Recent reviews by Shazza

I'd received this as a gift and have pended for a refund after trying to get into a few times, so wanted to leave some thoughts about the experience to better inform potential buyers.

Nubby's Number Factory is RNG centric, that's an inescapable part of how it's designed as a game. From the perks and items you find each run, down to Nubby's own bounce physics, there is a definite lack of control when defining any sort of skill input to the game.

You'll very quickly run into this aspect yourself after a few bounces: shots that make no sense, angles that should have been impossible, sudden curves into the gutter or straight through pegs when it visually collided with their hitbox.

And no, this isn't placebo.
The developer has confirmed there's a "chaotic angle-offset" to Nubby's calculations, which is what is supposed to cause Nubby to prioritise bouncing into pegs, but for a currently unknown reason it often weighs itself towards avoiding pegs, further grinding in the frustration re: lack of control.

Whether that's a detriment will be your decision at the end of the day, because games can still be fun as glorified pachinko or slot machines. Heck, my favourite part about Coin Game is the pachinko-style machines, like the marble dropper.

What turned me off of Nubby was actually the items and perks systems.
It's a personal issue, where I have little issue tracking numbers (ala splitting for ratios in games like Satisfactory) but have immense issues identifying and tracking effect-based synergies.
If you're into games like Arcana, and thrive off building and tweaking dozen-step synergies between your abilities, you'll very likely love this. If not, you'll probably drop it like I did.

Kudos to the dev for making something seemingly so simple addicting for so many. The sound design is fantastic, feedback is punchy, and the odd 80-90's early computer graphic style is charming.

White Knuckle is a gift pony from an alternate universe, where the internet's progress into social media domination had staggered, and Newgrounds was born just shy of 2020.
Speedclimbers, or the first "endless climber" games were a childhood staple through early 2000's flash games that fell largely into obscurity thereafter, grandfathering physics-based rage-game climbers, and the wistfully short Mirror's Edge series.

This beast merges together a grim, stylized aesthetic, roguelike elements, and the simple time pressure of "you must go higher!" to create one of the best momentum-based experiences I've had with a game to my memory.
It's hard, but the kind of hard that's fair, encouraging you to get a fine grip on the controls and get comfortable with balancing precision, speed, timing, tools, and resources. There's a reason so many reviews have over ten hours just within the demo!

I especially appreciate the approach to minimal UI: having your hands, the only visible part of your body, be your stamina indicators is Dead Space spine=health levels of genius simplicity.

Despite it being difficult, sweat-inducing, and even frustrating at times, it never gets to the point where I want to drop it outright. It just feels amazing to play. The weight of your movements, being able to pull back to throw yourself forward, it all feels incredibly natural and makes me want to chew at the challenge again.

That's helped quite a bit by - despite the "levels" being the same set of map tiles - the shuffling of map tiles on each run, and the titular Endless Modes you can unlock. ..Also the demo has achievements, so go nuts!

Steam Deck?
Runs extremely well, but needs you to touchpad input to confirm menu options.

Edit: I've run into two game-ending bugs so far.

1) More recently, sprint suddenly turned itself off without reason. I dropped all my items, turned on "Always Sprint", nothing fixed it. Ended the run because I couldn't get the momentum required for the required jump.

2) Barnacles are supposed to let go if they've grabbed you after a period of time, as they have a stamina meter similar to the player's. I had one in the Sewers (second area) that was in an unreachable area (to bash with the hammer) grab and not let me go, so the run ended as I was still trying to pull it off me.

This review covers both performance on PC and the Steam Deck.

Locomoto is very much Animal Crossing inspired, insofar as its design choices, "animalese" speech for NPCs, and accompanying simple dialogue and character archetypes for the various NPCs you encounter.

What's different is that you're not managing a growing town, you're a glorified deliveryman who takes packages, goods, and people across the map.

And in that respect it's quite relaxing, though dry. I really like how different materials actually contribute to the final look of furniture that you craft. The character customization is also pretty detailed, with loads of different options for animals, though can be lackluster if you're a big fan of birds (owls, pelicans, flamingos, forget it) or lizards (as only mammal/avian options are currently available).

Definitely give the demo a try before committing, this is the perfect kind of game for someone younger, or is really diehard into very, very slow paced games to relax with.

