HIGH Solid, classic-style 2D graphics and catchy tunes.

LOW Brutal difficulty even higher than the original.

WTF The first game I’ve seen where the score resets after losing a life…

Difficulty is a topic that has dominated the discourse over the last few months. However, let’s all agree on a simple point — finding the right balance between challenge and enjoyment isn’t easy at all. Some developers can spend years tinkering with a formula before release, but in the case of Ganryu 2, I think this one needed more time in the lab.

As readers have surely noticed, the “2” in the title indicates that this is a sequel. The original is a little-known (and not very special) 1999 Neo-Geo side-scrolling hack-and-slash which featured two playable characters. Apparently, Storybird Studio thought it was the perfect IP to bring back to life and develop a sequel to.

Narratively, there’s not much to pay attention to — Miyamoto Musashi, the protagonist of the original, gets called back to Japan to fight against evil. No second playable character here.

The press release mentions both Shinobi 3 and Shadow Dancer as inspirations for Ganryu 2. Indeed, the idea is clearly there in the way Musashi roams the Japanese countryside dispatching enemies left and right. Yes, this is a classic 2D side-scrolling hack-and-slash with a few alt weapons, wall-jumping and such, but essentially players run and jump around, dispose of enemies, reach the boss at the end of the level, and progress. There’s nothing more to it than that, but there doesn’t need to be.

Still, mentioning a huge classic like Shinobi III as a point of comparison reveals right away the problem with Storybird’s attempt — there is no flow nor rhythm to the gameplay here. Where Sega’s work felt like a magical dance in the way their ninja progressed through each level with beautiful 2D graphics and an exquisite Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack, none of that same energy is here.

The jumps feel floaty and imprecise, the rhythm is constantly interrupted by enemies spawning everywhere, and above all, the difficulty feels cheap.

Ganryu 2 wants the player to memorize every little obstacle by trial and error in an oldschool way, which would be fine if the player wasn’t punished for death by resetting the score, losing all power-ups and being set back quite a way. While Musashi has a health meter, a hit often sends him flying back (good old ‘Nintendo Hard’ trope design) into an abyss.

Worse, there are no difficulty settings (nor any settings at all, except for volume) which is a bewildering sight for a retro-themed 2022 release. Players dealt with this kind of difficulty because we had to back in the 8- and 16-bit days, but design and player concessions have come a long way since then. Seeing the words ‘game over’ with all of the penalties that come with it in Ganryu 2 will not be a welcome sight.

Technically, Ganryu 2 stutters a lot on the Switch, especially in Stage 2. This is is indeed a problem when the action requires one to be extremely careful. Apparently things got worse after the first patch and the team is working on another, but still.

Apart the stuttering, the otherwise-pleasing graphics get in the way of the action. Some visual elements are foregrounded and obscure the enemies which tend to randomly spawn whenever one goes exploring about, sometimes even right on top of the player’s sprite. These aspects of the difficulty in Ganryu 2 simply do not feel fair since skill won’t help.

Retro players starved for a Shinobi-like title who also relish mastery through repetition will surely see this as the perfect opportunity — just be sure to get anything other than the Switch version. For everyone else, Ganryu 2‘s try-and-die learning curve is repulsive, and the trial-and-error design harshly punishes the player for every little mistake. It’s one of those rare titles that I do not wish to go back to.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Storybird Studio and published by Pixelheart. It is currently available on Switch and PS. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on Switch. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game is rated E10+ by the ESRB for Fantasy Violence. Overall, there’s not much in the way of violence and there is no blood, but considering the brutal difficulty of the game I would probably recommend this to a teen audience.

Colorblind Modes: there are no colorblind modes and also, the graphics make identifying the enemies quite more difficult than it should be.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not feature spoken dialogue, nor are audio cues used to communicate enemies’ attacks. Text cannot be altered or resized. In my view, the game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game is controlled by moving the character around with the D-pad, using B to jump, A to slash and Y to throw kunai daggers (see included scheme). It is not possible to remap the controls.

The post Ganryu 2 Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Selling 100 cola products and getting Captain Cola to visit the zoo.

LOW Having a hundred tasks to keep track of.

