Recent reviews by oldskoolgool

Fun game, but I have one major gripe with this game (And other puzzle games that suffer from this same problem).

There seems to be a disproportionate amount of RNG when it comes to getting the perfect expansion hexes and tiles to place within them for classic mode (or high-score mode). This is great for randomness' sake, but when you have to score a certain amount of points, its insanely frustrating to constantly score the same amount of points or less no matter what you do differently. Long explanation below, skip to the end for my summary of the game as a whole.

Let's take the Continental Medium stage as the prime and major example:

-To score "3 stars" on that stage you need to score 2100 points. There are river cards that give a point bonus to adjacent biome tiles, and ponds that do the same.
-Placing a perfect biome involves 12 like tiles and 3 like animals. (Think 12 forest tiles with 3 boars).
-You unlock the large expansions as you score more points, and each expansion is a large hexagon made up of 19 smaller hexagons.
-If you place a row of three ponds you score the most bonus points.
-If you have a river of at least 18 tiles you unlock the water mill, which gives an additional bonus to each water tile (Rivers and ponds).
-Ideally, you would strategically place biome tiles in a way that it utilizes the river bonus and at least one pond bonus. The only way to truly do this is to plan ahead for river and pond placement, taking into account the different tile elevations that influence the river's path and making sure not to place ponds directly adjacent to any rivers.

With those things in mind, imagine you get the perfect expansions to allow for an early 18 tile long river, unlocking the water mill. You manage to correctly use all the provided tiles for biomes of exactly 12 tiles, with as many rows of three ponds as possible and any extra rivers are no longer than 3 tiles. The ponds aren't touching the rivers anywhere, there is little to no wasted space with sharp turns in the rivers, and you have 3 matching animals in every biome. You have likely scored every single point you can, and you're sitting 200-300 points short of the 2100 needed for the "3 star" rating. You try again, getting a similar score with a seemingly completely different configuration. You try a third time, and you eke out 10 more points from the sheer luck of getting an extra pond this time around.

Now fast forward 2 hours, you still haven't gotten past the 1900 point mark and there is no explanation anywhere as to why. The only thing you can do is hope you randomly get an extra couple river or pond cards and that the expansion hexes you get are good enough that you can get the long river needed for the watermill quickly so you can maybe score more points this time, possibly. Now don't get me wrong, I get this is a puzzle game, but whats the point of any puzzle if there's no surefire solution to it? If you're relying on RNG to draw the perfect tiles and get the best possible hex configurations, it ends up being extremely frustrating when it doesn't happen after dozens of attempts. It also takes away from the challenge of the puzzle when there's not always a solution.

A good puzzle is solvable in one way with a set outcome. A great puzzle is solvable in multiple ways and has different outcomes that are all counted as success by the puzzle's parameters. A bad puzzle is one that relies on chance and bashing your head against the wall enough times that it eventually works. I hate nothing more than a puzzle game that relies mostly on RNG to achieve an outcome. This game unfortunately has that exact thing as part of its core mechanics. After 15 hours that has turned me off entirely to the rest of the game, regardless of its better or not. I also just don't want to spend hours retrying a puzzle because I can't get "lucky" enough to score enough points.

Summary:
Great game that suffers from a glaring negative; you will not be able to solve or "3 star" every stage consistently due to card draws and expansions being completely randomized while requiring a set score to complete. I can't really recommend it when there's better options out there like Dorfromantik or Islanders that do the same things in a much less frustrating format.

Locked Singleplayer duels behind a paywall. Perish.

I understand this game costs money to run, but I'm to the point where I would rather play in a web browser with ads or watch an ad to play a game instead of paying for yet ANOTHER subscription. Subscription models are doomed to fail in this day and age, we as gamers and consumers have severe subscription fatigue.

Full of sweats, hackers, and just overall not as fun as it was years ago. Battlefield is dead.

Fun game! Definitely recommend if you're looking for something similar to Gunfire Reborn or other roguelikes.

Combat is a little weird at first, but once you get used to the different weapon speeds and the block timing its not bad at all.

The stages are basically the same every time, but the order in which you experience the rooms/areas is slightly different, which is a great way to keep it from feeling repetitive while also not forcing the devs to rely on procedural generation.

I leveled up to max level (65) in about 5 hours, but even with the limited amount of content available so far the game has a solid foundation.

I would only have a few suggestions to build on whats already in place:

1) Different tiers of abyssal rift would be cool. Maybe make it so you can go past five rounds for a reward tier increase every 5 rounds for a max of 15 rounds or something along those lines. Also making the enemies spawn from more than one direction could make it feel more challenging as the rounds advance.

