Senaste recensioner av coolz

A N64 collectathon with the right amount of platforming jank dialed in. You'll learn some moves and then abuse geometry to zip around levels. Guides were helpful for my last few items to get 100%. I had to set music to 0 after struggling with one of the golden spring challenge levels.

How I prefer my metroidvanias: short, minimal complexity, hidden goodies, fun powerups. Took roughly 3h for my initial completion with all collectables. A few places where you can get lost or loop around a map. Achievements are reasonable. You can rocket jump by holding jump into an explosion (needed for "Sequence Break").

I do not care for "Speedrun" (beat in 1h) which requires a complete restart for failure. Community guides and videos can be helpful.

It's an incremental-ish game where you're rolling for stats & gear to merge together for +rarity. The atrribute-salad is akin to Luck Be A Landlord: confusing and bloated as hell until you've done a few runs and start chasing builds. Online co-op is a huge bonus with a buddy. It's too early for me to say, but is probably unbalanced with a teammate.

Holds up very well for it's age. Story is not forced. Sound and music are done well. A few puzzles that felt simpler being brute forced than clue hunting.

This is my second "puzzle mystery box" after Boxes: Lost Fragments. I would not believe that 10 years separates the two titles, which might speak to how well done and influential the OG Room is.

A short hidden object game (HOG) that departs from most of the elements of "Please, Touch The Artwork" to explore the works of James Ensor. While the first PTtA was a longer puzzle game with strong art influences, PTtA2 is built and constrained to the paintings and scanning around the details.

Making this title free highlights Waterzooi's passion for making the art of Northwestern Europe more accessible. While I typically find the HOG mechanic too tedious, it was an interesting way to experience artwork. This is built to be casual and there is no punishment (besides self deprecation) for using hints.

I hope Waterzooi continues to experiment and bring more art & history through the medium of gaming.

I decided to play this through prior to playing through the freely available "Please, Touch The Artwork 2". This title provides 3 different types puzzles, with De Stijl (1) being the most puzzley and is the primary embodiment of the game's title: construct the solution using a touch-to-paint-adjacent mechanic. I found the final puzzles of De Stijl difficult and required I sketch solutions on screenshots.

Boogie Woogie (2) is a take on the laser-mirror puzzles with a simple love story. New York (3) is path-tracing to build out a poem. While the gameplay is weaker, they were quicker run throughs with no technical issues. New York felt too long and laborious (backtracking was painful), but I appreciated the style/mood elements. My only negative is that the full text of Boogie Woogie and New York are not available for a viewing upon completion.

Overall a fun experience, particularly with the De-Stijl puzzles. Hard to believe that all puzzles are procedurally generated. Thanks, Thomas - I'm eager to start Please Touch 2!

Interesting take on the card battler with some neat synergies and mechanics - each oracle has a few branches of unique builds. Each seemed viable for my first few runs with each.

The RNG tends to drag turns way too long: chaining rerolls + skill refreshes + self-damage + heals + my discard pile + etc. There are some animation speedup options but still a lot of decisions & actions to churn through. That is the obvious tradeoff with "dice deck" mechanics but it made me yearn for a simpler system.

Impossible not to get hooked after the first minute. You shoot crowpeople, you get some unlocks, and you jump back in for more.

SPACEPLAN is a story-driven idler with some solid synthwave music. I'd prefer something with more active progression, but the idler/clicker genre comes in too many varieties. I used a clicker script, which would otherwise double the time needed to complete. None of the game's experience was lost from it. The final animation sequence was a treat.

Would love an optional auto-click, fixed multiplier upgrade, or longer offline progression.
No achievements - a simple "game complete" would be a nice touch, too.

A lot of clicking, short, fun, and simple to 100%. Thanks, Rat Monthly!