Recent reviews by Mommy~

Yup gonna need some eyewash after this

Dude the milk is gonna go bad

This is basically peak Shiren the wanderer, everything I could ask for in a sequel to the original and more. If you've never played Shiren the wanderer, it's basically ultra-hard pokemon mystery dungeon. They're made by the same company, Shiren is just Chunsoft's own IP.

If you haven't played pokemon mystery dungeon, well basically this is a traditional roguelike (grid based, turn based, permadeath, random generation...) with a heavy focus on accessibility (compared to the rest of the genre anyways), resource management, and imagination stimulation/explorer appeal. Accessibility in that anyone can pick up and play it, it's not marred by overly math driven gameplay. It is however gruelingly difficult, as the genre tends to be. At it's core you must learn how to manage your items, the lifeblood of your run, well enough to survive the long and arduous dungeons the game offers. Beyond that figuring out what all the enemies do, what the items do, and generally how the language of the game works is important to success, which is also where the explorer appeal comes from. Similar to Spelunky, a lot of the fun is just figuring everything out, the joy of exploring the unknown. The game leans into that very well, and for newcomers there's definitely plenty to see, and plenty to see there is because there is a loooot of content in this game, as is almost tradition it feels like with this series.

Shiren the wanderer is my favorite series of games, and Serpentcoil Island is my favorite Shiren game. I'd easily recommend it to anyone who likes difficult strategic games, anyone who loves pokemon mystery dungeon, roguelite or roguelike fans in general, and especially folks who love figuring out the secrets in games like Spelunky.

So fair warning, this game does have jumpscares. They're mild, usually being pretty predictable, and they're never "ultra loud noise with a spooky face while you were just walkin' here" kinda jumpscares, more just something unexpected happens suddenly.

This is a fun game though, lots of intrigue, lots of spooks, and a fun story. Certainly a bargain for the price.

Been a hot minute since I played this, and I certainly have way more hours on mobile, but the problems from its inception have remained evidently, and this seemed like a decent time to add my two cents.

The core game is fun, it's simple, strategic, and full of random wackiness. The new player experience will leave you engaged until you reach the end of what is called series 3, which basically just means after you've unlocked enough cards. At that point, getting new cards takes forever, which is one of the major issues if not the major issue with the game, especially given it's a collectable card game. Kind of weird to make your collectable card game not collectable, but ah I'm not a game designer. The monetization is horrifying frankly, enough to make a gacha developer blush. Paid content, paid passes, paid cosmetics, paid in game currency, lots of focus on a store page, obscene prices that would make even the richest whale think twice, it's about as bad as it gets without strictly being pay to win. Though you certainly do pay for a power boost, in the sense that you can unlock cards faster by paying, so that's up to you to decide if it fits the definition of P2W.

Second dinner is a small-ish company, one that can't realistically compete with AAA studios when it comes to content output, and card games require a looooot of content output in order to be fun long term. Because of that, they're stuck in a cycle of releasing 1/10~ ish of the content a company like blizzard would with hearthstone (140+ new cards ever 4 months) or Wizards of the Coast with Magic (4 huge sets a year), releasing a measly 4 cards a month. 90% of the problems with the game stems from that; they're essentially only releasing legendaries/mythics price wise because well, they straight up don't have the breadth of content to print anything else. Card games are a medium built on the idea of selling cards, and if you only have 1/10 of the cards to sell, well they better be expensive. Now does this suck for the consumer? Yes, extremely so. Though let me make a semi-bold claim; even if all the cards were easily accessible, the game would still be stale after not too long, because again, the issue is in their abysmal content output. Even if you had all the cards, you would not be able to make new decks until they print enough content to allow for that... so what, a new possible deck every 2-3 months? That wasn't enough to keep me engaged, I doubt it'd be for most people.

Either way, the result you're left with is a fun card game on paper without long term sustainability, when it comes to fun at least (because they sure as heck are trying to make it profitable long term). And well, we're in the long term at this point, and people are finding that out. I already wouldn't recommend this game to anyone given the monetization is horribly predatory, but even besides that I wouldn't recommend it because it fails at being an engaging long term live service game.

