RumbleRose
2023
Solid picross game. I play this before bed and fall asleep to its music.
2024
Worst thing I've ever done to myself is purchase Balatro and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth at the same time. I'm having dreams about Jokers with Cait Sith on them.
As someone who sucks at deck building games this game is just like crack injected straight into my brain. The aesthetic is really strong and I appreciate the options to adjust the CRT filter, the pixelation, etc; those are great accessibility fearures. There's also an option to make the card suits high contrast which is nice for those with vision issues. Unlike a lot of deck builders, there's not a story structure or narrative built around the game. It's entirely gameplay-focused, which makes it super easy to pick up and play, and much harder to put down. I find myself playing right up to the last second of my lunch break and having to rush to meetings. It's got the perfect balance of challenge and reward, and offers tons of new decks to change the way the game plays. It also offers higher and higher difficulties for you to tackle as you get better at the game. I havent touched these yet because just looking at them makes my head hurt.
Even on runs I know I've lost, I keep playing to discover more jokers/vouchers/what have you. Every run I lose, I feel like I'm learning something.
You don't need to know ANYTHING about poker to play this game. I highly recommend picking it up if you have ant interest in it at all.
If you still aren't sure, watch some playthroughs online to get a feel for it. I watched Into the Aether's Balatro series on Youtube and quickly became obsessed.
As someone who sucks at deck building games this game is just like crack injected straight into my brain. The aesthetic is really strong and I appreciate the options to adjust the CRT filter, the pixelation, etc; those are great accessibility fearures. There's also an option to make the card suits high contrast which is nice for those with vision issues. Unlike a lot of deck builders, there's not a story structure or narrative built around the game. It's entirely gameplay-focused, which makes it super easy to pick up and play, and much harder to put down. I find myself playing right up to the last second of my lunch break and having to rush to meetings. It's got the perfect balance of challenge and reward, and offers tons of new decks to change the way the game plays. It also offers higher and higher difficulties for you to tackle as you get better at the game. I havent touched these yet because just looking at them makes my head hurt.
Even on runs I know I've lost, I keep playing to discover more jokers/vouchers/what have you. Every run I lose, I feel like I'm learning something.
You don't need to know ANYTHING about poker to play this game. I highly recommend picking it up if you have ant interest in it at all.
If you still aren't sure, watch some playthroughs online to get a feel for it. I watched Into the Aether's Balatro series on Youtube and quickly became obsessed.
This is a perfect Kirby game, I think. It's beautiful, it's silly, it's got fun level design, and it goes completely bonkers in the final hour. In true Kirby tradition, the final boss is "give the controller to an older sibling or a parent" levels of difficult.
This is a great game to play with a young child, and the co-op mode is one of the best I've seen for that use-case.
Though the game is pretty easy, I think it's also very enjoyable for an adult Kirby fan. As I mentioned, it's a charming and beautiful game. There's also replayability for each level to complete specific challenges, many of which are actually challenging even for more experienced players.
There is also a post-game area that features a massive difficulty bump, which should be satisfying for players wanting more of a challenge.
In terms of importance to Kirby's lineage, I'd compare this game to Mario Odyssey. I think it's genuinely a really wonderful experience for anyone who likes Kirby games, but it is especially good for children and adults (or just older children) playing with young children.
This is a great game to play with a young child, and the co-op mode is one of the best I've seen for that use-case.
Though the game is pretty easy, I think it's also very enjoyable for an adult Kirby fan. As I mentioned, it's a charming and beautiful game. There's also replayability for each level to complete specific challenges, many of which are actually challenging even for more experienced players.
There is also a post-game area that features a massive difficulty bump, which should be satisfying for players wanting more of a challenge.
In terms of importance to Kirby's lineage, I'd compare this game to Mario Odyssey. I think it's genuinely a really wonderful experience for anyone who likes Kirby games, but it is especially good for children and adults (or just older children) playing with young children.
2015
Just a fantastic puzzle game, kept me company on my 1 1/2 hour commute for a good long while. In my wildest dreams they make another one....please Nintendo I'm begging.
This review contains spoilers
I played this after all of the patches were released. Apparently there are significant quality of life updates in those patches.
That said, this game as of all the patches coming out is just fine. I'd go so far as to call it "mid". Yeah, it's not the worst game in the series, but the entire time I was playing it I kept thinking "why am I not playing a better Story of Seasons game?"
There's just not much meat here. The world design is very simple and feels very small, there are 2 main areas: the town and the farm. The town is very centralized and you find people walking outside or along the beach. There's a few shops, including one that you can expand (the character customization shop). As a result, the world feels small and confined, and the farming and social aspects of the game feel completely disconnected from each other.
