Recent reviews by dawagamer

TL;DR: Finished DDLC+ only years after getting it! A 10/10 decision for me!


SPOILER ALERT: Please skip this if you haven't played this or the original.

I bought my copy of DDLC+ just days after its release on Steam. I vaguely remember achieving the normal ending. After that, I put this game on the back-burner... until a few days ago, when I decided to go for the normal and special endings, and the Side Stories. I'm literally here writing this not long after completing the Side Stories!

I think that was the right decision in my case. I had played the original DDLC sometime in 2020, quite a latecomer to that excellent game. I enjoyed it, so when DDLC+ released the following year I naturally snapped it up. Why didn't I get into it, then? Well, because I wasn't interested anymore. That's all there was to it.

Anyway, in the years since, I began to appreciate the brilliance with which the game and its characters had been put together. Going through work by the fandom helped quite a bit. It warmed me up a lot to the denizens of the game, making me see them as the complex individuals they were. Thus primed, I was fully ready to give the Side Stories the respect they deserved. I'm very, very glad I waited. The writing is excellent. You really feel for each of the girls. This has made me all the more convinced that Doki Doki Literature Club wasn't just some fad from the late 2010s.

I just had to get this out, haha! Thank you, Team Salvato, for giving us something truly special!

Lots of interesting reviews on here for Kind Words. I'd like to add that I find its core "gameplay" design to be very wise. When someone posts a "Request" message, other people can each reply once to that, and that's it. There's no inbuilt way to go back and forth. Yes, you could insert personal information, but that's not encouraged. The anonymity is the point.

This addresses the problems of expertise, dependency, and toxicity.

Expertise, as most people aren't qualified mental health professionals. The character limit also puts brakes on how much is discussed.

Dependency, as sustained correspondence between a suffering person and a (presumed) good Samaritan could be detrimental to either party.

Toxicity, as Kind Words is trying to raise positive energy from the masses on Steam. You know how savage the gaming community can be at times. Anyone who receives an uncivil message in-game can report it.

I consider this a great improvement over the previous entries in this series. When I play those again, I find myself missing the new features in Kingdom Two Crowns. For one thing, the gameplay mechanics are more "efficient", e.g. fresh recruits now run from their vagrant camps to your base. For another, there is more structure to the missions, in the sense that you feel like you're conquering and gaining new territory in a tangible, systematic way. This is true across a campaign, and also for a single island.

The "Shogun" and "Dead Lands" DLCs take it to another level altogether. And they're completely free! "Shogun" is mostly a beautiful re-skin, with the main gameplay difference being the significantly denser forests -- with all that that entails. "Dead Lands" has more drastic changes: monarchs with powerful, supernatural powers can be unlocked, and the overall atmosphere of the lands within can be disorienting when you first play them. If that isn't value for money, I don't know what is.

It's worth mentioning the "Challenge Islands", self-contained scenarios with specific goals, meant for the veteran player thirsty for more. These keep you on your toes, but are really fun. At the time of writing this, four scenarios are playable, with slots for two that are in the works. I haven't tried local, split-screen co-op, so I can't comment on that feature.

In fact, the only thing I'd say falls a bit short is the soundtrack. I prefer the music in Kingdom: New Lands. The extra tracks that come with "Dead Lands" are spooky in a good way, though.

ADDITIONAL TEXT ON 23-Nov-2023: Re-reading my review over two years later, I find no reason to change anything. The game has since received regular tweaks too many to mention, all making for a better experience. A new "Challenge Islands" scenario was added, called "Lost Islands". I have nominated this game for the Steam Awards 2023 in the "Labor of Love" category. Seeing how much I have enjoyed it, I very happy to have done so! Also, note that a DLC, "Norse Lands", was released for Kingdom Two Crowns, but it is a separate purchase.

ADDITIONAL TEXT ON 28-Nov-2024: Here I am once again, due to the "Labor of Love" nomination for this year's Steam Awards! I do want that tick mark on that badge, ha ha! Seriously, though, it's a no-brainer for me. The "Call of Olympus" DLC was released in October. It's a paid add-on, and it's a decent and fun experience. The Greeks come with an interesting new-and-alternative method to assault greed portals, where you as the monarch lead your troops while carrying a banner. It's also possible to be accompanied in these assaults by warships firing ballista missiles at the enemy! It's a useful addition to your warfighting toolkit. Outside of the Greek faction, there are a raft of tweaks to the entire game. I actually played one of the older factions in a Challenge Island scenario, after buying "Call of Olympus" but before trying out the new campaign — to see what these tweaks were like. On the whole, I give these tweaks the thumbs up!

As the Store Page says, FLAC format is provided in addition to MP3. It looks like the devs listened to the earlier review that noted the lack of FLAC files previously. Yet another reason to buy this album! The music by itself is worth it, and I'm happy to have it in my collection.