WTF Filling the pizzas with chili to sell more colas…

These days, zoos definitely don’t have the same great reputation that they used to. Most of us born in the ’80s used to take regular trips to see the animals, but it’s just as common to hear zoos described as “places that keep creatures in chains” as it is to hear them billed as “educational experiences based around wildlife”.

Let’s Build a Zoo finds itself in the middle of this moral conundrum, but at heart it’s an isometric, menu-based management sim, heavily inspired by titles like Theme Park or Two Point Hospital. Players will build a zoo, get customers in, take care of the animals, decorate everything, and try not to go out of business.

Successfully stocking the exhibits is done in two ways, either by adopting them from all over the world or doing trades with other zoos. As a gameplay feature it feels underdeveloped — it seems largely meant to keep growth at a slow pace and to prevent the player from getting all the animals as soon as they start. Put a pause on those zebras, players will usually start with rabbits, pigs, geese, and so on.

The interface is the mouse-driven variety common to the genre with a few keyboard shortcuts thrown in. Unfortunately, something doesn’t feel quite right. It is especially noticeable when doing things like laying down paths to direct customer traffic — one would expect to simply drag and drop tiles and right-click to delete, but it instead requires a slightly more complicated series of clicks.

The interface itself also feels lacking in a larger sense. For example, to get a list of the Zoo’s staff, it’s unintuitively required to click on the entry gate, yet there is no obvious button that one would expect on screen to prompt it.

Aside from small quibbles like this, everything else about Let’s Build a Zoo works great and the pacing is well done. It’s easy to get lost in the larger mechanics of getting animals and putting down shops, and just as easy to dip into smaller things like regulating the amount of salt to put in the chips or sugar in the cotton candy. There are many fine details as well, like every animal having its own name, seeing VIPs visiting the zoo, and there’s even DNA splicing to create the perfect hybrid between any two animals to really draw the crowds. A pig/snake (pigake?) combo, anyone?

Also interesting is a morality system — apparently it’s possible to be good or evil. For example, getting animals on the black market nets the player evil points. Accumulating these unlocks things like factories that will pollute the environment but net the zoo quite a bit of money. Remain on the good side by reporting the black marketeers and not euthanizing extra animals, and other features can be unlocked, like a recycling plant to keep the environment clean.

Overall, the juxtapositions between handling moral choices and trying to build a successful business make for entertaining gameplay. This balance also helps keep thingse more interesting than the average entry in the crowded management sim genre.

Graphically, there’s not much to note about Let’s Build a Zoo, since it uses basic 2D pixel graphics with the usual isometric view — it could easily pass as a mobile game to be played on a tablet.

Let’s Build a Zoo is an interesting take on a genre that has been done to death, taking the complicated business of running a zoo and doing something with it that is thought-provoking and still manages to keep the player entertained. Definitely recommended.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Springloaded and published by No More Robots.It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game had not been rated by the ESRB at the time of review, but it doesn’t seem to contain anything that I would think needs a warning. There is non-graphic animal death, of course, but it can still be recommended to a wide audience.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not feature spoken dialogue, and the interface (and text) can be resized. Audio is not necessary to play the game. In my view, the game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game is controlled exclusively via the mouse with some additional keyboard shortcuts that can be remapped if one wants to.

The post Let’s Build A Zoo Second Opinion appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH An accurate reconstruction of ’40s Italy with pleasant graphics.

LOW Too much gore and not enough research into characters’ psyches

WTF The newspaper written in two languages.

The Town of Light by Italian developer LKA was among my favorite experiences in 2016. It told a harrowing story of how patients were treated in mental hospitals back in the ’40s and ’50s, complete with case reconstructions based on historical research. Martha is Dead tries — apparently — to do the very same thing, but with a completely fictional story set in the same period and the results don’t stack up.

The story begins in 1945, in a small Tuscan villa occupied by Nazis. Main character Giulia witnesses the dead body of her sister Martha floating in a lake. The story then follows Giulia as she tries to figure out exactly what happened, and why her memories regarding the fateful day are so vague. It soon becomes clear that Giulia is an unreliable narrator and by the end it remains unclear whether the events actually took place at all.

