Recent reviews by Tyzone♥

Pokémon but the creatures are tiny little fairies, the other characters are elves, dwarves and goblins, and the battles are real-time, first-person shooters. As someone who doesn't care much about Pokémon... what's going on here? Why aren't there more games like this? Do they have some massive and vague patent on the concept of capturing battle creatures that prevents this sort of creative take to become popular?

Anyway, this game was my childhood. Your machine might not run it properly today (mine certainly didn't) but there are guides on how to patch the game and it should run just fine after following those. I totally recommend it, even so many years later.

Such a cute game, with such a cool soundtrack, and a fun combat and progression system on top. TUNIC's progression is pretty open-ended, and it's been fun comparing my exploration of its world with friends ("wait, how did you get to [area] without getting [item] or beating [boss] first?" and it turns out there's a different way to get there which wasn't suspected at all by the other party). This alone is enough to make me give TUNIC a positive review, but I think TUNIC is among my favorite games now, and there are a few more reasons for that. Increasingly spoilery sections below.

There's this category of games I would call "Icebergs", where you progressively understand that the game hides more than you suspected initially. In this category I would place games like FEZ, Void Stranger, ANIMAL WELL... sure let's throw in The Witness too, why not. Anyway, TUNIC is one of those, and I don't know if it's because I played it the most recently, but right now it feels like the best game in this genre, period. From the moment you pick up the first page of the manual and see its eldritch language scribbled about, you know you're in for a good time.

I would have been happy if the game's hardest puzzle was the Golden Path. This would have been enough. But shortly after getting there, and finding a couple secrets, I found yet another, deeper secret... and another after this one. And another after that...

This culminates into the greatest secret of the game, where I had to throw my hands up in the air and just admit that I couldn't solve it on my own, and had to look up a solution. The ultimate secret of the game, to me, was the reveal that there is a second language in the game, hidden in the music and jingles of the game's world, where every slightly melodic enemy or item is speaking a hidden phrase to you. Those phrases don't reveal any further secret, or even a story, they're mostly just stuff you already know, but I find it absolutely jaw-dropping that the audio engineer managed to create a musical language and hide it under your nose ALL THROUGHOUT the game, and for it to BOTH convey a legible message, AND be melodically interesting. Look up Kevin Regamey's thread on TUNIC's audio secrets to see some of it in action. I can't wrap my mind around it to this day.

They absolutely cooked with this one. I'm so glad I could play it almost 100% blind, because not only do you not get to experience this twice; I don't think there's another game out there that'll make me experience this again.

I think Portal 1 is responsible for much more of my relationship with games than I'd think to give it credit for.

This wasn't my first game or anything like that, but it was the game that made me get a Steam account all those years back. I still remember trying to install it with my awful internet connection back in 2010, hyping myself up the entire afternoon as the progress bar slowly crawled to 100% over the course of a few hours. And then I played it, and it was the best puzzle game I'd ever seen.

But it was also one of those games that helped me learn to speak English at the time. And it was a game that taught me how interesting puzzle design could be. And once I figured out how to open the console, it was essentially my homebrewed Garry's Mod, spawning tons of manhacks and antlion guards in that large turret room during the escape sequence. Up until I got Gmod and TF2 a few months later, this game was kind of my everything.

Today, I don't care much for most sandbox games anymore, but I am still deeply interested in puzzle games of Portal's caliber. This game is a masterclass in its puzzle design, a reliable point of reference for any aspiring developer out there. I'm trying to make my own puzzle games myself, and when met with a problem, will often study other similar games to see if they could solve those issues in their own way. Ultimately, then, I often ask myself "How would Portal's devs achieve this?". This game's a timeless gem, and a goldmine if you're an aspiring puzzle designer.

I'll regularly come back to play through this game's story, and make the same realization every time: I can't think of many games that age so slowly as this one has. The controls feel right, the soundtrack's great, the graphics don't show so much as a wrinkle.

It's ironic, seeing how much freedom of movement is implied by the lifestyle of the Runners, that its younger sibling (Mirror's Edge: Catalyst) didn't grow on me at all when it dropped the linear story approach and gave us the promise of open-world. I tried it for a couple hours, didn't vibe with it, and instantly came back to the original instead. I haven't looked back since.

While To the Moon is a very touching story, and I've grown particularly attached to the two goofballs that run the show, I'm here to tell you that you should absolutely NOT sleep on the rest of this series' games, namely the main titles Finding Paradise and Impostor Factory (the former of which is my fave in the series by far). There are also some shorter games inbetween (Sigmund Minisodes 1 and 2, A Bird Story), another game I haven't had the chance to play yet (Just a To the Moon series Beach Episode), and another one currently in the works (The Last Hour of an Epic TO THE MOON RPG). If you've enjoyed To the Moon, there's some seriously good material there to keep you going.

Probably the best I've played in that genre. Even if my review comes a bit late, this game is still as excellent as it was when I first picked it up. It's a challenging and fun platformer, with a good story, interesting characters, and a banger soundtrack. On top of that, there are some insanely fun fanmade levels to check out (I'm mostly thinking of the Spring Collab and Strawberry Jam collections), so replayability is through the roof.

(Slight mechanical spoiler) Another really good point regarding the mechanics is that certain moves, like faster or higher jumps, will only be shown to you much later into the game, but are available from the start, rather than being power-ups of sorts. And when you revisit those older levels, their designs give you a huge amount of room to experiment with those new moves you've learned, to progress through levels either a little safer, or much, much faster. It makes the game's future playthroughs feel fresh as new!

