Recent reviews by twinsky

Incredibly thought-provoking, this stands out as possibly the best of games like this.

I'm surprised how often I'm stumped by which reward to take because the options all have their upsides.

I was hesitant to play this since I had lukewarm feelings about the first one. But I find it better in every way.
- The art is wonderful. Gorgeous, varied environments. The characters, enemies, and bosses are bursting with personality.
- It has a good sense of humor that's not overdone. It's goofy without being distracting.
- It's a joy to hop, dash, and spin kick around your environments. It's fun from the beginning and just gets better as you unlock more permanent abilities. Very expressive movement.
- Each class feels SIGNIFICANTLY different, I was surprised. This is a big part of what prevents the game from getting stale.
- It's slow to grow the tech tree but it feels fair and far less like a grind compared to RL1.
- The relic/resolve system is unique, and leads to some interesting tough choices.

I don't feel particularly compelled to dig into post game content. The game has a lot of lore but I'll say it's not particularly compelling. It's no Hades in that regard.
However, I beat the game in a little under 30 hours, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Absolutely stunning art & animation. Some of the best I've seen in an indie game outside of cuphead.

Unfortunately there are a number of missteps in its game design.
- Battles don't feel varied enough, especially in the first area. You slowly wipe out hoards of the same few enemy types.
- Each character starts out with the same incredibly dull set of moves. Unlocking enough for the game to feel like an actual beat em up is tedious.
- The feeling of beating things up isn't as snappy and satisfying as many other beat-em-ups.
- Temporary equipment you find during a run is underwhelming, to put it mildly.
- The tutorialization is ridiculously overdone. I'm almost surprised there's not a tutorial on what a tutorial is.
- There's a ton of mandatory dialog that tries to be clever, but really bogs the action down in the context of a multiplayer action game.

I guess categorize this as one of those "I really wanted to like it but..." reviews.

Tim Follin, we demand a sequel! This game was awesome, and deserved much more funding than it got. Despite a lack of funding though, it was a well acted, mind boggling thrill ride that had me begging for more by the end. Can't wait to see what you put out next, but whatever it is better be soon! I definitely recommend this game to anyone that loves mystery games.

Friends and I weren't able to play this game very long. It would be a lot more fun with better tuning: needs button buffering, better enemy telegraphs, more weight to your movement and attacks, that sort of thing.

Towards the end my friends were dying on purpose and begging me not to revive them. Not a good sign.

This game is wonderful, like a fairy tale brought to life.

The art is fantastic and the dramatic moments of the dynamic soundtrack kick in at just the right moments. My favorite things about this game are the visual effects when the season changes and the level design. Everything takes place in a relatively small area with a lot of concentrated content. It's fun to revisit familiar areas with a new goal and I like that everything is plotted out in a way that doesn't require any kind of minimap or teleportation.

Now, it did take a while for things to kick in and become engaging for me. At first, play is overly simple, and the voice of the narrator made me feel concerned that this was perhaps intended strictly for a very young audience. (I prefer the narration after changing the voice language to German, which also somehow makes the fairy tale aesthetic feel more authentic.) It would benefit from a more interesting scene towards the beginning. But after a certain point, (about 2 hours in my case,) the puzzles become very fun and surprisingly thought-provoking.

The controls favor animation over player input which can lead to feelings of stiffness or latency. But because of the nature of this title (pure exploration, no lose state) this only amounts to a minor annoyance.

I played this stereoscopically using Nvidia 3D Play and many scenes were absolutely gorgeous.

I bought this game because I'm a big fan of the fast-paced expressive combat in Zelda 2. I'd classify that game as "tough but fair." In contrast, I find Shadowcrypt to be overly sluggish and disadvantageous to the player for my tastes.

I ended up enjoying everything about this game a whole bunch less than the first Typing of the Dead on Dreamcast.

That game had:
A fun sense of self-parody -- zombies attack with frying pans and plastic mallets. Human characters actually fight by typing on keyboards strapped to their bodies.
A combo system that rewarded you for not making any typos.
Two player local co op.
Bosses with unique gimmicks.
Additional challenge modes.

This game has:
None of that.

At first it looked like a worse version of Towerfall. But it ended up being better. Now I play it whenever I'm in a fowl mood.

Battling in space feels groovy. Difficulty ramps up nicely, and once I unlocked all my ship's abilities combat became expressive and fun. I like changing my approach based on which power-ups I find and buy in a given season.

My only concern is that I don't feel a lot of incentive to replay once seasons are cleared on arcade and rogue modes, which is odd for a procedurally generated game. But it's a good value regardless.