the only thing holding back from a 5 star rating is how same-y the worlds and dungeons are, but i have 100% confidence this game will develop into something special as it's early access period comes to an end. im generally jumpy when playing horror games, but something about the environments, unique ticks and sound effects per monster, and the sound of proximity chat as your friends scream in the distance while theyre mauled to death... its truly a unique horror like no other. like i said, i am generally jumpy with horror. this game actually made me feel more than just cheap jumpscares, i felt genuine dread. there was a time i was stuck alone in a room, trapped by 2 slimes while no one was answering my radio. i escaped, only to see a monster in the doorway. i slammed the door, realized i was trapped, and said "fuck it." i opened the door and crept into the hallway.

the whole time, i was just going "shitshitshit im fucked" without even REALIZING because i was so tense. it was dark, aside from the occasional scan, and the rattling of a sound-activated monster followed me. i was forced to weave in and out of this maze-like dungeon, completely alone, and unfamiliar with the monsters that waited for me. i was so afraid at one point trying to find the entrance i genuinely considered just sacrificing myself to the monsters but i perservered, and escaped the building just to be hounded down by large dog monsters.

the adrenaline rush i felt was RIDICULOUS and the moment my friends respawned on our ship, i felt all my nervous energy just melt away only to realise we were going to be doing that... again!! it was so much fun. i really dont think i've had such a fun horror co-op experience in YEARS.

i feel like i have so much to say about this game, but its hard to really put to words just because i liked it so much. if you have some close friends willing to fork over 10 dollars, give it a shot.

wow!!! really great game. i think its best to go in blind, so i'll be careful with what i say here. i dont know how i avoided spoilers for so long, but i'm really glad i did! i love meta-y stuff and deckbuilders and also roguelikes, so i knew i'd love it but this was more enriching than i expected.

act i was my favorite part, despite having played through everything. the mystery being turned up more in act 2 and the complete gameplay shift was a little sad, but once i found the way to continue my build from act 1, i breezed through it and had a blast finding all the secrets i could. once act 3 hit... i felt so complicated. i liked this version of the gameplay more than act 2, but in the beginning it just made me want act 1 back. exploration and progression felt really slow, and the death/losing mechanics felt unrewarding and bad in a way that the rest of the game had never been. i still agree with this, but that is my only real negative. my spirits lifted and thoughts changed the moments i hit all the bosses in act 3. without giving anything about the fight itself away, golly was my FAVORITE and is probably one of the coolest bosses in any video game i've ever played. the more i experienced the twists in act 3, the less i cared about the things i didnt like and honestly, i got into a real groove with the deck i built and the inherent gameplay required. it became such a fluid and challenging experience at times, that i have a hard time deciding which i liked more. the ending was great, though it left me yearning for more in a way that was... almost unsatisfying? thats not the fault of the writers, i just tend not to like open-ended conclusions. i'd much rather hear what the author intended and decide whether i want to take that in as my own ending, rather than be given nothing or very little and asked to piece it together on my own. its not even really a negative for me, because i think that this and the degradation in gameplay quality is intentional to what the game is trying to say, and the story that is taking place. i like it in concept, but its hard to rate. retrospectively, it makes sense, but in the moment it feels bad to play in a bleak and worse environment and to lose the fun gameplay. regardless, i wont say more, and i dont even think that people who dislike open endings will feel the same, so go in with an open mind!

overall, one of the better gaming experiences i've had. it didn't click with me the first time i played it, so i'm glad i put it down and resolved to come back when it did, because i think pushing through wouldn't have let me enjoy it as i did.

bonus points for the yugioh reference <3
MINOR SPOILER: i saw the duel disk and almost screamed at 2am <- what autism does to a man

[played via steam deck, as there is no steam deck platform option]

this game is cute, dont get me wrong, but its really nothing special. im not sure if im just old and jaded now, but the humor and writing of this really... well, it makes me realize how much of an issue i have with the VN formula. it's impossible to write a character that fits every single player possible, especially when you're writing a romance and need the love interest to bounce off of the dialogue each player chooses. you just can't capture all the nuance that comes with an individual person unless you decide to code thousands of edge-cases that tailor each route and interaction to the player, but that is so unfeasible its never been done (to my knowledge, at least) and definitely not without sacrificing the story they want to share.

