Recent reviews by Seeric

Lingo 2 is a fantastic sequel and it has become one of my favorite puzzle games. This game has a ridiculous amount of content and there are layers upon layers to chip away at while hunting down secrets. It's also a rare puzzle game that's fun to play regardless of if you're playing it solo or cooperatively solving puzzles with a group of friends.

This was an enjoyably uncomfortable little game.

Tiny Thor is an enjoyable, though not particularly amazing, platformer. Though the good outweighs the bad, this is not a game without some issues.

To begin with, the art and music are both great and work well alongside the lighthearted tone and often fast-paced action platforming of the game. Unfortunately, the high quality is undercut by just how little variety there is. This is especially true of the third region since, while it has about as many levels as the previous two regions, its levels tend to be much, much longer and by the end I was well and truly tired of listening to the same music alongside the same icy mountains and frozen temples.

Platforming generally feels good and Thor has a versatile moveset which allows for some complicated maneuvers. Between walljumping, a double jump, and an air dash, Thor can cover a lot of distance before touching the ground and the later parts of the game will often require you to string these skills together in one way or another while under pressure from enemies or environmental hazards. Thor sometimes spends so much time without touching the ground that it can become easy to lose track of if you still have a jump and/or a dash remaining so it would have been nice to have a visual or auditory cue tied to those, but I otherwise have no issues with the standard platforming in this game.

However, one thing I certainly have a few problems with in Tiny Thor is the hammer. The hammer rarely feels good to use, which is a rather large problem when it's one of the game's defining features. Thor is able to aim his hammer before throwing it and the hammer will bounce off of not just physical walls, but also the edge of the screen itself. Many of the more puzzle-focused challenges in the game require you to bounce the hammer at a certain angle or to trap the hammer somehow to make it rapidly bounce in a smaller area. Aiming the hammer can feel finicky, especially if you're on moving or breaking platforms, and this is compounded by the hammer's hitbox being smaller than its sprite implies - even by the end of the game I frequently missed hitting various objects by a handful of pixels.

Bouncing the hammer off of the screen itself sounds like an interesting idea, but it mostly ends up feeling weird and needing to make use of the screen's edge rather than static environmental objects often left me wondering if I had actually figured out the intended solution to the various puzzle-platforming challenges or if I had found a significantly more awkward solution the developers didn't plan for.

The last issue with the hammer is you'll often want to set it to bounce in a straight vertical or horizontal line, but Thor will immediately catch the hammer if he touches it (often resulting in death for one reason or another), which means you often need to awkwardly make sure you have enough space to throw the hammer and then get completely out of its way before it rebounds. Pressing the hammer button while the hammer is out will make the hammer zoom back to Thor, so making Thor automatically catch the hammer on touch feels completely unnecessary and only gets in the way.

There are a few other oddities worth noting as well. For example, blue gems are Tiny Thor's version of currency and, like coins in most platformers, strings of gems are often used to guide the player along platforming paths, especially when the destination is not initially visible. However, gems collected in a run of a level remain gone after dying and respawning, depriving the player of a useful visual indicator, which is an especially odd choice since ghost versions of the gems *do* appear if you replay a level. Tiny Thor has some issues with its visual language too, such as the hitbox on horizontal bounce mushrooms being much smaller than the whole mushroom, the ice covered walls (which you can't jump off of) sometimes blending in a little too closely with the heavily snow-covered walls (which you can jump off of), and the fact that any enemy not covered in spikes is safe to jump on - except for the very round ghosts, which will kill you.

Even with its various issues, I think Tiny Thor's level design is quite solid overall. It presents a good challenge and the difficulty curve was pretty stable; Tiny Thor is a hard game without being overly demanding and the only frustration I ever felt was from some particularly awkward hammer-throwing moments. Checkpoints are frequent and generally felt properly distributed. There were a few moments in the later parts of the game where I died because I didn't know what to expect from a new room, but these were also consistently within ~5-10 seconds of a checkpoint and with infinite lives it hardly mattered. Most of the boss fights were also entertaining and level mechanics were generally varied (floating on wind currents got a bit old).

Tiny Thor has its share of issues and rough edges, some more severe than others, yet it often provides a solid, enjoyable platforming experience. While this certainly isn't the strongest recommendation I've given to a game, I don't regret my time playing Tiny Thor and I think it's a game worth considering for anyone looking for a challenging platformer.

Everblade is a fantastic hidden gem of a game. While it certainly has some rough spots, there is more than enough polish elsewhere to make up for its shortcomings.

The main factor Everblade has going for it is variety. The game is divided between a hub area and 9 levels which generally unlock in sets of 2 or 3 (plus a final level). The level themes are diverse and range anywhere from underwater ruins to a church and graveyard crawling with undead.