Most of your time is going to be spent on the farm. The farm is massive, due to the robust crafting element in this game--every item you collect off the ground is going to be coming from your farmland. The 3 mines are also only accessible from your own farmland.
Crafting and designing your farm is very much the gimmick here. Unfortunately, the development of this game was largely outsourced to a small studio that is best known for licensed mobile games (I believe they did a couple sega mobile games), which means that the crafting mechanics are heavily influenced by mobile game design. There's more than a dozen maker machines, and each one makes a different item, and each one is on a timer than can only process one item at a time. Meaning you need to have several of each kind of maker on your farm to get anything done in a timely manner. If you want to make silver bars, for example, you need to input 5 silver ores to the ore processing machine and wait for the bar to be done (this will take the better part of an in-game day). So if you need 3 silver bars, you either have to wait multiple days for the maker to process 15 ores, or you need to build 3 ore makers to process those 15 ores at the same time. However, if you want to make more ore makers, you need 3 logs for each material, which means you need to spend time and stamina to knock down trees to collect logs. As you progress in the game, makers begin requiring refined materials to craft them, such as silver bars. It creates a chain of many different makers, and the need for storage for each material at different steps in the process. By the time i got a reasonable workflow going for basic materials, my screen started lagging whenever my maker quarantine zone was on screen.
The other big aspect of this game is inventory management. Managing inventory is the thing i spent the most time on in this game, even with the biggest bag, and it drove me nuts. The very limited fridge is the only storage you have in your house, and you can only increase fridge storage by upgrading your house. You can create more storage boxes but they can only be placed outside on your farm.
While the loop of collecting materials and processing them to refined materials and then using them to craft new materials or cooking ingredients is well-constructed, it ends up being more addictive than actually fun. My gameplay started revolving around feeding the makers new materials so i could keep getting refined materials. Nothing I get from the loop felt worth the effort I was putting in to keeping the loop going.
The other aspect of this game I find disappointing is the social aspect. I found the characters somewhat bland, even for a Story of Seasons game. Many of the marriage candidates have similar voices and personailities, so they don't stand out much from each other. I found keeping my production loop going to be way more compelling than taking valuable mining time out of my day to run up to the town and talk to people.
Related, the story is the weakest element of this game by far, and can be fully completed before the end of the first year. Essentially, you provide refined materials to the city so that they can improve the city to attract more tourism. Ocassionally this will involve something interesting like opening a new shop, but in most cases the only change to the town will be cosmetic (the streetlights or the cobblestone roads change to a different model or texture, for example). Once you complete the handful of these material requests, the "story" is over, but you can keep playing as you were before. It feels like one of many missed opportunities.
Some things I did end up liking: I adore the ability to mix and match "feminine" and "masculine" model elements such as stance, clothing, hair, etc; the ability to marry any marriage candidate regardless of gender; the abiloty to run around with your pet; upgrading tools is immensely rewarding; the mining feels good and there's three different mines to explore; the fishing system is fun and involves a bit of skill which makes it engaging; and the progression of unlocking new recipes is well-built.
Honestly, I think there's a lot of potential in this game, and it's clear the developer is taking some positive direction from other farming sims such as stardew valley. But frankly there's other Story of Seasons games that do what this game is trying to do better.
Ultimately, this feels like a very hollow mobile game experience draped in Story of Seasons wallpaper.
That said, this game as of all the patches coming out is just fine. I'd go so far as to call it "mid". Yeah, it's not the worst game in the series, but the entire time I was playing it I kept thinking "why am I not playing a better Story of Seasons game?"
There's just not much meat here. The world design is very simple and feels very small, there are 2 main areas: the town and the farm. The town is very centralized and you find people walking outside or along the beach. There's a few shops, including one that you can expand (the character customization shop). As a result, the world feels small and confined, and the farming and social aspects of the game feel completely disconnected from each other.
Most of your time is going to be spent on the farm. The farm is massive, due to the robust crafting element in this game--every item you collect off the ground is going to be coming from your farmland. The 3 mines are also only accessible from your own farmland.
