Just so people know, this game's development has been abandoned. The publisher laid off the entirety of the dev team. Apparently, the game's early access release didn't meet sales expectation, despite it selling really well for an early access release from an unknown and new publisher.

Gameplay-wise, it was a pretty solid side-scrolling roguelite. Controlled well, had some decent build variety, and a fair amount of content. The art was also fantastic and what drew me to the game in the first place. The localization was rough, but this was a great beginning for an early access roguelite.

But none of that potential will be realized now. The devs got to make one update and then within two months, the publisher fired everyone.

The Corruption Within is a kinda okay point-and-click adventure game.

Gameplay-wise, it's pretty standard. You click on stuff, get inventory items, and use them to solve puzzles. It's not the most obtuse puzzles, but there is the occasional weirdness. One problem, is that because the game is short and there aren't many puzzles, it can be way faster to trial and error through rather than think. I also don't really like having to click on something multiple times to get something useful from it.

Unfortunately, the story wasn't very compelling either, although a little bit of that is my own fault. For some reason, I thought this would be a horror thriller. It was not. There are no horror elements and that did dampen my impression of the story a bit. Aside from that, the mystery and plot are just okay. The villains don't have any interesting motives and the mystery isn't particularly compelling or suspenseful. The "plot twists" weren't very shocking and my response to all of them was: "Oh... I guess that makes sense." A lot of dialogue also feels kinda stiff. Like the writer wanted to communicate some information to the player/reader and didn't bother dressing it up to sound natural sometimes. Looking back on the story now, it feels like the whole game was written with the minimal amount of story and dialogue needed.

Ultimately, it's passable. It's a short story that I killed an hour playing. It's not bad, just completely middling. Got it on sale for $2.49 and felt it okay with that, but probably wouldn't pay full price.

Despite seeming like a game where you manage an up-and-coming, but mentally unstable streamer, Needy Streamer Overload is not about the life of a streamer. NSO is almost exclusively focused on themes of mental illness and in a way that is quite dark and depressing.

Streaming in NSO is to provide context and goals for the management aspect of the game. You try to grow your streams followers while balancing her mental state and affection for you. It was pretty good on my first playthrough, as a single playthrough is quite shot. But its also not very complex and drags on repeated playthrough. As a result, I only went for a few endings on my own and looked up the rest of the endings. This is definitely a game where the writing (and art) is the main draw.

Writing-wise the game is pretty alright. The main character (Ame) is troubled, hypocritical, and has a mean-streak towards others, but still has a lot of relatable feelings and funny banter that makes her enjoyable to watch.

As I said earlier however, the game is primarily focused on mental illness. Ame goes through a lot, from self-harm, to drug-abuse, to severe depression and paranoia. And a lot of this is shown very graphically and descriptively. I can't say that I've gone through everything Ame has, but I did find a fair amount of what she goes through and says to be relatable to my own struggles with mental health now and in the past. And unfortunately, while you can try your best to help Ame, you cannot fix her. Almost every ending of this game is strange or very depressing, as she succumbs to her mental illness even in endings that are relatively happy. While I was still enjoying the writing, this honestly can make this game extremely heavy emotionally to get through. More than I was expecting at least.

On top of all that, some endings require you to straight up be abusive to Ame. It's honestly kinda hard to watch, much less perform such abusive acts. It's the part of the game that feels the most iffy to me. A lot of the game's endings are also cryptic and strange, where things happen that seem to not line up with reality.

VERY SLIGHT SPOILERS IN THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH (TRYING TO KEEP IT VAGUE)
A fair amount of my problem with what I said in the previous paragraph is somewhat addressed by the final secret in the game, which requires getting all other endings in the game. It honestly makes me feel a bit better about all the awful stuff in the other endings and ties together some of the strangeness in the rest of the game. My only problem is that because it requires so much work to reach, is somewhat hidden, and is the thing that shifts the game's final message to being a positive one, most people are not going to see it. And because of that, most people's takeaway from this game's writing (in regards to mental health) is one of negativity, nihlism, and toxic dependency. Especially when writing about severe mental illness, it feels a little irresponsible to leave people with that kind of messaging.

All that being said, I still liked the game overall. The gameplay was some fun casual management for a short amount of time. The writing was strong, felt real, and was enjoyable even though there were parts that I found iffy in theme and messaging. However, be aware that this game can be very depressing and depicts various forms of self-harm. Please make sure you're in a good headspace.