2) More inscriptions? More boons? Maybe even more weapon/magic types? - The content already in place is solid, and I enjoy every weapon for different reasons, but I wonder if there wouldn't be room for a Sword & Shield, Mace, or Pike/Halberd? I also noticed there's nothing related to direct Life-steal or Bleed damage on weapons, which I think would fit in pretty nicely. An On-Hit life-steal boon would be neat, maybe every weapon hit on an enemy heals X damage or something to that effect. Bleed could be a weapon inscription or unique modifier possibly as well, with a percentage chance to inflict Bleed or maybe a flat chance to inflict so much Bleed on an enemy. Might fit best as a unique modifier, where the weapon will inflict bleed every few hits that does a percentage of the weapon's damage per tick for a short duration. One last thing I noticed there is no poison damage of any kind, which could be a great category to add across the board. Adding a Poison spell class, damage type, and related boons and inscriptions would greatly increase the variety of options available and give a great alternative to whats already implemented.

3) More enemy types and classes? - Again, what is in place is great. Nothing feels out of place or overly re-used except maybe the orcs. I think replacing orcs with goblins/shamans in the swamp area and mixing in some new variations of existing enemies would help the game not feel so samey after a bit. For enemy classes I think adding some archers/crossbowmen to the enemy class pool would also be neat, only issue being they wouldn't be affected by spell reflect damage.

4) An endless wave-survival mode similar to the Abyssal Rifts, but with a shopkeeper that appears every 5-10 rounds. Scaling enemy difficulty and numbers, a boss every few rounds, some unique enemies sprinkled in, maybe even some player activated traps that could be bought. All that and throw in some kind of support characters that can be hired for a set amount of time, and you've just doubled, even tripled the amount of content available by adding a second mode with its own unique challenges.

All that being said, I really like what you guys have so far and hope that you keep building on and improving on whats in place!

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EDIT: Looks like we're getting some of what I mentioned above in a future update. Excited to give it a shot!

Also two of the achievements appear to be bugged for me. I have completed the game normally and launched 25+ enemies into the Abyss on every abyss-type stage. As a person who likes achievements I am sad.

Best/Most fun I've had since Lethal Company. Similar concept but unique enough to stand out and be great in its own ways. Monsters react to sight/sound in different ways than Lethal Co entities too, which also helps it feel like more of its own thing.

Definitely recommend, even solo games can be fun if you don't have a ton of friends to convince to play.

Fun if you like brain rot or are a die-hard fan of the SCP universe. The game itself is fine, its mostly the community that drives me away. Most servers are full of loud, obnoxious teenagers who just gaggle around screaming memes at each other. Yes, you can mute people, but then the communication part of the game is gone and you might as well just go play SCP: 5K.

This is more of a "Meh" then anything, but since its leaning toward the negative I'm giving it that.
Very fun if you have enough friends for a private server, but most people don't, so don't bank on that.

Probably the most addicting deck-building rogue-like game I've played since Slay the Spire. These two games are by far my two favorites in the genre, with very few others even coming close.

I've only played 11 hours of Balatro, but I already know that I'll be playing this one for a while yet.

The game is super rewarding for that small part of our monke brains that likes watch the funny number get big. It also has a great amount of progression based rewards, mainly in the new jokers you unlock. Every time you win with a new set of conditions, you're most likely unlocking something. Just playing the game unlocks things over time too, with different milestones also unlocking new jokers and ways to play.

Fanstastic pick-up, and when it's on sale it's almost like you're stealing. Absolutely worth it if you like this style of game.

You want to play Chess? Chinese Checkers? Risk? Basically any other board game in existence? This lets you do it.

In-person DnD keeps falling through? Bam its got that too.

You like Warhammer but are poor? We got Warhammer at home!

Seriously the best platform out there to play tons of board/card/tabletop games. You must buy.

Very fun if you have a private server you can play on or know someone else who also plays. That being said the community on public servers can be pretty hit or miss. Most people are cool and will help you learn if you're new, but like any game there are some people who won't.

Highly recommend if you have friends that will play or can find a community to join.

Due to the fact that this game costs over $1000 dollars to fully experience I'm telling EA to completely F-off. Best game was Sims 2, they've only gone gradually downhill since then.

My wife loves this game and has purchased a fair amount of packs over the years, but I won't recommend it to anyone ever just due to the price alone. The base game is "free" but it's as free as going into a grocery store and getting the free samples in the food section, or as free as playing the demo games in the electronics area is. I don't normally recommend sailing the high seas, but this is one case I can advocate for it.