Recent reviews by Babel Nobuharu

We live in an ever increasingly interconnected world. A world where we all have instantaneous access to the internet and each other anywhere and everwhere. Whenever and wherever. This new technology has granted us huge boons and benefits, but it is still a double-edged sword with a serrated hilt that mars the hands of those who wield it. No one understands the claustrophic feelings of being constantly bombarded from all sides, every email platform, every app notification, every direct message, better than Teebowah Games.

In Fishing Vacation, you join your friend on a fishing trip after his recent layoff to relax and unwind at his uncle's lake house. But from the moment you get there, you're weighted down by the oppressive hands of the clock. Allowing you only a measly 30 seconds to frantically dig through the mud, grasping at the writhing worms you need to line your fishing hook with. The game attempts to panic you with its time limit, providing a juicy carrot of an achievement for getting 11/12 of the worms you can find on any given excavation, only to whack you with the proverbial stick as you, in your haste, accidentally bury the worms that you cannot perform your one activity of leisure without. One of three short days, potentially wasted. There is a single book in the cabin for you to read, but you cannot read more than one or two pages in a day because, well, there just isn't enough time. There's never enough time. Before you know it, you're done fishing and need to head back to the cabin for the evening. The entire game itself can be completed in about the course of an hour; because Teebowah Games knows that in today's hectic world, even ten minutes is a huge ask of the player in terms of an investment of time. Even your friend's absent uncle burdens you with the mystery of his own disappearance in the form of a mysterious note and a padlocked cellar door. Lurking figures in the woods prodding you to delve further into a mystery you simply don't have time to investigate.

It's no wonder then that your friend decides to wake you in the dead of night to head out to the lake to go fishing again. Because there just isn't enough time. There's never enough time. And the idea that you would waste any of that time waiting on disinterested fish to lazily nibble at the end of your hooks. The idea that your wife or children or whoever else might try to interrupt these precious few moments before your boss reaches out to ask if you can work from home that day. The idea that there may not be enough worms for you to fish with that day...if only there was a way to illiminate all three of these problems in one fell swoop. Some sort of way to provide an abundance of fish, an abundance of worms and to silence those who would try to distract you from the few moments of happiness you have left.

Fishing Vacation will teach you the true horror of planning an itinerary in today's oppressive rise and grind world.

***WARNING: SPOILERS***

From the creators of Amnesia: The Dark Descent comes an ambitious new survival horror that's fun for the whole family! In this epic retelling of the story of The Brave Little Toaster, you play as Simon, the plucky dive suit and Catherine, the quirky Radio Disney AI as they embark on a quest to find their original owners. You must solve fun, brain-busting puzzles and sneak past other grumpy appliances who never found their owners and have consequentially been driven mad with jealousy. This game has a total play time of about thirty minutes, but a complex dialogue tree and morality system guarantee a different ending for at least the first five or six playthroughs! (And you know kids, they'll want to play or watch you play through this heart-warming adventure over and over!) The beautiful undersea city is truly breathtaking. The original cast members of Jon Lovitz as Simon and Deanna Oliver as Catherine, along with an entirely new soundtrack by David Newman really helped recapture the warm, fuzzy feeling of the 1987 classic film! So pack your bags and embark on a magical adventure to a wonderous undersea city and help the lovable Simon find his way back to the home he so fittingly deserves!

This game ended up being way more fun than I originally expected. It's not that I wasn't expecting it to be good; but I opened the game thinking I'd just try it out real quick for a few minutes and ended up unlocking all of the characters in a single sitting.

The level design is amazing. They strike a really good balance of being ingeniously treacherous without being rage inducingly unforgiving. And there's a lot of them too. Definitely keeps things interesting.

The mechanics are simple enough pick up quickly, while still leaving an additional learning curve with the deflection and richocet mechanics to keep the game challenging. I played on a controller. Not sure if keyboard and mouse are any fun or not.

The music is really good. I like the variety of level designs and the setting of a futuristic death tournament. There's also a few funny jokes scattered around from time to time. Although the dialogue doesn't really change from character to character. Stays relatively consistent with "Are you ready?" "I'm not going to lose." ect ect.

The game was obviously intended for multiplayer. I'm sure it's WAY different than 1st player, but I haven't had the chance to. Very eager to challenge some of my friends in this. I can see how the certain levels would be CRAZY against human players. The AI is kind of all over the place. Sometimes they'll deflect a bullet a million times. Other times they don't put up any fight at all. Manages to keep the difficulty in a clumsy kind of homeostasis though. Certain levels are super easy to con the AI into suiciding though. (In the magma level, they fly at you as soon as they spawn. Even though they're invincible, if you fire at them, they'll deflect and dip just enough to plunge into the lava over and over until the level drops back down. In the ice level you can just stand still and 90% of the time they'll just zoom into some ice spikes.)