grim is a real sweetie, but from day one you can see what archetype they are going for and if it doesnt work immediately to captivate you, the game... doesn't do much to try and fix that. despite trying to pretend he is anything but, grim is a very shallow character. its to be expected, i guess, from such a short window of "dating" in universe and only two-ish hours in real life, but i really struggled to put myself in this guys shoes. right off the bat you get the option to call him "babygirl", they bring up homestuck, mention things like kaomojis and slang like "rizz." it's clear who they are pandering for and the type of humor meant to attract them, which is okay! just not really for me. i cant really critique the story. not because it doesnt have flaws (i think its pretty poor overall), but because i just dont have the language for it. im sure with more time thinking about it, i can summarize it in a concise way, but this is backloggd so... sorry! if you're familiar with butterfly soup, this game is the newest version of that, just limited to one character. its uniquely charming and i think if i was 16 again, this would have hit a lot harder than it does for me now!

that said, there are a few things i like. the art is really fucking good. while some of the character creation things are a bit goofy, it's overall really great and i like the tiny bits of flavor it added to the game, even if its really not used for anything. the pet thing is cute and the neighbors story existing alongside your own is also a fun add, but the game has a lot of nothing outside of the text chains and calls. if this could have been fleshed out with maybe another week of in game bonding time, i think the game would have increased in quality dramatically.

solid dating sim. if you like it, you will probably really like it. if you dislike it, you will know right away. its free, so pick it up and give it a go if you feel so inclined. grim is a cute generic anime boy and i still would be his friend :-)

as a huge fnaf fan, i am biased, but i loved this game. i have always had faith in steel wool after their entry with the first help wanted game, and this was everything i really wanted from it!

there are what feels like so many more minigames in this one, and the quality of the models and sets and overall atmosphere has really developed into something special with the more experience they get under their belt. security breach was many things, but i always appreciated just how beautiful and full of life the expansive pizzaplex felt, despite the lack of scary atmosphere with all the neon lighting. they seem to have struck a good balance between the visual flare of SB and the atmosphere of ruin/HW1, which i appreciate a lot.

i think despite the praises, there just wasn't a way to really compete with how insanely good help wanted 1 was. the endings and secrets to this installment are genuinely fantastic and feature some of my favorite animatrionics/game concepts to date, but the mystery tapes were so much more captivating to me than the story things we are given in this one. i think that this might have some of the best fnaf reveal moments since... idk, ruin? the books' conceptions? so many moments in this one that were more hype on their own that i am struggling SO HARD not to spoil, because if there is a chance for you to discover it on your own, i would hate to ruin it for you. the highs in this are AMAZING, and there aren't really any "low" points i'd say unless a minigame really didn't resonate with you, but my experience as a game OVERALL was less exciting than the first game. maybe because it was more of a hunt to find all the tapes and coins, maybe because it was the first VR game in the franchise, or maybe because it was setting up a story rather than spending time clarifying and continuing an existing one, i couldn't say. i just know they did a great job here, and this is a must-buy for any fnaf fans who are able to purchase a VR headset.

that said, pick up and play HW1 first, even if you've seen a playthrough. come back to this one after.

so hard to rate this one. it excels and improves tremendously over the previous chapters as a horror game, offering more tense build up and interesting and terrifying scares through huggy, catnap's stalking, and the various areas of the playcare we start to explore. the moment you start playing, you can FEEL how much the developers have taken their time with this and crafted something that feels bigger than just another "mascot horror" game.

despite this, poppy playtime 3 fails as a game. the puzzles themselves are interesting and decently fun, albeit a little glitchy at times, but it irks me how little catnap featured despite how excited I was for him as an antagonist. he was genuinely terrifying, but his final boss fight is anything but. i dont want to spoil much, but its so underwhelming when compared to how wonderfully executed mommy long legs and huggy wuggy's chase sequences were. i think the new direction they chose to give catnap fits the cat character more, yes, but its just so painfully boring. it reminds me of the whack-a-huggy minigame in chapter 2, except that one was actually fun and didnt overstay its welcome. the playtime devs are definitely able to create fun and stressful minigame situations (especially obvious thanks to chapter 2) but they really missed the mark on its ending which sullies my feelings of positivity for chapter 3.

regardless, it is pretty fun and genuinely very scary when it tries to be. i really admire the direction the poppy devs are taking the series!

[ played via steam deck ]

So, I've had a load of games I've wanted to get through in the beginning of 2024. I've played a pretty good spread of genres and qualities and got hit with both a blessing and curse: a two-day long, still ongoing power outage. I got sick of playing the things I've been getting through so I took a break with this one. Sitting in the pitch dark, I wasn't sure what to expect, but I... enjoyed my time with it, I think? Although I felt very underwhelmed once I realize how shallow the world, the systems, and the characters were.

