Recent reviews by Thordred

Dear adventure game aficionado,

Here we have a game that you have possibly overlooked - maybe because it's freeware, maybe you were put off by the rather janky looking screenshots (Admittedly, the hand-drawn low-res 2D graphics take some getting used to. Especially the walking animations look ridiculous.) - but Absent is actually a pretty decent game.

Absent is a supernatural comedy thriller with a complex story set in and around a british university campus. You play as Murray, a university student who is helping his friend to find his missing girlfriend who was taken by a mysterious creature.

If you have ever played a classic point & click adventure you know the drill: Right-click to cycle through the usual actions (use, look at, walk to, talk to), left-click to perform selected action. Collect everything that's not nailed down in your inventory, combine your inventory items with stuff and choose appropriate dialogue options from a list during conversations to solve the fun but not particularly difficult puzzles.

A positive surprise besides the complex story (for a non-commercial game) is the voice acting. The game is fully voice-acted and while the audio quality of the recordings is less than optimal all the actors and actresses are doing a superb job.

For the unbeatable price of nothing Absent offers an evening's worth of entertainment for fans of the adventure genre.

This 2017 freeware release is "more of an interactive experience than a game" as the description on the store page correctly states.

In classic point&click adventure fashion Forever Space is controlled entirely with the mouse, with left-click used for both movement and interactions. A minor difference to most adventure games is the lack of an inventory, collected items appear as menu options for interactions with particular hotspots instead.

Forever Space has realistically rendered 3D environments and cel-shaded looking character models. Character animations also appear largely realistic. The graphics are somewhat minimalist without much detail.
It is fully voiced and while the audio quality is not on a professional level and the voice acting is not always great it is, like the graphics, at least serviceable, especially for freeware. The background music is unobtrusive but fitting the atmosphere nicely.

Forever Space has minmal gameplay elements at best and I would classify it as an interactive short story, told through dialogues with NPCs and inner monologues of the player character. As such I don't really want to compare it to games. I recommend Forever Space as an alternative to reading a short story or watching a movie (or rather an episode of a tv show, because it is really short). I enjoyed the story and consider the experience an hour well spent. Since it doesn't cost any money and not much time... why not give it a try? ;)

Trivia Vault games are shovelware achievement spam.

All games in the series come with 5000 worthless achievements, all with the same name and artwork, already unlocked without even installing the game. To have the achievements shown on your profile you have to start the game once, closing the game then crashes the Steam client.

Funnily enough, the developer didn't even make the effort to create new achievements and just copied them from another one of his games "Trivia Vault: Boxing Trivia", so their artwork doesn't even match the game.

"Blonde Driver" is not really a game... well, a sad excuse of a game that purely serves as a vehicle for achievement spam and the developer is completely unapologetic about it. In the games discussions you are greeted by a pinned thread that tells you to start the game and then just alt+tab out of it to do something else while the achievements are generated automatically. And yet I'm giving the game a positive rating. Why? Unlike most spam achievements these actually serve a purpose and cater to Steam users who like to use their profile showcases to decorate and individualize their profiles. For this small subcategory of users "Blonde Driver", along with the five other games in the "Buy Eazy achievements +1" bundle, might be one of the best offerings on Steam.

The 994 achievements include 5 sets of letters, numbers and symbols with differents fonts, eleven 7-achievement-pictures for level 1 achievement showcases, twelve 14-achievement-pictures for level 2 showcases, eight 21-achievement pictures for level 3 showcases and a bunch of memes.

On top of that the developer has included lots of placeholders for custom user requested achievements: Just post artworks and titles for your own custom made achievements in the discussions and they will be implemented provided they don't break any rules (e.g. copyright laws). As far as I know this service is unique, haven't seen any other developer offer something similar.

This developer doesn't sell games but achievements. "Hentai 3018" is achievement spam and the developer is refreshingly unapologetic about it. In the games discussions you are greeted by a pinned thread that tells you to start the game and then just alt+tab out of it to do something else while the achievements are generated automatically. But unlike most spam achievements these actually serve a purpose and cater to Steam users who like to use their profile showcases to decorate and individualize their profiles.

The 3445 achievements include 20 sets of letters, numbers and symbols with differents fonts and backgrounds, seventeen 7-achievement-pictures for level 1 achievement showcases, seventeen 14-achievement-pictures for level 2 showcases, sixteen 21-achievement pictures for level 3 showcases and a bunch of memes consisting of one or multiple pictures.

