Category: Game reviews

Border Pioneer is the second game you can get in the Yogscast Games bundle I mentioned yesterday. They sent me a review copy of both games to play, you can get the bundle here.

Now these two games are quite different, while one was a card roguelike, this is more of a city-builder tower defense title. You get a turn or two to build farms, towers walls, etc. After that enemies will show up and hopefully you kill them. This will cause them to drop their chest. The chest contains cards that can be used to build new buildings. This is the basic flow of the game.

There are a number of characters to unlock, my favorite gives you a chance to spawn temporary fairies when you kill enemies. These are extremely helpful in the later stages. Other characters do things like give you food one time if you run out or make mages stronger. There is a great variety in characters.

Yogscast Games has a habit of making some amazing games, and this is one of those games. I can’t truly explain why. It is a pixel game that sounds good and looks ok, but the game is just pure fun. I quickly lost hours to this game and will probably lose plenty more. I can not recommend this or stray-path-129797 enough. The games are amazing. it is definitely a 9/10 game that I can’t complain about. Best wishes and may the gaming ods bring you glory.

• One World Under Doom
• Hellraiser: Revival Playstation 5 Review
• Lostbound Steam Review
• Ashfield Hollow Steam Demo Review
• No More Room in Hell 2 PlayStation 5 Review

If you had come to me and pitched the idea of a game that combined Freecell and a roguelike before playing Stay Path, I probably would have thought you were insane. When I saw some screenshots, I still wasn’t sold. Then Yogscast Games sent me a video, and having played their other games, I figured I would give it a shot, and thankfully, they sent me a review copy.

What transpired was hours of gameplay that I would not trade for anything. As a very famous public figure in the gaming community is notorious for saying, it just works. Each card gets an attack and defense, just like your character, of which you have a few to choose from. They either take damage or outright die. If they die you take no damage usually, if they don’t they hit you back assuming your defense isn’t higher than their attack. This goes on until you clear all the cards, die, or reveal a card that lets you move on to the next area,

Each character starts with their own stats that differ slightly and they all get their own possible starting relics. They all have their own benefits to start with and there is no truly wrong answer so let your personal play style guide you. It is far more important that you pick the right upgrades when they are offered and use your two-item slots wisely. It may seem smart to always keep healing items with you, but some enemies deal damage before you hit them, and having an arrow to kill them outright is more important than healing.

You start with three emblems slots unlocked and by scoring more points in runs you can unlock more slots that make runs easier. Emblems are unlocked by doing different in-game things to get the stuff you need to buy them, for example, defeating bosses or reaching new levels. This is also how you unlock new characters. Points are plentiful at the start so unlocking characters and enough emblems to have choices is easy out of the gate.

The game is a 9/10 must-buy for fans of the Roguelike genre, and you won’t find much better $15 bucks. That being said there is a Steam bundle for about $25 that you won’t want to miss that includes both Stray Path and a game called Border Pioneer that I will also cover. If you don’t want to go read that review, it is a slightly different game that also costs $15 and is amazing. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Macross Shooting Insight on PS5 was sent to me by Red Art Games which I always appreciate. The game revolves around a series of Anime ( known as Macross or Robotech) that I honestly know nothing about, but it has its own story that will fill you in. It involves flying space mechs. During these space battles, you will collect power-ups that will allow songstresses to sing very catchy songs that will give you different boosts such as dealing or taking less damage as just two examples.

These battles range from side-scrolling to traditional top-down and even a top-down 3-directional type, all using the same basic and easy control scheme. The game itself isn’t easy but has very good accessibility options for those who just want to see the story play out. You can all skip the story entirely if you just want to get to the action.

Each character has different stats and weapons to use, as well as a different story to play through. The game isn’t limited to a simple story mode leaving plenty of replayability. You can take a boss rush mode or an arcade mode. With plenty to do my only real issue was the price. As much fun as I had it just doesn’t feel like a $40 game to me. at $20 I would absolutely recommend this game, it is a solid 7/10. At $40 however, I would wait for a sale. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

• One World Under Doom
• Hellraiser: Revival Playstation 5 Review
• Lostbound Steam Review
• Ashfield Hollow Steam Demo Review
• No More Room in Hell 2 PlayStation 5 Review

Tavern Manager Simulator on Steam is another long line of Simulator games I have been checking out recently. This one was sent to me by One More time. The game itself is all in the name, you inherit a run-down tavern, clean it up, buy some beer, and start selling it to anyone who walks in. Take these profits to buy more beer and repeat. Do those until you can buy some upgrades. In between you will draw water from the well, wash mugs, and clean up after messy patrons.

The issue with this game is while it looks solid enough, it gets boring very quickly. The game loop of buying single servings of beer and then selling them just doesn’t hold up very well. As you add more chairs and food into the mix without the ability to simply hire help gets tedious and frustrating. While you can get help through the use of a special fairy dust it isn’t really the same as simply hiring someone. It would have been nice to simply hire a tavern wench or hunk so to speak to sling beer for me or a cook to make life easier.

That isn’t to say the game is bad, there is fun to be had for many, just not for me. The game has very positive reviews on Steam with close to 3000 reviews, the game is definitely at least a 7/10. For me, there are just better options out there. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

• One World Under Doom
• Hellraiser: Revival Playstation 5 Review
• Lostbound Steam Review
• Ashfield Hollow Steam Demo Review
• No More Room in Hell 2 PlayStation 5 Review

The Nameless- Slay dragon is one of those games I wasn’t sure about, but Whisper Games is one of those companies I have always had a great relationship with and I had to take the chance. The Nameless- Slay dragon sits at over 1000 reviews on Steam and is very positive, and with very good reason. The newest Mythic Update has added a ton of content including a new game plus, new professions and so much more.