Crafting and designing your farm is very much the gimmick here. Unfortunately, the development of this game was largely outsourced to a small studio that is best known for licensed mobile games (I believe they did a couple sega mobile games), which means that the crafting mechanics are heavily influenced by mobile game design. There's more than a dozen maker machines, and each one makes a different item, and each one is on a timer than can only process one item at a time. Meaning you need to have several of each kind of maker on your farm to get anything done in a timely manner. If you want to make silver bars, for example, you need to input 5 silver ores to the ore processing machine and wait for the bar to be done (this will take the better part of an in-game day). So if you need 3 silver bars, you either have to wait multiple days for the maker to process 15 ores, or you need to build 3 ore makers to process those 15 ores at the same time. However, if you want to make more ore makers, you need 3 logs for each material, which means you need to spend time and stamina to knock down trees to collect logs. As you progress in the game, makers begin requiring refined materials to craft them, such as silver bars. It creates a chain of many different makers, and the need for storage for each material at different steps in the process. By the time i got a reasonable workflow going for basic materials, my screen started lagging whenever my maker quarantine zone was on screen.
The other big aspect of this game is inventory management. Managing inventory is the thing i spent the most time on in this game, even with the biggest bag, and it drove me nuts. The very limited fridge is the only storage you have in your house, and you can only increase fridge storage by upgrading your house. You can create more storage boxes but they can only be placed outside on your farm.
While the loop of collecting materials and processing them to refined materials and then using them to craft new materials or cooking ingredients is well-constructed, it ends up being more addictive than actually fun. My gameplay started revolving around feeding the makers new materials so i could keep getting refined materials. Nothing I get from the loop felt worth the effort I was putting in to keeping the loop going.
The other aspect of this game I find disappointing is the social aspect. I found the characters somewhat bland, even for a Story of Seasons game. Many of the marriage candidates have similar voices and personailities, so they don't stand out much from each other. I found keeping my production loop going to be way more compelling than taking valuable mining time out of my day to run up to the town and talk to people.
Related, the story is the weakest element of this game by far, and can be fully completed before the end of the first year. Essentially, you provide refined materials to the city so that they can improve the city to attract more tourism. Ocassionally this will involve something interesting like opening a new shop, but in most cases the only change to the town will be cosmetic (the streetlights or the cobblestone roads change to a different model or texture, for example). Once you complete the handful of these material requests, the "story" is over, but you can keep playing as you were before. It feels like one of many missed opportunities.
Some things I did end up liking: I adore the ability to mix and match "feminine" and "masculine" model elements such as stance, clothing, hair, etc; the ability to marry any marriage candidate regardless of gender; the abiloty to run around with your pet; upgrading tools is immensely rewarding; the mining feels good and there's three different mines to explore; the fishing system is fun and involves a bit of skill which makes it engaging; and the progression of unlocking new recipes is well-built.
Honestly, I think there's a lot of potential in this game, and it's clear the developer is taking some positive direction from other farming sims such as stardew valley. But frankly there's other Story of Seasons games that do what this game is trying to do better.
Ultimately, this feels like a very hollow mobile game experience draped in Story of Seasons wallpaper.
It's more of the same from Breath of the Wild, only more so. If you liked Breath of the Wild you'll like this.
Even as someone who doesn't love open world games, I had a lot of fun playing this. I think if there are weak spots in the narrative and the world (I didn't find the underground as interesting as the overworld, but I did explore every nook and cranny), it comes from the ambition on display. This is a massive game, yet somehow it feels less lonely than Breath of the Wild despite how much larger the physical space is you will be exploring.
I did find the story to be more engaging than the previous game, and the boss fights were generally really fun action pieces.
I think that whatever comes next in the mainline Zelda games is going to have quite a lot to live up to.
If you like this kind of game, you'll love it. If you don't love an open world Zelda, though, you'd probably be best served by something else.
Even as someone who doesn't love open world games, I had a lot of fun playing this. I think if there are weak spots in the narrative and the world (I didn't find the underground as interesting as the overworld, but I did explore every nook and cranny), it comes from the ambition on display. This is a massive game, yet somehow it feels less lonely than Breath of the Wild despite how much larger the physical space is you will be exploring.
I did find the story to be more engaging than the previous game, and the boss fights were generally really fun action pieces.
I think that whatever comes next in the mainline Zelda games is going to have quite a lot to live up to.
If you like this kind of game, you'll love it. If you don't love an open world Zelda, though, you'd probably be best served by something else.
2017
Really loved the first chunk of this game and there's a lot going on with the setting and story that's right up my alley but I'm finding that this style of game just isn't for me.
2023
Sucked me in for an enjoyable couple of days. I love the art direction in this game, the strong sillouettes of the characters, the fish, the items. I took my time with this game, thoroughly exploring and spending tons of time fishing and upgrading my boat beyond what it necessary. The gameplay loop of fish, dredge, sell, upgrade, fish again is very well made.
My hands get stiff, so I appreciated the option to turn of the button pressing minigames for fishing. It's a neat accessibility feature that let me keep engaging with the world of the game.