The game raised eyebrows after Sony asked the devs to reduce or remove certain violent scenes in order to be published on PlayStation, so I played the uncut PC version for the purposes of this review. For those wondering, there are only a few scenes, though they are quite graphic — things like a body being cut open or a face being removed from a character with a sharp tool. However, since the story is about psychological horror (there are no serial killers nor any supernatural elements) this imagery feels mostly irrelevant, existing only to amp up the shock factor. Ironically, the story feels less effective as a result of its presence.

The gameplay is, as with The Town of Light, of the “walking simulator” variety — travel in first-person, interact with items, pick up a few select ones and progress the story. There is no character interaction, but LKA did try to develop a few mechanics, which mostly left me scratching my head. The first is taking pictures with a complicated camera setup, then developing said photos in a “real darkroom”. This is used a few times to further the narrative, and the game also entices players to take “extra” pictures, but the purpose is never clear.

Then, there’s the telegraph. Oh boy.

At one point the story grinds to a halt because the game offers the choice to communicate with the partisan resistance forces by using a telegraph as one would in real life, morse code and all. The problem is that, instead of providing a clear morse code scheme, there is a complicated, nonsensical picture to use as a reference. In the end, the puzzle is simple (even though sending and decoding eight messages is a bit much) but I had to resort to looking up Morse code on my phone, which definitely did not support the immersion.

Then, at the end, another mechanic rears its head — a puppet show. The point is to move puppets in the correct order to make them play out scenes from Giulia’s memory. It’s barely a challenge at all, and like the rest, seems little more than an attempt to provide some sort of gameplay apart from walking. Worse, instead of being naturally spread throughout the story (which is only around 6-7 hours) they’re all clumped closely together, so they become irritating in a hurry.

On Steam, the developers list “unashamedly authentic voice acting in Italian”. Well, I don’t know what they mean by authentic exactly, but I played with English subs on and couldn’t help but notice something strange. The subs would say different things than the voiceovers, and the discrepancies couldn’t be easily explained as slight differences in translation. I’m really not sure if I should have followed the story told in the subtitles or the one in the voice acting. There’s more language confusion elsewhere — if one reads a newspaper, half is in Italian and the other half in English. This jumble makes for Tower of Babel-like confusion.

After The Town of Light, LKA’s team of male writers decided to try their hands at writing another woman with mental health problems, touching upon issues like pregnancy, menstrual cycles and abortion. The overall message seems to be about caring for one’s mental health — something I’m sure we can all get behind — but the mechanics are too peripheral and the script is too confusing, gory and horrific for a tale that is ostensibly about a woman’s interior journey. By the time credits rolled, I was not convinced that the version of Giulia’s story present here was one worth telling or experiencing.

Disclosures: This game is developed by LKA and published by Wired Productions. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5 and XB. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game is rated M by the ESRB, it contains Blood, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Self Harm and Violence. It features quite a lot of harrowing scenes, so this is one definitely recommended for adults only (and not for anyone squeamish). The game does feature warnings before one particular scene of self-harm, even though it ends up being slightly less violent than others with no warning.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All spoken dialogue in the game features subtitles, but text cannot be altered or resized. The telegraph gameplay section is subtitled so it can still be played, even though it might be more difficult without audio. This game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: On PC, the game is controlled like most first-person titles — WASD to move around the the mouse to interact. Shift can be used to run. The controls are not remappable. there is no control diagram.

The post Martha Is Dead Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Strong writing and nostalgic vibes.

LOW Repetitive puzzles and a janky overall look.

WTF Why do I feel like I wouldn’t mind living in Union City?

Trying to make a sequel to a game originally released 28 years ago is no easy task. I can only imagine that when UK studio Revolution Software, of Broken Sword fame, decided to pitch a follow-up to their 1993 dystopian cult classic Beneath a Steel Sky, they did so well aware of what they were getting into.

Honestly, Beyond doesn’t go out of its way to brush newcomers up on the story so far — instead, after a rather strange comic book-style intro, we are merely dropped into a desert and left to discover old plot points as we move through the narrative. We play as Robert Foster and our main objective is rescuing a child who has been kidnapped and brought to Union City, a mega utopia built in the middle of the desert. Naturally, players can expect many classic sci-fi tropes about a ‘perfect’ society that is not as perfect as it seems.

