Recent reviews by Stammi

Drova is easily my personal game of the year.

What I especially liked about it:

• Exploration is fun - there is always something to find, and you are rewarded for peeking into corners with hidden treasure chests, rare crafting materials or the entrance to a secret dungeon
  
• Combat is hard, but always fair - when I died, I always had the feeling that it was due to my lack of skill, but never that it was due to clunky controls or unfair conditions
  
• No quest babysitting (no minimap, quest markers etc.), but a decent journal that has all information you need to resume a quest even if you haven't played for a couple of days
  
• It doesn't take you by the hand too tightly (no mob level adjustment etc.), but also doesn't let you completely alone (there is a decent tutorial)
  
• Conversations with NPCs aren't prolonged by meaningless phrases that make you want to skip them
  
• The quests are entertaining and often come with a twist
  
• It has multiple endings, depending on your playstyle
  
• The overall setting is very grim, there is no black and white or good and evil, but there is also a lot of humor and references to other games

Everything feels very well polished, I didn't encounter any bug or quest glitches so far.

Against the Storm is a fresh take on city builder games. The main feature is that there are no battles, just a time limit (which you can stretch in-game). Each playthrough is on a new (procedurally generated) map, has different modifiers (positive and negative) and a random starting set of citizens. There are four biomes that all have different features and resources. Seasons play a very important role, as well as the happiness of your citizens. There are four species that each have different preferences and skills. However, there is no citizen micro-management like in Dwarf Fortress or Rimworld (they don't have names or individual features, each member of a species is the same).

Pros:
- Fresh ideas paired with classic buildings and production chains
- No battles, no troops - instead you fight against the time and have to deal with lack of resources and the happiness of your citizens
- You don't have to spend dozens of hours on a playthrough, more like 1-3 hours
- Rogue-lite - each finished playthrough grants you resources to permanently activate new features
- Not all gameplay features are available from the start, some are only granted after dozens of playthroughs, so gameplay doesn't get stale
- Lots of built-in "Quality of Life" and convenience functionality
- Very responsive and transparent developers, who always listen to their players

Cons:
- There is no real campaign or story arc, you just play on for the meta progress (and the fun)

The game does not start at all. It shows a popup that it requires the "Media Feature Pack" to be installed, with a link to that package. The package from the link is installed, as well as the Media Player itself, but the popup stills shows up and the game does not start. No help from the devs in the forums, either.

Don't buy this unless you want to burn your money for nothing.

An excellent game that does (nearly) everything right.

Pros:
- easy and clear controls
- great music
- nice upgrade system, broad variety of weapons and tools
- entertaining story (although a bit forseeable) and humor
- levels are challenging but (with one exception) always fair
- nice savepoint feature (integrated into story), fair distribution of savepoints
- unique bosses with different challenges

Cons:
- there is one level near the end that is extremely annoying, because it has different mechanics than the rest of the game, and forces you to repeat boring stuff all over when you fail


Without that level, the game would be perfect. I can't understand why the devs did everything so well in the main game, just to "break" it in that sublevel. That level should be either removed from the game or made optional.

Apart from that, I can fully recommend it. I'm definitely looking forward to a "Ghost 2.0".