Recent reviews by Carbone

Short, Cheap, and Beautiful. Well worth the 60 minutes to dive into. A cute narrative and satisfying progression in a small package.

Not sure how this is experienced with the skill system since I went for the No Skills achievement right off the bat.

Perfect combination of variability and consistency to keep me hooked. If the concept interests you at all I would say it's worth the price.

Despite the free price it's hard to recommend something with so little meat on the bones. Game-play just isn't varied or dynamic enough to really get going. Unless the art style really speaks to you I think this one is a skip.

I've played quite a few idle/nonsense games in my time and the structure surrounding the inside jokes just doesn't tickle that itch to watch numbers get bigger.

For free it's hard to steer people away but I would have rather spent the hour playing something else.

Humor and Puzzles executed with fabulous style. All this costs you is about an hour so it's hard to say it's not worth a try.

Certainly a game that wears it's influence on its sleeve.

If you have the spare hour, enjoy psychological horror, and an interest in video games as an art form it's worth the $3.

As someone who, as I have recently learned, is enthralled by meticulous management games I had a blast Tavern Manager Simulator.

The loop of hitting the QTE with each ale to get a perfect cup, serving it, cleaning the table, cleaning the glass, and filling it up all over again was satisfying enough to keep me going through the slow early game. As your shop grows you do get a ton of new dishes and drinks to serve all with their own unique animations and mini-games. I really appreciate the simplicity in some areas and the extreme levels of detail in each of the food and drink prep areas.

100% is far from an impossible goal for this, I got their without really needing to keep an eye on them with the exception of the critic but the game did enough to let me know that she was an important person to keep me from passing over her.

While the concept of this game is inciting, and in a lot of ways the overarching story is engaging, if I had the chance I would take back every hour I spent with this game.

Technically this game does everything it can to remove you from the experience. Every single encounter is either way to easy or unbelievably difficult. The enemy AI seems incapable of having a clear detection system and you have no way of really knowing if any action or footstep will alert anyone. Some missions can be completely trivialized to a laughable degree with helicopters, then in other cases auto lock missiles will blow you out of the sky if you don't fly 2000 feet into the air first. The world is WAY too big, fast traveling is a must and missions are just 300 variations of the same camp with the same guards, guarding the same 2 or 3 things.

So why put almost 60 hours in? Honestly the first 20-30 hours was with friends and it was serviceable enough with a metric ♥♥♥♥ ton of bases to take over. But the last 30 hours were played solo. I continued playing because the overarching story of Bowman, El Sueno, and the Underbosses left enough breadcrumbs to keep me coming back for more every time. On that front I can say that everything came to a pretty satisfying conclusion, and I'm happy I pushed myself to finishing it. Unfortunately, this push was due to the game fighting me every step of the way. Save your patience and your time.

Alan Wake is worth the hype that its cult classic reputation has earned. In 2024 it's a beautiful look back into over a decade ago, to an era when games were first figuring out how to present it's story to the player in a way that satisfied its own esoteric internal logic.

Even if you pay attention there will be numerous times where you have absolutely no clue what is going on, sometimes that seems to be intentional, but at all times it is to the games benefit. Alan Wake, interestingly enough, is kind of an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Especially in the beginning he is abrasive to a fault and pretty rude to his wife, especially in flashbacks. But Wake spends a majority of the story in utter confusion, high stress, and high pressure situations. Not only does his character evolve overtime and slowly soften towards those he once treated as expendable, but I think the authentic writing keeps him too confused and panicked to be the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ he is in the beginning.

The soundtrack and world building are of an extremely high quality. The music made for this game can be found on Spotify and in isolation are well made songs in their own right. The TV shows scattered around the levels are short, funny, and aid in the general atmosphere they're going for. Everything crafted here is intentional and done with so much care for a clear vision this game was aiming for.

The Gameplay itself. I hesitate to say it's good, but I wouldn't say it's bad. Fighting enemies, for the most part, is fun. Having to deal with two parts to every enemies cycle is enjoyable to manage, and I had a number of times in the late game, on Hard, where I ran out of ammo due to not conserving enough and I had to weave my way through a patch of enemies. Running off the beaten path is also rewarded either with collectibles or more ammo. The part I despise, is the objects flying at you. They're introduced with no warning or explanation, you oftentimes don't have enough time to stop them before they get a shot at you, and worst of all the stamina and "dodge" mechanics are laughable at best and are easily my most frustrating part of this experience.

It's a shame the sequel will likely not be on Steam in the foreseeable future.

Does exactly what it says on the tin. For 5 dollars you get exactly what you pay for, and a pretty polished version of that to boot.

Don't rush, enjoy yourself, throw on a podcast, and loose 4-5 hours exploring. If you're interested in Achievements don't be afraid to look through the hidden ones before starting your first game. They won't pop until you've finished your first play through and respawn at the top, but it will track your progress in your first run.