscare, but there never was one. I think I probably watch too much horror on YouTube.

Keyword is fairly short, as I finished it in about 4 hours, and I tend to be a slightly slow reader. The in-game hint system is probably the best one I've ever seen, and reminds me of some help books for extremely retro Sierra adventure games. If you like detective games or escape rooms, or you just want an engaging story, I recommend Keyword without reservation.

Through chapter 4, I grade Cyber Manhunt 2 a B+. It's an excellent detective game that mainly uses Hollywood-style social engineering and some hacking (plus mini-games) to tell a fantastic story.

The sequel is a serious upgrade over the original. The story is better explained and better paced, the writing is much tighter (including a much better English translation), the main voice actors are solid, and the entire presentation is internally consistent. There are a few typos or weird word choices due to localization mistakes, and some of the minor voice actors could improve. Overall though, it's a solid indie product.

As with the original, the main gameplay loop involves hunting for clickable important clues in text. By mousing over specific entries in in-game social media posts or news reports, the text gets a red highlight, and then is added to your case file for future use. In the original, it was sometimes a pain to find everything and I had to get used to pixel-hunting for entries, which wasn't fun. In this sequel, it's much better, with larger hitboxes for the clues. For example, in the original, a clue might be a single word, or a four-word phrase. Here, entire sentences or paragraphs are usually the clues, and the physical size of the hitbox is larger. (Maybe a bigger font was used?) I spent much less time hunting for pixels, and more time investigating.

Also, there's now a hint system which you can disable in the options. If it's on (which it is by default), there's a big green button on your in-game desktop that will tell you about where a clue may be. It can be worded as something like, "You're missing something on Tom's Toothbook page." Vague enough that you still have to hunt, but specific enough that you have a solid direction. I think that's the perfect balance, and you can always disable hints if you really want an extra challenge.

Another issue I had with the original was the awfully tight time limits on some mini-games, especially phone hacks. For the sequel, the time limits are much more generous. I still think the phone hacks specifically could use an extra 30 to 60 seconds each, but I'm also a slow reader, so maybe this is my problem. Either way, I didn't have any issue with the time limits for the non-hacking mini-games, and some mini-games that had awful time limits in the first game now have no time limit at all. That's definitely my preference.

The cyberpunk music slaps, and the chapter transitions are incredibly stylish and look like something out of a fast-paced movie trailer. I love it!

All in all, I'm eager for Chapter 5, and this dev has made a fan for life out of me. Can't wait to see this story come to its conclusion.

I give Cyber Manhunt a middle B. It's a fun investigation game that is similar to Orwell and Analogue: A Hate Story where you piece together the plot by using "hacking," or really Hollywood-style hacking in between social engineering.

The gameplay suffers a bit for its loop, in which the majority of your time is spent looking through in-game social media logs of your subjects. That's a fun premise, but the game proceeds by having you click on relevant lines of text. When you hover your cursor over lines you can "collect" to add to your case file, the lines turn red, but otherwise there is no indication which bits are relevant. There are many times early on I just missed the lines in question, and so I spent the last few chapter meticulously mousing over EVERYTHING so I didn't miss anything, but I STILL missed things. It was a little frustrating and I had to use a guide a couple times to find what I had overlooked, even though I read everything.

More frustrating than that though are the mini-games. Usually when doing something more intense than reading, you're playing a mini-game to hack a system or reason out a situation. For the most part these mini-games aren't difficult and I appreciate the variety. However, in later chapters the mini-games start getting time limits, and some of these are unnecessarily harsh. A particular hacking mini-game in Chapter 5 nearly made me rage quit, and even with a video tutorial from YouTube, I was really struggling to get past it. Maybe I'm just a slow reader, but I think it's just less-than-good game design.

The developer seemed to understand those criticisms too because in the Home Sweet Home DLC there aren't any time limits, and in Hello World there is only one mini-game with a time limit that's incredibly generous. Also in the DLCs, the mini-games can be straight up skipped. I wish that had been in the base game.

Luckily, all mini-games and gameplay loop tedium are absolutely overshadowed by the excellent story. All seven chapters (DLC included) had great twists and turns. All the cases are connected in subtle ways, and almost no one ended up how they began. All the characters were complex, and the writers absolutely nailed social media posts, including strangers of all genders uncomfortably randomly hitting on strangers in their own feeds. And what starts off as a "simple" matter of investigation eventually spirals into sci-fi and metaphysical questions. I loved it.

