quillex_
2023
Another hidden-cat game! The game allows you to adjust the colours of the background and lineart to your comfort, which is a neat accessibility feature. The art is adorable, and the cats plentiful. Made for a fun 15 minutes of gameplay, DLC levels included.
2021
Archvale was my first bullet hell. And oh boy, what a wild ride it was.
The premise is simple. You are a child with the ability to kill the undying, and you must reassemble the Arch. Fight your way through rooms of enemies, dungeons, and bosses to eventually reach your objective. You get three classes of weapon to choose from, though I stuck to magic almost exclusively.
Here are the pros:
- The game is honestly pretty accessible to people who haven't played a bullet hell before. (like me!)
- The world is vibrant, with unique enemies in each area and different vibes throughout.
- Upgrades are not unbearably grindy to get. If you clean each room out of useful resources on your way through areas, by the time you reach the town of the area, you'll have enough to upgrade your armour and buy health upgrades and badges.
- The soundtrack is great - most of the area themes absolutely slap.
The cons:
- The trials. Most of the trials are fine. They're not too hard, you can dodge the orbs easy enough. Then you get to some that just spit tons of them at you with no rhyme or reason and before you know it, you've touched one and have to start over. These were easily the most exasperating part of the game for me, and I'm not usually someone who has to step away from my system in frustration.
My overall opinion of Archvale is that it's a solid little bullet hell, well-designed for the most part, with a few balance issues here and there. 4/5 stars.
The premise is simple. You are a child with the ability to kill the undying, and you must reassemble the Arch. Fight your way through rooms of enemies, dungeons, and bosses to eventually reach your objective. You get three classes of weapon to choose from, though I stuck to magic almost exclusively.
Here are the pros:
- The game is honestly pretty accessible to people who haven't played a bullet hell before. (like me!)
- The world is vibrant, with unique enemies in each area and different vibes throughout.
- Upgrades are not unbearably grindy to get. If you clean each room out of useful resources on your way through areas, by the time you reach the town of the area, you'll have enough to upgrade your armour and buy health upgrades and badges.
- The soundtrack is great - most of the area themes absolutely slap.
The cons:
- The trials. Most of the trials are fine. They're not too hard, you can dodge the orbs easy enough. Then you get to some that just spit tons of them at you with no rhyme or reason and before you know it, you've touched one and have to start over. These were easily the most exasperating part of the game for me, and I'm not usually someone who has to step away from my system in frustration.
My overall opinion of Archvale is that it's a solid little bullet hell, well-designed for the most part, with a few balance issues here and there. 4/5 stars.
This review contains spoilers
Rarely will a game make me cry, and Spiritfarer is one of them. An emotional, heartwarming, sensitive tale about coping with loss, Spiritfarer is a cozy management game with platforming levels that requires you to run your ship, ferrying souls to the afterlife. Highly recommend.
2009
My first Amanita title, Machinarium drew me in with beautiful artwork, an eclectic cast of characters and even stranger music. The puzzles are not too difficult but still pose a fun thought exercise.
An adorable puzzle game where you slot cats of a variety of different shapes into the board, so that they fill in all the spaces. Cats Organized Neatly is a cute spin on the classic block placing subgenre of puzzle games, and doesn't overstay its welcome. It provided me with two hours of relaxed play, with the difficulty amping up as the chapters went by. Not super challenging, thinking and visualisation is key to solving the later puzzles. It has a dark mode for people who might have issues with eyestrain, and charming, relaxing music. The cats meow and purr when you interact with them, but not in a way that causes irritation.
The canine counterpart of Cats Organized Neatly, Dogs Organized Neatly carries on the "Organized Neatly" torch perfectly, with a cute, funky soundtrack, and a cast of adorable dogs to arrange on the board. Much like the first game, the difficulty amps up as the levels go by, but the game isn't very challenging on the whole.
2022
A neat little co-op game to play with a friend. You play as a character in the past, or as one in the future, with the other player taking on the role you didn't choose. You have to work together to help solves the puzzles in the two timelines, with the usual Rusty Lake weirdness smacking you in the face on the way. Took about four and a half hours to master the game, with three playthroughs in total. It can be done in two - I just missed a couple achievements the first time I played as the Past.
2023
This game is chock-full of goofy monsters, and they're hungry. Your objective is simple - guide the delivery workers to the monsters to feed them all, with each worker having a different amount of food, and a different number of steps they can take. The puzzles vary wildly in difficulty - some of them are quite far into a region but pretty simple, while some early puzzles had me scratching my head. The music is delightfully goofy, and the art is bright, bouncy, and cute. An excellent way to while away a couple hours of your time!
2023
Find All 4: Magic improves upon all the gripes I had with the previous games - you can now zoom in and out of the canvas, the hint is improved, and the levels caused barely strain on my eyes at all. The theme is more cohesive - the items are almost all related to magic and witchcraft. There is also no screen tearing - a problem that plagued me while playing Find All 3.
This review contains spoilers
A whacky adventure about a sentient turnip committing tax evasion. Beneath its ridiculous surface lies a dark, surprisingly depressing undercurrent of nuclear fallout and disaster.
2022
Probably my least favourite in the series, simply due to the awful screen tearing I had to contend with, especially in the final level with the boats. The art was charming as always, however, and I liked the introduction of levels of difficulty.
2022
Sudoku, but with cats instead of numbers. Do I need to say more?
2021
A cute little hidden object game that has you hunting for a variety of objects in a black and white world that fills in as you find things. There are 4 achievements tied to speedrunning the game - these stack if you hit the lower times than required for the higher-timed achievements. A short, but enjoyable experience.
A short, festive addition to the Cats Hidden In series, for the Yogscast Jingle Jam! The cats had me feline Christmassy as I hunted for them in a cute, snowy world, resplendent with presents, the tree, and wintry surprises!
The base game is free, with a DLC adding 3 new levels with errands to run. As is always the case with Devcats games, the art is incredibly charming, with the colours making hunting down the cats hidden in each scene easy with no strain on the eyes. The synth music had me tapping my feet as I played, and I loved the mechanic of arcade game mini-levels within some of the levels.