Recent reviews by coolz

Beat-em-up + Platformer + Luchadores = Fun!

The developer does get some flak for releasing an update as a separate game ("Super Turbo Championship Edition"), but nothing felt lacking in the "Gold" edition. Challenge levels & item collection are well done. While my experience was limited, co-op seemed to decrease the difficulty significantly by allowing a timed respawn instead of a checkpoint respawn.

A short 2D spy-and-sneak game with a "solve the circuit and chain-reaction" element. The humor options throughout the dialog deserve a special mention, although some are unfortunately tied to missions & achievements.

Gessler : You get it?
Conway : Yes, but there's something you should know about it.
Gessler : Yeah? Well spit it out.
Conway : It's really heavy. My arms hurt.

A fun take on the puzzle platformer with the goal to "light up" puzzle rooms by bumping, jumping, and teleporting to explore around levels. Puzzle names & solutions were kept my interest and remained challenging, although I feel some puzzles were solved unconventionally by abusing edge-of-vision teleporting or revisiting after receiving a powerup/upgrade.

The resolution & world map were difficult to deal with - windowed mode is too small and often had me misclicking outside the game, while full screen ended up a too scaled and stretched. I had to switch between windowed/full to utilize the tiny world map, which added to the frustration of getting to "that next unsolved room".

Whispering Willows suffers from "where do I go next" frustration. I'm glad the movespeed had been increaed, but the environment loses it's excitement multiple times through. The hand-drawn style is nice.

SteamWorld Dig is exactly what you would expect: dig up ores, get upgrades, and solve a few puzzles. Upgrades could come a bit earlier, as you quickly end up in areas that take one too many chops. 3-4 hours is just the right length for a simple grindy games.

Jazzpunk is full of gamer/hacker references and "WTF" moments and the gameplay deserves to be recognized on it's absurdity. The half-trolling humor never really clicked with me but might be well suited for the Adult Swim audience.

Hero of the Kingdom is a well made and short hidden object game. Has some money/resource management but plenty of options prevent any possible frustration. Minor challenge getting all those collectibles, but a steady pace had all achievements earned shortly after the end game.

This is my first playthrough of this genre and Hero of the Kingdom felt right, even with the vanilla title & storyline.

Short point and click with a spelling-music mechanic. Direction, artwork, and music is charming and very well done, with music freely available via Steam and Bandcamp[storybirdgames.bandcamp.com]. Game is frequently on sale or bundled.

Missed opportunity for younger audiences due to complicated spelling (and possibly some death sequences). "New Game +" unfortunately offers no new gameplay. Hoping Finding Teddy 2 expands and improves.

Dialogue is dull and repetitive. Trying to skip banter leads to strange breaks & pauses. No real variation in poker play.

Camera angles and respawn points are poorly executed and offers the only real challenge in the game. Music is nice and playful.