Recent reviews by CJ

Normally my rule of thumb is "every buck must equal an hour of gameplay". This is not the case here.

While the game is very short it is a unique experience. One that is best described as indescribable. It is bizarre, it is weird, it is itching under my skin, and it is absolutely fascinating.

In its core it's a first person puzzle game in a whimsical hell-ish world. While most of the time is spent walking around, trying to make sense of everything and orienting yourself, for me most of the "fun" came from taking in everything. Looking at the stuff, all the props they made, the environment, feeling the rumbling, just being part of this world which you absolutely don't want to be part of. From start to end it was creeping me out and it was wonderful.

There are no jumpscares mind you, all of the horror in this game is mostly put in the body horror category. A feeling of being uneasy is your best companion at all times since you just can't make any sense out of anything. You are progressing sure, but it's not really clear what it is that you're doing. Sure you can describe a puzzle as a push-block-puzzle but what exactly are you pushing around? Are those eggs? I have no clue. But I know I have to do it.

The graphics are for the most part phenomenal, the sound design is on point, everything you see, hear or feel is carefully crafted to kinda make you go "ugh god", the designers really know how to make an enticing horror game. The controls are simpel and feel on point.

If you like creepy or unusual stuff with a bit of puzzles and discovering a weird world this should be a no-brainer for you.

It's free. It's a mostly grayscale top-down last-man-standing like game. You shoot big bugs and get power ups and perks. Go as long as you can. That's about it really.

ALWAYS KEEP IN MIND THAT THIS GAME IS COMPLETELY FREE!

There are quite a few flaws:
- Balancing. Once you got a certain build for your weapon you'll pretty much stick to that build. The perks either build a nice synergy or an absolutely horrible one.
- No achievements. I don't know how much longer I'll play this without achievements. I'm pretty sure this says something about us gamers today but nevertheless here we are. The unlocks are far too quick to be the selling point, the gameplay is not addicting enough.
- Gameplay. There are a few tricks to basically go through this mostly unscratched, like just going in one direction, never turning around. Later you'll get a perk to pull every piece of EXP you missed along the way so there's not really a downside to it.

What I like about it:
- The feeling of dread and isolation.
- Getting a feeling for every gun and finding the matching perk combinations for them.
- The path to getting to "invincible mode" is fun (basically doing enough DPS to never get hit).
- It's completely free.

If you're not turned down by simple 2D graphics just give it a shot. Worst case you wasted a couple minutes, best case you'll get the feeling Crimsonland gave us all those years back.

Plus the developer is still working on it, providing bugfixes and balancing updates, and I think he's even working on new content. Hats off to this legend for just giving us his game for free.

If you like Japanese culture this is pretty much a must for you.

The game is absolutely beautiful and the world is mostly carefully crafted. The game is a fun time in itself. It might not be the most challenging but that's okay, it's just a chill action game. If you're looking for a hardcore gaming experience with lots of gameplay depth this is the wrong place though.

Pros:
- Graphics.
- The feeling of walking through Japanese streets.
- A lot of backstory about Japanese culture.
- Various Japanese demons to fight. Super awesome!
- Chill for completionists. 38 hours for me for all achievements on hard difficulty.
- Collectathon but not demanding at all.
- Lovely enemy animations.

Cons:
- The battle system is a joke.
-> There are some reasons to choose one weapon/power over another but those reasons aren't very good.
-> Fighting is super stale.
-> Enemies barely feel like a threat. Don't read this spoiler if you wish to figure surviving out for yourself. Just walk backwards and close combat will never ever hit you. Just keep moving and bosses will barely have a chance to hit you. About to get hit? Just block with a bit of timing.
- Completing the game gets rather repetitive. Not to the point that it's super annoying though.
- No gameplay depth, nothing to figure out.
- Linear paths to completing quests, there's no choice to be had anywhere.

For me this was a nice little game inbetween everything else. With the amount of time put in and the overall game experience I would never pay anywhere near 60€ though. 30€ feels fair. If you like learning about Japanese culture, just go for it, you won't regret it. Just a bit sad we don't get to visit an onsen.

