Recent reviews by Zygfryd

It's a true gem, minimal, focused and well-crafted. Missing button remapping, but there aren't any button prompts during gameplay anyway, so you can use Steam Input.

Allows you to train your motor memory for Sekiro in a very controlled environment, without wasting time or being punished.

A perfect learning environment for gitting gud.

I'm rather disappointed by this title. The underlying ideas are sound, but could have been explored better.

I can recommend a single playthrough, but exploring the whole decision tree of the game to get all achievements doesn't seem worth the tedium.

I think it's fair to say the team was inspired by the 2004 film The Butterfly Effect. They didn't however decide to commit fully to its story structure, which would have made for a better game. As it is the load/save mechanic is pulled into the very setting of world, into the story, but isn't central to it in a way that'd have the player use it to finish the game, to achieve an ultimate goal. One that is only achievable using it.

You can save everyone on your first playthrough and there's no significant motivation to meticulously go back to every story branch and explore it. More importantly I haven't noticed any fast-forward feature that'd let you skip the hundreds of lines of dialogue you've already seen to arrive at new ones. And there's a lot of characters in this game, if you save everyone by the end you'll have like 20 conversations to click through manually every time.

The language also leaves something to be desired, the writers use "they/them" out of the blue to refer to singular characters whose gender we are, or can be made aware of, and it's confusing. If it's because some of the lines can be used in regards to different characters, it's just lazy coding. If it's something else, it's not making a good impression.

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Forgot to tell you what I did like...

The story is of an arctic expedition and it was rather faithful to my expectations of such. I'd hazard a guess it might have been somewhat inspired by the 2018 TV series The Terror, but that was just my most memorable encounter with the subject.

Most of the game you'll be managing two things: resources needed to survive, and loyalty of the crew. These mechanics aren't particularly challenging nor tedious (when playing through once), they're just enough to keep you engaged and feeling like you're two weeks away from an icy grave.

The characters of the crew and passengers are mostly well-written and believable, varied in their motivations and personalities. (Except the journalist, she should have won the Darwin Award years prior.)

The game could have stood on its own being just this, an expedition simulator. They tried to spice it up though, and made it feel incomplete in the process.

I rate it Kinder Surprise on a scale from cold omellete to Fabergé egg.

Bardzo dziękuję twórcom za wysłuchanie próśb, również moich, dotyczących wypuszczenia polskiej ścieżki językowej dla gry. Niestety grę mogę opisać jedynie jako bardzo średnią.

Dialogi, szczególnie na początku gry, bywały bardzo sztywne i pozbawione naturalności. Wiele terminów, zwrotów i żartów bezpośrednio zostało zaczęrpnięte ze współczesnych anglojęzycznych źródeł, tylko ekipa odpowiedzialna za obelgi wyrożniła się w tworzeniu iluzji historycznej autentyczności.

Mechanika walki raczej szybko się nudzi, pomimo istnienia w grze stopniowo odkrywanej drabinki umiejętności. Nie ma tutaj zbytniego pola do poddania próbie własnych umiejętności, ani zaistnienia interesujących sytuacji. Mechanika eksploracji polega na obieganiu całej mapy, cały czas używając funkcji "przeszukiwania", która uwidacznia ukryte interaktywne przedmioty, i byłoby to znacznie większym problemem, gdyby aktywacja tej funkcji nie miała tak przyjemnego efektu dźwiękowego lub gdyby wymagała zatrzymania się by jej użyć.

Do ukończenia gry napędzała mnie głównie ciekawość dotycząca fabuły, większe wątki fabularne są całkiem ciekawe i dobrze napisane. Tylko to, co w innych grach nazywałoby się drobnymi, pobocznymi zadaniami, tutaj zostało zaimplementowane tak niewiarygodnie oszczędnie, że aż trudno uwierzyć.

Nie ma wielu podstaw, by tę grę komuś polecać, ale jeśli ktoś lubi przygodówki z niecodzienną fabułą, to na przecenie może sobie upolować i mieć tydzień/dwa takiej sobie rozrywki.

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The quintessential video game. When you look up "video game" in a dictionary, you should see the cover art for Elden Ring.

It is art.
It is sublime game design.
It is a profound insight into the experience of being.
Or... you know, just a great way to get some dopamine.

Seems promising, but lack of controller button remapping kills it for me. Hopefully it gets patched in.

A pretty great experience.

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I enjoyed the pseudoscientific-esoteric theme, reminiscent of the SCP Foundation, though not as good. The writing could be improved by not relying so much on silly Capitalized Terms. 4th wall breaks in the main story surprisingly kept me invested in it, but the expansions tested my patience and suspension of disbelief.

The game is fairly pretty, but I felt the art direction lacked vision. Imposing, monolithic architecture copy pasted ad nauseam.

Combat is kept fairly fresh throughout most of the game by drip-feeding the character new powers and weapons. Ultimately the character becomes a very mobile fighting machine, who has little trouble with enemies most of the time, but one lapse in attention can easily get them killed. The gameplay reminded me of Anthem and Andromeda, but better.

Would definitely play a sequel. On GOG or on Steam. Epic can piss right off.

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Perfectly executed tiny masterpiece.

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Great setting. Great mechanics. Can't recommend this enough.

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Textbook programming problems in a subset of Intel assembly: the game.

Its main challenge is only how tedious it is to express solutions in its programming language.

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