Recent reviews by Sigmar's Sausage

I waited a really long time to play this. I am one of the patient (cheap) gamer crew, so I waited for an eternity for this to go on sale. I’m glad I did because its pretty pricey for what it is. It still gets the thumbs up though because it is a pretty good slow burn horror game that has virtually no jump scares and relies more on narrative and a visceral feeling of being in the shoes of the character to make you feel uneasy.

+Martha is Pretty. This game is quite beautiful to look at. The world feels real and I enjoyed taking it all in.

+Martha is Engaging. The story is convoluted but not confusing and though slow, it engages you and puts you firmly in the shoes of the character through all the minutia of tasks that need to be completed. This may seem tedious for some. Taking photographs takes a lot of time to select lenses and adjust focus and framing. You then have to develop each picture in a darkroom. I enjoyed being the character and it felt like I was a professional photographer.

+Martha is Smart. There are puzzles in this walking sim and they are as painstaking as the photography at times. Generally you will know what you are supposed to do but there were some points where I felt lost.

+Martha is Dark. The story takes place in Nazi occupied Italy and covers some pretty deep and dark subject matter. You will see and hear things that might shock you. You will do one thing in particular that really made me squirm. In the end it was a great narrative that dealt with dark subject matter in a mature way.

+Martha is Well Voice Acted. The acting is all in Italian. I didn’t check to see if there was an English option. But I really enjoyed the Italian voice acting and reading the subtitles.

- Martha is Prone to Invisible Walls. I hate invisible walls. Its not something we need in the 21st century. Especially in this game where you move around a lot in a forest.

– Martha is Buggy. I had some save file problems and checkpoint troubles that set me back a bit throughout the game.

– Martha is Poorly Optimized. Its an indie, I get it. Optimization takes time and money. But still.

I am glad I finally got to play this. I think it is too much of an asking price and definitely recommend on a sale. If you are in the mood for a dark walking sim with some puzzles then its pretty good. As I mentioned before, there are horror elements to the game but it doesn’t have a single jumpscare. It is creepy because it immerses you in the life of the protagonist and it does a good job of keeping you engaged in the story.

I am a huge team Cyan fanboy. Check out my other reviews if you don’t believe me. Firmament is not bad but it just not something I would expect from the makers of Myst and Riven. It’s almost like my heroes have lived long enough to become the villains. Firmament feels like a VR tech demo, a really pretty one. But it’s really hollow, lifeless and lacks the vibrancy of a lore filled world I have come to praise Cyan for in the past. Complete and utter disappointment from me and it truly pains me to badmouth one of my favourite developers ever.

+ yet another beautiful Cyan world. It is pretty, sure, but honestly I still find Riven more visually enticing. Firmament is okay by standards 5 years ago. The remastered Myst is far better though.

- We don’t want you to use pencil and paper when you have VR. Cyan have thrown all codes, cyphers, journal clues and pretty much anything that would require a pencil and paper because they do not want to inconvenience VR players to remove their headsets and write stuff down. All of the puzzles in the game revolve around you using a Power Glove that can open doors, raise elevators, turn stuff around etc. And basically that’s your lot. Puzzles revolve around how to open doors, unlock things, revolve machinery and switch on generators. How far we have fallen from the glory days where we would look at alien machinery and push and prod buttons wondering how it worked. Now we button mash until it works (bugs permitting: see below)

– bring me No Pages! The story is garbage. Zero engagement apart from the first 5 minutes. What little is offered is so badly paced that it pops in at really inopportune moments and you don’t feel any intrigue or empathy for the character.

– Oh remember the cool rollercoaster rides from Riven that you wanted to do over and over again? Gone. Connection between worlds is a hallmark of Cyan games, they show you the stark contrast between worlds and tell you that you have reached a new zone. In Firmament the rides are so utterly boring they reward you with completing the ride with a teleport so you can skip the ride back.

– sound. Robyn Miler is so deeply missed with his departure after Obduction. The music and sound effects in Firmament are so uninspired they may as well be free assets.

