Recent reviews by Flaming Badger

Now, I haven't quite finished the main game, but I have to post a review.

This game is so good. I know the general advice is to just go in completely blind, and I support that, but for those who want a little more (no spoilers) here's my take so far:

The main goal of the game is to unravel several related/overlapping mysteries related to your solar system and an ancient civilisation that once inhabited it. The game is good at pointing you in interesting directions and there is a well-designed log system to help you keep track of everything. There is enough to do that if you get stuck on one thing you can go somewhere else to try something different and there is almost always more than one way to approach any one thing.

You'll spend most of the game going from place to place in your ship or spacesuit. The solar system is a toy scale, with planet orbits and sizes ranging from around 1/10,000 to 1/10,000,000 compared to ours. Your ship is very powerful and has infinite fuel, so while the physics is generally realistic, you don't need an understanding of orbital mechanics to get around (an achievement or two notwithstanding), and searching planets always feels fruitful.

There is a lot to discover, and interesting mechanics to learn and deal with. If the above sounds like something you'd enjoy, just jump in blind.

Last piece of advice, because I regret having spoiled myself while trying to look this up: while the game can easily be played in small chunks, the way the save system works means you'll need to finish the tutorial area and some of the game before it kicks in, so make sure you have an hour or so free so you can take your time with the tutorial instead of rushing through it like I did. You can always come back, but I think it's best to take your time and get to know the game first.

Edit:
I forgot to say it's simply beautiful! Whether it's wandering around the starting village or watching an eclipse, the art design is incredible. Some areas are low on detail, but that's a deliberate choice to prevent you wasting your precious time on fruitless searches and doesn't have a negative impact on the look of the game.

The premise is a silly vehicle for an addictive, fast paced roguelike, match 3, endless runner, which is not a combo you see much of.

Very silly game with a pythonesque humour.

The goal is to re-commit each of the seven deadly sins due to confusing church bureaucracy. The game's clever use of (more or less) renaissance artwork serves as the background for a short point and click adventure.

If short games aren't usually your style, it might be worth waiting for a sale, but for less than the price of a movie ticket it gave me a similar amount of enjoyment, so I'm not complaining. I did suffer one crash and one minor navigation bug during the playtime, but neither was a dealbreaker in my eyes.

If nothing else, it gave me a new way to appreciate some of the great artworks.

It's just a little thing, but adds some extra charm to and already charming game, and goes towards supporting a passionate and open dev.

Disco Elysium is one of the best games out there. For a very particular type of gamer.

It's an RPG with the emphasis on the RP. It offers a wide variety of (frequently off-the-wall) dialogue options, where skill often plays a part but where failures rarely halt progress, they just change its direction. In fact, sometimes a failed roll is preferable to success!

There is no action to speak of. The gameplay is basically a text-heavy point-and-click buddy-cop adventure. That text is over the top—some might find it pretentious, self-indulgent or just plain cringe—but I think that's part of the charm of the game, and lends itself well to a protagonist in the midst of a mental breakdown.

There are too many skills to choose from, and some are rather abstruse, but again this is of benefit to the gameplay. It makes it essentially impossible to be good at everything, which will lead to interesting failures—the game's real charm. Don't try to understand how it all works at the start: just make choices based on vibes and jump in.

if all of that sounds great to you then check it out. If "no action, text heavy" doesn't sound like your thing then chances are it's not. Me, I think I'll be jumping back in to see if I can avoid being a sorry/boring cop on my second playthrough. Maybe I can be a superstar.

This is a very interesting game, reminiscent of god games like Populous or Black and White, though it has a roguelike element to it. The art style works really well, with 2D sprites on a 3D environment (and creatures!). The world of Kainga is very varied, and the buildings conform to their environment.

The player doesn't play as a god but a "Thinker", whose job it is to uncover technologies to help your town develop, interact with neighbours or the creatures and environment around you. It can take a few games to work out what resources (and combinations of resources) are important, as bad early choices can cripple your budding civilisation before you get off the ground.

The game semi-intentionally makes micromanagement a pain, as the focus is supposed to be bigger picture. And sure, your population can be left to their own devices to some degree, but you'll very often need to direct them to specific tasks. Whether or not they then actually begin (or complete) those tasks can be a bit harder to predict.

