Recent reviews by catgode

people actually respond to my arguments, unlike on reddit...

gameplay-wise its basically ace attorney cross-examinations, but philosophy arguments instead of witness testimonies, and on the easier side

i cant help but feel like the game is oversimplifying the subject matter, but im not familiar with it anyway, and worst case scenario, it can inspire someone to dig deeper on their own, which is always a plus. a degree of simplification is also probably necessary for this to be a fun videogame for most people (including me) in the first place.

if youre unsure whether youll vibe with the game, a demo of the first chapter and the previous game are all available for free and theyre a good primer for the game's tone, so just try that if youre unsure

Good if you're a carpenter and like playing with wood.

Best part of the game is gachi in the workshop.

Metaprogression hell. Permanent upgrades for a grindable currency, permanent upgrades to find in levels, permanent upgrades that make the final stage easier. Good luck without bonus HP per level, without healing per level up, without rerolls, without alt-fire chances, without 700% better loot chances, without a bonus third jump, against a cavalcade of bullet spongy enemies blasting a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of bullets at your screen.

This is unfun, lazy, and creatively bankrupt. Solid core loop ruined by a completely boneheaded metagame.

EDIT:

If you're going to claim "skill issue", I want to see your 'finish the game" achievement with less than 9 hours, bucko (technically 5 since I had 4 in early access but whatever). No power crystals either, if it's an issue of skill, clearly you're good enough to do it without them.

At the moment, the game would rather stonewall me with a "time issue" instead, making me play over and over again for whatever currency they come up with to buy upgrades to have my character suck less.

Locking permanent power in form of passive number buffs is an anathema of real roguelites and -likes, a complete disrespect of player's time, and gives me zero trust in quality of the game's balancing. If beating a game on a fresh save is impossible or magnitudes longer/more tedious than on a completed one, something went terribly wrong.

The good news is that this is basically just like the original Risk of Rain 1, with all the cool parts.
The bad news is that this is basically just like the original Risk of Rain 1, with all of it's flaws.

If you loved the original game, you probably bought this already. If you hated it, it's basically the same game, but with more stuff and a shiny coat of paint.

I've never seen a higher intensity of straight-up unfun enemies in a single video game before.

It's a fine game when it goes on the 90% off sale or whatever but tryharding/100%ing it is masochistic.

I'm happy for the dev that they managed to finish a project and create an actual, working game. I am proud of them and I wish them luck and success in their gamedev journey.

That said, being a functional game isn't enough to make it worth playing.

TL;DR: Solid game, but a completely asinine design direction makes it possible to prevent you from actually seeing a victory screen if you're unlucky with RNG. Have fun grinding for an item that's not guaranteed to spawn just to have a chance of finishing the game.

It's a decent little game. I like the setting and the vibes, music reminds me of a few games I like, the core gameplay loop is solid.

Meta-progression is something I tend to dislike in roguelites, but it's not super annoying in this game at least. The first upgrades are very impactful, and you get enough of the currency to keep getting meaningful upgrades while constantly learning how to optimize the run and get further each try.

Until you max out the basic parts, learn the entire run, and still are not able to finish the game, that is.

See, the game is on a strict timer, and you need to activate some sort of a thing before the last timer is up. But you need 5 keys in order to activate it. These keys persist between runs so you just need to collect 5 during your playtime a and you'll be fine.

Except they're completely (or heavily) RNG. I'm at 14 hours right now, and for at least 3 hours, I've been blocked from finishing the game because I don't have the last, fifth key.

I've reached the 60-minute mark at least ten times by now, finished the last 4 with a lot of upgrades and a juiced up spider, and the last 2 I've managed to explore the entirety of the map. I've basically conquered whatever content there is, but as long as I don't find the fifth bloody key, the game won't let me get a victory screen.

There is also no way of speeding up the process as far as I can tell - I have over 120k of currency and I don't have anything to spend it on anymore. I can't buy the key with it, I can't guarantee the key spawn with it, I can't mark it on the map, nothing. I have to spend an hour of my life starting a new run, grinding out the upgrades again, so I can start clearing the entire map again, hoping to find the last mcguffin. And because every single run plays out pretty much the same at this point (most of the variation comes early on from upgrading equipment and learning the mechanics)... well, it can get boring quickly.

It's a ridiculous, arbitrary block that adds nothing to the game and only brings it down. If someone is lucky with the keys, they'll be able to finish fast anyway. If they're unlucky, enjoy doing the same thing over and over with no variation. And it's not like this is a live-service game, with microtransactions or subscriptions or whatever. This padding serves literally zero purpose, the devs have my money already, the only thing this does is make me regret spending 1/3rd of my playtime since it boiled down to basically nothing.

Having a sub-10 hour average playtime on a 5-dollar game is not a bad thing by any means, you don't have to resort to that kind of dirty tactics.

It's a solid 3.5/5 title by itself, but the key ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ retroactively made my entire experience much worse. I'll probably continue to play the game, hoping to finish it at some point, but I don't think I'm gonna be able to stomach more than a single run at once for a long time, if ever.

Developers. Please, improve this. Guarantee a key spawn, or let us buy one with the currency. This is miserable.

Game if free up to ring 2, ring 3 and onwards require paying a one-time fee, so it's more of a demo. It could be communicated more quickly, but it's also in the literal first paragraph of the game's description, so idk.

Nice presentation, feels surprisingly polished for a solo-dev. Gameplay is very simple, and it's not a game that will make your blood boil from excitement, but it doesn't try to be. A pleasant clicker to chill with.

Character sprites get cropped into a tiny square box during dialogue. Appears to be a problem specific to AMD cards.

Will rebuy when fixed.

EDIT:

There's an optional beta branch with a fix available right now, and it works fine for me, which is great. Enjoying the game so far.

when does this game get good