– you will eat those bugs and you will like them. First up, I would not have expected the high standards of Cyan to allow their game to be released in this frankly awful buggy state. I had many game breaking bugs that required restarts. Crane bug, ice bug, elevator bug you might know about them. They are STILL there after almost a month of release. Trees are still flickering, I am still clipping into stuff. It is hard to rely on a puzzle game that refuses to play properly. Oh but Cyan have offered an option for you to be dropped back into the game at your last save if you encounter a bug. I am actually shocked that they did this. I have seen this same option in single dev indie games where they just didn’t have the time or couldn’t solve the problem. It is laughable that Cyan have chosen this option rather than release a bug free game. Shame on you.
THE CONCLUSION
You think I enjoyed writing this? Think again. I would have expected Firmament in 1992 as a precursor to Myst. It is shocking to see this being touted as team Cyan’s latest efforts. I don’t even care about the AI used to create artwork, script, diary entries etc in the game. I am beyond the energy to even care about that. THIS was Cyan’s big swing after Obduction which was really good. For them to take this weird direction after almost 2 million dollars worth of Kickstarter money is baffling. I do not recommend Firmament and even if they iron out all the bugs and make it run smooth as butter I STILL don’t recommend Firmament because it is a boring game with a boring story and if you are new to the Cyan franchise you should spend your money on Myst or Riven. Firmament is an affront to the Cyan name. I have honestly seen much better indie 5 dollar attempts at the genre.

Music aside this game is boring as hell. Even 1980s Outrun had corners to take at least. This game is like driving through a neon Idaho, nothing but straight boring roads.

Put on a screensaver and go listen to Gunship, Carpenter Brut, Perturbator, Com Truise, etc.

Nostalgia be a helluva drug to give this "game" Overwhelmingly Positive.

I have honestly played better Flash driving games than this.

Edit: the only reason I have more than 30 minutes in this game is because it takes forever for the cards to drop.

Let’s just say right off the bat that I love Scorn but it is not for everyone. I would describe this as a “Dark Souls” of Walking Sims in that it can be very unforgiving and difficult in places. If you are expecting a shooter then turn around and head back out the exit because Scorn is a linear walking sim with some very dicey shooting mechanics. But if you are interested in taking a stroll through an H.R. Giger inspired alien world and piecing together a strange tale of life and death told through a mashup of viscera and technology then oh boy, Scorn might be a great way for you to spend half a day. Honestly, looking back on the game the more I appreciate it.

+ drop dead gorgeous. This game is amazing to look at. I found a lot of my playtime was spent just gawking and screenshotting the environments and landscapes. It’s a hellish nightmare world of decay but it is so conversely beautiful at the same time. It literally oozes with life.

+ Look Ma! No Hands! There is zero handholding in this game. You are On. Your. Own. Things you can interact with are highlighted in the game but you will need to figure out everything else. I really appreciate the very limited use of a HUD, zero quest markers or tutorial. We are equally as lost as the main character.

+ Puzzling Surroundings. I enjoyed the labyrinthian areas to explore and puzzles to solve. I felt like I had really achieved something when I finally got a great hulking piece of alien technology to work, or I found that button that had been eluding me for the past 20 minutes. I felt rewarded for my curiosity but others might be frustrated by the very slow pace of the game.

+ easy peasy cheevy. Collecting all the cheevos was a cakewalk. There is only 1 point where the story has a decision to make that results in you missing one of the first cheevos. All the rest are mandatory and its just a case of restarting and doing the introduction again to get that sweet 100%.

- Too much cutting room floor lore. To fully understand the game you need to purchase the special edition with the artwork pdf. They tried to include lots more in the game but what didn’t make it into the final product ended up in a fairly extensive pdf. You can theorize about what the game is but its not until you see a detailed YouTube video that goes through the artwork pdf that you will understand the game in its entirety.

