erki
2019
It's hard to talk about this game without spoiling it, so I won't try - all I can say is "if you look at this game and think you'll like it, try it - stop postponing it".
Beautiful game with well written characters, amazing worldbuilding and tons of lore. The only reason I'm deducting a point is because I personally found it hard to stay with the game in the first ~3 hours, almost giving up on it. Glad I didn't. After that it opened up a bit more and I started to enjoy it.
Beautiful game with well written characters, amazing worldbuilding and tons of lore. The only reason I'm deducting a point is because I personally found it hard to stay with the game in the first ~3 hours, almost giving up on it. Glad I didn't. After that it opened up a bit more and I started to enjoy it.
2024
Haven't 100%'d this game, because that takes a long time, but beat this game a dozen times with a lot of different decks and builds.
This game's really, really fun. It's also very good, which helps.
It has a great 'vibe', everything is very cohesive - the mellow music, constantly changing when fighting bosses, yet somehow never feels repetitive...
The gameplay is very simple, I didn't know how to play poker but that doesn't really matter, you get into the swing of things in less than 5 minutes.
Tons of fun synergies, silly discoveries and strategy keeps me playing this game almost daily for an hour or two.
FUCK the Water boss blind
This game's really, really fun. It's also very good, which helps.
It has a great 'vibe', everything is very cohesive - the mellow music, constantly changing when fighting bosses, yet somehow never feels repetitive...
The gameplay is very simple, I didn't know how to play poker but that doesn't really matter, you get into the swing of things in less than 5 minutes.
Tons of fun synergies, silly discoveries and strategy keeps me playing this game almost daily for an hour or two.
FUCK the Water boss blind
Both games are really fun, but this one felt more like a complete story. The endings are less of a sketch gone wrong and more of a story playing outself out (and then going wrong).
Very good characters, voiceacting and dumb humour, this game's dumb dialogue will be in my head rent free for a while.
You could play this + its prequel in about 6-8 hours I think, easily doable in a day and definitely worth the time.
Very good characters, voiceacting and dumb humour, this game's dumb dialogue will be in my head rent free for a while.
You could play this + its prequel in about 6-8 hours I think, easily doable in a day and definitely worth the time.
2021
This game is unlike anything else, a perfectly hand-made shitpost with good callbacks to opinions and stances back in 2010 and earlier.
I'm not much of a 'react youtuber' watcher myself, but this game's really fun to watch someone else play. Consider giving a youtuber a try with this! It's only like 3-4 hours long or so.
Kylar is a chad.
I'm not much of a 'react youtuber' watcher myself, but this game's really fun to watch someone else play. Consider giving a youtuber a try with this! It's only like 3-4 hours long or so.
Kylar is a chad.
2021
Played this for about 8-9 hours and couldn't find myself to stick with it.
The game actively prevents you from progressing 'too fast', and it definitely feels like 'style over substance'.
It's a shame that this game gets recommended to people who play Slay the Spire, because they couldn't be more different if they tried. StS looks like dogshit, but it's an incredibly deep, fun and rewarding game to play, whereas Inscryption has great presentation but very lackluster gameplay.
I likely won't be trying this game again, unless if there's a huge overhaul mod to make the gameplay more complex.
The game actively prevents you from progressing 'too fast', and it definitely feels like 'style over substance'.
It's a shame that this game gets recommended to people who play Slay the Spire, because they couldn't be more different if they tried. StS looks like dogshit, but it's an incredibly deep, fun and rewarding game to play, whereas Inscryption has great presentation but very lackluster gameplay.
I likely won't be trying this game again, unless if there's a huge overhaul mod to make the gameplay more complex.
2016
Retried this game with some mods, because I had the classic bi-yearly Starbound itch.
Unfortunately this game isn't what I want it to be.
The game doesn't run very well, and it's worse with mods. The dedicated big mod, Fracking Universe, even has a wiki page about it, simply stating that you can't really improve the performance because of how the game was made.
Even in modded, I didn't feel like the progression was very meaningful and a lot of the options in this game feel bloated. I can just survive on 1 specific food and bringing a big stack of that, I can use 1 weapon to kill everything until I get a new weapon, etc.
Inventory management and storage is an absolute hell in this game, though mods can alleviate it.
I really want to like this game, because it has most of the elements I want, but with so many annoyances and inconsistencies, I can't help but feel discouraged whenever I try and boot this up.
Unfortunately this game isn't what I want it to be.
The game doesn't run very well, and it's worse with mods. The dedicated big mod, Fracking Universe, even has a wiki page about it, simply stating that you can't really improve the performance because of how the game was made.