Beyond the aesthetics, each level has a unique feel as they all focus on different mechanics. You'll be dodging plenty of boulder and riding along on the wind in the mountains, jumping between falling tree branches and swimming around thorns and poison in the swamp, and mostly solving puzzles while trying not to drown in those underwater ruins I mentioned. Several of the levels are even broken into two distinct segments, such as the desert level which first has you platforming across the desert while periodically dipping into water to avoid heatstroke and later has you fighting your way through a trap-filled pyramid. The underwater level does go on for a bit too long, but otherwise the levels stay fresh and interesting from beginning to end.

Secrets are another aspect Everblade excels at. There are a truly *ridiculous* number of breakable walls and hidden passages in this game. If a wall looks even a little bit suspicious, chances are high that you can break it or crawl through it for a prize or a challenge. While many of these secrets result in relatively minor amounts of treasure or a 1up, there are also plenty which grant more valuable prizes in the form of skill coins, max health upgrades, lore books, or minigame portals (which in turn unlock another upgrade when you find and complete all of them). The hub area itself also has plenty of hidden paths to gradually uncover as your skillset grows. If you get a sense of satisfaction every time you find something hidden in a video game, chances are you'll love Everblade.

Level progression and backtracking is handled rather well here too. The path leading to the boss of each level tends to be straightforward, but finding every permanent upgrade hidden throughout a level is rarely going to happen on your first run through it. In fact, it's outright impossible to do so in a single run for all except the final few levels as many of them have paths you can only reach with upgrades found elsewhere. Thankfully, Everblade does several things to make backtracking fun instead of tedious. Each level entrance has a marker to let you know if you've found every important item inside it. Doors and other shortcuts remain permanently open across visits, with a path leading to the later areas of a level almost inevitably right near the start. Lastly, you can leave a completed level at any time with the only penalty being the loss of half the treasure you obtained on that run, which is likely to be next to nothing if you're focused on seeking out missed upgrades. What this all means is levels are long enough to feel like satisfying challenges on an initial clear while having enough permanent shortcuts open up along the way that you rarely need more than a minute or two to reach any part you want to investigate while backtracking.

The combat system itself is decent. You have a standard slashing sword combo alongside a set of 3 weaker, regenerating throwing daggers for ranged attacks. I found myself relying on the daggers most of the time as most enemy types can take quite a few hits and often deal plenty of close-range damage. This does mean combat can feel tedious early on if you like to play it safe, but it picks up in the back half once you get more utility between decreased cooldown on dagger regeneration and elemental daggers which let you freeze most enemy types or leave behind fiery damage areas. Enemy placement is also handled well, with enemies often positioned in locations where they can make effective use of their attack patterns rather than being haphazardly tossed around.

While combat in Everblade generally falls under "decent if unremarkable", the boss fights are more noteworthy. To begin with, every single boss and miniboss has its own combat theme. Many bosses are immune to dagger attacks, so learning how to dodge their attacks and when it's safe to get close enough for a few quick sword slashes is vital. This isn't to say that daggers are completely useless for these fights though, as many bosses summon in weaker enemies (which can drop valuable health) or shoot destructible projectiles and daggers *definitely* come in handy against the bosses who don't have immunity. Bosses also have enough health to put up a good fight without having so much that the fight drags on. Furthermore, most bosses either have a fixed pattern they change up in some way around the halfway point or pull from a large enough pool of potential attacks to ensure the fights feel satisfying and tense from start to finish. The only boss I didn't like was the one in the mountain level, which was a neat concept for a sort of 'summoner' fight, but the execution was a bit tedious.

With all that said, it's time to get around to discussing some of those rough spots I mentioned. To begin with, the visual language of Everblade has some issues. For example, the castle level has plenty of thin, grey, rectangular platforms whcih look like they should crumble beneath you and, while they do disappear upon contact, it turns out they're bounce pads. You can jump up most walls, but the walls you can't jump on have a thin line of green moss which blends in so well with the environment that it took me a moment to understand why I couldn't jump on some walls. These visual issues are rarely a problem other than the first time you encounter something, but they do mean otherwise simple mechanics can sometimes feel oddly confusing to understand.

Treasure and 1ups don't feel valuable for most of the game. The inclusion of a lives system in the first place is a strange decision, but it's made especially pointless when there's a hidden 1up you can farm in the castle (one of the earliest levels) within 30 seconds of the entrance once you open a shortcut; I spent a good chunk of the back half of the game hovering at or around the maximum of 9 lives thanks to how easy this and other 1ups were to obtain. As for treasure, it's virtually everywhere and finding hidden treasure can in and of itself be fun, but the only things you can use it for are a skill reset token, a single max health upgrade, dirt cheap consumables (you can only have 3 copies of a single type at a time), and passive items which all either go away upon death or do something upon death (you can also only have 1 passive item at a time and they are all so expensive that it makes more sense to simply save for consumables).