– Dud checkpoints. There are some terrible checkpoints in the game. The developers said they fixed them but I found a few more later in the game. You might find yourself having to replay a good chunk of the game again if you die. The good news is I didn’t really find myself dying until the late game stage anyway. But also consider where you save and exit for the night. Relying on the game’s autosave is worrying at times.

– Price-gore. I get it, this game took a long time to get made. I get it the artwork is great. But in my opinion the price tag is a touch too high. I would suggest buying in on a sale around the 20 dollar mark.

This game is very polarizing but its still currently sitting at a “mostly positive” on Steam but I can see that dropping to “mixed” once more people pick this up and give it a try. In all honesty I am not a superfan and had no idea of the kickstarter history and extended development of this game. It popped up and I wishlisted it a few weeks prior to launch because it looked interesting and different. And I got exactly that. Interesting and Different. I got a walking sim without all the audio logs and diary entries, I got a really awkward Katamari Damacy shooter, I got an old school puzzler where nothing is explained.

And I’ll end by saying something that’s sure to upset a few people: “It’s a better Prometheus than Prometheus.” You really get a good look at “The Builders” of the Scorned and you feel like an anthropologist/archaeologist piecing the parts of this doomed world together.

Finally, a game I’ve played that is worthy of a “The Room-like” comparison. Machinika Museum is a very short little puzzle game (2-3 hours) that borrows from the The Room but doesn’t outright steal from it as other titles in the genre have. It was refreshing to play this game and almost every level put a smile on my face when I found something new.

+ new gimmicks. Gone is the special lens that let you see a new layer. We now have 3 tools: a 3D printer, an endoscope and a sonic screwdriver type thing. Gone also is the item manipulation in the inventory for the most part. The game really wants you to just focus on the puzzle in the environment.

+ thanks for having me over but it’s time to get going. Machinika Museum has 7 levels and they are fairly short. Yes I was left wanting more but I appreciate they didn’t pad out the game to 10 hours. It’s a short little experience and because of this no level starts to feel stale and the game doesn’t get repetitive.

+ Myst-like machinery. Some of the artifacts you unbox are almost magical and you are puzzled at first by thinking “what even IS this thing?” and by the end you are well versed in this alien tech.

+ sights and sounds. Machinika Museum looks great and all the clicks and button pushes have satisfying accompanying sounds.

- the museum bit. I’m sorry I just don’t like it. This game would have been more believable if it were an X-Files or Fringe setting. The developers said they wanted to set it in a museum because they thought anything else would break immersion and the museum was more grounded. Trust me devs, we can handle it.

– the story bit. Maybe the story was just an afterthought seeing as they were intent on setting this in a museum and you were just cataloging strange items. I do really like the story they were building up to but in the end the whole thing falls a bit flat. I would love to see the story more developed in the sequel.

– difficulty and hints. For casual gamers this is a good one. But for the more hardened puzzle gamer/Room enthusiast there is going to be very little challenge here. I also found it surprising that there was no hint system in the game. Maybe this is why they made the puzzles so easy but if you do get stuck then you will be forced to look up a walkthrough.

- controls. Not a huge issue but on keyboard and mouse I found moving some items, especially rotating things, to be a pain. So the sonic screwdriver and mousing around things into a position was frustrating at times.

- pricey. Considering the length, the puzzle difficulty and some of the other cons listed, the price is too high. Get it on sale.

I really enjoyed the few hours I had in the Machinika Museum. If you are new to this kind of puzzle box genre of gaming then this is a great entrance point. I really hope the devs are working on the next installment and this journey continues. I look forward to more incredible machines and the difficulty ramping up a little bit.

Sometimes a little game comes along in a genre I don’t normally play but then completely takes me by surprise. RogueSlide is a great example of this. You block slide around a small 6x6 map and basically bump into enemies to cause them damage. But beware, the ones behind you will then bump into you and you might find yourself in a sticky situation. Magic scrolls can help you clear out areas and health potion will keep you alive until you find the exit. To which I would advise booking it to as fast as you can.

