Reviews – Page 19 – Savior Gaming

Cattle Country (Steam Fest Demo)

Cattle Country is a cozy farming simulator tossed my way by Castle Pixel and the demo is fantastic. It has everything you would hope from a game that lets you live the farming life, cattle, crops, fishing, crafting, and over 20 people to get to know and love.

Don’t let that description fool you, you could easily see these amazing pixel graphics, see it is a farming sim, and think, is this trying to take on Stardew Valley for the crown as king of the mountain. We all know this is an impossible challenge, and Castle Pixel doesn’t even try. There are some obvious things in common that go all the way back to Harvest Moon on the Super Nintendo. For example two of your first quests are to meet all the people in town and harvest some crops.

The game itself tho more or less just sets you down to let you do what you want. On my first day, I went and met the guy who runs the blacksmithing place and we talked about his dreams that I interrupted. Then I decided to just break some rocks and knock down some trees. I don’t know why I chose this path, I simply felt like doing it. On day 2 I decided to plan more crops and cook some food while doing some fishing.

The fishing mini-game is actually very easy, simply cast out and hit a button and boom mini-game starts. As the bar moves hit it a couple times when it is in the green zone and you catch a fish.

For fans of the genre definitely go check out the demo. More importantly, for those reading this thinking PC players get all the great games, a PS5 and Switch version is coming out this year as well. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Flocking Hell (Steam Review)

I first checked out this game a few months ago, and you can check out Flocking Hell (Demo) if you want. Sextant Studios recently sent me a message and asked me if I would be willing to check out the game before its March 25th release date and I was excited to do it. In fact, it felt like the perfect title to kick off Steam’s Next Fest.

The game’s premise is easy, you and your sheep are under attack from Hell. You will play a sort of mine sweeper meets auto battler. You start with one square open and click on a space next to you to reveal another style that will grant you sheep. If you see a number, it will tell you how many cities are in that area surrounding it. You can then connect these cities with roads so they can send reinforcements to each other when the turns you get to prepare are over and the demons from hell attack.

these mines can be used to kill demons before the battle starts

As I mentioned in my last review, the card system plays a huge role in how the game goes. I have lost entire runs because I wasn’t paying attention to my turn count and instead of using a card that could have given me a huge boost to the power of my cities I simply clicked a space and revealed a new square.

There can be victory even in defeat, however. You have two hearts which means two chances to win. When you lose you get to pick a card that can show up when you play. These cards do things from making cities bigger to revealing cities or just revealing spaces. Revealed spaces give you more space and let you not waste turns revealing the map. More sheep means stronger mines or more roads to connect cities. This leads to stronger defenses. It also can just mean finding a city sooner which means it has longer to grow.

Now comes the part you all know is coming, do I recommend this game. Yea of course I do, look how cute those damn sheep are. The demo was fantastic, id have paid money for that if it were the right price if they tossed it into early access. The game has come a very long way since then. Small things to improve quality of life or to just make the game more user-friendly. As you will see this week I have played quite a few games for this event, but this one might hold a special place in my heart and I think you will feel the same way. check out the demo and maybe Wishlist it before the March 25th release, Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Border Pioneer (Steam Review)

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.

Stray Path (Steam 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,

Good luck the first time you run into this guy

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.

Fraternity Demon (1992)

There are bad movies that are fun to watch, and there are bad movies that are worth it just to say you have seen them. Then there is this fucking movie. Trixie Bowie plays a lust demon summoned by some college students because they didn’t know what a spell they found did. The guy that left it in a pile of papers knew, he apparently figured summoning her would grant him some sort of authority as well as get him laid.

The movie is as good as the concept, and by that I mean Ms. Bowie made this movie and this movie only then retired. Or maybe she went and did porn I don’t know honestly I wrote all this to say, never watch this movie. Seriously here is a YouTube review from someone else saying basically the same thing with some movie clips. (it does have some brief nudity) Best wishes and may the gaming gods brin you glory.

Recycling Center Simulator Steam Review

Recycling Center Simulator on Steam was sent to me by Balas Games and I have to be honest the idea of running a recycling center seemed a bit weird at first. I wasn’t sure how fun it would be to to cut deals with places to pick up trash, bring it back, and toss it into a sorting machine then into other machines to make different materials like crushed plastic or wood chips to sell.

Turns out, outside of a few annoyances like using the hand truck which you get used to fast, or having to carry plastic totes around which you can actually just throw a pretty good distance anyway, it is actually a lot of fun. I found myself just tossing on Spotify and letting my hired help do the sorting while I hopped in the truck to various places to pick up more stuff for them to sort and focus on the business side.

This brings me to my biggest complaint. The locations you go to are very much the same over and over again. There only seem to be a handful of places to visit. This is by no means a deal-breaker. You can unlock everything fairly quick if you rush but at a modest price point of $15, you will get your money’s worth. Definitely a 8/10 game. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Macross Shooting Insight (PS5 Review)

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.

Scream 6

I am back today with Scream 6 and I have to say while Scream 6 revitalized the franchise, Scream 6 brought it to another level. The opening scene actually made me think the movie was ruined from the start when they revealed who the killer is from the start. This isn’t really the case, however.

Amber and Tara are now in college, much like in Scream 2. Yes, this movie is continuing to build off the idea that we are restarting the series while not restarting the series, and once again they are very open about this. Even when the killing starts and they get together with the group to discuss this the core 4 from the last movies even openly discuss this and how a franchise has rules and how they can’t count on the rules from Stab 2 (Scream 2) holding up.

Once again I have to admit, this actually has me excited for Scream 7. I didn’t think it would be possible for a franchise to die and come back like a horror villain but it actually has. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Tavern manager simulator (Steam 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.

Collectible Card Shop Master (PS5 Review)

Collectible Card Shop Master was sent to me from Nostra Games which is always appreciated. It is one of many simulator games being released in recent months and I have to say it is kind of a mixed bag. You run a card shop, a premise anyone familiar with TCG Card Shop Simulator (Steam Review) will be familiar with. You name your shop, buy some supplies like card pack, dice, etc and sell them to customers.

The game is quite simple to get into, and its price point looks nice and functions well. Honestly, I was expecting a complete train wreck with glitches everywhere. This, however, is not the cash grab I was expecting. Outside of a few quality-of-life improvements I would like to see, for example, I hate having to put one card at a time on the card stands, this game has everything the Steam competitor has for the most part. Customers come and go, and if the price is too high they will let you know. There are plenty of options to let you set up your shop however you like, but not so many that they seem useless or get confusing.

As an added bonus, trophy hunters can get the platinum in about 20-30 minutes. That isn’t to say the game is short. Having the platinum simply isn’t linked to actual progression. They all have to do with opening card packs or selling items and waiting on customers. When you have it there are still plenty of things to unlock.

If you are on a console the game is good enough to scratch the itch, it is a 7/10. While I prefer the Steam release myself this is a good alternative that even as I write this received an update I haven’t played yet. I will update this if there is anything in it worth mentioning. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.