On top of that the developer has included lots of placeholders for custom user requested achievements: Just post artworks and titles for your own custom made achievements in the discussions and they will be implemented provided they don't break any rules (e.g. copyright laws). As far as I know this service is unique, haven't seen any other developer offer something similar.

This developer doesn't sell games but achievements. "Mouse (Sneaking)" is pure achievement spam and the developer is refreshingly unapologetic about it. In the games discussions you are greeted by a pinned thread that tells you to start the game and then just alt+tab out of it to do something else while the achievements are generated automatically. But unlike most spam achievements these actually serve a purpose and cater to Steam users who like to use their profile showcases to decorate and individualize their profiles.

The 2976 achievements include 14 sets of letters, numbers and symbols with differents fonts and backgrounds, eleven 7-achievement-pictures for level 1 achievement showcases, eight 14-achievement-pictures for level 2 showcases, ten 21-achievement pictures for level 3 showcases and a bunch of memes consisting of one or multiple pictures.

On top of that the developer has included lots of placeholders for custom user requested achievements: Just post artworks and titles for your own custom made achievements in the discussions and they will be implemented provided they don't break any rules (e.g. copyright laws). As far as I know this service is unique, haven't seen any other developer offer something similar.

This developer doesn't sell games but achievements. "Reflex" is pure achievement spam and the developer is refreshingly unapologetic about it. In the games discussions you are greeted by a pinned thread that tells you to start the game and then just alt+tab out of it to do something else while the achievements are generated automatically. But unlike most spam achievements these actually serve a purpose and cater to Steam users who like to use their profile showcases to decorate and individualize their profiles.

The 1502 achievements include 9 sets of letters, numbers and symbols with differents fonts, three 7-achievement-pictures for level 1 achievement showcases, three 14-achievement-pictures for level 2 showcases, a bunch of memes and 10 national flags.

On top of that the developer has included lots of placeholders for custom user requested achievements: Just post artworks and titles for your own custom made achievements in the discussions and they will be implemented provided they don't break any rules (e.g. copyright laws). As far as I know this service is unique, haven't seen any other developer offer something similar.

This developer doesn't sell games but achievements. "Sky Jump" is achievement spam and the developer is refreshingly unapologetic about it. In the games discussions you are greeted by a pinned thread that tells you to start the game and then just alt+tab out of it to do something else while the achievements are unlocked automatically. But unlike most spam achievements these actually serve a purpose and cater to Steam users who like to use their profile showcases to decorate and individualize their profiles.

The 998 achievements include 6 sets of letters, numbers and symbols with differents fonts and backgrounds, three 7-achievement-pictures for level 1 achievement showcases, three 14-achievement-pictures for level 2 showcases, a bunch of pictures of dogs, cats, birds and celebreties and 9 national flags.

On top of that the developer has included lots of placeholders for custom user requested achievements: Just post artworks and titles for your own custom made achievements in the discussions and they will be implemented provided they don't break any rules (e.g. copyright laws). As far as I know this service is unique, haven't seen any other developer offer something similar.

This is achievement spam done right.

There are games with thousands of Steam achievements which is not a bad thing per se as some players like achievements, especially hard to get ones, for bragging rights. But some of them offer tons of worthless achievements that can be unlocked with no or minimal effort and fall under the category "achievement spam".

"Achievements printer", as the title suggests, is of the spammy variety and the developer is refreshingly unapologetic about it. In the games discussions you are greeted with a pinned thread that tells you to start the game and then just alt+tab out of it to do something else while the achievements are unlocked automatically. Unlike most spam achievements these actually serve a purpose. They cater to Steam users who like to use their profile showcases to decorate and individualize their profiles.

The 3004 achievements include 12 sets of letters, numbers and symbols with differents fonts and backgrounds, 12 7-achievement-pictures for level 1 achievement showcases, 12 14-achievement-pictures for level 2 showcases, 10 21-achievement-pictures for level 3 showcases and an assortment of single and multiple picture memes.

On top of that the developer has included lots of placeholders for custom user requested achievements: Just post artworks and titles for your own custom made achievements in the discussions and they will be implemented provided they don't break any rules (e.g. copyright laws). This service makes this developer unique as far as I know, haven't seen it elsewhere.

This game, like all of this developers games, is pure shovelware garbage.
Achievement spam that comes with 5000 worthless achievements, all with the same name and artwork, already unlocked without even installing the game. To have the achievements show on your profile you have to start the game once, running the game crashes the Steam client so you'll have to restart it afterwards.
Funnily enough, the developer didn't even make the effort to create new achievements and just copied them from another one of his games "Trivia Vault: Boxing Trivia", so their artwork doesn't even match the game.