Beyond a Steel Sky is still very much a point-and-click adventure game like its predecessor, with the exception that it’s more controller-friendly. We directly control Robert’s movements, trying to focus the screen on items or people. Then, we can interact with them by examining, talking (or more rarely) using inventory items on them. Interactivity is mostly limited to what’s required for the character progress, which is a bit of a shame.

While the initial sequence does hint at classic graphical adventure mechanics — find items, talk to characters, solve puzzles — the rest of the experience follows a new blueprint. At the end of the first scene, a character gives Robert a hacking tool, and most of the puzzles that follow will involve interacting with that tool in order to modify the behavior of various systems we find. For example, making a robot act erratically to distract a guard, or swapping the ‘close’ and ‘open’ functions of a door.

While some of the solutions are inventive and others lead to funny situations, overall this new philosophy on solving most puzzles gets old pretty fast because of its repetitive nature. As a side note, there is an in-game hint system available for players who get stuck, with a 30 second pause between each hint if one requires one more than one push in the right direction.

Gameplay mechanics aside, another change is the new 3D approach to graphics and a sort of ‘open world’ design. In a time when many developers are sticking to the classic 2D formula of old, these are bold choices for sure. However, I’m afraid to say they didn’t really pay off. The world of Beyond feels empty for the most part, with only a few characters ever walking around. There’s no environmental sense of ‘perfect city gone wrong’, which is instead conveyed via the writing. Ironically, this dystopia doesn’t look like a bad place to live!

Speaking of the graphics, Beyond seems like it’s from ten years ago, rather than two. I’m not faulting it for not looking entirely up to date, but the results here are janky and weird. For example, many times Robert will be awkwardly placed directly in front of the character he’s talking to, obstructing the view. 3D models clip through each other regularly, and animations need to be fully played out for our character to successfully interact — if he’s standing just slightly off the proper position, he’ll get stuck mid-animation!

Despite this rough transition in production and mechanics, Revolution Software does show strength in the writing and quirky characters which populate the world of Beyond a Steel Sky. Veteran adventure writer Charles Cecil was at the helm here, and his expertise makes for a fascinating series of encounters. The spirit of the original Steel Sky is at least partially intact, and the story will alternate between serious bits of world lore and humorous situations to great effect.

For example, in the museum of of Union City we encounter a religious fanatic. We’ll have to think of inventive methods to get rid of him, since we need the help of his daughter who’s stuck with him. Despite the puzzle still using the same hacking mechanics, it does so in amusing ways — in the end, the guy will have to lose faith before the path ahead is clear.

In the end, recommending Beyond a Steel Sky is a a sticky thing — if one is content with a strongly-written sci-fi adventure and doesn’t mind repetitive puzzles, there is good content to be found here. On the other hand, I suspect the huge gap between installments runs a very real risk of leaving both new and returning fans unsatisfied.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Revolution Software. It is currently available on PC, XBX/S, PS4/5 and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on Switch. Approximately 7 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game is rated T by the ESRB, it contains Mild Language, Partial Nudity, Use of Alcohol and Violence. Personally, in my hours with the game I haven’t seen much for concern except for a couple of people fighting, but still, considering the overall dystopian themes it’s to be recommended to a teen-and-up audience.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue in the game is subtitled (see examples above) however, be aware that there are conversations which take place far away from the character that are subtitled when he gets closer. Still, they are not essential or necessary for successful play. Text cannot be altered or resized. In my view, the game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game is controlled by moving Robert around with the left analog stick and rotating the camera with the right stick. A is used for interacting with most other items. The touchscreen is not used and it is not possible to remap the controls. There is no control diagram.

The post Beyond A Steel Sky Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Inspired architecture.

LOW Issues with performance and random crashes.

WTF Finishing Hardcore with no autosave on…

Developed by two-man team BleakMill over the course of three years, Industria is a first-person shooter set in an alternate future, in a timeline which feels inspired both by steampunk and aesthetics of Eastern Europe during the Cold War of the late ’70s and early ’80s.

The story sees young scientist Nora on the hunt to discover what fate befell her missing husband. In doing so, she ends up in an alternate future where the artificial intelligence project the couple was working on, named ATLAS, has taken over. The AI is in full ‘Skynet’-mode (see: Terminator) and will stop at nothing to eradicate all human lifeforms. As a result of its actions, Nora is the only human around for the entirety of the adventure.

