What a game.

ProjectMoon is a peculiar developer. Ruina is not the impenetrable wall that Lobotomy is, but it does share a lot of the same flavors. Such as an incredibly awkward and clumsy UX and terrible tutorial, made worse in Ruina by just many more mechanics there are in Ruina, as opposed to the simple but nuanced gameplay loop of Lobotomy. You just have to accept it as the ProjectMoon flavor at this point.

However, ProjectMoon has strengths, from their incredibly fascinating and fantastical urban hellscape in the city, their inspired SCP-likes in abnormalities, and gameplay ideas. While other popular cardgames try to replicate a draft format via roguelike elements, Ruina is more like replicating a constructing format.

Except this time, there's no bad developers ignoring terrible metas for months on end.

Ruina tests your deckbuilding skills, both in how to make a swiss army knife pile of extremely strong cards, and more nuanced singular counters to specific mechanics in their abnormalities. As the library gains more notoriety, the more powerful and influential figures of The City will show up and seek what it can offer. And you'll take their cards and pages, too.

A notable flaw in this system, however, is the fact that you lose your books upon loss. This can be circumvented with an Alt+f4 before you actually lose, mind, but still it's an unnecessary addition to an already very long game to force backtracking, when there's already plenty of incentive to go back. It's a pretty severe problem the game didn't need.

Nevertheless, the game succeeds in replicating a constructed format vs many different figures and people. Some monsters, some humans pretending to be monsters, and all they command.

One of the things I really enjoyed was how, narratively, despite the plot ostensibly taking place in one area, you get to see just how much the library effects the world at large. You cause so much change in the city, whether good or bad nobody can say. And while the characters initially shrug their shoulders at how the library lures people into its maw to turn them into books, the player themselves may not. You'll hope for characters to not come to the library knowing you'll be forced to cut them down. It's an interesting method of storytelling you won't see much similar to.

Ruina is not a game for everyone. The UX will definitely be too infuriating for some, and the necessity to understand its mechanics with how badly tutorialized they are likewise. Not even counting the barrier of the deckbuilding/cardgame aspect of it. But if you can get into it, odds are you'll be VERY into it.

A weird ass game with SOUL.

Terraria-ish combat with a lot of build variety by equipping food items. Mostly linear with a little bit of side paths for extra recipes. The story is... much more than you expect from the game, and from the first few hours.

What starts as a truly bizarre game about celebrating cooking and eating things that were all alive, including plants, quickly becomes an existential dread simulator featuring body horror. To say the game undergoes a tone shift isn't quite accurate. It's more like a tone catapult.

The writing can sometimes be a bit too corny as characters will talk at length about >THEMES OF THE GAME<, but it's heartfelt and the characters have great chemistry with each other. The comedy has a lot of good usage of art assets, too. It's a fun, rather breezy ride.

I do think there's more design than what meets the eye in the bosses and platforming, but the player becomes so horrifyingly strong, and easily, that even on master chef it feels like the game falls over without too much issue, the bosses largely because of one food item that lets you delete projectiles via dashing, and the platforming because the obstacles simply aren't threatening enough.

Either way, a fun romp with fun characters and it has Simmer, so 10/10.

Copy/Paste of my review of it on Steam.


Finished on Master Soul.

Unsouled is a game that I think needed a bit more polish, but still delivers on a satisfying combat experience with a plethora of mechanics to dig your claws into. Theres a lot of minor and major nuance to every attack and move in your arsenal, which is massive. I would have liked to see more harder elite enemies and combinations of those, because many combat encounters can feel quite musou-esque with the amount of violence you dish out on waves of small enemies. The bosses are good and fun almost unanimously, though.

If you're someone who enjoys a difficult combat-focused game you'll probably enjoy this. The camera can be a bit too antagonistic, mind, and the see-through vision through walls doesn'tdo enough. Also I do wish there was a bit... more? Bosses weren't easy, but there was nothing that TRULY felt like it was pushing the system to its peak. Kamas was close, though.

Either way, fun game! Hope theres some dlc for it of some kind.

I'm not much of a city builder kind of guy, but Frostpunk really drew me in. The sombre atmosphere with a wintery armageddon, this almost religious worship of fire (and then if you want, the 'main character') and warmth. The scenarios are all pretty great mixups of the formula too, with each offering something new.

I will say that I think the game could have used some more unique events that pop up, especially in the early game. You start to know what you're going to get offered and when pretty early, and this bleeds into the endless mode being kind of easy to 'solve' aswell.

All in all though, I'm not super experenced with city builders so I can't vouch for its ability as one, but as an atmospheric crawl through an oncoming winter grave where you must make the best of what you can, it's great.

I want to add Black Souls 2 but I can't CAN I JUST PLEASE ADD BLACK SOULS 2

Ahem.