Lastly, Everblade does have something of a U-shaped difficulty curve. The reason for this is nearly all of the skills related to exploration are found in the first 3 levels in the back half of the game. The result is you spend the first few levels getting a tiny handful of skill coins for permanent passives and a few max health upgrades and then the number of health and skill upgrades you can find skyrockets once you get these new skills, making damage largely trivial until near the end where the game starts becoming balanced around the assumption that the player has found most of the health upgrades. It would have made sense to distribute these upgrades more evenly across the game.

When all is said and done, none of Everblade's issues are particularly severe. Ultimately, Everblade is a wonderful game full of plenty to like from start to finish and I'd say it's easily worth the asking price. And if you're still on the fence, I strongly recommend checking out the demo as it lets you play through the entirety of one of the early levels (it certainly did a good job of convincing me to take a chance on this game at least).

Vampire Survivors is the best game where you can spend 10+ minutes straight being a living screensaver.

Tetracosm is a wonderful Metroidvania and I can only hope it one day receives more attention than it currently has - it certainly deserves it. Though the main path through this game is fairly linear, there are dozens upon dozens of secrets scattered about absolutely everywhere. Backtracking is frequently rewarded yet rarely required and a generous warp system paired with tools for increased mobility and for finding secrets go a long way towards keeping exploration interesting.

Upgrades are one of the best parts of Tetracosm. The protagonist, Pseudo, starts off so weak that you can't even ring a bell hanging slightly too high in the air. By the end of the game you can race across massive stretches of land in a matter of seconds, soar high into the air, and obliterate enemies with laser beams and homing orbs.

There are no glorified keys; every mandatory upgrade significantly affects the way Pseudo is able to move through or otherwise interact with the world. A steady stream of optional upgrades in the form of new attacks, passive skills like increased invincibility time, and stat boosts (including movement speed) further enhances that sense of constant progress. Upgrades are often rather inventive too, such as in the case of one early upgrade which dramatically increases your aerial mobility in a far more interesting way than a simple double jump.

Tetracosm does have its rough edges, so let's get those out of the way here. I experienced slowdown in a few of the bigger locations. It was never severe nor was it constant, but it was definitely noticeable at times. The camera could also use some work in places because there are some spots where it will jump or zoom far too abruptly.

The biggest issue is probably the simple matter of bosses feeling consistently undertuned. Though the non-optional content in Tetracosm isn't particularly difficult in general, boss fights were always less challenging than the areas leading up to them. The bosses themselves often have an impressive variety of attacks *if* you give them a chance to show off, yet ranged magic rapidly obliterates their health bars and even sticking purely to melee attacks often results in the boss losing battles of attrition. While my decision to aim for a 100% completion run means I was definitely overpowered for many of these fights, they would almost certainly still feel far too easy during anything outside of a minimal completion run or close to it.

On the other hand, Tetracosm's biggest strength is its sheer amount of charm. On a purely technical level this is certainly not the most detailed spritework out there, but it also doesn't need to be. Character sprites and locations alike ooze with personality and an excellent soundtrack consistently complements each location to create a perfect sense of tone. There were multiple times when I stopped and decided to soak in the atmosphere of a location, which is something I can honestly say very few games have made me do.

Every one of the rather large number of NPC's in Tetracosm has a distinct personality, many of them have quite a lot to say if you choose to talk to them multiple times, and several outside of the main cast even have their own small character arcs. Speaking of the main cast, the story itself is relatively simple while still being engaging and all of the main characters have enough depth to them to avoid feeling one-dimensional. There's also no denying that Pseudo is an incredibly adorable little yellow dinosaur-thing. A dinosaur-thing you can put a bunch of hats on.

Ultimately, I would describe Tetracosm as refreshing. It's not looking to revolutionize the genre, yet it's packed full of variety and clever twists on mechanics. Tetracosm has a vibrant setting filled with both a lot of heart and enough narrative depth to keep things engaging. It has its rough edges, but they are negligible to the overall experience. You can easily spend a good number of hours searching its world for secrets and, even after finding every single upgrade out there, there will probably still be a few Easter eggs still hiding somewhere.

I purchased Tetracosm during a sale and its quality took me completely by surprise. I can safely say that I think this is one of the best indie games of 2021 and I absolutely recommend it to anyone who enjoys 2D exploration platformers.

The game that launched 1e3 clicks.

Luna is definitely not the only game out there with a gravity-rotating gimmick, but it plays with this gimmick better than most and makes for a solid, challenging platformer experience. The basic mechanics are simple. You can walk left and right, jump, and rotate the world clockwise or counterclockwise 90 degrees at a time. Progression is likewise straightforward as, aside from secrets, you linearly make your way through about 5 sets of challenges before facing off against a boss in each world.