(Comments contain spoilers, read at your own risk)

Everhood 1 had me hooked really quickly with its innovative combat. I started fighting Zigg on the dancefloor, some 20 minutes in, and I instantly knew I'd remember this game long after beating it. But then it had me stick around for its story, the charming characters, the uneasiness it would setup over time with its notion of inescapable immortality, and so on. But in spite of the praise I'm giving Everhood 1, I always felt its story wasn't always cohesive enough, and it left me hoping that Everhood 2 would pick that story back up, keep playing with those unsettling vibes, and let me meet those old characters again, even if they were going to be slightly different reincarnations in a new universe.

Sadly, in the first couple of hours of playtime, the story has felt even less cohesive, not more. And instead of getting to talk to a small cast of regular characters like in Everhood 1, I'm met with a ton of random one-off characters that I don't care about and seemingly never meet again, and just a couple of characters from EH1 (Irvine and Sam), that I... also don't care about! Seriously, in EH1 one of them was hidden behind a bunch of walls and the other was just there a short time to tell you about a secret boss. Even for how diverse the first game's cast was, these guys always felt out of place to me in their design, and now they're pretty much always there, even though they're the characters I had the least attachment to.

The combat still feels good (great, even), aside from the fact that you now have random encounters in the levels, and will fight "standard enemies" repeatedly, sometimes with short tracks that stutter when they loop. It's grating, it feels unnecessary, it makes every combat feel less unique, where EH1 made almost every single character shine, because there wasn't gonna be a second one like that.

I went and watched moments of a playthrough on youtube to see if the story got any more engaging later on, and... I think the ending would have pissed me off if I'd seen it myself, honestly. I'm fine dropping the game at this point.

I didn't go far when I played the original version some... 15 years ago. As such, I'm reviewing Ao Oni (2024) relative to other horror-puzzle RPGMaker games of its kind, NOT relative to the OG version.

It's kinda bad!!!! It's kinda stinky!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I do like the random chase mechanics. They have a knack for building up tension and anticipation, and where other horror games typically get you bored and accustomed to their spooks, this game made me feel progressively more anxious as I progressed, even if the chases didn't change much. I'm sure this was a cool mechanic back when the OG version released, and might be the reason the game is popular to this day, and I'm not gonna deny that it works pretty well.

That's about where it ends, though. The puzzles aren't exceedingly contrived, but they sometimes require interacting with objects you should have no business interacting with. A bookshelf sits in a corner waiting for you to pick up a book inside, when no other bookshelf in the game could be interacted with to this point, not even giving a bit of flavor text to make them feel like part of the environment and not just some textured wallpaper. Pushing a bed from a certain side early in the game reveals a hole in the floor, and from then on you'll be trying to push every bit of furniture from every side, just in case that's where the next part of the game is hiding. Some puzzle elements have a slightly different sprite, but that can be genuinely difficult to see. Some of them felt like their sprite was exactly the same as all the uninteractable stuff filling the rooms. I did not enjoy feeling like an idiot running around the mansion and hitting every table I could... I picked up a guide, and regularly checked it so I could know which slightly different sprite I should click on to progress. I don't feel like playing without the guide would have enhanced my experience of the game at all.

The dialogues are bland as hell. Now, I know the OG version has pretty much the same dialogue, and I'm not requesting that they change the writing of the game. Again, I'm comparing this game to other similar games, not to its predecessor. I'm just saying these characters do not make me feel attached in any way, do not immerse me in their world at all.

As for the bonus gamemodes: I haven't played High Speed Mode. Ai's Story is basically a bunch of rooms from the main game randomly stitched together, with a couple of Onis occasionally chasing you while you try to solve one (1) puzzle. In my case I had to solve the Doll Head puzzle which is already in the main game. You solve that and you're done. Took me about 8 minutes. I'm not complaining that the gamemode is there, but it's not gonna be a selling point at all.

Go play Witch's House, or Mad Father, or Ib which is my favorite of the lot by far! They're all pretty neat.

Gorgeous, gorgeous game, filled to the brim with secrets of any depth. I love any game that will have me solve enigmas by drowning my desk with notes like I'm some sort of crime investigator gone mad. I mean, this game has a built-in drawing/marking system on its map, so I didn't need to write *that* much stuff down, but you get the idea.

I solved a bunch of puzzles as I played. And then I got to the end. And then I solved some more. And then I solved harder ones... until I had to give up at some point. Some of the puzzles are very far-fetched. Some of them are pretty difficult to achieve (the game is actually pretty demanding in terms of platforming! It's not just puzzles out there). But I don't feel like I'm missing out by not completing the puzzles beyond my reach, it's more like... I decided I'd had my fill! I was content with how much the game had given me at that point.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, even if you only went to the end of the game, it would be reason enough to be satisfied with the content. And if you steel your resolve a bit more than I did, and wish to 100% the game, then you definitely won't be left unsatisfied with the plethora of content the game has to offer!

I usually like titles like this where you explore some weird, dreamlike worlds (with or without the sprinkle of horror) and uncover their secrets as you go, but... I dunno, I felt this game wasn't very approachable? Like the characters' reactions to things don't often make much sense, and so it's hard to relate to them?

I'd played the demo a while ago and already felt like it was dragging on a bit. I can't really put my finger on it. I want to like this game, but there are a lot of absurd things going on that either aren't explained, take too long to be made clear in the worldbuilding, or... or maybe the theme doesn't resonate with me, or some interpretations are out of my reach, or whatever. The end result is the same, I wasn't motivated to get through the story, wasn't hooked, wasn't hoping to find out more.

But hey, the game is Overwhelmingly Positive and has a free demo, so if it sounds like you'd enjoy it, don't let me stop you!