While it’s refreshing to see an ordinary protagonist who doesn’t behave like an elite soldier or superhero, this choice to use a ‘normal’ person ultimately makes little difference as Nora doesn’t seem to question things or doubt herself — she just starts using weapons immediately and gets to it.

As our antagonist is an AI, of course Nora’s enemies will be of the robotic kind — most will attack physically, and only few of them will shoot. Foes are many and resources are scarce, even though it is possible to explore and find more ammo and health vials in crates and furniture. Personally, I didn’t have problems with scarcity of ammo, except right at the very start when I was stuck using the initial pistol. While there are enough enemy types to keep things varied, from mechanical dogs to mannequin-like automatons, none of the designs are particularly memorable.

Apart from the first-person combat, Industria offers a puzzle involving electricity and valves in the first 20 minutes of play. One would reasonably expect to find others later, but instead it ends up being the only one. The rest of the campaign’s puzzles are mostly about dragging crates around to use for jumping, so no minds will be taxed here. Despite the poor puzzles, the combat is solid and since Nora is not capable of withstanding more than a couple of hits, tension always runs pretty high.

While its mechanics are… fine?… where Industria shines is in its marriage of architecture and narrative. Tthe steampunk setting suggests a world where there is much to be explored. Unfortunately, the narrative develops along cliché lines by asking the player to read notes laying around and talking to an unknown person via radio — both things which have been done by countless titles, countless times before. On the plus side, the voice actors are particularly good.

Industria‘s best aspects are its solid combat and beautiful architecture. While this might not be enough for other titles, these things do carry its 4-5 hour runtime, and by not overstaying its welcome it remains engaging enough until the end.

Disclosures: This game is developed by BleakMill and published by HeadUp. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game is not rated by the ESRB, but it contains violence. Even though most of the enemies are robots, given the abundance of guns and shooting and the quality of the narrative, I would recommend it at least to a teen audience.

Colorblind Modes: There are several colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game features subtitles for all spoken dialogue. Text can be resized and the on-screen duration can be modified as well. There are some audio cues from the enemies, but the subtitles help in that regard.

Remappable Controls: Being a PC FPS, the game is designed to be controlled with a combination of keyboard plus mouse — using WASD to move the character and the mouse to look around and shoot, while Q is used to replenish health and E to interact with objects. The controls are remappable.

The post Industria Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Solid 2D graphics and voice acting.

LOW Some bugs and issues dampen the experience.

WTF No more fourth wall-breaking jokes please!

The recent resurgence of 2D point and click adventure titles seems to have no end, so much so that “recent” hardly seems the right word for it: this wave has been crashing for a few years now. Encodya is yet another, and it sits right in the middle of the pack — not entirely derivative of the classics, yet it doesn’t attempt to cover new topics or to surprise players who know the genre.

In the city of Neo Berlin, orphan Tina lives homeless on the streets with her caretaker robot Sam, their relationship the only thing that’s kept them from going crazy in their bleak, grey future. As the story begins, she has an opportunity to find out what happened to her disappeared father, while also looking into the mayor’s plans to transform Neo Berlin.

Players can expect the usual 2D adventure tropes — pick up objects and items, combine them, and talk with characters to solve puzzles. Encodya kindly keeps track of objectives needed to advance and, on easy mode, will also highlight interactable objects on screen.

The narrative is not of paramount interest, but it does touch upon some interesting political topics relevant to modern times, despite not going in-depth on any of them and remaining mostly light in tone throughout. That said, the humor is a bit hit-or-miss, relying a bit too much on ‘fourth wall’ jokes and pop culture references. It’s not over-the-top, though, and on the whole I’d say this is primarily a light cyberpunk-ish drama and not a comedy.

The puzzles are not too difficult, but I would still recommend sticking to easy mode since Encodya wants the player to engage in some irritating pixel hunting at times, and such design – at least for me – does not make the experience entertaining. There are also a couple of instances where ‘moon logic’ crops up, like a random line of dialogue that nets Tina an item for no clear reason whatsoever.