I bought the game on sale, if you don't have people coming over regularly to play against you on multiple steam controllers, you might want to grab it on sale? But if you have friends with it's definitely worth the $10. Really a super fun game.

Game is brilliant. I think the only complaint I have is that it was too short. Most of the humor is great. Game is packed with easter eggs. Controls are simple, but good and there aren't many points in the game where you get frustrated or confused. Obviously not meant to be a super challenging game, but it's super fun to explore and look for all the hidden jokes and mini games.

The humor is worth $1 if you bought it at the promo sale price. But there's only about 30 - 45 minutes of gameplay and replay value is pretty much just achievement hunting (which really falls more into the humor category in my opinion). The simple gameplay is forgivable because, obviously, it's to be expected. The laggy controls on the other hand, are not. (I dunno if it's just all the blood splatters that make the game lag or what, but it does get very irritating after a while. Especially on higher difficulty.) Kinda sad to say this about a $3 game, but buy it on sale.

I don't want to build a snowman.

It's very similar to the old Pokemon Snap game for N64. Except the pokemon all have oversized, heaving breasts and are constantly falling into compromising positions.

When I first saw this game I figured it was just another side-scrolling dungeon crawl, and to be honest, I haven't really been big on the dungeon crawl genre in the past. I bought it following a recommendation from a friend. I've barely touched any of the other games I bought during the steam sale. I ended up playing about 24 hours in the first week. I think it's the challenge. The fact that knowing that at any moment, everything could just go to ♥♥♥♥.

- "Bugs, huh? I gotta fight bugs? I think I'm a little old for Spider Stompin' (TM?), but ya gotta love those arcade classics!"
[mark - crit - crit - blight - ded]

- "The boss is a hag? And she doesn't summon? Pfffft. Cake walk."


- "Place a torch on the alter? This looks ominous. But there's *no way* it could be *that* tough."
[Death was swift]

- I burst out laughing when I first saw a "swinetaur".
[Still have not played a veteran level dungeon since that terrible, terrible night...]

I'll admit, I can see how mistakes could be made due to naivete of game mechanics. Like when all my characters died of heart attacks all at the same time. Who knew the Apprentice Necromancer was also a Krispy Kreme vendor? (also registered trademark) It may require some patience to endure the painful "learning experiences" of the game (although from what little I've seen of the most recent update, it looks like they're working to make the game less mysterious), but I never really considered the momentary confusion or unpleasant sudden realizations to ever outweigh the fun of playing. Honestly I rather enjoyed discovering the mechanics for myself.

All in all, the game is very challenging, highly addictive, pleasing to the eye and the sanity mechanics add an extra dynamic both in terms of game mechanic and in developing an emotional attachment to your cannon fodder (I mean...when you're one Obdurous Advancement away from a party wipe and your sexy booty ♥♥♥♥♥ hellion becomes Heroic and lets loose a raucous war cry as she cleaves a shamblers head off with one well placed justice crit it's kinda hard NOT to buy her a drink afterwards and offer to bear her children, yano?)

Highly Recommended/10
Play your way to madness.

Ana Larive's accent makes my nipples hard. Like, Pinocchio hard. They very nicely complement the raging boner I have from these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥' good graphics. I'm like bad ♥♥♥♥ girl fan art of Madonna. WE GO HARD OR WE GO HOME. WE GON' DO THIS ALL NIGHT LONG. WE GET FREAKY IF YOU WANT. ♥♥♥♥♥ I'M MADONNA.

As you can probably tell from the store page, the art style is really what sets this game apart from others in its genre.

As far as storyline is concerned, I personally I thought the ending wasn't terrible, but...also wasn't all that great either. I did really like the fact that the characters generally aren't purely good vs evil but, unfortunately, the moral choices for the player generally are.

The puzzles weren't all that challenging. I didn't get stuck as frequently as I have in other puzzle games, but that kind of opens up a whole discussion about the difficulty of the puzzle itself vs just not knowing what you're supposed to be doing. But I digress. I could understand if someone who takes puzzles more seriously than I do complained about it not being challenging enough.

Overall I do definitely recommend this game just for the badass artwork and atmosphere. Just don't buy it if you're going to resent it for not having keyboard in monitor rage level puzzles or for not providing some deep philosophical message at the end.