+ filthy casual. ‘Roguelike’ is a genre I am finding myself enjoying more of in recent days (looking at you Vampire Survivors). I am by no stretch of the imagination any good at them but I really like the fact they are easy to put down after 20 minutes. RogueSlide feels very casual but at the same time there is potential here for challenges that will appeal to the more hardcore nuts of the genre.

+ addictive. I honestly went in thinking I’d play for about 30 minutes and ended up staying almost 2 hours on my first runs.

+ room for improvement. There are a lot of things this game could potentially do to keep it fresh and punters coming back. There are Daily Challenges, an Endless Arena and 5 characters to unlock at the moment. It is possible new enemies, zones and modes could get introduced later.

- no cards or cheevos….yet. I know that certain elements of the Steam community will be all over this if the devs add these things. Not really a con, just a personal preference.

I was quite happy to get my hands on a reviewer copy of this game before launch. It might have slipped by me otherwise because a game like this is a little out of my wheelhouse. But it just goes to show that some good game design can carry a genre to new players and might also scratch an itch of the more hardened rogue-like fans too.

It genuinely baffles me why this game has thousands of reviews and is mostly positive. I don’t normally write negative reviews for games because a bad game is an easy target and it isn’t worth the time to vent even more on it.

For Slender: The Arrival I feel like people might look at the Mostly Positive and think oh, it must be good.
It really isn’t.

+ I mean……the scribbled pencil drawings are still cool from the original creepypasta. I did like looking at those.

- Hello Head Bob my old friend…..If you have ever wondered what it would feel like to play a game where it feels like your head is on a slinky that’s being shaken then ole Slendy got you covered. This is compounded in dark areas where you only have a flashlight area to look at and the beam is just doing arcs in front of you.

- Failure to proceed. I spent 30 minutes in the 2nd zone running in circles looking for an exit whilst avoiding Slenderman. It took me throwing my hands in the air and saying “♥♥♥♥ it just kill me” to trigger the cutscene to access the next level. JUST LET THAT AMAZING LEVEL DESIGN SINK IN. You had to get caught…..in a game that the whole raison d’etre is to stay alive and escape from Slenderman.....so that you could proceed in the game.

- Canned gaming. This game feels like a can of miscellaneous assets with a Slenderman sticker slapped on the front. This could have literally been ANY horror jumpscare game. It isn’t even scary. It has taken all the great tension builders from the free Eight Pages game and thrown it all out the window. Shame.

- Spenderman. Expecting people to pay 10 bucks for this is ridiculous.

From Something Awful forum creepypasta to just something awful on Steam. This game is a dire disappointment. There are far better horror walking sims out there especially at this asking price. Don’t waste your time or your money.

“Twoflower didn't just look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles, Rincewind knew--he looked at it through a rose-tinted brain, too, and heard it through rose-tinted ears.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

Armikrog is a decent game. Deal with it. I haven't played The Neverhood.....is my opinion still valid?

+ dat intro. Wow the opening is like a Saturday morning cartoon vibe mashed up with a game. I really loved that. I haven’t played The Neverhood. Maybe it has a really amazing intro….

+ not going to wet myself over the voicework but it does the job. It is always good to hear Michael J Nelson and Rob Paulsen. Beak Beak and Tommynaut are a fine duo. I’m not sure if The Neverhood has voiced lines. I’m sure that is really important for this review though.

+ Claymation is the new raytracing. The art in this game is pretty good. I’m sure it is nowhere as near as good as The Neverhood. But again I have never played The Neverhood and am just giving this game a thumbs up based on the actual content of this game and not the nostalgia fueled dollars I threw at this game on Kickstarter hoping to recapture that flame of what kept me alive as a college student or close to my older brother when I was 9 years old.

+ wacky soundtrack. The soundtrack for this game is all over the place and I love it. I’ll bet you The Neverhood has a better soundtrack. Oh wait…..according to many it does, even though it was made by the same guy that did the music for this game.