A nifty little game, the platforming is fun, the exploration is fun, the music is great and of course the cutscenes are superb. The best thing about this game though is if you're too broke to get it right now, you could always come back when you're a little mmmmm richer.

If you're looking at Caves of Qud because you played games like the binding of isaac or slay the spire, and you said to yourself "wow, overwhelmingly positive reviews, and people have a lot of hours in this, and everyone says it's the best thing ever? I gotta try it!" run away immediately. Even as someone who likes traditional roguelikes like DCSS and Shiren, this is maybe one of the least accessible games I've ever played. It's got all the tank controls, confusing numbers, menu mess and heavy difficulty every other traditional roguelike has, just now combined with an art style reminiscent of ET on the Atari and an open world sandboxy feel that'll constantly leave you wondering "Where do I go? What I am doing???" before dying because you wandered into an overleveled area (or worse, being bored in an underleveled area). It's so immensely confusing an experience that even after 10 hours of trying my best I could not even begin to parse what I was even supposed to do (also reminiscent of ET on the Atari, wow). And that's not really a knock on Caves of Qud, the people who love it do earnestly love it, and for the right reasons. But it's a game that feels like you already need to have played 100 hours in order to enjoy it. For that reason I literally do not know who to recommend this to. And there's another issue here: the community is by and large oblivious to how niche this game really is, which I believe can lead to a lot of folks thinking they'd be into this only to realise oh dear god no.
If you love traditional roguelikes, and you love the idea of Caves of Qud, and also traditional oldschool rpgs like fallout 1, all simultaneously, yea maybe pick it up and give it a try. If you were anyone else, I couldn't recommend it in any good conscience.

Signalis is a game I can only describe as elegant. It's elegant in execution of every idea it attempts; it's gameplay is smooth as butter, it's story is presented thoughtfully and paced immaculately, it's themes and worldbuilding fantastic, and as an homage to the genre it is as authentic as can be. Writing, sound, music, pacing, gameplay... simply put, it's amazing in all respects. It's hard to explain exactly how or why, the genre is very much an emotions driven genre so, best to simply experience it. But if I had to try, the atmosphere is oppressive, driven by a corporate-gone-wrong totalitarian aesthetic, by sound design that implies a heavy and isolated environment, by it's lore which reaffirms just how messed up the world is, how doomed any endeavor to rise above misery truly is. But in that doom and oppression, there is love that can blossom, despite it all. I'm incredibly impressed by how effectively they craft that atmosphere; every aspect of the game, to the sound, to the environments, to the story, to even the UI is made to make you feel like you're living in that totalitarian nightmare. I've also never played silent hill or any game of the sort, yet I still somehow feel nostalgic, that's how potent and tight the design of Signalis is.

A beautiful story about love despite the literal worst case scenario, wrapped in an amazing survival horror experience, Signalis is an incredibly easy game to recommend. Anyone who loves horror (survival or otherwise), queer stories, story driven games, or just polished games in general should certainly pick this up.

Best anti-smoking ad I've ever played

This one is hard to review. I definitely liked it a lot, I think it's clunky but does everything it sets out to do successfully, and I found myself playing through it with enthusiasm. In principle, story wise, it feels like Wooden Ocean mixed with Lisa: the Painful rpg. The dialogue however feels like it goes back and forth between either poorly translated Elvish poetry or Die Hard fanfiction. I don't know how to explain it better than that honestly, but it does do a good job at making you ask questions and at stimulating your emotions, even if sometimes those questions are 'what the heck' and the emotions are confusion and laughter. And I got to wonder, am I laughing at the game, or is the game laughing at me? Am I the joker's joke, or the joke's joker? Can the Joke ever be the Joker? Uh anyways I was invested through and through even if some moments took me out of it.

The mechanics are oddly satisfying, simple rpg stuff but with a nice sorta persona-esk type matchup/knockdown system. I liked it a lot.

I don't know who I'd recommend this to honestly, but I guess if you liked Wooden Ocean and wanted more? Or if you just really like odd rpgs with a focus on interpersonal relationships? Honestly it's cheap and short enough, I think it's worth picking up if you're curious at least.