Steam Deck
Has to be locked to 30FPS through the Deck's performance tab (no in-game FPS options) and turned to Low quality graphics to run decently, even then you'll experience drops to 20FPS in most outdoor areas. Locomoto is a surprisingly resource intensive game that needs some major improvements.

A roughly 20-minute intro to using your Deck, with a little Portal flavouring.

My only major gripe is that it's very "baby's first handheld" with the joke of mindless repetition dragging out its welcome just a smidge too far. Additional controls would have been nice to see (ie. screen brightness shortcut with the joystick) but it's serviceable, runs like melted butter no matter the settings, and is just a good little experience.

Expect roughly 1-2 hours of gameplay included. The demo ends after a certain number of turns have passed, and there is no "continue freedmode". Your save can be continued in the full game.

I think DotAge can be best compared to Before the Storm, where the goal is turn-by-turn-based resource management, sprinkled in with events you have to manage and survive through, and a roguelite progression mechanic in the form of unlocking memories as you survive progressively tougher doom events, encouraging replayability.

When I still had access to my partner's copy through Family Sharing, I'd clocked in a fair few hours, but was still on the fence about a purchase for myself, and had put it down.

It does feel very "numbers go up" (one common thread with the reviews) with the soft limit of your map size/villager count, but my experience was still pleasant, if not slightly reminiscent of other colony sims I love - like Rimworld - where the 'point' in later gameplay is to survive as long as you can, constantly tweaking and oiling the colony until it's a self-sufficient, nigh perfect machine.

However, I may just pick it up this time as the Folkways DLC piqued my interest!

I'd definitely say give the demo a try to see if you enjoy the small-scale management loop. It gives you a good idea of how building synergy will work, how to weigh up food vs. expansion, how doom events and their management works, and is overall a fantastic tutorial, clearcut to use even if you're unfamiliar with this strategy style of city builder.

At just the last 1-2 hours away from 100% completion, I figured to finally give my full thoughts..

✩ How long..?
You can reasonably expect an 18-24 hour experience for the main story, depending on how diligent you are about frogs, keeping genetic variety available, and mushroom cultivation (especially in the hours before you get access to technology).


✩ What is..?
If you're unfamiliar with the backstory of this game, Mudborne is essentially the spinoff to another of Ellraiser's games: APICO.

Both are animal-management sims, with APICO more focused on a money-go-higher/puzzler-breed-and-collect progression system in an open (slightly proc-gen) world, while Mudborne is focused more on a straightforward narrative and story goal, maintaining the puzzler aspect of its breeding mechanic while borrowing a little Metroidvania, insofar as using the frogs you breed and mushrooms you cultivate to unlock new areas, new NPCs, and yet more mushrooms and unlockables.

Does that sound a bit confusing? It's actually a lot easier once you get your own mits on it, as it comes packed with a Guidebook to serve as your bite-by-bite tutorial.


✩ Beginning Gameplay Loop
You start with one plain type of green frog hopping around, catch two of them with a net, and chuck them into a Spawner (courtosey of your carpenter friend Hopert) so they can 'kiss'.

Then, by mixing different mushrooms with mud - mushrooms spawning depending on your area and current time/weather, checked in the upper left corner - you create magic mud to modify the traits of their eggs; frogs-to-be.

It's then a puzzle to figure out which combination of genes will create a new type of frog, or even a variant of one, like a Large Orange Boi rather than a Large Blue Boi.

Magic mud is infinitely reusable, meaning once you craft a bucket you don't need to craft more of the same, so the only time drain is sitting around waiting for things to hatch (which is easily sped up via a bed or chair).

Different frogs also have different properties, and serve as living keys to numerous puzzles and objects throughout the map!


✩ Progression Style Difference
In APICO, you set up a small business making honey 'soda' and beeswax goods, which directly contributed to upgrades (to make more money faster), while in turn breeding various genetic lines of bees (with variant+variant breeding required and sort-of puzzling to the weather/time conditions) to make said numbers go up higher and faster. It's often likened to spinning plates as you're managing workstations and the hive-cycles of your colonies.

Mudborne by contrast is a fair bit slower and more lenient on your active-time management, with progression tied to unlocking gateways and new areas by means of making new frog genetic lines with mushrooms, which have more lenient windows of opportunity. Without a main currency for numbers-go-up, frogs are far more similar to keys for machine function and for progression.