Encodya was first released on PC, but this console release comes with a controller-friendly scheme which mostly works even though — for some reason — it switches from direct control to point-and-click when items are being handled. Unfortunately, in addition to this new control scheme, the console version also comes with a slew of technical issues like random loading times (sometimes up to 30 seconds just to switch screens!) subtitles disappearing, and stuttering after loading has been completed.

For these reasons, Encodya might be best recommended to hardcore adventure players who are on the hunt for something to quench their thirst on consoles. And even in this case, maybe wait for a few patches…

Disclosures: This game is developed by Chaosmonger Studios and published by Assemble Entertainment. It is currently available on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox . This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PS4. Approximately 3 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was not completed. There are co-op multiplayer modes available.

Parents: The game is rated E10+ by the ESRB, and it contains Alcohol Reference, Fantasy Violence and Mild Language. Considering there is nothing much in the way of sensitive topics or content, I would recommend it also to a younger teen audience.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game features subtitles for all spoken dialogue. No audio cues are needed for gameplay. Text cannot be altered or resized. (See examples above.) In my view, the game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game is controlled by moving the character around with the left analog stick and interacting with the X button, along with the triangle button to open the inventory. It is not possible to remap the controls. There is no control diagram.

The post Encodya Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Pleasant 2D graphics with nice animated sprites.

LOW Run-of-the-mill platforming gameplay with average humour.

WTF The hipster woodcutter stereotype feels very 2005.

The makers of Encodya decided to switch from the nostalgic flavors of a point and click adventure to… well, the not-too-far-removed nostalgic flavors of an early ’90s 2D platformer.

Clunky Hero follows the adventures of a bucket-wearing hero intent on going out to rescue his wife, plus doing sidequests for whoever he meets.

The writing likes to underline the fact that this is, indeed, “A Videogame”: fourth-wall breaking jokes come around a bit too often for my liking, along with characters complaining of “lazy writing”. While the humor failed to get a laugh out of me, it’s not offensive (for the most part) and it doesn’t get in the way of the gameplay.

While the developers use the word “metroidvania”, this feels like an inappropriate use of the term, since Clunky Hero would be best described as a free-roaming 2D platformer. The player is free to explore at their leisure while defeating enemies, collecting coins, jumping around and solving quests (which are, for the most part, of the “fetch” variety). In my mind, a metroidvania would offer something more — some RPG elements, loot to collect or, at the very least, experience/level up mechanics. None of this is in Clunky.

It is possible to learn new skills, like the incredibly necessary genre-standard double jump, but what’s on offer adds little to the overall play beyond having to go back to areas which have been previously visited, and this doesn’t clear the metroidvania bar for me.

Combat is okay but lacks variety. Each defeated enemy will drop coins, but these are only useful to buy health and mana-restoring items which makes collecting them feel like it’s of low purpose. Further, most of the enemies in Clunky Hero are quite inoffensive, which makes killing them tedious — they’re dangerous only if the player gets distracted and they get the drop on them. What’s worse is that these enemies respawn as Clunky leaves the area, and since there’s little value in defeating them again, this gets annoying fast.

There’s no way to buy upgrades to weapons, nor different kinds of armor or amulets of any kind. Some weapons can be obtained via solving quests and… that’s it. So, the gist of the gameplay is walking around, killing enemies and solving puzzles of the “pull lever to open door” variety.

This is all fine, really. I’m not against the kind of simple gameplay Clunky Hero offers, but I definitely feel like there’s room for improvement as it’s still in Early Access. That said, I doubt that it will evolve into something much different than its current form — it’s just an overall solid platformer that checks off the required boxes, and nothing more.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Chaosmonger Studio. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game is not rated by the ESRB, but it contains violence, sexual references and mild horror with enemies like goblins and big heads. Skipping the dialogue, this could be for all audiences. However, considering some of the humor, I would recommend it to a teen audience.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not feature spoken dialogue, nor are audio cues used to communicate enemies’ attacks. Text cannot be altered or resized. In my view, the game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game is controlled via the keyboard or gamepad (see diagram), with the D-pad to move around, A to jump and X to attack. Controls cannot be remapped.

The post Clunky Hero Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Stunning comic book art style that goes perfectly with classic FPS mechanics.

LOW Wasted narrative potential.

