Recent reviews by L-VZ7-120-153 (she/her)

Played on Steam Deck with a custom control set.

TL;DR: A quaint little sailing game with interesting, albeit somewhat short progression depending on how you play. Would recommend to anyone who enjoys sailing, and making their own boat.

World: The world is made up of a handful of different civilizations - 4 at the time of writing, each of which reside on their own archipelagos in a fairly large ocean. Travel between islands within the archipelagos often takes less than a day downwind conditions but often more in adverse conditions. Travel between the archipelagos, however, is a multi-day endeavor; prevailing winds, inclement weather and sea conditions, and plain luck can drag out a voyage from a couple days to weeks. Pack plenty of food and water.

Sailing: The sailing is fairly good, albeit a bit frustrating occasionally. Across the game, there's a handful of different kinds of sails you can get - junks, squares, lanteens, etc. - all of which impact not only your speed, but how you can sail. I personally chose to use Junks, since i like the control they give and their utility in sailing upwind. However, they will capsize you if you don't keep an eye on them in bad weather.

Navigating: In the beginning, you'll mostly be navigating with a map, a compass, and landmarks. Once you start sailing over the ocean, however, you'll need better tools. Despite their prohibitively high cost, the angle ruler, chronocompass, and world map are absolutely required to make it across without dead-reckoning. All else is nice-to-have, but not necessary.

Upgrades: There's a handful of upgrades for the boats, however most of these revolve around new sails and the rigging/masts they require. For the real upgrades, you'll need to go to the capital. Each capital has a large boat, with the difficulty of navigating to each capital coinciding with their size and complexity of their operation. There is also furniture, paintings, and extra tools such as smokers, grills and fishing rods available in most cities.

9/10

I love this game, it's witty, funny, heartwarming, and at times absolutely emotionally brutal. However, it's all down to *your* decisions and investigation, not split-second reasoning or reflexes. It's very tightly-written and self-aware, but it obviously also contains a lot of touchy subjects- bigotry, politics, abuse, trauma, etc. Not for everyone, but it's now one of my favorite games of all time.

Example + non-specific spoilers:

I roleplayed an emotionally insecure thinker-cop that got pipelined from a straight-edge boring character into a communist because of amnesia, rejection trauma, propaganda, and a personal dislike of certain characters in positions of power.

PS: anyone saying "this game wants you to be communist" is an idiot, the game clowns on you multiple times for being one- and a fundamentally ideologically inconsistent one at that.

PPS: This game has a LOT of replayability. There are hard caps on levels and a finite amount of XP in the world, it's worth making another character to spec into different skills. I'm probably gonna try a physical-fascist cop next for the meme. I'm gonna feel horrible for Kim though, I don't want him to have to suffer my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ :(

Got brain damage, gave some guy in a cool jacket brain damage, and got to be on the fun end of late-stage capitalism. 10/10.

Dwarf fortress has been a cult classic for years, and releasing it on Steam in a much more accessible way has given Tarn the rest of Bay 12 the recognition -- and money -- they deserve. The game is incredibly mechanically deep, and you can easily sink hundreds of hours into growing your little outpost into a true mountainhome. Give it a try!

I want to write something more in-depth about this, and will in the future, but for now I want to say that this looks incredibly promising. Where SR1 (while still a very fun and worthwhile game) lacked focus and had a lot of mechanics that felt retroactively pasted-on (resource collection and science, for example), SR2 is much more focused in what it wants to be: it has all of the functionality of 1, but presents and leverages them in a much more focused, and ultimately fun way. Exploration is now beneficial rather than just a chore to get more slime types or resources, the map is much more varied and works better with this kind of game, and I feel that while prices are relatively similar to 1, I don't feel that I have too much money in this game. I actually have struggled to make enough to pull off some expansions and setups!

Only knitpicks:
- I'd love to see some more slimes, especially the quantum ones. The game is still in development, so this'll probably come in time.
- Silos now store 100*3 per side rather than 300. This fills up really quickly, especially when you're like me and give largos their favorite food. I'd like to see this expanded a bit.
- I'd like to see drones and warp ports make a return (I think the latter is already in the game? I haven't found any blueprints)
- If drones and warp ports come back, I'd like for drones to be able to push/pull from warp ports. I would prefer to keep all my plort silos in the main area, close to the market, and then have dedicated expansions for certain tasks like farming, slimes, etc.

I'm really not a fan of the whole "paid alpha" business model that Bohemia seems to be trying to run with. This should be a tech demo for people who own A3, and absolutely not 30 dollars.

(Played on a Valve Index with Vive controllers, Windows 7 Pro 64 bit)

Wow.

I've played every room game, and I've seen Fireproof's gradual improvement with each game. This game is no different; the improvements between this and Old Sins, the fourth and prior game, is very good. From storytelling, to puzzle complexity, to attention to detail, this is a step up from every previous room game. That's not to discount them, they're all wonderful games, and I would recommend buying and playing them. I'd highly recommend getting them on mobile, since (to my knowledge), the previous games are made for mobile rather than desktop.