Even in modded, I didn't feel like the progression was very meaningful and a lot of the options in this game feel bloated. I can just survive on 1 specific food and bringing a big stack of that, I can use 1 weapon to kill everything until I get a new weapon, etc.
Inventory management and storage is an absolute hell in this game, though mods can alleviate it.
I really want to like this game, because it has most of the elements I want, but with so many annoyances and inconsistencies, I can't help but feel discouraged whenever I try and boot this up.
We always boot this game up every few months, play for an evening, have a lot of fun, save the game, and then make a new campaign a few months later.
2022
There's a big wave of 'vampire survivor' clones coming out of the woodwork, and most of them are very uninspired. Not this one.
The distinct presentation was enough to drag me in, and its gameplay being more involved than VS made it a ton of fun to play.
My main complaints with VS is that 30 minute maps just take too long, and you only walk around.
Here, you actually have to aim and shoot - a novel concept, I know!
There's various characters and builds, and they recently added weapon evolutions to specialise your weapons more later through the run. These are all great and explain why I have ~30ish hours in a game where 1 run is 20 minutes.
Also Reimu Hakurei is in the game. From Toe Hoe Project.
Only reason I can't give this 5 stars is because there isn't too much content to work towards. VS has tons of achievements, hidden items and whatnot, whereas this game is pretty simplistic and easy at times.
The distinct presentation was enough to drag me in, and its gameplay being more involved than VS made it a ton of fun to play.
My main complaints with VS is that 30 minute maps just take too long, and you only walk around.
Here, you actually have to aim and shoot - a novel concept, I know!
There's various characters and builds, and they recently added weapon evolutions to specialise your weapons more later through the run. These are all great and explain why I have ~30ish hours in a game where 1 run is 20 minutes.
Also Reimu Hakurei is in the game. From Toe Hoe Project.
Only reason I can't give this 5 stars is because there isn't too much content to work towards. VS has tons of achievements, hidden items and whatnot, whereas this game is pretty simplistic and easy at times.
Incredibly unique roguelike with great music? That alone gives it 10/10 status for me, but it also has really fun gameplay.
I abandoned the game a long time ago due to other stuff coming up, but recently the devs actually updated the game again after a few years! This helped spark my interest in this game again and I'll definitely be trying it out again in the future.
Also I can't get over the fact that the Chess Boss' theme is called 'Knight to C Sharp', that shit's clever as fuck I can't deny it.
I abandoned the game a long time ago due to other stuff coming up, but recently the devs actually updated the game again after a few years! This helped spark my interest in this game again and I'll definitely be trying it out again in the future.
Also I can't get over the fact that the Chess Boss' theme is called 'Knight to C Sharp', that shit's clever as fuck I can't deny it.
2022
I really want to lick the brown girl's abs. Among other things.
People who play this are probably fueled by nostalgia, like me!
There's been a couple of "Microvolts Revival Projects" (games that simply rerelease the dead game for a while) and this seems to be the latest one. This one's currently available for free on Steam, but there is the RT (paid currency) system like before.
I'd rate this game 6/5 if I could. It's such a fantastic game to play, and nothing comes close to the 'feel' of this game. The closest I had was zero-build Fortnite, and that's an entirely different experience.
The characters are cute and funny, there's decent weapon variety and there's very fun and creative maps.
...so, why the 3 stars?
It's because of the current iteration of the game, with its current developers. Unlike the other Microvolts revival projects, this one actually features pretty major gameplay changes. Weapon rebalancing, MP/RT costs and rewards, revamped upgrading system, and some minor things too.
In my opinion, these changes are actively taking away some of the fun. Let's start from the top - weapon rebalance.
Weapon rebalance sounds good, right? In the original MicroVolts, people usually ran the same loadout since there were pretty clear winnners and losers. In this iteration of MicroVolts, they opted for a 'A/B/C/D' solution. In the original game, there were 3-4 different 'archetypes' of every weapon type. For example, rifles: 'Pepper' was the prefered choice, boasting high fire-rate, decent accuracy and a big mag size(clip?), but it dealt the least damage. On the other end is the 'Sherlock' rifle, dealing high damage per shot and being much more accurate, but losing out on fire-rate and mag size. Then there was the third option, 'Hornet', which attempted to be a mixture of the two, but ultimately worse than both.
In the new iteration, all weapons have the 3-4 archetypes built in. You can have a Pepper (A) which acts exactly like the old school Pepper, or Pepper (B) which acts like the Sherlock, or Pepper (C) which acts like the hornet. (I don't remember the letters for every archetype, just pretend I'm right.)