A rather short experience, but worth it none the less.

Pros:
- Interesting dialogues.
- Soothing soundtrack.
- Lovely artwork.
- Raises awareness for depression.
- It's free!

Cons:
- No gameplay other than picking some choices.
- Not really fleshed out. The game feels like: either you pick the right path and get one interesting dialogue, or you loose the game, but you can just try again and win then. I wish there was a little more depth.

This is what ruined the experience for me:
- Playing on a 1440p screen does not work properly. In windowed mode everything is too small, in fullscreen mode there's always a thick black border which sometimes misalignes which makes the whole game a struggle to play. Not to mention that the UI doesn't scale with resolution, it's tiny in 1440p.
- The movement speed is so slow that I couldn't bare to explore the first town I dropped in. Absolutely not for me.
- The combat system is wanky, but maybe I just didn't get in deep enough to learn how it works. Sometimes the character does some fast consecutive hits, sometimes he just needs a breather for a few seconds. I couldn't find a stamina bar while hitting, so I can't explain this behavior. It might just be a gameplay mechanic, but I could neither see it nor did it get introduced.

Here's what I liked:
- The setting. I love zombies!
- The style. Really, really lovely art style, and the cut scenes are just lovely to watch. This and the zombie setting drew me in in the first place, which makes it a real bummer for me that I didn't like playing it.
- Looting, eating, managing your energy and stuff to burn, essentially all the survival stuff.

It's a match-3. It's got animooh titties and va-JJs. It runs without any problems at all. I got all achievements in a mere 3 hours. I enjoyed my time, even though some shapes are not as round as they should be. It's got a soundtrack which gets stuck in your head even though you probably don't want it to, like with most visual-novel-style games. Don't bother about story, it's straight from the horrible-hentai-plot-generator.

If you like match-3: just buy it, you'll have a nice afternoon with it, that's about it. My rule is: a game must bring at least as many hours of fun as it costs dollars. 2 bucks, 3 hours of fun (well, as fun as a match-3 can be), it's all good.

If you want a little more content or more of a challenge, take a look at Hunie Pop.

Very nice short film about the life of a border checkpoint inspector. It makes you think about the choices you sometimes have to make. Emotions mustn't get the better of you when you're in a position like this.

Just as gray and depressing as the very excellent video game, which you should definitely try as well.

Yes, there are some bugs, yes, there are some balancing issues, and yes, all of this is getting better and worse all the time as time goes by, new fixes come, and new content is being published.

Nevertheless, I'm having tons of fun with this game. There are four survivors who have to repair generators, until they can open electrically powered gates to escape the level. Before that happens, the fifth player, a killer, has to find the survivors and kill them. Both survivors and killers have abilities that help them on their endeavour. Also, there are advanced tactics for both sides to really mess with the others to a point where you can take the fun out of the game.

I play both sides, and even with recent content updates which seem to push the game really to the survivor's side I get fun games. There is a ranking system, and even with high rank players you never know what happens. It's definitely not as one-sided as many people try to make you believe these days. Sure there are some rounds which just screw me over really hard and I barely get anything done, but for the most part I get nice matches.

If you like tense games I really encourage you to play Dead by Daylight. You will face a lot of losses, but given that you learn and adapt to the game you also get really awesome wins.

I'm afraid I can't recommend this game. I wanted to like it, I really did, but the gameplay is just plain unenjoyable. The only things I can enjoy a little tiny bit are the conversations, but even those are as anime cliche as it gets.

7 hours in and the story is still flatter than Etna and Flonne. The infamous motivation minigame is neither fun nor interesting to look at, even with the uncensorship mod. There are multiple kinds of motivations where each is its own kind of minigame, one more tedious than the other. None of them has any appeal at all. The girl is in the background, the more you motive her the less clothes she has. But still, not even a nip. Teasers, nothing more. They do wear different clothings based on the kind of motivation, but even then they're still in the same pose, so pretty uninteresting.

