Recent reviews by Charem

I enjoy walking simulators if there is enough in the environment, and/or enough side-activities, and/or a good enough story, to engage me. This game looks neat here and there for sure, but it's AGGRESSIVELY-padded-out in its actual gameplay. You will walk through basic or samey environments for far too long, over and over again. Simple but long mazes with nothing going on, long paths with nothing going on. There is a story here, possibly an intriguing one if you like a bit of mystery, but I found myself growing more and more frustrated at the long, boring, non-scenic walks with each new area, as almost every map has this occur in it.

I tried to be patient about this; see my play game. But eventually, I got too frustrated, and quit playing before I became ineligible for a refund. I honestly believe the way these long walks are structured throughout might only be to pad out the game past a 2-hr Steam refund window. I got so frustrated, in fact, that I wrote a review. I've been active on Steam for a LONG time, but I don't write a ton of reviews; I generally have to be 'spurned' into writing one. This game definitely spurned me.

A lot of people do seem to like the game based on other reviews, so I guess...this is just my own opinion. But I'd recommend pursuing other walking simulators that respect your time better, and give you a much more interesting experience in the process. Walking should be enjoyable; when it's not, all you're doing is trudging along. Maybe I'd call this game a 'trudging simulator'.

This game would be fine at $2-$3 USD, honestly. But as it was going for 9 USD, I expected a fair bit more to...see, do, something. I definitely did not expect a game taking $9 USD would make me go on long, drawn-out walks in mostly-repetitive environments. Shame, that.

This game is fantastic.

Paint Chase can go #*#$( itself though.

Targeted -10 Days is a high-quality Exit 8 Like that stands above the majority of games in this genre. This game has a focused vision and a balanced scope; you could say the devs had a clear 'target' on exactly what they wanted to make here, and delivered on it.

There is only one environment of a reasonable size, but the level of polish on display in this environment is exceptionally well-done. Ambiance, lighting, and environmental details are all balanced to serve as good world-building while also being conducive to good gameplay.

Rather-notable too is the game's plot; something that is rare in most of this genre, and when it does exist, it's predictable and common tropes at best. Here, you are playing as an ex-Mafia member going to trial against your old boss, and your objective is to observe the parking garage your car is stored in every day until the trial finishes, as your old boss is seeking to 'rub you out' and prevent your testimony. This creates a great motivation for you, the player, to observe your environment, as well as a very logical reason why that environment is changing and needs to be observed.

There's over 100 anomalies and three difficulties so far. These anomalies may be odd, but are grounded in reality, matching the theme of 'things indicating your life is in danger that day', though some of these anomalies are more subtle than others. As well, the devs will be adding a special 'anomaly' mode later as a free update from what I understand, adding even more anomalies that will be of a more outlandish and fantastical sort, for those who like the weirder events that can happen in other Exit 8 Likes.

I do have some nitpicks, though as this genre is heavily-reliant on RNG, your mileage may vary from mine. Most notable for me is that while there are over 100 anomalies, a number of them seem to be repeats of the same concept. For instance, I saw the same time bomb dotted around many different places in the environment. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I do wonder if that anomaly list could have been pruned down to make room for more-unique dangers to show up more frequently, as it's certainly more than large enough as it is.

Compounding my feelings on this, I found myself getting 'safe/anomaly-less' versions of the parking garage a little too often, which are always the most frustrating type of room in an Exit 8 Like. They are a necessity to keep you on your toes, but if they show up too often, you will be looking around the environment for an awful long time to make sure there is no anomaly, and it can wear down the experience. Since there are so many anomalies in this game to see, I found getting so many safe rooms extra-annoying. I'm well-aware this could just be me having extremely-bad RNG, but this experience felt consistent over my four and a half hours of gameplay over two sessions as of this writing.

Still, these are not gigantic complaints, and I think this is an extremely good game with more effort put into it than most of this genre ever sees, which is exceptionally-refreshing and something I hope to see more devs do in this genre.