✩ Negative Reviews
Besides the obvious personal taste bit, one key note is that Mudborne is defined as casual management. It's slow, albeit offers easy ways to speed up time quite significantly.

Complaints regarding the tutorial are near universally user error, as the provided Handbooks give you a step-by-step for every part of the journey, as well as functioning as reminders for genetic keys (use the Magnifying Glass on Vision Pools and Seals, you'll thank me later).

I've just "finished" my first zoo (aka completing all relevant achievements, but not finishing the genome or getting many hybrids) at around 45 hours of play, and as I jump in to both the DLCs I wanted to leave my thoughts on the basegame experience, just to offer a little insight to potential buyers.

What Builds A Zoo?
This is less of a classic zoo management sim, and more of a micromanagement/automation goal zoo sim. Your scope in endgame is drastically different compared to the more hands-on and personal approach to keeping your animals, but it's not its detriment; it's a different flavour.

I personally quite enjoy "numbers go up" and automation implements, so after a few initial failed attempts to click - as I tried engaging with it the same way I would Zoo Tycoon - I easily dumped in dozens of hours. My experience is from an Evil morality zoo, and I won't spoil too much in the way of how it differs from Good zoos, but I will say it's a fun shake-up to the formula and actually gives you rewards and progression based on morally definitive choices!

The Animals (and Hybrids)
One big selling point for LBAZ is the ability to take any two animals and craft a hybrid! These are cute side projects that you can work towards, and are worthwhile to make as guests love coming to see them. They're optional (as even though you get the occasional quest for a free one, you can cancel it in the CRISPR) and can offer a little more variety for your zoo; you may want a specific enclosure, or you could stick them in with one of their "parent" species as incentive for guests to come see the other animals in that same pen.

They're also just plain cute, I love the spritework.

The Morality System
You'll likely find older reviews dogging on how the morality system is implemented: arbitrary, non-optional, and maybe hamfisted. In counter, I'd say let yourself have fun with it. Evil in particular is meant to be stupid levels of goofy, Saturday morning cartoon levels of villainy, where you turn animals into robots and help your startup boss evade taxes offshore.

The "point" of the morality system isn't so much pure replayability, more to offer weight in your choices - to see the fruits of your chosen path, insofar as certain upgrades and the general vibe of the zoo (for example, investing deliberately into black market sellers, and pollution dumping). I would say an Evil zoo is "easier" because you're not having to care so much for the animals themselves.

Protip: if you're after the "200 Evil Morality" achievement, do not build a single Nature or Water Deco (plant) item (flowers/plants/trees), as these suck up CO2 and part of this achievement is maximizing CO2 production. You can thank me later!

Gameplay Loop
As is typical in other zoo sims, you're in a top-down god perspective and overseeing the whole facility and makeup of the land. You hire staff of varying sorts to help perform tasks that you can't (ie. feeding animals, cleaning up after guests), and there's a Wage incentive system where generally the more they're paid, the better at their job they'll be. Your first dozen or so hours will familiarise you with every mechanic of the game, from the CRISPR cloner/splicer, enclosure management, and the RNG-esque Research Tree.

Research RNG
Essentially you start in the middle of a progress board and work your way outwards by a largely time-gated currency (that you can somewhat speed up later with your Researchers). In lategame it may take a few in-game days to get a notch of progress, but in earlygame everything's quite cheap. You do have a guide on the left-hand side to tell you the "general purpose" of what a square will unlock, in relation to what it affects (ie. restrooms, enclosures, bins), but I definitely ran into some instances of frustration where I'd deliberately dump a lot of points towards a Factory tile, only for it to be revealed to be a passive upgrade rather than a new building. It's not a dealbreaker.

The UI
The biggest source of negative reviews and it's one I generally agree with: LBAZ's UI is atrocious, even years later. Everything is done by mouse clicks only, meaning navigating through menus is a manual, tedious process of having to click the "next" arrow. Staff and the Animal Feeding menu in particular are horrendous for this because they're either locked to only using a very low sensitivity mouse wheel to scroll through, or an equally slow "click this arrow and hold to scroll down". There are no filters which could alleviate some of this issue, but the biggest fixes I could offer are the following:

• 1. Allow the use of Q and E, or A and D to move left and right in contextual menus, particularly building. Having to option the Lights submenu and click the right arrow (which occasionally doesn't register and closes the window instead!) several times just to get one type of light is very annoying.
  