Where Luna stands out is in its variety and creativity. Luna is constantly introducing new obstacles and ways to play with gravity and I never felt like any mechanic overstayed its welcome in the ~3 hours it took me to complete the game. Giant swinging pendulums, magnets which attract clusters of hazards, spinning lasers, crusher walls, and more than a few deadly boxes are among the obstacles you'll have to overcome on your journey.

In particular, Luna excels at playing with relativity and its core mechanics. Sure, there are hazardous boxes which fall downward, but other boxes fall up and yet others fall left or right. It sounds simple, but keeping track of which hazard is going to move where quickly proves challenging when the only way to escape being crushed is to make use of your momentum from rapidly rotating the world around you. How about arrows which change the relative direction of gravity for everything except the player? For example, a left arrow now means boxes which normally fall up instead fall right because left is treated as 'down'. You'll often encounter walls which affect Luna, but which hazards have no problem passing through. One particularly puzzling world even takes away your ability to manually rotate altogether and instead forces you to make use of buttons on the walls.

There are a good number of other things to appreciate about Luna too. The soundtrack is quite good and the graphics, while simplistic, are charming and complement the overall silly tone to the story. This is a tough game and you're likely going to die a whole lot, but respawn times are short and checkpoints are placed after every challenge; most of the boss fights and some of the more involved rooms have a checkpoint or two along the way.

This isn't to say that Luna is flawless. This biggest issue is the lack of any sort of stage select. Not every game needs a stage select, but Luna is a game which constantly keeps track of your playtime, contains multiple secret areas, and has plenty of achievements tied to fast completion times and finding secrets. In other words, it's somewhat frustrating and baffling that a game like this doesn't include a way to experiment with an area you've completed other than to start an entirely new save and make your way back to it from scratch.

There are some other issues here too. The camera, while usually good, sometimes doesn't zoom out enough when initially entering a room to give you a good idea of its layout; I had a few instances where the camera only properly zoomed out after I had stepped far enough into a room to get disintegrated by an obstacle zooming in from off-screen. Though it's rare, some large obstacles swing or bounce around erratically enough from even a single rotation that they don't feel reasonably predictable. Finally, there are difficulty spikes in a handful of the challenges near the end, though they never last for long.

If you like challenging 2D platformers, you really can't go wrong with Luna. It's probably not going to be on anyone's Top 10 list, but with tons of variety, a good chunk of content, excellent checkpointing, a healthy dose of quirky charm, and a satisfying difficulty curve despite a few rough edges, Luna is a great game and an absolute steal at $0.99.

The Lost Soul is a bite-sized precision platformer designed to be completed in about an hour.

This is definitely a minimalist experience, and in more ways than the art style. Your only ability is a basic jump, there aren't any extras outside of a handful of secret warps, and the difficulty selection simply affects your number of lives, the number of checkpoints, and the time limit. The minimalism isn't a bad thing though, as its simplicity and brevity give The Lost Soul long-term replayability and some solid speedrunning potential.

Level design is a crucial factor in games like this and The Lost Soul doesn't disappoint. While nothing here is revolutionary, The Lost Soul steadily introduces new obstacles and experiments with them just enough to add variety without feeling repetitive. Difficulty likewise ramps up at a consistent pace and the game demands plenty of precise, tight timing without ever feeling frustrating or unfair.

The Lost Soul also does mostly well aesthetically. The minimalist, industrial visuals resemble those of the LOVE series, though this game has plenty of its own style. Though there isn't much in the way of a plot, the levels take on a more sinister look over time and really convey the sense of descending deeper into a secret factory. The one area where The Lost Soul somewhat stumbles is its music. While the music selection itself is solid, levels cycle through sets of songs which each fade away into other songs instead of looping; it gives the impression of listening to a music playlist rather than a soundtrack tied to a game and robs levels of some of their sense of individuality as a result.

It may not be Game of the Year material, but for its low $1.99 price tag The Lost Soul offers up a short, yet consistently solid and entertaining challenge from beginning to end.

The Manse on Soracca maintains a great retro adventure game feel with some modern twists and conveniences. While I wouldn't call it outright scary, it does maintain a consistently eerie atmosphere the whole way through and the monsters are dangerous enough to keep tension high.

Exploration feels good with plenty of secrets and shortcuts to uncover and I nearly always had two or more locations to choose between poking around in. Many of the puzzles are likewise clever and require you to think outside the box. You're also in luck if you like flavor text as nearly every object in the mansion can be interacted with for a good mix of lore, clues, and humor.

The only nitpicks I have are that the retro "load times" can feel a bit tedious if you frequently change areas or die multiple times in a row and the monsters in the basement never felt threatening. But these really are minor complaints. The Manse on Soracca is an all-around very solid experience with enough content on a single playthrough to easily justify the $5 price, let alone if you replay it on higher difficulties and/or for speedruns.