WTF The arena segments devolve into random, chaotic battles.

Released in Early Access last year with a potential 1.0 release sometime in 2022, Forgive Me Father plays like a classic First-Person Shooter of old. Indeed, while controller support is available, this experience is clearly meant for the old WASD + mouse control scheme, which will give great satisfaction to those who cut their teeth on it.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a strictly Lovecraftian FPS and Forgive Me Father delivers on that premise, featuring several Cthulhu-influenced enemies like a purple-headed liquidator that shoots green goo, or mental health patients that turn into monsters, along with classic locations like graveyards and sanitariums.

Unfortunately, while the narrative has potential to deliver a gripping storyline via comic book cutscenes, there’s ultimately little of it to speak of.

Don’t get me wrong, there actually is a story, but it’s delivered via (apparently?) randomly-placed items found throughout play, which need to be interacted with. These story bits are gone the moment the player closes up the popup window that appears, and overall they seem to be of little consequence with regard to what actually goes on in the gameplay.

For example, our protagonist is a priest but, that doesn’t seem to influence the proceedings much, nor do we get insights or many comments from him, aside from a rare “poor damned souls!” bark.

While the weapons aren’t inventive (the usual takes on pistol/shotgun/machinegun/rocket launcher are on offer here) they can be upgraded via experience points. The player can use them to either modify weapons with weird monstrous effects or an akimbo revolver mode, or to upgrade magic powers.

These powers can be useful in tight corners — there’s a cross used for healing (a rare connection to our character being a priest) and the Necronomicon is also available and can be used to go full-on mad while delivering heightened damage. However, most of this stuff is par for the course in the retro-themed FPS subgenre.

At times, Forgive Me Father feels like a great idea that lost its way during development. There’s no denying that it offers a robust package of first-person shooting gameplay, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s so much more it could offer. With more emphasis on the narrative and the addition of more interesting mechanics beside shooting and strafing, this could be a much more robust experience. For now, it’s recommended only to hardcore FPS throwback fanatics.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Byte Barrel and published by 1c Entertainment. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game is not rated by the ESRB, but it contains violence, blood, gore and horror with zombies and monsters. Considering the type of content and that it’s horror experience, this is definitely one for an adult audience.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not feature spoken dialogue, but many times audio cues are used to communicate enemies’ attacks or proximity and there are no supporting visual cues. Text cannot be altered or resized. In my view, the game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game can be controlled via gamepad or classic keyboard and mouse combination, using the mouse to look around and shoot with the left button and moving around and using objects with the keyboard. It is possible to remap the controls.

The post Forgive Me Father Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH A unique plant shop concept.

LOW The gameplay loop could have used some more finesse.

WTF Where are the Little Shop of Horrors references?

Running a plants and flowers shop isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially if one lives in a town full of Lovecraftian horrors that go bump into the night. Bad Viking’s adventure title Strange Horticulture does indeed play at first like a straightforward shop sim, so if this is something one has always dreamed of, it’s here. However, there’s a bit more to it than that…

The game takes place in our store with a fixed view where it’s possible to click on various points of interest to interact with them — click the door to greet customers, the window display to select a plant, a book to check out the various features of each plant, and so on.

The overall story involves finding out what is going on with the shop, and the narrative will indeed involve demons and witchcraft, but it’s mostly with a ‘light horror’ vibe — nothing too gruesome.

The bulk of our daily routine will consist of trying to identify, with relative certainty, what plants our customers wish for. Usually, we are given a generic description of what the client wants — what it smells like, or what the leaves are shaped like — and we are left on our own to find the plants. This is the main gameplay loop and players will either find it quite relaxing or intensely boring, depending on one’s tolerance for slow-paced puzzlers.

As things progress, the player will read up on more clues and characteristics of each plant and use that information to choose the right one to keep the customers happy. For example, one plant might have hallucinogenic effects, so giving that to someone who can’t sleep might have some serious (un)intended consequences… A good shop owner will steer hat person towards something more appropriate.

Oddly, the clues are sometimes not be enough to pinpoint a single plant, so it will end up being a bit of a guessing game between two or three similar species. For a puzzler, this lack of specificity feels unsatisfying. Picking the wrong plant will make the customer unhappy, which will ramp up our stress. Stressed players will need to calm down, otherwise they cannot manage the shop.