This leads to an interesting scenario: weapons don't matter, their archetype does. Which weapon you pick is cosmetic, the only thing that matters is type.
Since the game allows you to purchase basic starter weapons right at the start, there actually is no reason to buy anything else. A 100 mp Cricket (A) will perform the exact same as a weapon 100x the cost, or even costing real money. They function the exact same.
This causes a scenario where no purchases matter, since everything is basically unlocked at level 5 (20 minutes of play) and you have the exact same weapons as someone with 200 hours into the game. This sounds like a good thing, but this is problematic because there's no reason to actually play the game besides for fun.
One of the big reasons I quit playing Overwatch 2 is because there was absolutely nothing to play for. No progression, no levels, nothing. You just play because you enjoy playing, which I wasn't in OW2. MicroVolts has this exact same problem now.
There also used to be 'special/hyper' weapons back in the day. Most noteably are the God weapons and the Military weapons: The God Weapons were extremely expensive and very overpowered, giving the game the fabled 'P2W' label. And the Military weapons were extremely unique, such as the AK Rifle having ABSURD damage, but also ABSURD recoil, making it hard to actually hit. This went for every weapon in this set, making them extremely unique. These weapons no longer exist, which is a good thing for the God Weapons since they were just the standard ones with insane stats, but the military weapons were actually incredibly fun to play with and would incentivise playing the game a bit differently.
The devs seem very stuck on 'nothing must be OP, so everything must be the same', which gets boring quick.
MP/RT costs ties into this. Both are currencies - one is earned from levelling up, the other from spending money. But what is the point? Nothing you buy matters.
Though it doesn't matter, I should mention that MP can only be earned on level up. Previously you'd get it from every match you play. This change is...stupid? Yeah.
The only reason to spend MP/RT is for cosmetics. Since MP is so limited, you're probably spending real money if you want cosmetics. 95% of the cosmetics are behind a gacha system which cost somewhere between 50 cents to 2.50 to roll, once. You could very easily spend 100 bucks and not get what you want - no pity system either, just bad luck!
Also, buying RT is pretty expensive. They introduced this 'pass', you log in every day to get a small amount of RT, which should profit you if you log in daily. The amount you get is very very low and you don't profit very much. You also don't get rewarded too much for spending a lot at once, like you would in other games. The 100 dollar bulk option is basically the same as buying the 20 dollar item 5 times, which isn't how it works in most games.
My final gripe is actually the biggest one, the upgrade revamp: with the current upgrade system, you simply pick 1 stat and it upgrades it a lot. For example, you can upgrade the Pepper (a) with more Power. It now deals more damage.
In the original game, upgrades were done in levels - there are 9 of them. You select a stat you want to upgrade, and have to upgrade it 9 times for the biggest upgrades. A cool feature about this is that your weapon would change with levels. The weapon's model will change colour, the bullets will change colour and leave behind a nice colour trail, and at max level the weapons will even have a pretty glow when held.
This alone made upgrading worth it back in the day - it looked cool!
Needless to say, this doesn't exist in the current iteration. You can't tell if your opponent upgraded their weapon, or what upgrade they picked.
This game unfortunately needs to undo the reworks they did for people like me to start playing it again, or it will struggle to keep the playerbase engaged. There needs to be a reason to play, something to work towards.
The reworks made the game more balanced and easier to get the best weapon, but I don't think people will play for longer than 1 day.
Also please add the RIO441. I need my baby back, I love that weapon. And please don't forget its authentic heart-attack-inducing SFX.
Sorry for the long read! I love you mwah mwah! <3
There's been a couple of "Microvolts Revival Projects" (games that simply rerelease the dead game for a while) and this seems to be the latest one. This one's currently available for free on Steam, but there is the RT (paid currency) system like before.
I'd rate this game 6/5 if I could. It's such a fantastic game to play, and nothing comes close to the 'feel' of this game. The closest I had was zero-build Fortnite, and that's an entirely different experience.
The characters are cute and funny, there's decent weapon variety and there's very fun and creative maps.
...so, why the 3 stars?
It's because of the current iteration of the game, with its current developers. Unlike the other Microvolts revival projects, this one actually features pretty major gameplay changes. Weapon rebalancing, MP/RT costs and rewards, revamped upgrading system, and some minor things too.
In my opinion, these changes are actively taking away some of the fun. Let's start from the top - weapon rebalance.