- IT'S NOT THE NEVERHOOD

- jokes aside. This game has some serious inventory issues and this is something that THE NEVERHOOD also does where you will find items and they won’t be labelled and you will just place them away in your chest and that’s that. You won’t be able to mouse over them, look at them, or even get an idea of what they are. You just have to hope that you click on something that is willing to accept them to be used.

- quality of life. There are some parts where you wish you could sprint. There are bits you wish you could cycle through a bit quicker. The save system is SCUMM but in 2015 and you think checkpoints might be a thing by now. Some puzzles could have been better optimized. But I’m sure The Neverhood had none of these issues.

Armikrog is a decent game if you get it on sale for a few bucks which is what I picked it up for. Full disclosure I own The Neverhood and that game is insanely good for being 25 years old. I mean it is seriously beautiful to play. Even the menu is Claymation. But it had the full weight of Dreamworks behind it and Armikrog had a Kickstarter with nothing but true believers. Don’t pick this up for chasing that nostalgia hit from playing the OG in 96’. Play it to celebrate what it is NOW….a dying genre of puzzle game with beautiful hand-made art that doesn’t get nearly enough attention and positive reviews because of all the people whining it isn’t some kind of time machine to take them back to when they still had optimism and delight in new ideas.

I’m not sure how to proceed with this one…..bear with me and please hear me out. Exo One is a game I really liked but cannot recommend to you. You need to be of a certain ilk to get into this one and I really suggest watching a few bits of a playthrough and reading reviews on both sides of the fence.

I am giving Exo One the thumbs up because it definitely does not deserve a thumbs down. But this is not a thumbs up in the way that if you like a certain kind of game then you will enjoy this. More like I liked it, everyone else on here seems to be going gaga for it but I can’t help but feel a lot of the reviews here are part of the Kickstarter crowd or were at least following it. I honestly expected a Mixed or Positive average on Steam. Not an Overwhelmingly Positive for sure.

+ ground control to Major Tom. The whole space exploration vibe that this game gives off is neat and you get a sense of the vastness of the universe. You definitely feel very Kubrick 2001 playing this.

+ controls? I’m putting this as a pro but it only kind of is a pro once you become a master. The game is like riding a bike. You will fall off a bunch, get frustrated a lot and maybe even consider quitting. However if you try harder you will become a master and you will be timing epic drops onto the sides of mountains and then flying into the sky with ease.

+ relaxing. The game is pretty chill and its quite a soothing experience to soar through the air and break the sound barrier.

+ What you see is what you get. Exo One is very honest about what it is and you can quite early on decide if this game is for you or not and refund it.

- dive in at the shallow end. Sure the worlds are huge and sprawling in every direction but all those directions lead to nothing. It feels procedurally generated….until the game decides it isn’t….which should be the title of my next con.

- UNTIL IT ISN’T. You will run out of energy and fall to the ground until the game has something it wants to show off and then magically you will keep on having just enough juice in the tank to continue flying. The worlds unfurl in every direction with not really much to see until you get on the rails and head for that laser in the distance. The game wants to put you under pressure at certain points until it decides ok, that was a fun bit of drama, it’s all over now.

- controls? So here we are again. I listed controls as a pro. Yes they are fun. Until they aren’t. The games difficult camera angles make controlling very hard at times. There are points where you can’t even see your craft and just basically have to kind of guess and hope for the best.

- “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” Don’t get me wrong. I fully defend Dear Esther’s lack of a sprint button. I am all for taaaaaakiiiiiinnnnnnng iiiiiiiiiit slowwwwwwwwww. But the vast stretches of empty space in Exo One have one major difference from Dear Esther. Dear Esther had something special to gawk at in each zone you were in and when you turned a corner (eventually) there was another. Yes, the worlds of Exo One are amazing. When you arrive in a new world you will most likely be blown away but within that world there is very little variety.