The question of the ages since... uh, dark souls 1 released; What is a soulslike? It's a confusing question that nobody has a good answer to. What makes a soulslike? Is it simple combat with a stamina meter? Is it the atmosphere? Is it a storytelling style predominately told by item descriptions and vague npc dialogue? Is it crash bandicoot? Mysteries, mysteries.

Black Souls is definitively a soulslike, despite being an rpg maker game. It misses a lot of typical checkboxes, but I think any single person that has played a single souls game will turn on Black Souls 1 and feel IMMEDIATELY what it's inspirations are. Not just because you start in a prison filled with undead where you are given your estus flask, but even further than that.

The way the maps spread out and sometimes coil on each-other, this bizarre atmosphere of a land that is simultaneously alive and dead. The NPC's actually feel a lot more direct in what they say, but their ambiguous goals and directives that all progress as you progress, it all feels the same. In a good way!

Indeed, while Black Souls is incredibly derivative in a way some might find distracting, the obvious combat system change due to... being an rpg maker game gives it a different flavor, and the theming across different fairy tale stories also let it tackle ground that the souls games never did.

The main issue of the game is... mostly, the game is busted to bits. It's not hard to break, and it's sadly not all that fun to break either. Combat becomes same-y quickly, and you'll find yourself going through the motions fast. A lot of the cool presentation and story of the game lacks punch because of it.

I will say, the story and hints at the greater setting are both intriguing to me. Maybe it's my own love for the works it references, but the ideas presented, both lovecraftian and whimsical in nature, go together and create something unique to it.

Anyways, I think Black Souls 1 feels like a large prototype to Black Souls 2, and the dlc that it would bring forth. I'd like to write a review for that, if this damn site would let me.

I was playing it with a friend and we were both enjoying it, especially the rapid form changes and small goals to keep progressing... and then it all kind of stopped. We just stopped playing one day and never wanted to go back to it. Mostly because, sadly, after the charm wears off and the bulk of the forms come in... there's not a lot to it, really. It's like an ARPG without the loot explosions, or as much customization, but with all the repetitiveness. I can't see myself going back and playing it, but maybe.

Holy Fuck.

You know, there are times when you get worried as someone who's been playing videogames for awhile. Will I never find my 'favorite' game again? Are all the good games behind me, and everything else coming is just decent, maybe once and awhile great, but nothing in compared to what you felt before? That's somewhat where I was at with Elden Ring, and here it is.

All of the things I had at 5 stars prior to now were freeware... and a VN, but that's a special case. That's not to say I'm allergic to any game that requires money to play, but my big favorites often come from small teams, or even single people, making games with a focused vision, or unrestrained ambition. Elden Ring has both, in spades.

From your first footsteps outside, you can tell what kind of game you're playing. Similar to every game in the souls series, you wander around a now dead kingdom, like a fly buzzing over a carcass, but never has that atmosphere been more prevalent here. Architecture sanded away by time, great big monuments in tatters, madness and hostility everywhere you see. But that's not the only atmosphere Elden Ring has. Sometimes it's more mystical and dabbles in the unknown, sometimes it's gross but beautiful, sometimes it's hard to even describe. But the map never stops giving you something new, new senses to experience, new things to find.

See, open world games have been in the same cyclical trap for a long time when it comes to big releases. A map filled with nothing but collectibles, the same bandit camp copy pasted. But Elden Ring, while does have some asset resuse, I won't lie, the entire world feels like it has a purpose. Ruins hide basements which hide ashes, churches are always good to find, towers golden trees. Minor dungeons such as caves all the way to other huge maps and castles entirely. It's not just the amount of content, it's the depth of it.

The souls series has always been desperately trying to evoke this sense of exploration and awe-struck wonder. It's done so in different ways. Dark Souls 1 had it's looping world, Dark Souls 2 had size and ambition, 3 had hostility in combat. Bloodborne evoked a haunting atmosphere. But it was never put together, something always lacked one from the other. Bloodborne got the closest, and now we've hit its apex.

I can't say the game is entirely perfect, of course. The catacomb dungeons can sometimes feel a bit bland, especially with DaS2 bosses usually sitting at the end. But I found I was often at least given a weapon to see. And the natural consequence of a game so open ended is that much of the game can accidentally end up trivialized by finding it too late. It's not a problem to some, of course there's natural satisfaction from feeling your characters strength in a concrete way, but it's worth mentioning.

And I've also seen some people dislike exactly how freeform it is; they get stressed out without a clear goal. I sympathize with this, as someone who can end up lost and overwhelemd and was at times even in this game, but at the same time I wouldn't want it any other way in this game. It's a joy to be lost in.

It's the best in the series for sure, and one of the better games to be released in years in the main stream, and definitely one of my favorite games of all time now.