Joh
BACKER
7 reviews liked by Joh
There's only so much that good atmosphere and art direction can do for a game, both of which this game does very well. However the gameplay, length and tasks you are set to do can only be described as a complete and utter slog, resulting in the game being double the length it should be.
Balatro
2024
This game is absolutely awesome and extremely beautiful to look at, but I think I kind of ruined it for myself by accident. I won on my 5th run or so and got to Endless Mode (and lost at Ante 10 and Round 26) without getting to truly spend a lot of time with the game, hopefully it still feels replayable and I can get a lot of enjoyment out of it still.
I didn't know how to play Poker before buying this but it's really helpful for learning because I picked it up really fast.
This game is soooo complex and there's so many interactions that it's almost breathtaking, I can't even think of a game to compare it with really but it's amazing when your mind gets flooded with potentiality when you see certain cards and so on, it's extremely pleasurable to play.
My deck basically worked with the following, you'll see very quickly how strong it is:
Jolly Joker (Switched out for Half Joker later)
Half Joker (Bought very late in the run)
Blue Joker
Green Joker
Supernova
Card Sharp
Would love to be able to see a run history on the main menu and at the end of your game like Slay the Spire has.
The seed is included in the screenshots if you're interested in that.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167164010
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167164062
I didn't know how to play Poker before buying this but it's really helpful for learning because I picked it up really fast.
This game is soooo complex and there's so many interactions that it's almost breathtaking, I can't even think of a game to compare it with really but it's amazing when your mind gets flooded with potentiality when you see certain cards and so on, it's extremely pleasurable to play.
My deck basically worked with the following, you'll see very quickly how strong it is:
Jolly Joker (Switched out for Half Joker later)
Half Joker (Bought very late in the run)
Blue Joker
Green Joker
Supernova
Card Sharp
Would love to be able to see a run history on the main menu and at the end of your game like Slay the Spire has.
The seed is included in the screenshots if you're interested in that.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167164010
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167164062
Beautiful sprites, world and character design. Thanks to good use of the GBA hardware, the NPCs in this game have nearly as much goofy charm as their counterparts in the 3D games. I haven’t played a ton of Zelda games, but I really enjoyed this one!
Counter-Strike 2
2023
Same generic garbage you're used to but with better smokes. I was global a few times back in like 2012-2016 but quit completely around 2016. The game has no real value to be taken seriously, only casual play and trading. Cheaters are at every single level of the game (even silver and pro offline matches), a lot of people don't understand how cheats even work so you'll see a lot of people defending VAC and so on.
Outer Wilds
2019
Beautiful game. I got a little antsy near the end and I shouldn't have because now I don't want it to be over (At least I get to try the DLC soon! Yay!). One of those games I'd encourage anyone to play before they die. Even non gamers. A game that can be used to demonstrate video games as an example of what they should be and how high of a ceiling they can attain for art and entertainment.
Ignore (or try to forget) everything you've heard about things people have said about this game, try to go into it as blind as possible. One of the best games ever made.
La-Mulana
2012
Before ever playing La-Mulana I had heard warnings that, were I ever to play it, it's effectively mandatory to take notes, not counting resorting to guides of course. As someone who has historically enjoyed games with some form of note-taking--ranging from the original Tex Murphy game Mean Streets to more modern mysterious action puzzlers like Fez and Tunic--this warning served as a highly effective sales pitch, and I knew there was a very good chance I would like it when I finally got around to it.
Mechanically, it's a very focused action platformer somewhat analogous to the likes of the original Castlevania. It has confidence in its feel that makes it highly predictable and satisfying to pull off. While I did get a little frustrated with some of the boss fights, others were fun to figure out [or, at worst, easy enough to circumvent with subweapons]. A game like this would fail with poor mechanics, so it's nice that the foundation is strong.
But the adventure-puzzle side of this is the main attraction, and even knowing to some small degree what I was in for, I absolutely wasn't prepared for the kind of surprise La-Mulana offers. Specifically, it's difficult to create a Metroidvania-style game that lasts anywhere near as long as La-Mulana does, while also evolving what those areas are to the player basically the entire time. One of my biggest problems with Hollow Knight, a game I did ultimately enjoy, was that it was way too long. A lot of playing it was backtracking through environments that you have more or less "experienced" the first time you move through them. This is a problem with a lot of Metroidvanias, but most of them also aren't 20+ hours. It's a difficult problem to address, and I don't know that La-Mulana's solution is universal, but I do know it's very appealing--it is, essentially, "you have no idea what you just walked through," a sentiment often delivered by the game with a little bit of mischief.
Notes from the final hours of the game would reveal secrets about a room I may have seen within a half hour of starting. Sometimes, as long as I was decent enough with my scribbles, I'd come to realize that I should backtrack to the source of the note, where I'd find I actually wasn't thorough enough, and key details failed to register with me. No potential source of information is off limits, which can be intimidating and occasionally present some rough progression walls, but the moments in which an idea would come to me or something would click as relevant gave me an indescribable amount of joy. I started with a notepad file that served as my main research companion and ultimately surpassed a thousand lines, but by the end of my 40-hour journey I had supplemented those notes with numerous photos on my phone, a spreadsheet documenting connections between clues, a few notebook pages of translation notes...
For a particular brand of individual, this is heaven. I was absolutely smitten with this, and weeks after finishing I still think about some "a-ha" moment I had and what I felt when I had it. I know its reception isn't quite the same, but I'm excited that I have a sequel I can pull out whenever I want to chase even a semblance of that high again.
Mechanically, it's a very focused action platformer somewhat analogous to the likes of the original Castlevania. It has confidence in its feel that makes it highly predictable and satisfying to pull off. While I did get a little frustrated with some of the boss fights, others were fun to figure out [or, at worst, easy enough to circumvent with subweapons]. A game like this would fail with poor mechanics, so it's nice that the foundation is strong.
But the adventure-puzzle side of this is the main attraction, and even knowing to some small degree what I was in for, I absolutely wasn't prepared for the kind of surprise La-Mulana offers. Specifically, it's difficult to create a Metroidvania-style game that lasts anywhere near as long as La-Mulana does, while also evolving what those areas are to the player basically the entire time. One of my biggest problems with Hollow Knight, a game I did ultimately enjoy, was that it was way too long. A lot of playing it was backtracking through environments that you have more or less "experienced" the first time you move through them. This is a problem with a lot of Metroidvanias, but most of them also aren't 20+ hours. It's a difficult problem to address, and I don't know that La-Mulana's solution is universal, but I do know it's very appealing--it is, essentially, "you have no idea what you just walked through," a sentiment often delivered by the game with a little bit of mischief.
Notes from the final hours of the game would reveal secrets about a room I may have seen within a half hour of starting. Sometimes, as long as I was decent enough with my scribbles, I'd come to realize that I should backtrack to the source of the note, where I'd find I actually wasn't thorough enough, and key details failed to register with me. No potential source of information is off limits, which can be intimidating and occasionally present some rough progression walls, but the moments in which an idea would come to me or something would click as relevant gave me an indescribable amount of joy. I started with a notepad file that served as my main research companion and ultimately surpassed a thousand lines, but by the end of my 40-hour journey I had supplemented those notes with numerous photos on my phone, a spreadsheet documenting connections between clues, a few notebook pages of translation notes...
For a particular brand of individual, this is heaven. I was absolutely smitten with this, and weeks after finishing I still think about some "a-ha" moment I had and what I felt when I had it. I know its reception isn't quite the same, but I'm excited that I have a sequel I can pull out whenever I want to chase even a semblance of that high again.