It's weird to say, and it sounds a bit pretentious, but have you ever played a game and been struck by the realization that you are not the target audience? Not because the game doesn't appeal to you in themes or genre, but because it feels like its targeting players unfamiliar with what its trying to be? Thats what Citizen Sleeper has felt like to me. I don't like saying it, but it's true, and it boggles my mind ever so slightly because resource management simulators in the way CS presents itself are not new-gamer familiar. Despite this, you are given very long, hand hold-y dumping menus the first time you interact with people, with systems that seem to serve no.. real purpose? After only an hour or two, I had gamed the system well enough to not feel any of its difficulty. Despite the many paths in its story, I never felt pressured or had the fear I couldn't feasibly complete the content available to me. I don't think every game HAS to be difficult or lock me out of content and require many playthroughs (i honestly hate it when games do this), but CS's world would have been the most perfecf place for this and it rarely comes up. You can encounter different endings, yes, but it is entirely possible to accidentally stumble into every piece of content even if you don't fully understand the systems. I was very confused on the condition/energy system for a solid 2+ hours and still managed to complete every time gated prompt with ease thanks to the generous leveling systems and time windows.

In fact, the entire class system is pointless. All it did was ensure that when I finished the game, the stat I had a debuff for was the only one that ended at a +2 bonus rather than a +3. If the stats were fixed or more scarce or even impacted by the choices you made in the story, it would have felt more rewarding to pick and choose what risks you made. Instead, I just chose "what do I have perks for", which often was a +1 or +2 to a critical dice roll, with the option to reroll my dice if they were low costs. There was consistently no stakes present, and the one part of the game (the 3 part DLC? after stories) that stressed how intense and difficult the window of time would be... I completed it in half the allotted time.

I am not a game designer. I don't have a perfect recommendation on how to fix this in a neat way, but removing the outright stat bonuses to dice and only having perks or only providing bonuses as a result of your choices would help increase the pressure and difficulty a little bit, while still feeling satisfying and not changing the core mechanics so much. There were other issues I had with balancing (by the end of the game I had an overflow of 700 coins, and could effectively buy any of the balancing resources necessary without thinking), but this was probably the most game-breaking. It removed any hint of strategy I faced, and I felt really disappointed by this aspect of the game. I hoped that the story and overall world-building would suffice in picking up this slack, but...

The premise at CS's core was great. I loved the idea of our emulated Sleeper robot self finding their place, seeking refuge and their place in the world. It was fun to meet characters and find new places constantly that made the Eye feel alive, but unfortunately the writing, aside from a few select characters, felt so bland. It is well written for the most part in its prose and when it has things it wants to say, but the actual time we spend with most characters to get to know them is short.

One character I really liked was Tala, a bartender who you meet after facing discrimination for being a Sleeper, and eventually befriend and work for. Unfortunately, you talk to her for a few minutes, do some fetch-dice-quests, and then suddenly you speak in another visual novel-esque sequence and you are already good friends. None of the build up is actually there, on screen, and while I still liked the relationship the MC and Tala have and the things I learn about her, it still feels like I'm not even experiencing this in my own story. It happens without me, and this occurs multiple times with other NPCs. The after stories fix this and is genuinely the better part of Citizen Sleeper's entire campaign, but it happens so late. You're given brief impressions of characters and asked to invest in them, and you do and you can, but I wish that 75% of them had been expanded on whatsoever. Feng was wonderful, as well as Peake and Riko, but they are also the few characters who have long and sprawling storylines that interweave with the Eye's political turmoil and each other's struggles at least tangentially.

Even the big political factions are only brief mentions with little impact on the story until the absolute end (and it still feels tacked on). You can choose to provide intel and complete stories where you side with conflicting political factions and rise in their ranks but it never reflects elsewhere.

Citizen Sleeper takes itself seriously, but feels too shy to commit fully to anything. It doesnt want to give you complex narratives, maybe because it doesn't have faith that the dice mechanics are capable of supplementing the decision-making systems, I dont know. But there is a really strong foundation that it fails to capitalize on. I think it's a good game regardless, but that almost makes it worse because I can see so clearly how it could have been great.

I still recommend you pick it up as I enjoyed my time with it, but I dont know... I see they're making a sequel and I hope that when they do, they aren't afraid to be more in-depth with the mechanics and storytelling at hand.