The English translation is unfortunately wonky, and there are typos or "just doesn't sound right" issues in just about every other sentence. There's also some polish issues where the voice acting doesn't quite match up with what's on the screen, like the script changed after the line were recorded. Even so, the translation is good enough that you can follow what's going on and there's nothing more egregious than mixing up pronouns. But man, if the story had been run through a native English speaker/writer before being released, this would have been an incredible story.

The music is awesome as well, and really sets the mood, but the story really caries the game. I'm excited to try the sequel now, though I'm hoping the gameplay loop for Cyber Manhunt 2 is less tedious.

Refind Self is a C game, and it's pretty much exactly what it says it is. The estimate of the game taking an hour was bang on, though probably it's really a little shorter because I was recording it for YouTube at the time and my blathering naturally added time. Interestingly, the game takes that into account by asking you before you start if you're streaming or recording it.

I do like the concept that it was tracking just about everything I was doing, including a couple unexpected things. There's also just enough that you probably won't see everything in a single playthrough, and the game encourages you to play through it at least three times. I don't generally take much stock into personality tests and I'm not sure how accurate this one is, but it was interesting enough that I was engaged in playing it through and trying to play it as sincerely as I could. (Regarding the playtime, iirc I played it while in offline mode, which could be why it's not quite adding up, but I did play it for almost exactly one hour.)

I don't find the story as entertaining as many other reviewers here. I don't think it's a bad story, just not one that resonated with me personally. It did make me a bit intrigued about the deeper lore, but the gameplay wasn't interesting enough to me to justify trying to actually look for any plot payoffs. YMMV of course.

Still, I give it an overall up vote because it's inexpensive and I feel I got my money's worth. The soundtrack alone was great, with peaceful piano tunes from start to finish. I enjoyed my time with Refind Self, but I doubt I'll go back to it a second time.

I received the game for free from the dev via Keymailer.

My grade for Full Metal Sergeant is a B+. It's a light management game where you train your recruits in skills for 12 turns, send them on an interactive mission, and then bring them back to repeat the loop. The first set of recruits will not be able to fully finish their mission, but they get promoted to assist you in training the next batch of recruits. You keep the loop going until you succeed in the mission, with each loop resulting in more and/or better recruits.

I really enjoyed the game and to me it's similar to classic "training" games, like Monster Rancher or even (if you squint really hard) a game like Princess Maker where the loop is Increase stats -> Put the stats to use -> Repeat. There's no music, but the sounds effects and military cadences do their job. What you see is what you get with the graphics, and I appreciate the Atari retro feel, but your mileage may vary on that.

I received the game for free due to streaming it for my YouTube channel. You can view the stream and see its gameplay here: https://youtube.com/live/XpgVi0wakto?feature=share

Not Tonight 2 is a solid B+. I enjoyed it more than the original. The general gameplay loop is the same, clearly inspired by Papers Please, where you simply compare documents under ever-increasing rulesets.

I felt that the original Not Tonight was too grindy. The gameplay loop rooted you to the same venue generally for five shifts straight. Rather than making me feel like it was perfecting my playstyle, I just got bored. I meant to go back and give it another go, but instead gambled on Not Tonight 2, and I'm glad I did. Any given "job" in NT2 is only repeated once before you're off to another location to learn a new mechanic. Even better, the mechanics don't always stack, so I never felt overwhelmed. The pacing was perfect, and I was hooked for the gameplay start to finish.

The story is against the backdrop of the United States being split into warring factions, and it's heavy on political themes. It's also heavy on tropes and stereotypes in all directions, with even the main characters relegated to having a couple characteristics each and that's it. I didn't expect top-tier writing from Not Tonight 2, but I also didn't expect it to be that trope-heavy and cringy. It's fine as satire, but lacks any semblance of subtlety. If you're not the type to use the word "woke" unironically while blathering about who's ruining the country this week, I don't think you'll be upset at what you read here. I just don't think it'll provoke anything close to a thought during its entire playtime.

Luckily, the gameplay, music, and graphics more than make up for the story's heavy-handedness. If you're on the fence about Not Tonight 2, I say it's worthy of a buy.

One of my favorite base builders of all time. A few things different but not worse than the original.