IMPORTANT: There are a LOT of bugs here, many of which will make you replay whole chapters. I was lucky to only hit one but it hit RIGHT at a chapter's end.

Outside of this, Mr. Coo is spectacular. Anyone who knows me can tell you that this type of circus-y abstractionist nonsense is what gets me out of bed in the morning, and the puzzles, while hard, are well thought out and satisfying to solve. That's all I can really say without spoiling, so in summary: Beware of bugs, pray for fixes, and I hope you can experience this absolute delight without them.

A horror game full of incredible ideas that end up tragically curtailed due to the game's repetitive nature. You play a lighthouse keeper plagued by strange visions and occurrences as you work the mundane tasks of cranking the rotor handle and refilling the lighthouse oil.

The first day was well-paced and had me excited for the game's overall structure, but by day 2 the game had become a bit of a navigational mess, requiring the player to stroll up and down the small island again and again in search of new objects without much prompting on what to do with them. During this period I nearly bounced off the game.

But without spoiling, the game really ramps up towards its finale, making memorable moments and a better use of its wandering gameplay, but only does so long after the fatigue has set in. If the first half of this title had the thematic inertia of the second, it would have likely been a HUGE hit with me, but I just can't recommend it to anyone but die hard indie-horror fans with the tremendous gameplay wall in the way of the real meat of the story.

Currently my GOTY. The gameplay is incredibly smooth. Could use some better settings like being able to make subtilties bigger and a different color, same with the hud. The story was cool but i think i like some of the previous entries' stories a bit more

Coming back to add to this review now that I have completed NG++, got the true ending, completed the entire arena and all the missions. The game continues to be impressive in game-feel at every moment. Its so addicting to play and so easy to just boot up missions and have a blast with them. Even going back to the drawing board with builds in the lab is fun. There are a few stinker missions like Depths 1 which i despise and wish i didn't have to play through 3 times.

--Spoilers--

The story actually got even weaker for me now that i've seen everything. The Flames of the Raven ending feels like the one that got the most attention and is the only one i really liked. The other two felt both a little short with the narrative and gameplay. Final boss of the Liberator ending doesn't have a phase 2 for some reason? The true ending final boss was fun but its set piece was not nearly as memorable as some of the others moments earlier in the game which is kinda disappointing given how much you have to do to get here. I wish the story stayed more in the horrors of corporate proxy wars for resources like it was in the opening hours. The most memorable story moment for me is the mission where you go and kill a test pilot who sounds like he's just a kid getting caught up in all of this. I wanted more of those harrowing moments like this found in the earlier games

Be prepared, this game will make you call your parents if still in contact. This game is the most unironic and heart-wrenching expression of a family relationship a game has presented me with in a long time. It will make your heart hurt as a child, and again as a parent or hopeful parent.

All of this emotional core is housed in a series of cooking minigames that, while mostly a vehicle, strongly communicate the themes through use of language, antiquity, and childhood memory. Food as a thread of life experience is one of my favorite narrative devices and no game presents it as close to the heart as Venba.

Please give this one a shot even if you think you won't like it. It simply packs so much life into such a short game that part of it will speak to you whether you're ready for it or not.

Pain is mandatory

What is a Doom II on Ultra Violence? A misserable lttle pile of go fuck yourself. A huge amount of issues regarding the pacing of the whole experience sadly make this sequel fall short of surpassing the original game. Sure, the new enemies are pretty good for the most part (I will find whoever thought of adding the Pain Elemental, and I shall teach them) and the super shotgun is probably the most iconic weapon in gaming at this point, but the whole experience gets bogged down by downright mean level design. I began theorizing with a friend that they did it this way so you would just skip the single player campaign and go play deathmatch since that was all the rage at the time. The small pockets of pure fun are incredible, blasting through scores and scores of baddies and meanies with a finelly tuned arsenal of deathfuck, but the puzzle and fucking platforming sections just tank the experience to a whole new degree of unfun.

There was a whole lot of hurting in this one fellas, mostly from Petersen's level design. You heard about traps and hidden switches? Now get ready for THE AGONY CONTRAPTION. You could fill a small nation with the amount of cacodemons present in his levels (my personal theory is that he is such a TTRPG nerd he just adds them because it reminds him of DnD).

Shoutout to the music tho. I found myself stopping to just hear it after every carnage. Yeah we all know it's mostly just stolen heavily inspired by the metal they were listening at the office at the time, but the ambient tracks and original stuff knocks it off the park.

On to build engine games, starting with Duked Nuked DDD. I won't play them on the hardest difficulty since from my experience the level of fun just goes to the shitter with them, while in Doom it's a somewhat achievable punishment for trying to have fun.

Bought this on a whim after seeing it on Twitter. Overall it's played pretty straight - you get like 4 or 5 of these 'mobile game ad' minigames and you can unlock harder versions of each. There's something to it that reminds me of Make 10 for the DS, almost? Very simple premises that become more complex, but never really approach 'puzzle' so much as a slightly longer and straightforward exercise.

I was sort of hoping for some kind of weird twist or extreme version of these sorts of games, but ah well.

Latest game by me. A collaborative effort between Woodaba and I on writing, as well as ConeClvtist on music, and Vis and a mutual friend of Cone's and I on art.

I'm leaving this one pretty happy, all things considered; It really stands as something where I could feel everyone firing on all cylinders, and at around 22k words, it definitely breaks a bit of the mold of my last two games. With that said, it's really showing the limits of twine, as an engine. I love it, I will continue to use it, but for anything beyond a one-or-two person affair, creating with Twine proves to be... less than ideal.

In any case, still very glad to have done thing, and really, REALLY impressed by the work my fellows devs put into it.

And yeah I'm giving it a 5 anyway, i am shameless lol