Weapon rebalance sounds good, right? In the original MicroVolts, people usually ran the same loadout since there were pretty clear winnners and losers. In this iteration of MicroVolts, they opted for a 'A/B/C/D' solution. In the original game, there were 3-4 different 'archetypes' of every weapon type. For example, rifles: 'Pepper' was the prefered choice, boasting high fire-rate, decent accuracy and a big mag size(clip?), but it dealt the least damage. On the other end is the 'Sherlock' rifle, dealing high damage per shot and being much more accurate, but losing out on fire-rate and mag size. Then there was the third option, 'Hornet', which attempted to be a mixture of the two, but ultimately worse than both.
In the new iteration, all weapons have the 3-4 archetypes built in. You can have a Pepper (A) which acts exactly like the old school Pepper, or Pepper (B) which acts like the Sherlock, or Pepper (C) which acts like the hornet. (I don't remember the letters for every archetype, just pretend I'm right.)
This leads to an interesting scenario: weapons don't matter, their archetype does. Which weapon you pick is cosmetic, the only thing that matters is type.
Since the game allows you to purchase basic starter weapons right at the start, there actually is no reason to buy anything else. A 100 mp Cricket (A) will perform the exact same as a weapon 100x the cost, or even costing real money. They function the exact same.
This causes a scenario where no purchases matter, since everything is basically unlocked at level 5 (20 minutes of play) and you have the exact same weapons as someone with 200 hours into the game. This sounds like a good thing, but this is problematic because there's no reason to actually play the game besides for fun.
One of the big reasons I quit playing Overwatch 2 is because there was absolutely nothing to play for. No progression, no levels, nothing. You just play because you enjoy playing, which I wasn't in OW2. MicroVolts has this exact same problem now.
There also used to be 'special/hyper' weapons back in the day. Most noteably are the God weapons and the Military weapons: The God Weapons were extremely expensive and very overpowered, giving the game the fabled 'P2W' label. And the Military weapons were extremely unique, such as the AK Rifle having ABSURD damage, but also ABSURD recoil, making it hard to actually hit. This went for every weapon in this set, making them extremely unique. These weapons no longer exist, which is a good thing for the God Weapons since they were just the standard ones with insane stats, but the military weapons were actually incredibly fun to play with and would incentivise playing the game a bit differently.
The devs seem very stuck on 'nothing must be OP, so everything must be the same', which gets boring quick.
MP/RT costs ties into this. Both are currencies - one is earned from levelling up, the other from spending money. But what is the point? Nothing you buy matters.
Though it doesn't matter, I should mention that MP can only be earned on level up. Previously you'd get it from every match you play. This change is...stupid? Yeah.
The only reason to spend MP/RT is for cosmetics. Since MP is so limited, you're probably spending real money if you want cosmetics. 95% of the cosmetics are behind a gacha system which cost somewhere between 50 cents to 2.50 to roll, once. You could very easily spend 100 bucks and not get what you want - no pity system either, just bad luck!
Also, buying RT is pretty expensive. They introduced this 'pass', you log in every day to get a small amount of RT, which should profit you if you log in daily. The amount you get is very very low and you don't profit very much. You also don't get rewarded too much for spending a lot at once, like you would in other games. The 100 dollar bulk option is basically the same as buying the 20 dollar item 5 times, which isn't how it works in most games.
My final gripe is actually the biggest one, the upgrade revamp: with the current upgrade system, you simply pick 1 stat and it upgrades it a lot. For example, you can upgrade the Pepper (a) with more Power. It now deals more damage.
In the original game, upgrades were done in levels - there are 9 of them. You select a stat you want to upgrade, and have to upgrade it 9 times for the biggest upgrades. A cool feature about this is that your weapon would change with levels. The weapon's model will change colour, the bullets will change colour and leave behind a nice colour trail, and at max level the weapons will even have a pretty glow when held.
This alone made upgrading worth it back in the day - it looked cool!
Needless to say, this doesn't exist in the current iteration. You can't tell if your opponent upgraded their weapon, or what upgrade they picked.
This game unfortunately needs to undo the reworks they did for people like me to start playing it again, or it will struggle to keep the playerbase engaged. There needs to be a reason to play, something to work towards.
The reworks made the game more balanced and easier to get the best weapon, but I don't think people will play for longer than 1 day.
Also please add the RIO441. I need my baby back, I love that weapon. And please don't forget its authentic heart-attack-inducing SFX.
Sorry for the long read! I love you mwah mwah! <3
2021
Relatively new to the game, but I'm already hooked on the characters, setting and themes. This gacha is the only one which lets you skip the story when you actually don't want it to.
Currently popular gacha could definitely learn a thing or two from this.
Will be playing this for a while!
Currently popular gacha could definitely learn a thing or two from this.
Will be playing this for a while!