The game itself is a true RPG. Not just turned-based combat, but a tabletop RPG turned into a video game. Searching for things and talking to people will all increase skills and change outcomes, for better or worse. A bad early game roll had me fighting some trees at level one solo that decimated me, but an early lucky roll let me avoid an early battle with some elves and even got me some high-level items. These are the kind of things any DnD player will tell you create awesome memories.

Another great aspect of this game is the customization of characters. While characters do come with a sort of class given to them, how they develop is up to you. Your magic user can focus on one element or all of them. Do you want your ranger to have a dagger or a bow? Don’t limit yourself, do both if you want. Create a character that can steal items while slamming enemies with a huge axe if you want. I am not saying these are the optimal ways to play the game, but you can do it if you want.

The story itself is also deep, with a world covered in lore to discover. You not only are killing dragons in a world with elves and magic but there is a very good reason for it. The elves aren’t very popular, but again there is a very good reason for it. Most of it also isn’t the typical Elves and Humans are different so they hate each other, it goes back to a time living humans don’t remember but most elves can tell you in detail where it comes from.

With nice graphics, a fantastic story, plenty of replayability, and a price point of just under $20 there is no reason to hold off getting this game. 9/10, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

• One World Under Doom
• Hellraiser: Revival Playstation 5 Review
• Lostbound Steam Review
• Ashfield Hollow Steam Demo Review
• No More Room in Hell 2 PlayStation 5 Review

Librarian Simulator on Steam was sent to me by the fine folks over at Nuuvem and Little Giants. For those of you that have followed me for a long time you know I love simulator games like this. This one is actually rough for me to review. I will be honest right now, I did not like this one for a number of reasons.

First and most importantly, I never had any fun with it. The game loop is simple: books get delivered seemingly randomly, you put them on a shelf, and people borrow them. You don’t choose what books are in stock, and sorting them at the start is damn near impossible depending on what gets sent because the variety and how many shelves you have won’t really match up.

Second, you only have two options for gameplay. You can play until you lose, or you can play for 15 days. You never really feel like you are building up a library so much as you are racing against the clock in a race to get as much done as fast as possible or to go as far as possible before it becomes impossible to keep customers happy.

The third thing I didn’t enjoy was simply that there never seemed to be a point I felt like I was doing anything other than doing busy work while playing the game rather than running the library.

Everything I said up until this point however is subjective. The game cost $7, and at that price point (and in early access) the game does look and sound nice. Far better than many games at that price point. Reading Steam reviews the game is also sitting at positive reviews, with many people saying the game is better while using its online co-op and this is honestly true. Having someone to help you sort books and find the customers what they want does make the game more enjoyable.

While for me the game wasn’t fun, the game functions well and is very reasonably priced. I will say it is a 7/10 and many people will find hours of enjoyment, I just was not one of them. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

• One World Under Doom
• Hellraiser: Revival Playstation 5 Review
• Lostbound Steam Review
• Ashfield Hollow Steam Demo Review
• No More Room in Hell 2 PlayStation 5 Review

Shujinkou is an upcoming Dungeon Crawling RPG from Ricegames. It will be available on Steam and PlayStation on February 13th, and the big selling point of this game is that it tells an intricate story about a man named Shu as well as Jin and Kou. You will travel a world full of political intrigue, and real people just going about their lives trying to survive.

The game starts out with you playing as Shu, a retired samurai living with his little sister, Momo, whom he adores. Momo just wants to grow up and make tea. It isn’t long however before this peaceful village is shattered when an Omi attacks killing a villager and Shu is forced out of retirement to protect the village.

I won’t go into the story too much because there is a lot to cover, but I will say it is a solid story, far better than I ever expected from a game that says it is built to be able to teach you a foreign language, but we will get to that. The combat is built around a turn-based system like many dungeon-crawling RPGs. Every enemy name is given to you as “??” marks which denote how many kanas or syllables their name is. For example cat is “Neko” and in hiragana, this uses the kana Ne and Ko, which I do not know how to type on an English keyboard admittedly but I did find this pretty accurate image. If you are fighting a cat and spell this out however you will receive a significant damage boost permanently.

Now I am no expert on the language, going into this game I didn’t know any of this. The game does however teach you all of this, and at the push of a button you can literally just shut it all off. In fact, the game will ask you at the start if you are even interested. Outside of a few trophies, you aren’t even punished for not learning. The game is perfectly playable without knowing or learning any Japanese.

This brings me to one last thing, is this game fun to play? As great as the game looks and sounds, it means nothing if it isn’t fun. I am happy to say everything isn’t tossed at you at once. As you explore the dungeons you will come across new kana to learn and the characters will give you explanations of them. Sign boards will teach you sentence structure that you can study or ignore. The menus are in both Japanese and English so there is no guesswork or stress involved.

The game starts out with a message from Julian Rice explaining that he and his team made this game as he helped a family member through a medical issue and sadly she did not live long enough to see it finished. As one of the first people to have seen this message, I am happy to say that Mr. Rice and his team have succeeded in their goal. I won’t say you can fully learn Japanese from this game, no single source will teach you any language. This game will however absolutely give you a solid foundation. The game also succeeds in being a fun and in-depth RPG.

Originally I intended to review this on its merits as a game and as a learning tool separately. Instead, the game is simply a 9/10. What I thought was simply a gimmick turned out to be fantastically built into the game as an optional part of the experience that anyone can enjoy. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

• One World Under Doom
• Hellraiser: Revival Playstation 5 Review
• Lostbound Steam Review
• Ashfield Hollow Steam Demo Review
• No More Room in Hell 2 PlayStation 5 Review