If you want to see my playlist of Exit 8 Likes, please look here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrrJVubEzDSMetuDMvGblamf2-Qb73SNp I'm seeking to play EVERY Exit 8 Like and rank them all against each other. Currently, Targeted -10 Days ranks #3 of 63! (You can see my gameplay of this game in the videos 'Part 24' and 'Bonus 2'.)

Sure wish this Gimmick sequel was actually a Gimmick sequel. This game does nothing to capture what made the original so great. Outside of the Gimmick name, this is an okay puzzle-platformer game, but inside of that name... WHY is it inside of that name?

Let it be known: This is not Gimmick 2. This is not Gimmick. Even though I got a review key for this game, I feel like I paid too much to experience the excitement of a Gimmick sequel, only to then feel depressed in not getting it. (Thank you for the key devs but...still, this hurts.)

I made a video on the game too if you want to see my first-hand thoughts and reactions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiJhR4JIlYs

HUGE WARNING: As far as I can tell, at the time of this review being posted, -THERE IS NO GAME TO ACTUALLY PLAY IF YOU BUY THIS.- Literally, the download is 0 bytes big. (See for yourself: https://i.imgur.com/fnNghCN.png ) If you accept the download, it just creates a folder called 'Windows' which contains nothing in it.

The only reason I even managed to accrue 5 mins of 'playtime' to post this review is by making Steam run a different game while thinking it was Re≒Connect. I went to this trouble because I really felt it was worth informing everyone of this situation. -I will make sure to update this review if this situation changes.-

Now, I do think there USED to be a game here. When I downloaded it well over two weeks ago, I distinctly remember downloading...actual files, with actual file-sizes. And the other reviews here, while mostly negative, do at least talk about the game as something they were able to play. But I notice that the latest review before mine was, crucially, before the last update of the game... So I think what happened is that the dev totally broke the game upon one of the last updates. This was probably not intentional, but if so, it's been like this for at least the last month and a half. (Last update was June 14th as of this writing.) And the dev has never noticed.

Btw, just to give myself credibility to my statements... I'm a content creator. I actually have been making a huge series on 'Exit 8 Likes', the genre this game is in. My playlist is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM0lKWTpVIg&list=PLrrJVubEzDSMetuDMvGblamf2-Qb73SNp I'm trying to play and beat every single Exit 8 Like on Steam. So I really did wish to play this one too, but...yeah, it's literally a nothing-download, it's impossible to.

Sadly, I'm not really surprised that the dev hasn't noticed these issues for over a month. I discovered all these issues the night before when I finally spun the wheel and selected this game for the next one I streamed. Since the main game didn't work, I elected to play the demo version instead as a Plan B. It DOES function, the demo, but...my god.

Well, let's review this demo, so this review IS actually a proper review, rather than just a PSA. It is very clear the demo is an older version of the full game with some content potentially cut to justify the full purchase. So I think it's 100% fair to review the content of the demo in relation to the main game, as the problems I have with the demo would clearly exist in the full game too. (If the full game...existed, that is.)

The performance is the number one thing that stuck out to me. It is one of the worst-running games I've ever played. Even with all of the settings down as far as they could go. It literally looked like I was playing a frame-smeared 160p video, and yet it STILL was stuttering frames everywhere. I can't say I'm surprised given some other reviewers here mentioned having VERY powerful systems and still having the game suck up over 50% of their CPU. This dev clearly did NOTHING to optimize their game, and in fact made one of the most-unoptimized experiences I've ever seen. The demo is also nearly 10 GB and I really think the game does nothing to justify being that big, given how much there is to the experience.

And about that experience... While it is hard to ignore the performance issues, if you do look past those...what you have is a very-poorly-constructed Exit 8 Like. (And that is no assumption on my part; the game's bottom description states: "This is an Exit 8-like work in which only old men appear!") For those unfamiliar with the genre, Exit 8 likes, originated by the game Exit 8, is a genre where you typically loop through the same environment, looking for things in said environment that aren't quite the same as they were before, known usually as anomalies. You typically need to move or act in a different way if there is an anomaly compared to when there is one. The failure state usually comes when you guess incorrectly and take the wrong actions, typically resetting you back to the start of the game. The success state is typically when you make enough correct guesses in a row to win.