2018
This game's very very fun and therapeutic. For some reason, I absolutely loved doing chores and running jobs for people, it felt really rewarding.
Personally I'm a total sucker for Simulation games with light RPG elements (Euro Truck Sim2 does this too!). There's stuff to unlock to make your life easier, which encouraged me to play it more.
Slightly docked points because of incosistency. There's a huge difference between what the game was at the start, and what the latest content is. It's a bit jarring at times, and I personally liked the game without the DLC more.
Still, incredibly fun and definitely recommended if you want to relax a little!
Personally I'm a total sucker for Simulation games with light RPG elements (Euro Truck Sim2 does this too!). There's stuff to unlock to make your life easier, which encouraged me to play it more.
Slightly docked points because of incosistency. There's a huge difference between what the game was at the start, and what the latest content is. It's a bit jarring at times, and I personally liked the game without the DLC more.
Still, incredibly fun and definitely recommended if you want to relax a little!
2023
Unironically does more things right than modern fighting games (namely netcode and not ignoring PC players exist).
While I'm not really into vtubers all that much, this game does have some fun characters which I enjoyed playing. The stages are really cool too, and they have some great music with them.
The gameplay is overly simplistic however. It definitely feels intended to be a 'party' game, something a casual player can pick up and play. I don't think this is a bad thing, because the game knows what it wants to be, but that does limit the enjoyment for me.
It was fun for a few hours, and I'm very glad it's free to play and extremely accessible, plus it had good netcode and keyboard controls, but the lack of depth means I won't be playing this very consistently. Good stuff tho!
While I'm not really into vtubers all that much, this game does have some fun characters which I enjoyed playing. The stages are really cool too, and they have some great music with them.
The gameplay is overly simplistic however. It definitely feels intended to be a 'party' game, something a casual player can pick up and play. I don't think this is a bad thing, because the game knows what it wants to be, but that does limit the enjoyment for me.
It was fun for a few hours, and I'm very glad it's free to play and extremely accessible, plus it had good netcode and keyboard controls, but the lack of depth means I won't be playing this very consistently. Good stuff tho!
2018
One of the more fluid platformers I've played in a long time. The control scheme is quite tight and snappy - Madeline's a very mobile blob!
This game's got good visuals and an even better soundtrack, though the gameplay is a little simplistic. Unlike other platformers, you aren't swarmed by enemies or anything like that, it's usually just a room with tons of spikes. This makes the game more of a puzzle game than a platformer at times, since there's usually only 1 way to clear a room. This leads to the situation where you aren't actually encouraged to speed through rooms, but take your time and figure stuff out, which I feel is a shame considering there's fun movement tech in this game. This does make speedruns of this game more enjoyable to watch though!
The story is definitely written for a certain crowd, and I'm not part of that crowd at all. It didn't do anything for me, and on my second playthrough I simply found myself skipping through it. I will commend the fact that you can do this however - it doesn't force the story down your throat, you can skip it and just enjoy the gameplay.
I 100%'d the game before the DLC came out and I had a great time. The B and C sides were tough but rewarding to finish. When the DLC came out, I tried it for a few hours, and didn't really like it very much. It doubled down on this 'puzzle instead of freeform movement' game design, and I didn't end up finishing it. It also has more story for those wanting that, but as mentioned before, this wasn't really for me.
All in all, I think it's a very fun platformer to play for a while, with charming visuals and music, but it isn't anything spectacular. Still solid though!
This game's got good visuals and an even better soundtrack, though the gameplay is a little simplistic. Unlike other platformers, you aren't swarmed by enemies or anything like that, it's usually just a room with tons of spikes. This makes the game more of a puzzle game than a platformer at times, since there's usually only 1 way to clear a room. This leads to the situation where you aren't actually encouraged to speed through rooms, but take your time and figure stuff out, which I feel is a shame considering there's fun movement tech in this game. This does make speedruns of this game more enjoyable to watch though!
The story is definitely written for a certain crowd, and I'm not part of that crowd at all. It didn't do anything for me, and on my second playthrough I simply found myself skipping through it. I will commend the fact that you can do this however - it doesn't force the story down your throat, you can skip it and just enjoy the gameplay.
I 100%'d the game before the DLC came out and I had a great time. The B and C sides were tough but rewarding to finish. When the DLC came out, I tried it for a few hours, and didn't really like it very much. It doubled down on this 'puzzle instead of freeform movement' game design, and I didn't end up finishing it. It also has more story for those wanting that, but as mentioned before, this wasn't really for me.
All in all, I think it's a very fun platformer to play for a while, with charming visuals and music, but it isn't anything spectacular. Still solid though!