  
• 2. Scrollsmoothing/"ice sliding". One way older games alleviated long scroll lists was to amp up the power the scroll wheel had, either by letting it slide on a single input, or by scrolling through far more of that menu in one swipe.
  
  
• 3. Filters! Dear god please, filters. Filter by price, filter by age/sex/variant, these should all be dropdowns - one single bar of information that you filter by preference. This particularly hurts if you're trying to look for a shopkeeper or zookeeper, as their menu is sequential (based on when you hired them).
  
  
• 4. General improvements. Things like allowing selections for Staff placement on the Heat Map to not completely close out of the menu when you're done with a single placement. When placing the Water Pump, right-click (which is Undo for most other actions in the game, including the same Build menu) should also cancel its placement. You have to hard hit ESC to unselect a Water Pump. Better animal control management, ie. setting Abbatoir "minimum number" slaughtering and enabling variants to be saved (I've had too many rabbits need to be cloned because the abbatoirs slaughter seemingly at random).

What about the Negative Reviews?
Besides the UI issues and honestly over-using the mouse as the core controller, there are some.. interesting reviews that warrant a little explanation.

• "There's no Sandbox Mode!"
  There actually is! Problem is it's not very well explained, but it does exist. You have to play your "normal" zoo mode for a while before accessing it (as you buy it on the "zoo select" screen when loading your game, not by using Continue), but the developers even published a cheat video on YouTube on how to unlock Sandbox straight away.
  
  
• "Animal food can't be auto-stocked!"
  Nope, thankfully. There's a research unlock to specifically give you a Nutritionist - a building that handles restocking of animal food for you. It's a progression upgrade, basically.
  
  
• "Clunky animations!"
  Deliberate style choice. And it beats having hundreds of pixelated animals cluttering the screen and overlapping each other with smooth movements, personally speaking. Their jumping is to offset any overlay/hiding behind other animals.
  
  
• "Lack of information."
  An actual annoyance! With my protip above, it took me quite a few hours to figure out that ALL plants - not just trees, that have a definitive CO2 positive moodlet icon - do contribute to CO2 decrease, if not minorly. And as it's calculated as a buffer, you could have a single fern in a hundred factories and not get the Evil morality achievement. The Wiki is also atrociously bad, it's obvious whoever tried investing time into it abandoned the idea early on.
  
  
• "They ask you to rip off a rabbit's head and stick it on another animal!!"
  I had to include this one. Splicing. It's a really fun word. It basically means "take the genes from two animals, and make a baby from the results".

Being so late to the party, I don't really have much to weigh in on about the story of SOMA that hasn't been touched on by others.

However, I'd like to stress that even if you know how it ends, or know a good chunk of the story, actually having it in your hands to play is an entirely different experience and is well worth tossing a few dollars Frictional's way.

SOMA's atmosphere is thick, and will easily draw you in and drown you in its soundscape for your 8-10 hour trip inside. While I had two notable hiccups with progression due to some slight oversights in how the game dynamically presents the way forward, for the vast majority it was amazing to see how organic the game felt, teaching you its own rules without explicitly having to tell you them. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Outer Wilds took inspiration from this kind of storytelling and gameplay synergy themselves.

Much the same with the narrative; you'll come to your own conclusions in the end. And in respect to the story, please re-read the header. SOMA tackles some heavy, existential themes relating to transhumanism, euthenasia, and the human condition. If you're not in a good headspace, I don't recommend trying to go through it.

You'll get through in about 2 solid nights and it's well worth playing for yourself. I got lucky and snagged it for $2 dollarydoos, but I'd say it's well worth at least $10 or $15.

This is the kind of tiny indie experimental pet-carer game you vaguely remember playing on a friend's Nintendo DS, only it's not actually a dream: those dogs really did hatch from goo-spewing cocoons.

Wobbledogs doesn't try to be much outside of a cute pet simulation game, and that's exactly the kind of vibe I signed up for. Growing up with the crummy first-generation Tamagotchi, this game near perfectly encompasses how my memory recalls the hours of caring for those tiny pooping monsters.

While you're in a god camera perspective, you can directly interact with (hand-feed/pet/scratch/throw/tug of war) with these box-dogs more directly, with that interactivity allowing for some cute superficial behaviour training; pet them when they bark, you teach them to bark more often.

