i'm still not sure if i'm going to play this game again. i'm sure there's probably some true ultimate ending i can get if i bang my head at it for a few more playthroughs, but i loved the ending this game gave me too much to do that i think. it's a good game. the kind of game only the people who made it could've made. it's one of those games where every time it comes up in conversation, the people who have played it before will say "dude, you gotta try it. go in blind. just trust me." and that's a sentiment i will echo here, if you haven't played it i think you should!
in formula, this game is a lot like something like the stanley parable or there is no game. you are being directed by a snarky narrator to do something and given the power to either bark along like a good little dog or be a little shit and do what you want. the premise is simple: there is a princess in the basement of a cabin. if the princess leaves the cabin the world will end and everyone will die. you are here to slay the princess. past this point i'll be spoiling the basic twist of this game.
there are a lot of ways you can act when interfacing with the princess. generally, no matter what you will die. then you are back where you started and you notice what's going on. it's a loop. things are a little different though. in the first encounter, the only voices that spoke were the narrator and the voice of the hero, which could easily be understood as the voice of the character you embody. generally this voice was hesitant to harm any princess, but when it saw the princess behaving strangely became concerned. on the next loop though, you will be joined by a new voice. and holy shit there are so many voices it could be, all depending on how you acted. were you skeptical of everyone and everything? meet the skeptic, here to be accusatory and untrusting of everything around it. did you wait until the princess turned her back to do the deed when nobody looked? well let me introduce you to the opportunist! a smarmy, fence-sitting asshole willing to side with anyone or anything that looks remotely advantageous. do you believe every word the princess says and do anything it takes to save her? well now the voice of a dumb asshole desperate to fuck her lives in your ear. it quickly started to remind me of disco elysium, with these different voices giving me new ideas and dialogue choices. it's a really well done system and i'm impressed they pulled it off so seamlessly. also props to the incredible voice actor who plays all of them as well as the narrator, jonathan sims, who i guess did some kind of magnus chase fan-podcast or something.
you're not the only one who changes each loop though. the princess remembers everything each time too, and the way you chose to treat her changes her. stabbed her in the back? she hides in the corner, baring her fangs. saved her like a damsel in distress? now she lays with a hand to her forehead waiting for the brave knight to come rescue her. you get the idea. it makes for a story you always feel like you're steering even if you can't be sure where it will end up. these loops will end though. as soon as you see the princess leave the cabin. to explain further would give away the grander meta-narrative of the game and i don't want to delve into that, but i promise you it's very interesting.
as much as i enjoyed this game, it did almost lose me a couple of times. it's biggest issue is it can come across as far too cute. the player's relationship with the narrator can veer pretty far into stanley parable territory, and as much as i love this game i would get really frustrated at every argument with the narrator turning into comedy bickering of the same tone. i wanted to immerse myself in this game in a way that felt counter to that. at the end of the day, this content only showed up because i chose the "obstinate video game player" dialogue choices, but i think often the game is worse for including those choices at all, even if they can lead to some pretty interesting places.
the thing that assured me i would love this game were some of the first words on the screen.
"Whatever horrors you may find in these dark spaces, have heart and see them through. There are no premature endings. There are no wrong decisions. There are only fresh perspectives and new beginnings. This is a love story."
it makes an impressive piece of prose and a genuinely useful guide for how to play the game. you don't have to worry about wrong choices or missed opportunities. you will have time to explore and make mistakes without severe consequences. but you don't have forever. in the end, it's not a loop. it's a spiral.

kingsway is such an ideal roguelike. i really bounced off this game the first time i played it. the ui seemed dense and hard to keep track of, the mechanics felt obtuse and confusing, i often felt incredibly overwhelmed and weak compared to everything i was up against. then everything just... clicked into place! i knew where i liked everything, i knew what numbers i wanted to go up and what items i needed and didn't. i started relishing certain events and areas, getting excited at a new modifier on a weapon that complements a build i'm doing perfectly. even if it all seems impossible at first, eventually it all just comes together!
this game has some incredible endings as well. the writing and story itself isn't too interesting or unique by my standards anyway (at least the original ones, the more recent update added a real fun one) and i really love how easy it was to figure out how to reach different endings without resorting to looking anything up. even the most esoteric one makes itself pretty clear after a handful of runs.
anyway if you like roguelikes and think this ones gimmick looks charming, give it a shot. the game is cheap. also the game has a little picrew customizer to make a little face for your character, but you can also upload custom images to it and it's obviously a very small thing, but i just think that's very cute and fun.