The best Exit 8 Likes, imo, treat this system efficiently and elegantly, with enough interesting depth to the anomalies to be interesting but enough simplicity to make the experience move and play easily.

Re≒Connect's a bloated mess with its experience by comparison.

The layout of the looping environment is horrible. It's a train station with two platforms on opposite sides of the tunnel, and a bunch of NPCs and objects populating the platforms. You need to observe both sides to watch for changes indicating anomalies. You can't just cross the tracks to make this efficient, that doesn't work; instead you need to go to either end of the platform you're on and then go down some stairs which underpass you across to the opposite platform. This is an extremely-tedious amount of travel-time just to check the whole area for a loop, especially when you consider that these games are about repetition of the environment.

That's bad enough for the experience, but it gets worse. Your method of choosing whether you think the loop does, or doesn't, have an anomaly is by boarding the relevant-color subway train. One train rolls up to one platform, and one rolls up to the other. They aren't ALWAYS THERE, though. You have to wait, slowly, for the train you want to appear. And if you are on the wrong platform, then you DON'T have enough time to cross over and get to it; you'll have to wait for the next train to show up. And the two-color trains alternate showing up, so if you missed your train then you need to wait for the next (wrong) train to show up, and THEN for another one of the right train to show up. And their doors? They stay open for less that 5 seconds when they arrive, so you better hurry inside!

The train ride itself is at least skippable, but all of this design is...horrendous.

The gameplay does have other features, like an inventory with a rope and flashlight (for...some reason), but I admit that the pacing and performance caused me to stop playing the demo before I got a real grip on anything and before I saw more than a couple of anomalies. (TBH, I knew I couldn't actually win anyways as my video settings were so bad that I couldn't really visually make out a whole lot; but I couldn't risk increasing that video quality without turning the game into more of a side-show.) Despite that, I did give the demo MORE than a fair shake to know where I stood with the game.

Lastly, I'd like to address the absolutely-horrendous price. FIFTEEN DOLLARS USD? Keep in mind, Exit 8, the originator of this genre, costs just 4 USD. I've played a TON of games in this genre by now, and most never go past that price...or if they do, they typically REALLY justify it, and even then they never go past like 8 USD. This developer is...truly audacious to believe his game is worth over 3x as much as Exit 8. Even with patches to improve(/re-add) basic playability, again, it's...not that good. Not nearly that good. I can't tell if the dev just is way too unrealistically full of themselves, wants to rip people off, or something in-between. That gets a little too personal so I'll stop my comments there, but suffice to say the price-point is extremely unfair and sort of a jerk move in my opinion.

In summary, even if the full game gets fixed to actually be playable again, even if the performance is tightened up massively... This is still fundamentally a bad game. It's trying to do a genre so inelegantly and tediously that I cannot see anymore really enjoying this, beyond perhaps ironically. But even then...even if the game makes all of those improvements, and you qualify for just the person to enjoy this? You can do WAY better for $15 than getting this.

What an absolute mess. I cannot believe how bad this all is.

This ended up being a very stellar gameplay-focused experience based on rocketing around carefully and managing fuel and health while grabbing currency for upgrades and completing objectives to advice to the next planetoid. A classic inertia/momentum-style game, makes me think of the good flash game days. There's a lot of ability to just mess around and experiment with the physics. Also the art style is just surreal as well, very neat to look at and see how everything is put together.

The only thing I would need to caution people is, I did actually lose my save file randomly. It was there for a while, then on one game load it was just, gone. Not sure what happened with that but it was a pre-release copy so I'd imagine whatever THAT was will be ironed out by EA release.