Additionally, there's a breeding and gene expression system, with some whacky/weird mutation types for your pups that can be influenced with different foods! You can breed Wobbledogs together to create litters of new puppies, and hand-pick your favourite from that little, or re-roll through more simulated generations for extra randomization for that puppy. It can range from simple colour changes to extra/fewer limbs, and even a second head.

Wobbledog is a slower experience and is clearly made with love for that lazy/cozy petsim gameplay, with a primary focus on feeding/basic care and the breeding system rather than featuring any minigames. If I could change one thing about the game, it would be adding some basic minigames like bathing or walking your dog (ala Nintendogs) to make it feel a little more personal.

However, note that the gameplay revolves around generations, which means that your dogs can die. You can turn this off and 'preserve' loved dogs through cloning and pausing their aging inside the journal, but the 'point' of the game is more to see how their puppies turn out.

Would recommend to those wanting something to scratch that Tamagotchi/Nintendogs itch.

This is a review in progress. Nearly 90 hours later into a very, very Early Access version of Elin, and I've been enjoying the grind enough to want to leave my thoughts. I also have not played Elona or Elonaplus; Elin has been my introduction to Ylva so I won't be making any comparisons!

It's a grindy dungeoncrawler/RPG/colony management hybrid.

Yes, to get the biggest potential brick wall out of the way, Elin is a very slow crawl for progress. Slower than many oldschool RPGs. It prides itself on a slow burn of sequential upgrades (through learning skills and obtaining RNG-related recipes/gear), and while those upgrades do feel genuinely impactful the longer you go, it unfortunately births some issues relating to meta/overpowered stat training strategies for the simple sake of saving time.

At the moment, restraining yourself in the gallows and letting your friends whack you like a pinata is the optimal choice to level up many combat-related stats, especially in the current mid-late game stages, as Nefia (dungeons) diving doesn't scale experience relative to the difficulty of the monster you're fighting: it all scales off HP/tick.

Combat itself is relatively straightforward, offering challenge (stat/raw power notwithstanding) in having to adapt your strategy to certain targets: highly evasive bats and highly armoured hermit crabs will be a quick bane for the earlygame if you don't have a little magic or ranged weapon at the ready, and finding ways to deal with magical enemies that can curse, burn, or freeze your player/party/items steadily get introduced within the first few hours.

A lot of information is obfuscated, and relies on trial and error. Though there are extremely helpful new player guides on the wiki, I encourage anyone wanting to try out Elin to go in blind - it'll show you the very basics, and figuring things out on your own can be half the fun. This is more a personal preference deal, and
a small warning, but unfortunately if you want any specific detail without struggling to find what's changed or without wasting all your orens (gold), you'll probably have the Discord Questions channel or Ylva Wiki in the background.

Colony management sim enjoyers should not come in expecting functionality ala Necesse or Rimworld. There are resident-related functions, but currently they just spawn in related items rather than pick up things from the world (exceptions being item-use specific tasks like livestock eating pasture, or treasure hunters using treasure maps in shared containers). The Priority scale for containers is largely non-functional at the moment, so there's no way to automatically set up treasure dump-offs or any item production (ie. alcohol), be aware.

Suspension of disbelief is required if you're expecting a fleshed-out RPG. Portraits and ages won't always line up with the characters you speak to, everyone is written with prefab lines designated to their role (shopkeep/healer/mage etc.) and location, and the questline is a big work in progress (with other scenarios planned for the future).

But despite all the mechanical issues and missing features with it being so early into EA, I need to praise several aspects, including the devteam's rabid consistency of updates (with a Nightly version and even hourly fixes, with a dedicated Bug Report ticketing system via F11), and the customizability of characters. From a farmer becoming a powerful mage, to a mutant whose body grew extra arms to turn into a blender, to a wraith in perpetual deathmode due to their mana-as-health feat, the variety and raw 'feel' of different race+class choices feels genuinely good to interact with.

I'm looking forward to picking it up again after a few more chunkier updates, likely when colony management feels more fleshed out and allows for automatic storage setups.

Just don't pick Tourist or Snail as your first class. Without hyperbole, you will objectively have a terrible time. These are designed for "I know the game in and out and want to utterly punish myself for pressing Play" veteran players.