- camera. The camera is so boxed in. Maybe there is a way to get around this by toying with the FOV but I just want something to work out of the box and the free looking around is so tight when you want to be just soaking in the entire planet around you.

A lot of the stuff I have mentioned are probably very minor issues and might be something easy to fix.
But maybe it’s me and I am very difficult to fix.

I really liked this game but a lot of the other reviews are really blowing it way out of proportion. Yes I know it was made by the holy one man dev team but the one dev ticket does not grant you immunity from criticism. This game is flawed. Massively flawed.

But I love indies and flaws come with the territory.

I am also flawed.
temet nosce

Sacrifices must be made…

Inscryption is an escape room/ARG/puzzle game with some FMV moments, wrapped up in a turn based deckbuilding card game roguelike. If that sounds like a lot to swallow, don’t worry……It is, but the game does a fantastic job of scaffolding you up and taking it one step at a time. You won’t get very far until you really know what you are doing.

THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW because, well, it’s a Dan Mullins game and secrets and twists in story is kind of his thing. see Pony Island and The Hex

+ reinventing the wheel. Inscryption takes your basic beckbuilder and modifies it in a way that keeps it simple enough for people new to the genre to understand and enjoy. It also allows veterans to create OP decks (like an ant deck that will allow hitting face for lethal on turn 1 for 16 damage) and have a lot of fun playing around with different builds (I found some pretty neat synergies and unexpected combos). Not only this but the game is constantly reinventing itself too, giving further variations with new cards and mechanics.

+ Jonah Senzel. This guy does the sounds and music for all of Dan Mullins’ games. Inscryption’s soundboard is spot on and the music from the menu to the boss battles is exactly correct for the mood.

+ “Nice game. Can I break it?” And the answer to this is, of course! Finding secrets, breaking things and outclassing the NPCs is key if you want to survive and solve the mystery. I love this about these kinds of games that sway in and out of reality, breaking the 4th wall occasionally and leaving you a bit spooked that someone might be actually watching you.

+ YOU GET A PUZZLE! AND YOU GET A PUZZLE! Puzzles puzzles everywhere in this game. Play the card game, solve puzzles. Get up from the card game to walk around, solve other puzzles. Watch an FMV and pause it at the right moment……puzzle. What about this seemingly uninteresting piece of furniture? Yep, it’s a puzzle. Depending on how deep you want to delve into what the game has to offer, the main story line puzzles range from easy as sacrificing a squirrel for a Stoat, all the way up to some real headscratchers. But if you want to really discover the secrets behind the curtain you are going to have to get your Discord hat on and join the group to add your brain to the think tank.

+ Sit at the table and let me tell you a story. From what I can piece together about the story of the game, we have an extremely dark story, psychologically and even visually from time to time. There is plenty of explicit storytelling but also a lot of things you might need to fill in the gaps on if that’s your kind of thing too.

- It’s almost too deep. I get the feeling that without joining the Discord, taking part in the ARGs and watching Youtube videos I will never really fully understand this game or at the very least see everything that it has to offer. I wish I had the time to delve into every little facet of the game and discover it all for myself but I don’t. And this makes me sad.

- “It’s a deckbuilding card game but not as we know it, Jim.” As a game, Inscryption works very well but as a card game it won’t really have the draw to keep you coming back for more in that aspect. There are no new cards to unlock after the credits. There is no PvP aspect, which is such a shame because it would be amazing to build your own cards and play against other people online. So at the end of the day Inscryption is a clever video game with some well thought out card game shell around it.

I absolutely loved this game. I am an old balding fool now who is often nonplussed by new games. Getting into Inscryption had me grinning from ear to ear. It is great value for money considering the price and the length of gameplay you will get out of it.

You can play the original of this game Sacrifices Must Be Made [dmullinsgames.itch.io] and get a feel for the darkness and style of what you are getting into.

If you do check out that link and like what you see, do yourself a favour….don’t watch, read or even glance at anything else related to the game and just grab a squirrel, a knife and a pair of pliers and sit down at the table with your deck.