Our shifts in the shop are usually punctuated by story events and some occasional downtime to either rest or pick up some new exotic variety to sell — our stock on hand starts out quite limited, so it’s not long before the ‘adventure’ part of Strange Horticulture kicks in.

Armed with a map (and a pretty huge one, at that) we’ll have to hunt down more plants. Again, this will be a matter of using clues to their whereabouts to decide where to go ‘hunting’, but it works mostly the same as the main gameplay loop — use hints to try and guess the right place to look.

While the gameplay is simple and the core loop of identifying plants and making customers happy might be too repetitive overall, Bad Viking’s slow-burn title might end up feeding a green thumb that some players didn’t even know they had.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Bad Viking and published by Iceberg Interactive. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 3 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game is not rated by the ESRB, but it does not seem to contain salty language nor violence of any kind. There is a foreboding atmosphere and some horror references , so it will probably be better suited to a young teen audience at least.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not feature spoken dialogue. The text’s font can be simplified for easier viewing, but there are no options to resize it. (See examples above.) There are no audio cues necessary for play. In my view, the game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game is controlled entirely with the mouse with some additional keyboard shortcuts. It is not possible to remap the controls.

The post Strange Horticulture Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Quality atmospheric horror narrative.

LOW Being stumped at the very end.

WTF The cave was the perfect place for jumpscares, but luckily they didn’t do it!

As far as I can tell, there aren’t many interactive experiences that take place in Quebec.

This is something that the developer, Studio Chien D’Or, wanted to specifically address, so they studied how to effectively recreate the nineteenth century atmosphere of a rough and unhospitable place, yet one that would hold appeal for those trying to live and prosper there.

The Whisperer is a prologue to the still-to-be released adventure The Whispering Valley, so players can expect a short experience (one to two hours) and that they’ll be left with several questions that will (I assume?) be answered in the full game to come.

Structurally, The Whisperer is a classic first-person point-and-click adventure.

Players will be alone in the desolate, freezing cold of Lower Canada, picking up objects and solving simple puzzles, while trying to uncover what’s behind the sudden disappearances happening at a local trading post. While there’s not much mystery regarding the fate of the vanished — especially after the gruesome introductory sequence — uncovering what’s actually going on is quite intriguing.

It is not possible to move between locations freely, since movement is based on a grid — click on a path to walk towards a new place. Each area offers several details to examine while walking around. Finding and picking up items is the main activity, and while it thankfully never devolves into pixel hunting, a more effective way to indicate which items can be picked up would be ideal since having to roam the pointer all over the screen would probably not be anyone’s idea of a good time.

The puzzles are all quite grounded, never requiring the player to engage in any ‘moon logic’ the genre is known for. For example, a lamp is needed to go into a dark cave, or a shovel is needed to dig through snow and access a basement. It all makes logical sense. That said, there’s one bit at the end which I did not find easy to solve (it actually calls back to the introduction) so one small hint there would have been appreciated.

As mentioned, Studio Chien D’Or set out to recreate what it might have been like to be in Quebec in 1814, including ambiance-setting elements such as letters exchanged between characters and various period-appropriate objects which we will find inside the cabins. The minimal soundtrack and the constant howling of wind also work wonderfully to immerse players into a chill, unsettling world.

In terms of the graphics needed to carry a horror experience like this, The Whisperer definitely delivers with solid performance and detailed textures. Only some of the human models used are not of the highest quality and look a bit android-like, but in general it’s done well.

As an appetizer preceding the larger experience to come, The Whisperer checks all the right boxes and is perfect for anyone looking for a tasty horror morsel, and that goes double for players eager to explore a territory and setting that isn’t often seen in gaming.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Studio Chien D’Or It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 1 hour of play was devoted to the single-player mode and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game is not rated by the ESRB, but it contains blood, gore, violence and mild horror. Considering the themes of the narrative, including depression and self-harm, I would definitely recommend it to an adult audience.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not feature spoken dialogue, all narrative is related through text. Text cannot be altered or resized. In my view, the game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game is controlled via the mouse, with the usual point and click movement, with some additional keyboard shortcuts (see diagram). It is not possible to remap the controls.

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