You can see an hour of gameplay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcQRQD7xcDo

I am a streamer, have been for years, and have done first-impressions reviews of review keys I've received. I rarely add a written Steam review to this, preferring my videos to stand on their own as a review, but Super Bomberman R2... My word. This triggered me enough that I need to summarize my experience as a review here. If you want to see the full gameplay experience I had, the video's over here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNwW0vmf1h0

The Story Mode somehow manages to turn Bomberman power-up acquisition into a boring grind-fest, with you collecting medals to (slowly) fill an experience bar which then drip-feeds you power ups when you level up. Essentially, you break like 20-40 blocks, hoping for coins to spawn, and then eventually get 2-3 power-ups for that, and rinse and repeat. It also adds a weird base-defense mode to the story which feels simultaneously over-complicated and confusing (including having a very-intricate edit mode to customize your defense area), yet entirely too basic and scuffed at the same. There's a million things going on and to consider, but you basically just have to defend one particular objective, meaning you can ignore most of the details and just focus on surviving out the timer. And of course, the Bomberman Brothers from R1 are still here and still as sociopathically-noncaring as they were there, making them frankly-lousy characters and ruining the story imo. They're the same one-note characters with only White Bomber actually seeming to care about saving the day. Cutscenes are done in the same style as R1, with lazy cutouts and basic animation, and similar passable-but-basic dubbing (probably the same voice actors from R1).

The battle mode technically gives you tons of customization and game modes and options, but there is a very LARGE catch to this. R2 is actually just the F2P Bomberman R Online reskinned and renamed, with the Story Mode tacked on and the whole thing sold for a frankly-unreasonable $50 USD. This fact, as well as this price tag, has kept people away from the game...which also means that the multiplayer modes are DEAD. On Steam, I believe the player count -capped- at 300 a little after release; when I played it mid-day the other day, it had merely 18 players online. I couldn't even find an online match and was forced to play with bots...which btw, had seemingly-real-player-like names, but basic un-customized Bomberman characters and clear bot behavior as well. While I understand padding some multiplayer games with bots for low-activity periods, I only think that's okay if it's made clear when you're facing bots. In R2, it's pretty obvious Konami were trying but failing to pass bots off as real players, which I consider to be a very tricky business practice I don't approve of.

So yeah... R2 is an absolute disaster. R1 isn't very good either, but it's still at least a more streamlined and playable and ORIGINAL experience compared to the many tricky business practices behind R2.

Note: I did receive a review key from the developer, but this does not influence my opinion of the game. I made a video on the early part of the game here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv--vFmbEWU After recording, I played an additional 12 hours, and beat the game and 100%'d the achievements, simply because...I had a lot of fun here!

This game is a lovely grindy dungeon crawler heavily in the vein of Gauntlet...and I mean grindy in the most pleasant of ways. :)

It's easy to mistake this as a rouge-like at first, but it's really not. While you do lose a third of your current gold and exp upon death, this ends up only being a minor set-back that only takes from the level you're currently leveling towards and only the gold you didn't stash at the inn. Also, all levels (aside from the randomly-generated Well) are actually static and your progress is always saved, letting you immediately re-tackle whatever floor of a dungeon you just died on.

While, this game is a bit humble visually (though quite charming with the mix of 'normal' and 'ASCII' graphics), the variety of content here is really impressive. The game is divided up into 5 Dungeons and 5 Towers: Dungeons are longer, more exploration-puzzle-based affairs while Towers test your combat prowess at full. Every single dungeon and tower has its own theming, usually around a different element, and focus on different sets of mechanics and gimmicks that every floor on them share as a theme. But each floor is also very unique in its own right, offering a different challenge to the player.

What this means is, though the combat is technically pretty simplistic (melee, magic 1, magic 2, dodge, repeat), the constant variety in themes and ideas really shakes up every floor and keeps the experience very fresh and interesting. This includes the boss fights at the end of each tower and dungeon, which are each unique and hold their own special mechanics. On that note, the hordes of basic enemies you'll hack and slash through have a lot of variety too, with around 45 unique enemy types in the game (some are kinda similar to one another, but there's quite a few who have to be fought in unique ways).