As I usually do when I buy a bunch of games, I fired this one up to see how it was. I didn't close it after twenty minutes, though -- I kept playing until the end. And the next day, I did it again.

This game has successfully managed that elusive balance of gameplay, story, and aesthetics. I mention gameplay first, as Signs of the Sojourner is trying to be more than just a visual novel. I personally think the game mechanics have been carefully designed to give some inkling of the trickiness of human interaction. Quite often, quests and side quests can be derailed by conversations that go sour in maddening ways... as in real life. Thankfully, with some forethought, you can limit the extent of such setbacks.

The setting and story seem to be post-collapse. What we have here is as far away as you can get from Mad Max within the genre. If our current civilisation croaks, I do hope this is how we end up.

The art is sketchy in a pleasing way, and this, combined with the varied musical themes for each location, fills the characters and environments with life. The music is really, really easy on the ears, I should add.

I've done two playthroughs so far. As regards replayability, I've had different outcomes each time, with a bunch of threads left unexplored.

My secret word: Alien

With high chances of survival!

After a lengthy series of questions, some mystifying, I was treated to an unexpected, if interesting, outcome. I say interesting, because, while it did sound like something I would do (no surprises), I had given a few late-stage answers that were "out of my comfort zone" even though they were authentic (I have sometimes forced myself into acts I wasn't comfortable with, in real life).

Having been compelled into reasoning the way I did, I gave up on predicting where the game was going. This wasn't helped by the host -- very occasionally -- interjecting that certain late-stage answers of mine were unusual and such. Yes, we all know it's a program at work, a well-crafted program, but I cannot for the life of me say if my unusual answers were treated as statistical anomalies or if they contributed to my end result. That was an interesting session. Survive or Thrive is the second game from this developer that I've played, after The Test.

I am joining in the wave of approval because I feel this game deserves it.

Which is funny when I think about it, since there's no "gameplay" besides the series of questions, as far as I can see. No matter. I'm of the mindset that it's the job of a game, generally speaking, to draw you in without much effort on your part. That, it does well from the outset. I am very satisfied.

As for the game itself, I am impressed with the algorithm. It was able to pry out a very perceptive and accurate result for me. Your game be spitting facts!

NOTE: I'm going to indulge in a bit of arty-farty talk in this piece, so feel free to skip it if you're not in the mood. It's also not a proper review.

A decade ago, famed film critic Roger Ebert ignited a controversy when he asserted that video games could never be art. Following a tidal wave of pushback, he posted a follow-up article beginning with the sentence, "I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place." He had much more to say in that article, and I don't wish to misrepresent his position, so I would encourage you to read it for yourself. As far as this review is concerned, however, I can only agree with the self-assessment of that quoted sentence.

Is Oxenfree art? I opine that it is. As far as games go, narrative-driven, "story rich" titles bear the most obvious similarities to the established film and theatre mediums, and so have the most straightforward claim to being art. That's just my opinion, of course, and can be debated. Anyway, would Oxenfree be good, or even great art? That's a much thornier question, and one that I think can only be fully evaluated in a couple of decades. After all, the medium is still in its infancy. I'm not sure we have seen the equivalent of Citizen Kane... yet.

I bought Oxenfree on sale with a bunch of other titles. As is my wont, I ran each of them for a few minutes as a test. When I popped open Oxenfree, I was sucked in right from the opening scene and played all the way to the end. Then, I played the New Game+. In one sitting. I was hooked. Even now, a few years later, I still think of the game sometimes. It's as if you've left something behind with Alex, have become Alex.

There's a lot of justified criticism of the walking and running around. It can get tedious sometimes. It helps the immersion for me, though, which I put down to being invested in the situation in-game: a harried handful of teens pushing onward in the wee hours in the presence of a faceless horror. A more detached player would find it annoying.

I'm a late comer to this very, very popular game, and most of what I could say has already been said by thousands of other players. So, I'll just say...

After six failed attempts -- a few lengthy, a few short-lived -- my team finally made it to the promised land on the seventh try. My lead character had fallen just before the last battle, leaving the three survivors to fight their way through.

Looking for an all-at-stake, no-turning-around sort of adventure? Well, look no further. This game manages to evoke the feeling of just such an experience with each new playthrough, joining the ranks of those games that successfully use randomly-generated elements to help the story along. And does it succeed! The replay value is immense. You soon realise that each of your decisions carries real weight, and you're likely (statistically speaking) to be rewarded for boldness or caution if you choose judiciously. For instance, in the seventh attempt I mentioned, my team met a strange person on the road. Ignore or converse? My team was in good health, so I chose the latter. At another point they came upon two locations that were swarming with ravenous zombies. Seeing as how my team was then in bad shape, I elected to simply drive past. Let's say I did not end up regretting these. (Note: I had to play offline for awhile, so the time played shown here may be misleading.)