The rest of the game is dull. You walk around with blurry pixelated characters, the areas you walk around in are uncreative as all hell. There are small plains which are connected by paths, and sometimes there's a door, that's it. I've seen three environments in those 7 hours, and they're all following this idea. They do change the theme, but even those aren't interesting to look at.

When walking you encounter random battles. Battles give exp and "CM" which is the currency in this game. With this currency you buy items, and... "motivate" the girls. The problem is that you barely get any CM, so motivation happens very rarely. But you need to motivate them in order for them to learn new skills, and those are mandatory. The enemy HP ramps up very quickly, and you constantly feel outleveled and just try to keep the girls alive somehow, even with skills. And guess what, that's also not fun. This actually frustrated me so much that I spent an hour or two cheating the girls up, giving them max stats. Combined with a cheat to prevent random encounters I can focus on running through those boring levels, trying to get through the story at least once. I really wouldn't bother playing this game without cheating, and it hurts me to say that. I really liked the basic premise but it's just too amateur.

The game is just a giant fan service, it's all about the girls. You got your innocent one with big eyes and huge tits, you got your loli twins, you got shy psychic loli, you got big tits "I hate men" girl, and so on. Some of which you have no idea why they'd even be in this place, since this is a place for people who would've become criminals in the future. You can't tell me huge-tits-samurai-girl would ever become a criminal.

After motivating the girls they tend to come to you with some wish. From what I've seen you can fulfill four wishes for each girl, but having them come up with that takes a long time. My only hopes are that after all wishes are fulfilled there's some special "treat".

The only thing that differentiates this game from casual RPG maker games is the voice acting.

For this price I can commend it.

There really isn't much to the game. It's a set of rooms layed out in a grid pattern, all rooms look the same when you see them the first time. Rooms can have one of several traps: either a no-escape-trap (the doors get blocked off followed by a fatal trap), or a dodge-trap (you can dodge the trap and continue through the room), or a laser-trap (a laser appears in the door, making it unusable for one cycle; the room may contain other traps as well), or there may be one of several enemy spawns, which are all avoided by standing in the corner. The goal is to find the room with the exit panel. To find out if a room has a trap, you can throw your shoes in which trigger all no-escape-traps (making the thrown shoe unobtainable) and some dodge-traps. Each room has a coordinate, a X and Y if you will. The letter makes for the Y position, while the followed number defines the X coordinate. The coordinates are shown in the room in one of several colors, where each color indicates how many traps are in the rooms surrounding the room the coordinate describes.

Does this sound familiar? Have you seen the Cube-movies? It's exactly that. There are also some random civilians which clearly have some mental disorder, just like the calculator-guy in the movies. But he serves no purpose in the game, other than amusing and misleading you. If a crazy dude is jumping around in the room it must mean there's no trap in there, right? Wrong. You can see him get covered in lava and acid, and he still continues acting like a chicken. This was actually the most unintuitive part of the game.

Once you figure those mechanics out it's a mix of Minesweeper and coin flipping. Once you've lost both your shoes in no-escape-traps, you have to guess which other rooms are no-escape or dodge traps. This part of the game sucks, since it comes down to luck. In the easier difficulties you can mostly win the game by doing the Minesweeper logic, but in the hard difficulty this won't cut it. You can obtain shoes from a random enemy spawn which is some terrorist blowing himself up and dropping a shoe, or when another player who had a shoe dies. That's it for mechanics. After about an hour you start developing a workflow to scan the rooms in a fast manner. I'm sorry to say that at this point the game won't have much more to offer, neither in gameplay nor in content.

The best part about it is the multiplayer. That is because it's fun to coordinate your approaches, even though they're very minimalistic.

I had fun for little over 2 hours with a friend, and I really don't ask more of a 2€ game. If you have nobody to play it with I don't recommend it, but if you've got some friends with some bucks to throw away, this is worth it in my opinion.