So yeah! It's a grindy dungeon crawler, but definitely one of the really good ones, that keep you engaged and loving the grind. :) I 100%'d this game's achievements on Normal difficulty because it was simply fun to do so; the challenge felt just right for the difficulty I chose. (There are Hard and Permadeath modes I don't have the courage to try, but for those looking for a more brutal or rouge-like-ish challenge, these would likely be a good time for you!)

I think the drama recently around this game's moderation team really kinda sucks. It's clear enough that there's problems with the moderation being done on this game. That being said, I personally don't believe anybody really has the full story. As is common in situations like these, the information is largely one-sided, which almost never makes it accurate. So I would not pick sides.

Most relevantly for here though, I absolutely feel it very much sucks to use negative product reviews to boycott a situation centered around the product's team, rather than the product itself. Regardless of how you feel about it, I'm pretty sure this is a violation of some Steam guidelines.

I do not condone the mistreatment of customers. However, I have enjoyed TTS for years and the removal of the Public Chat, while a very stupid event, does nothing to stop me from enjoying quality games with my friends like I always have. This game is not perfect; I hate all the disconnects on Wednesdays for instance, and there are some features which I feel were very poorly-executed.

But overall, I have very much enjoyed this product, and wanted to leave a positive review to express this. If you are considering getting this game and are purely interested in the quality of the product, as I feel these Steam reviews should be (but aren't) focusing on, then rest assured this is a quality product for gaming with friends.

The public chat WAS removed - and there is a general drama surrounding what can and can't be said in public spaces on this program - so this may be a deal-breaker for you if you were hoping to play with randoms. However, I and my friend groups have never experienced any censorship during private games; which only makes since, since one player is basically hosting a private lobby. You can rest assured you will be left alone to enjoy TTS how you like if you simply care about engaging your own private circles.

DISCLAIMER: This game contains explicit full-frontal nudity and zoom-ins on nude/detailed female breasts in one of the introductory cutscenes. This is despite the game's startup screen and Steam page only indicating 'explicit violence and gore' in its mature content warnings. This game's teaser trailer also shows sections of this explicit scene, but in trailers it is shot, angled, and posed in a far-more-tasteful form that is not indicative of what you'll experience in the actual game.

PLEASE NOTE: This post is NOT focused on being a proper review of the game. I did not play the game proper after encountering this scene, because I am both morally-against how the developers have handled this content, and because I was attempting to stream this and this content was clearly not suitable for steaming. The rest of the game is presumably free from further nudity from what I have heard of others, but I cannot confirm or deny this to be true.

(If Steam gave me the option to, I would not have given this a thumbs-down OR a thumbs-up and left my post neutral. Since I'm unable to rate in this way however, I have chosen to thumbs-down due to how the developers have handled this content.)

I simply wanted to post this so people who do not or legally should not view explicit content such as this have a heads-up, seeing as the developers do not provide this heads-up.

I received a review key of this game for free, and I strive to always review every game I receive a review key for as it is the right thing to do. So, I still composed a video (without showing any explicit content) on my thoughts if you'd like to hear me go into further detail. You can view this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_B_0SZe5YM
---EDIT---

It has been made clear to me that this post is likely to be removed unless it is a proper Steam review. As such, I went back to the game and invested a solid amount of time into the gameplay to generate opinions of the gameplay itself. Please go to other reviews here for better-detailed reviews; I am only providing my review here to justify my post.

REVIEW: This game is most-certainly doing its best to hearken back to old-school survival-horror games. There's a lot of attention to detail in this, a lot of encouragement to hoard items and use them carefully, to examine everything, tank controls, etc. This can lead to old-school problems though, like wandering around without a lot of direction and not entirely knowing if you missed something important a few rooms back, or how the limited-save system can be bothersome (though admittedly adds to the tension). Graphically the game has a good horror-game feels, good monster designs with a lot of good animation, etc. It handles its atmosphere fairly well, both visually and with its sound design.

Hopefully this satisfies the conditions to maintain this post.