Recent reviews by tuxdelux

Bought the game based on the developer's name alone, but this game is very different than Steamworld. Instead of a quirky, yet interesting indie game, The Gunk is a flashy, linear game with unimaginative game mechanics. The game has you walking along a straight, predetermined path, sometimes literally a yellow line on the ground. There are trappings of crafting and exploration, but that is all window-dressing for a game that constantly leads you by the hand. There is always just one way to go, unless there is a side room with a couple unnecessary resources. And while the "sucking gunk" mechanism feels good, especially with controller vibration, it gets boring. There are no interesting choices. The lack of puzzles, combat, or other challenges makes it hard to stay engaged. Just look at the steam achievements, where 95% of owners got the achievement of starting the game, but only half of those kept playing for the "Cleared the Gunk Tower" story-based achievement which is unlocked after only an hour or two.

I hate giving this game a negative review, because the graphic artists did a lot of work here. The art style is amazing, with really nice, detailed character models. The story, characters, and voice acting is not bad either. It's just that all while playing, I could not forgive all the ways The Gunk was made to seem like a deeper game than what it is. What we have here is just a walk forward, have very simple game interactions, and advance the story. It's like the game designers just could not be bothered making interesting game mechanics, but still wanted to get all the boxes checked for the marketing department. I don't know what happened, but it is a real shame that no one could find a compelling reason for clearing levels of the gunk and finishing the game. That's a disservice to the story's enjoyable female duo (and "kurt").

My Gunk Vacuum ran on an Ubuntu Linux desktop, thanks to the amazing Steam Proton compatibility software. The software ran without any technical issues, despite the developers not offering support to Linux gamers, as they did with previous game releases. Not sure what happened at Image & Form but they lost a loyal customer to The Gunk.

I kept upgrading the upgrades with an upgraded upgrade, so it felt like I was winning. But did any of my upgrade choices make anything different about the simple gameplay of aiming a mouse pointer at some blocks?
I bought the game hoping that there would be some surprises in the deep underground, but the game was just so repetitive with no surprises. The upgrade system is just layered on top of a simple mechanic to give an illusion of progression through the planets. Boo.

This is a fantastic, multiplayer simulation for fans of building efficient machines, virtual economics, and "hard science fiction" stories. There is an astounding amount of technical detail contained within this colony builder, and It is super fun digging into the nuts and bolts to see how things work. The gameplay encourages extensive planning - even outside of the game interface, so only very few will tolerate this style. Thankfully, my steam friends are probably going to be that right kind of audience. To them, I highly recommend checking out this Prosperous Universe!

The game is free-to-play, and there is absolutely no need to purchase a subscription, despite the many notices indicating "trial" accounts are limited. The developers did a great job providing additional functionality to the "pro" subscription accounts, without making the "trial" account users feel they were losing something. I eventually paid for a subscription, only because of so many hours of enjoyment I had experienced. It opened up the "Local Marketplace" which creates new opportunities for trades with my planet-mates.

(Update... After years of 100s of hours of game-time, this game keeps giving me endless entertainment. I have been working with the planet populations, raising the technology level of the workers, in order to satisfy my building requirements. There is so much depth in the gameplay, and I find it completely captivating so I am thinking about it throughout the day.

Almost all my gametime has been through the Firefox web browser and it is not reflected in the Steam gametime seen in this review. This is easily the most-played game in my library, and I highly recommend it to everyone.)

I became a tycoon magnate of Kowa-Bunga Space Overalls on an Ubuntu Linux desktop. The game uses a keyboard and mouse control. The game interface was easy to use, and it had a good tutorial and help system. The game servers did go down from time to time, but the game developers consider the game Early Access.

Neat concept, but there are a whole lot of mission bugs. It also does not contain the voice-activation controls, unless you are using a specific configuration of microsoft's operating system. Even when the user interface is working right, the gameplay is simply a RTS where the player follows scripted events, without the ability of seeing the exact location of units. Further the game never explains what the unit statistics represent, even terrain modifiers. Not worth checking out for twenty dollars, in my opinion. Watch a playthrough video if interested in the concept.

Did not capture the spirit of the board game. Every action seemed forced and tedious. The cutscenes were not useful and not interesting. Frustrating inventory system.

I like this game, and I recommend purchasing it, although it might not have enough content to justify the full price, for some.
I built my slot machine on an ubuntu linux desktop with radeon mesa drivers. I had no technical issues with the game, and I used the mouse for controls. It does seem to use a common game engine, and it only takes up 165MBs of diskspace.

For a dollar it is worth trying this indie game with new ideas. I played on a linux desktop with steam's proton compatibility. Did not make it very far in the game, because of difficulty with keyboard controls, but others may find it more approachable.

Terrific game, even as a stand-alone title. Took me 90 minutes playtime. A perfect pacing of tension, puzzle, and action - for my tastes at least. A lot of great level-design detail, too. It's a no-cost add-on to Half Life 2, so why not give it a try? This gamer played on an ubuntu linux desktop computer and encountered no technical problems.

Played on a GNU/Linux gaming desktop with the third-party, open source OpenLara game engine, which uses the Steam Tomb Raider binary game files. It was easy to set up, with just a few steps involved. Some of the game assets do not work correctly, like the video cutscenes, but the gameplay holds up to today's standards, although I had some trouble with jump timing, until I visited "Lara's Home" tutorial. I later learned that the music files could be added to OpenLara from the "opentomb-earvillage-net" website. And, I also figured out that OpenLara runs on my RaspberryPi computer. How neat! Finally, until June-2022, it is discounted at just a dollar, even less with the collection bundle, and so I can recommend this for linux gamers looking to see an important part of gaming history.

Takes ten minutes to play through this "exploration adventure game", but that description is misleading. There is one room with some objects - spread intentionally far apart requiring a few minutes to reach each one. Clicking on them provides a Steam Achievement. You listen to some no-cost, Creative Commons licensed music, while you look at the very simple, no-cost, Unity Engine terrain assets. This same type of experience could have easily been found on the itch.io website of prototype games, as a student's learning exercise. Now while I understand new solo developers have got to start somewhere, I bought this game, although inexpensive, based on the positive steam reviews. I feel compelled to leave my own, contradictory opinion.