I love a quiet everyday horror. A terror that fades into the background in the face of daily life and needs. I love the feeling of this world that is in the process of slowly declining into something darker, but everyone just going on living their lives as best as they can, because they have to feed themselves. Finding places where people were living their lives when suddenly things got to the point where they couldn't anymore.
This is just a really engaging fishing game with a spooky atmosphere and some compelling mysteries to uncover.
My hands get stiff, so I appreciated the option to turn of the button pressing minigames for fishing. It's a neat accessibility feature that let me keep engaging with the world of the game.
I love a quiet everyday horror. A terror that fades into the background in the face of daily life and needs. I love the feeling of this world that is in the process of slowly declining into something darker, but everyone just going on living their lives as best as they can, because they have to feed themselves. Finding places where people were living their lives when suddenly things got to the point where they couldn't anymore.
This is just a really engaging fishing game with a spooky atmosphere and some compelling mysteries to uncover.
I enjoy a game that invites me to break out the corkboard and red string 30 minutes in.
13 Sentinels is one of the most ambitious games I've played in a long time, it's a miracle this game exists. The visuals and use of lighting are goregous, the music and sound are very nice (nothing is more satisfying than the sound effects of the Sentinels), and the voice acting is endlessly charming. The mechanics of the gameplay are clunky in places, but are generally very effective in moving the story along.
You do need to be tolerant of a certain level of Anime Bullshit to enjoy this game, I'll say, but otherwise it's an incredibly wild ride and one of the most engaging video game stories I've experienced in ages.
I did knock half a star off my initial rating just because I don't feel it fully stuck the dismount. With such a large cast it's expected that some don't get as much time for development as others, but if even one or two of those underdeveloped characters had a stronger character arc, it would probably be one of the best games I'll play in 2023.
That said, play it! It's SO much fun! This game was all I talked about for like 3 weeks and I'll be thinking about it for much longer.
13 Sentinels is one of the most ambitious games I've played in a long time, it's a miracle this game exists. The visuals and use of lighting are goregous, the music and sound are very nice (nothing is more satisfying than the sound effects of the Sentinels), and the voice acting is endlessly charming. The mechanics of the gameplay are clunky in places, but are generally very effective in moving the story along.
You do need to be tolerant of a certain level of Anime Bullshit to enjoy this game, I'll say, but otherwise it's an incredibly wild ride and one of the most engaging video game stories I've experienced in ages.
I did knock half a star off my initial rating just because I don't feel it fully stuck the dismount. With such a large cast it's expected that some don't get as much time for development as others, but if even one or two of those underdeveloped characters had a stronger character arc, it would probably be one of the best games I'll play in 2023.
That said, play it! It's SO much fun! This game was all I talked about for like 3 weeks and I'll be thinking about it for much longer.
2021
A perfect little pick up and play game, fantastic fit for mobile. The short rounds make it great for when youre waiting in line or commuting. The sense of progression is really strong but the further I get into it the more it feels like im plataeuing--but that may just be me spending less time with it and getting back less progression, as you'd expect. It may be more absorbing for someone into minmaxing for the perfect run, but I play it fairly casually.
I have a lot of fun with it either way. Turning a character into a bullet spitting buzzsaw throwing death machine is a blast.
If you have any interest at all, pick it up on mobile for free and give it a spin! Theres a reason it ended up on all those game of the year lists.
I have a lot of fun with it either way. Turning a character into a bullet spitting buzzsaw throwing death machine is a blast.
If you have any interest at all, pick it up on mobile for free and give it a spin! Theres a reason it ended up on all those game of the year lists.
This review contains spoilers
Its more like a barely interactive short film than a game, which isn't a crime, but i was hoping for more. Coupled with a fairly cliche android story and ending I was left disappointed. This isn't the game for me, I dont think.
2013
I love all the projects Emily Carrol has ever been involved in and this is no exception. Wonderfully moody and strange with beautiful writing, visuals, and sound, one of my biggest complaints is that it is not longer.
The creeping sense of dread and the very clear cause and effect of player action make for a very fun narrative experience.
A beautiful and creepy little game that sadly doesn't stay long enough to really shine.
The creeping sense of dread and the very clear cause and effect of player action make for a very fun narrative experience.
A beautiful and creepy little game that sadly doesn't stay long enough to really shine.
2020
This review contains spoilers
I feel like i had more fun with this than the game strictly intended.....i do love to smash office equipment. Especially when it screams
2022
Up is the only way
2003
Is this, strictly speaking, a good game? No. But this is not a game. It's an experience.