The visuals of the game, especially for VR, are very good. There's a *lot* of detail put into all of the objects, but sadly most of the detail is lost due to then screen-door effect and the lower resolution. I didn't actually realize that the player's gloves have a pattern to them until looking back at the store screenshots while writing this.

The controls are pretty good in terms of VR games. Many games offer alternative movement modes, be it joystick, teleport, an armswinger-like one a-la H3VR, or something else. This game only offers teleport, but I think that works in its favor rather than to its determent. This allows for the developers to define areas that they want the player to focus on, and eliminate ones that would do nothing but act as clutter or red herrings. One problem that I do have is that the teleport button is forward, while inventory is back. Players coming from a game like HL:A are used to teleport being the back button, and that tripped me up a bit when I played. I got used to it by the second scene, but I think it's still worth mentioning.

The story in this installment is well made, but is instantly spoiled by anyone who's played through The Room 3. If this is your first Room game, then you'll have no problems, but for people who've played all other installments, The signature on the note that you're sent will probably set off some red flags..

I think Fireproof should've not signed the first letter with The Craftsman's signature, since it'll instantly tip off any veteran players. Instead, they may have been better off using symbolism from the third game, such as the little pyramids that made up The Craftsman's Key or something. That way, you can hint to who's controlling the player, while not overtly saying it. I had a feeling throughout the entire story that there'd either be a scenario where the craftsman traps the player, or where the player wises up and strikes back at him. I'm otherwise happy with how the story went, and I'm glad that he got what was coming to him, but that first signature effectively spoiled the ending of the game for me.

The puzzles in this game are mostly pretty good. However, their quality can vary wildly. Some puzzles are what I call "nothing puzzles," where solving it is basically just moving something from point A to point B on a slotted track. There are some others that require minor memorization, and others that are more related to spacial awareness and looking through the environment, which are probably the best out of all of them. The cynical part of me thinks that the "nothing puzzles" are there to pad out playtime, but in reality, I've played all of these games, and I'm probably mislabeling some puzzles because I've solved similar ones in previous installments.

My main issues with this game are not really problems with the game itself, but more with the price versus time. Your mileage may vary, but I was able to finish the game in just over 2 hours. I bought the game on sale for $20, so that's about $10/hr. I understand that developing a game like this is no easy feat, nevermind for VR, but the sum of the other games' prices is $6 on the App Store, and at minimum offer around 10 hours of content. This isn't Fireproof's first foray into VR, so besides porting parts of the pre-existing mechanics to VR, I don't see why this would be much more expensive than the others. I believe that at release, Old Sins was around 5 bucks (at least that's what I remember picking it up for), so I guess my question for Fireproof is, is marking up the price this much worth it? This'd be the perfect opportunity to pull in a demographic that may not have heard of your games, but the price of entry for VR players is super steep. I love this series, but I still waited for it to go on sale because I couldn't justify buying a shorter game for $25. I still don't think that $20 is justified for the amount of time it took me to complete it, but I didn't want to wait for a larger discount before playing.

If anyone looking to buy this game takes away anything from this review, let it be this: This is a really good game, but wait until it goes on sale. If you're brand new to the series, it'll probably take you around 3-4 hours to finish the game, so buy accordingly.

All in all, this game's a solid 7/10. If the price were dropped to $10-$15, I'd up it to an 8/10, but the buy-in price is just too high for me.

pain

Wow.

I can't say much about this game without spoiling things that are best experienced firsthand, but I will say this: If you have some time to kill, if you like slow-burning games, get this. Play it. I'd recommend getting it on sale due to its price, but its for sure something you should invest some time and money into if you appreciate these sorts of games. Hell, it's not really a game as much as it is an experience.

IT IS BEST TO GO INTO THIS GAME KNOWING AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE ABOUT IT.


The game starts out pretty slow, but on the second level, something interesting will happen. You'll encounter another traveler. I immediately assumed it was a bot, although that quickly changed when I realized that whenever I'd send out a short ping, he'd respond with the same. We used these pings to point out collectibles, signal positions, and really everything in between. In one of the longer surfing sections, we pinged every time we went off a jump. It's insanely wholesome, and doesn't take away from the experience like a voice chat would. For a game like this, you don't need voice chat, just two players and a little ping.

Pacing in the game is great, you'll get a mix of puzzle solving, dodging enemies, and power trips. The game has variety without it seeming to be forced.

I could keep going on but I really would recommend that you experience the game. Even though you've likely spoiled some of it by reading this, still buy it, it's well worth it.

Interesting game. I don't see it as worth reviewing in-depth because it'll literally take you only like ten or so minutes, and best experienced by itself, but it's worth your time. It runs on the Quake 2 engine, and takes only a couple seconds to install. It's a great introduction to the Blendo style of games, too. I'd recommend checking out Quadrilateral Cowboy or Thirty Flights of Loving as well, since they're all fairly similar in style, humor, and campiness to this.