when i was a kid my favorite thing in the world was kirby. i was obsessed with kirby. i played all the games i could get my hands on, i watched the cartoon (whatever episodes were on my cable’s on demand service, which wasn’t as much as i liked), the movie showed up in the red box at the grocery store once. i didn’t even know there WAS a kirby movie. i begged to rent it and getting to see it, i was definitely not disappointed. when water kirby showed up i took a picture of the screen with my hand-me-down flip phone and made it my wallpaper.
when i eventually get unfettered internet access in my early teens i research kirby and i find out about an unreleased kirby gamecube game. 3d movement, full multiplayer, THEY EVEN HAVE WATER KIRBY! FROM THE MOVIE! this game seems like it’ll be THE videogame. my imagination ran wild. what else could this perfect kirby game have? it’s gotta have the power combinations from 64, the animal buddies from dreamland 2 and 3, gotta have playable metaknight and dedede too. of course, by the time i had found out about this, the game cube was long dead. any hope of this game existing was gone before i could even hope for it. i could imagine though.
eventually came kirby return to dreamland. i felt the pull in my heart. this was it, right? it’s a kirby game with full multiplayer, dedede and metaknight are playable characters! WATER KIRBY IS EVEN IN IT! but it’s not quite right. no 3d movement, no power combos, it couldn’t beat that game i imagined as a child even if it came close.
more kirby games came and went. nothing that really amazed me if i’m honest. lots of little side games i tried and got bored of. triple deluxe was underwhelming. i was too broke to try robobot (until much more recently when i played and loved it) or star allies. i don’t know if i could even be considered a kirby fan at that point. it was something so defining to me as a child and now it felt like a stranger. then, kirby and the forgotten world was announced. a 3d kirby game. with customizable powers (not quite crystal shards but still). and multiplayer.
ok, thanks for reading this far. now i get to the actual review. i’m not just reviewing this game as it is or as how much i enjoyed it. i’m reviewing it as the game i dreamed of when i saw those low quality screenshots of that unreleased game cube game. this is unfair to the game. but i wouldn't do it if it didn’t come so heart-wrenchingly close.
it plays like i always dreamt it would. kirby’s move set feels so adapted to a 2d platformer, but with the level design it fits seamlessly. the ability customization is straight up better than crystal shards. maybe not with as much variety, but the thought and design put into every variation more than makes up for the quantity. the multiplayer is fine. i wish it had online, but the game i imagined didn’t so i can’t fault it. the story is the thing i never would’ve cared about in my dream game, but i know if i could’ve imagined it i would’ve wanted it so bad. i was insufferable about kirby lore then and this would’ve had me pacing and rambling to nobody for hours. i loved this game. this is almost certainly as close as any game will ever get to reaching into my imagination and pulling something out and i am truly grateful i got to experience it. it’s the reason i 100%ed it within a week of getting it. but no water kirby. 4 1/2 stars.

this game is aesthetically and narratively an absolute triumph. i'd say the same for its gameplay at least in a bubble. the game is fun. the critical issue that makes it come apart at the seams is how in conflict the narrative is with the gameplay.

if you havent played, this game is a fast paced stock market simulator where you accept requests from people looking for organs and buy them off a market with fluctuating prices, trying to turn a profit. the game's several endings are gotten through fulfilling the requests of different characters in varying ways. the issue comes into play because these wonderfully written requests that serve as the game's main narrative are something i barely looked at. i had a tight time limit to buy and sell enough organs to turn a profit so the only thing i'm going to have time to look at is what organ they want and when. its a tragedy.

when i got my first ending i was completely blindsided. i was just desperately slinging organs and doing requests when boom. black screen, dialog, cool art, the end. and none of it made any sense to me at all. that moment killed me. i wanted so bad to love this game, but i knew that playing it as intended and enjoying the narrative would be impossible.

i can understand what they were trying to do. this game is about doing something unethical for profit. moving so fast, you don't have time to consider the damage you could be doing providing organs to mass murderers. but if i dont even have time to read it it's not gonna work.

there are options to slow down the game, but at slower speeds the stock market becomes a total slog. there's no challenge just find the lowest or highest number and buy or sell. and switching the speed requires going through 2 menus so you cant slow down to read requests, then speed up to play the stocks very easily.

i want to love this game so bad, but it feels like there was just no way to make this game concept work in any real way. im glad it exists for its beautiful music, art, ui, and the idea at its heart, but this game feels like a failed experiment

this is probably the closest thing i have to a "forever game". i cant foresee a point in my life where i wont be able to turn this game on and have a nice time. ive played this game hundreds of hours spread across multiple platforms and even though i dont play it nearly as much as i did, its always a game i know ill go back to. i still havent beaten the rat's punchout game even once. i know when i get everything and see the finished gun, i still wont be done with this game. thats something i havent felt about any game but this one.

when huniecam studio came out i saw some youtuber play it and thought it looked fun and pirated it. i spent the next week engrossed in getting perfect runs over and over. i got every unlock, got the highest tier victory on hard mode and i loved it. then i deleted it and forgot about it for several years. then, last year, i saw this game on steam and it seemed like something similar. i thought i'd pirate it and play it for a week then move on. i ended up playing a while longer than a week, and actually buying the game too.
to start off with, as a management game its perfect. i loved management in huniecam studio, but this puts it to shame. great sounds, ui, and gameplay. if the game was just this, itd be amazing.
the narrative, at first glance, is what you'd expect. the kind of humor you'd expect from a game like this. lots of 2012 "epic gentleman" shit, the kind of stuff that feels like its there to make youtubers make react faces at, that kind of stuff.
the thing this game does that so few do that makes it genuinely one of the funniest games i've ever played is that it says "yes, and" to every dialogue choice it gives you. there's some exception, but usually only in service of some greater joke. i found myself actually getting really invested in the dialog choices (which all have no bearing on the actual story) just to find the funniest options available and see how the game would justify them.
i really like most of the characters. i found a couple of the guys kind of flat, but its a dating sim and i'm a lesbian so that was always going to be hit or miss. i like more of them than i thought i would which is something! my favorite character is probably pip. shes a funny little detective and her storyline probably made me laugh the most.
as far as the sex parts, i think the ones i read were pretty good. the game cares a lot about consent and giving content warnings for stuff that will show up. there was an option for police roleplay in the pip sex scene that you could opt out of and i thought that was a nice touch. it also makes every character openly bi or pan and queerness always feels like a part of the conversation surrounding sex in a way i think is done well. being a game about being a victorian aristocrat, the game has generally very good politics. it is aware of classism and racism but manages to keep things lighthearted still.
my biggest criticism of the game is that there is a lot more body type diversity among the male characters than the female ones. theres no fat women at all. theres smaller women and kind of muscular women and thats it. it felt like a trans character was missing too. theres so much conversation in this game about queerness and body positivity, so not having characters representing that makes it feel like something is missing.
all that being said, i think the game is good. i like going back and just doing runs of it with new characters and strategies. more than anything, i hope there's another game in this series.