Each run involves completing a goal, and so far all the goals I've seen are independent of the other tribes on the map, so they can technically be completed peacefully by ignoring or allying with your neighbours. I really like this touch.

However, necessary technologies often spawn close to or behind other towns, and attempting to claim these will penalise your relationship with them or start a direct conflict. If these are the technologies for building friendship then peace may not be an option unless your neighbours reach out to you first (there is also an option in the menu for ensuring neighbours at least start peaceful, but I haven't tried it).

As the technologies are shuffled each run this makes each run fairly unique, though I imagine most players will quickly develop favoured strategies and the game has a "memory" mechanic to help ensure you can guarantee at least one (or eventually up to three) technologies.

As a run progresses and you claim more land the "danger" rating of environment increases, causing more and more hostile environmental effect to spawn, whether these are floods, fire or gigantic, uncaring creatures. This encourages you to keep runs short and focused, and to not let your base sprawl more than necessary, as well as adding danger, excitement and a bit of randomness.

If all of that sounds interesting to you then I strongly recommend checking this little gem out. It's full of really clever ideas.

However, it's not without its problems.

Runs feel very RNG based. Sometimes you just can't find an essential technology, or too many have spawned in terrible places (or both). Sometimes a massive beast will wander through and destroy a huge portion of your base quite early into the game.

On the other hand, with a good start the game can be incredibly easy, with the disasters being annoying more than challenging.

Despite a wide unit variety, combat isn't the focus of the game and winning usually comes down to getting the most people in an area or cheesing the AI.

The pathfinding can be frustrating at times, and can interact poorly with the land claim system that will often put the "nearest" resources quite a long journey away.

And it's also quite buggy, though the game is inscrutable at times which can make it difficult to tell buggy behaviour from intended. Perhaps you've finally managed to get the cursor in the exact right spot to tell a brave to repair the Karma Shop. Will he do it? Hard to say. Maybe your whole population is standing around your campfire idle despite there being jobs to do. Maybe an enemy hot air balloon get stuck in an inaccessible area and they just keep sniping your guys as they wander over to pick up wood.

Still, if you're willing to look past that it's a very worthwhile experience.

Achieves exactly what it sets out to do. The puzzles are hard enough that they require a bit of thought to solve but never so hard they are frustrating. A nice little twist on the sokoban.

A very cute, little, minimalistic puzzle game. The mechanics are varied and introduced at a good pace and combine interestingly enough without any one puzzle being too taxing. A little short, ending just as the puzzles are starting to get challenging, but that's hardly a complaint when you can pick it for a buck on sale.

There are a few technical issues, like the uncapped framerate and other defaults that the game gives you no way of adjusting in-game, but again these are minor when you consider the price.

I have enjoyed this game so far but have run into an issue that makes it difficult for me to recommend.

Stray has no manual save and no save on exit. Not even a warning.

The primary appeal of the game, to me, is exploring this strange world as a cat. But the only way to save is by progressing the story. Not by collecting items or talking to people. You need to progress to save.

It's a small thing but it absolutely saps my motivation to open the game up again, especially if I only have a little time to spend playing. If you're a goal-oriented player this may be a non-issue for you as the game is short and linear enough and checkpoints reasonably frequent enough. And if all you've done is take in the sights then you won't have actually lost anything. But if you've been taking your time to explore but happen to have talked to a few people or collected an item or two then you'll feel the need to rush to find a checkpoint when you do have to log off.

It's just a really odd design choice and creates a weird tension. Why make an atmospheric game if you're going to punish the player for enjoying it?

Anyway, I had some fun meowing at things and pushing paint cans off ledges. If that sounds enjoyable to you then by all means pick it up. But make sure you have a good bit of time set aside for a session.

I have many hundreds of hours in ASCII version of this game, and while it's not for everyone it certainly scratches a very particular kind of itch.

The learning curve is reasonably steep. The world runs on a particular kind of logic, and there are so many mechanics to get across. But once you crack that the game really opens up.

There are no real goals, so make sure you set some of your own for any playthrough, whether that's as simple as "Figure out how farming works so I don't die of starvation this time" or something more complex like "Pierce an aquifer and build below it", "Equip and train a functioning military" or "Build a giant, engraved pyramid out of microcline with decorative magmafalls"


I am currently retraining my brain to play with the mouse, so I'll come back and give a proper review once I've actually got some time under my belt.