Recent reviews by Ayche

OPUS: Echo of Starsong is an excellent feel-bad game about people with affection trauma having an adventure that only hurts them.

Full recommendation.

Picross meets detective story, has minor things in common with the Ace Attorney games.

ALSO NONOGRAMS ARE DANGEROUSLY ADDICTING. YOU WILL WANT TO DIE WHEN STUCK IN A NONOGRAM FOR 3 HOURS AND THEN WITHOUT SKIPPING A BEAT START UP A NEXT ONE.

The video game equivalent of a cooking book written around using just 5 ingredients for amazing meals.

A modern RPG adventure made with the least budget possible, but do not be pushed off by that statement. They used every part of the buffalo here, this game is a showcase of knowing what parts are essential to making a whole, cohesive political adventure. It has a decent combat system with proper fundamentals, political intrigue, emotional storylines and mystery to uncover. It subverts your expectations a few times and is not content of just doing the most obvious.

But you can still see the strings. Terrain will repeat a lot. Voice actors will repeat a lot. Enemy types will repeat a lot, it is still obvious that the game was made with a limited budget. The game is as good as you could make it with such limited budget tho, that is the bottom line.

Do you just want to feel utterly alive, get lost in the moment for a hour straight? Do you miss Rez? Then waste no time, stop reading and buy the game. HEADPHONES ARE A MUST! GOOD ONES, DO NOT DARE TO PLAY THIS WITH SOME DOLLAR STORE EAR BUDS! Just get lost in the energy of this game and come out with your fingertips tingling.

Absolutely one of the most stressful games ever made. MMO raids have nothing on this game. Useful for testing your friendships as you try to get those three out of three stars on most difficult maps and lose your mind when they just do not read your mind as bomb detonates in the middle of the kitchen and nothing makes sense anymore AND WHY DIDNT YOU WASH THE @#%&¤"# DISHES!!!!

Obviously a game inspired by the indie gem, VA-11 Hall-A. Following the footsteps of said visual novel framed with novel "drink mixing" framework, we have a game with same core idea but cocktails switched for something less edgy, cáfe related drinks. Alcohol and bars naturally have a more adult edge to them, for booze makes you drunk and drunk people lose their inhibitions. Coffee is still a stimulant, but is more mundane drug of our society, and no matter how many fancy eastern barista drinks the game throws at you, the game cannot escape the very same feeling as that comparison.

So instead of serving drinks at a bar, you serve drinks at a cáfe. People of many souls enter the establishment, and you are slowly embroiled in the complicated lives on a colorful cast. If you have played Valhalla, you know the deal. Just expect a game to be bit less colorful than the game it is looking up for. It has few plot hooks in it that are sadly more boring than the developers might think, storylines that feel bit too one the nose to be in an indie game.

I would recommend the game to people who want a light visual novel with a novel framing and people who want more Valhalla type visual novels.

Ori and the blind forest was made of three parts. One third jaw-dropping visuals, one third simple but emotional storytelling and one third competent metroidvania gameplay.

Ori and the will of the wisps has all the three same components, but bigger and better. The visuals of the game are even more impressive than before and the amount of art on display in each zone is immense. While the gameplay has been fleshed out from a simple snack sized xbox arcade title into a full blown adventure, each zone having dozens of screens to bounce around.

And bounce you will, because the game is once again tests your platforming skills to the fullest. Number one fauna in this forest is spike grass and there is a lot of it. You will come across platforming challenges you swore were meant for accessing hidden secret bonus zones, but nope, that was always the intended route forward, Moon Studios expects you to comprehend the full mobility kit Ori has and fully utilize it.

But do not worry, in a good metroidvania fashion, the difficulty of the game is easily controlled by the exploration element. If you find yourself low on health all the time, you can merely take a breather doing various side quests or collectible collection to get more health and energy buffer to have easier time bruteforcing through encounters if your fingers just cannot keep up with the action.

The Trine series make fine snacks in your gaming diet. Each entry takes about as many hours to complete as you could count with your hands, but they are delightful with their fairy tale settings and merry stories. Best enjoyed in the classic multiplayer mode where two of your friends will make the puzzles much more complicated just by the nature of having to wrangle 3 brains together instead of just one set of neurons.

Gunpoint meets Hotline Miami.

The action is fast and methodical to the point that this game is more of a puzzle game than a straight up hack and slash. Time manipulation based combat scenarios are best approached from a "connect the dots" line of thinking rather than trying to brute force your way through and playing on reactions.

Narrative is a bleak and sour tale of abuse and subterfuge. From the beginning the game sets you up to a mood of disbelief and keeps you there as the events truly spiral out of control. The game is "mature" the way Tarantino is mature: Excess of violence is adult, even if it does not really say anything profound.

Overall, a game that will get your heart pumping either in the hectic fight sequences or the pulpy story "highlights".

Every element has been built with multiplayer in mind. And multiplayer as in, every single piece of equipment and gun is built for devious opportunities for friendly fire, enough pressure and one mistake snowballing into total chaos where everyone dies in panic.

Respawning can kill your friends. That is Helldivers's essence.