Recent reviews by Fytayn

Incredibly relaxing and oddly fulfilling. If you love nature, plants, trees and animals this game lets you enjoy bringing them back to a barren landscape. It is one of those games which is oddly zen like trimming a bonsai. Each level has specific features and challenges but is procedurally generated within those limits so you can replay again and again. In my opinion the only thing it's missing is the ability to make custom maps to challenge yourself or perhaps share with other players.

This is barely a game. The banana items do nothing yet are traded, for real money, by speculators on the market. The game's shop lets you buy the bananas, too. Really reeks of the kind of FOMO and idiot exploitation NFTs thrived on for a while. Installed and played for the luls, will probably become a meme somewhere, but do not exchange any money for any part of this "game" -- the dev really doesn't deserve it.

A fun little game with a lot of style due to its use of Hololive characters. A true fan game as it is made by fans, for fans and even celebrating a number of fan artists.

The Streets of Rage-style gameplay is fun if not my personal favourite. The allies/fans make it much easier for a single player but this is definitely a co-op game -- and encourages it with a default keyboard setup that supports two players (requiring a full keyboard, of course).

Also, as with HoloCure, completely free!

It's the originator of the Survivors sub-genre. What else do you need to know?

...Alright, fine. It features retro graphics, a setting and story elements inspired by classic Castlevania games. It is easy to play as the only controls you use are directional arrows (with the addition of both a confirm and cancel button in menus). It offers a system of character building that has surprising complexity. It results in screens full of absolute chaos and BIG NUMBERS.

So basically it's a great simple-yet-fun game with more depth should you go looking for it.

An excellent take on the Survivors sub-genre but with cute anime girls, bouncy music, a lovely art style and references you will only fully understand by descending into the Hololive rabbit hole. Now with an additional light farming/fishing/decorating/management sim mode!

And it's FREE.

Why are you not downloading this right now? Go ahead. I'll wait. Just going to do a bit of grinding...

Done yet? Downloading? Okay, okay...

This is an excellent "prelude" to what could be an amazing game. It most closely reminds me of Forager but even beyond being first-person it definitely does some things its own way. The controls are responsive for the running and jumping around, including simple climbing and jumping up surfaces, and the UI is cute and simple. My only concern is that it does not showcase any sort of combat or danger beyond falling off the islands; the implementation of actual combat with enemies that can strike back could make or break the full game.

If you're looking for a dating sim with lovely voice acting, good dialogue and minimum effort then this is the game for you! Interact with many, many characters and gradually work your way up in their esteem through idle game mechanics. The dialogue is clever and (possibly too) self-aware so make sure to talk to the girls as much as possible! Years after I've started playing Sad Panda is still releasing content for the game, including a new girl just this last week, so you'll have plenty to do.

Additional note: in the last year Sad Panda has been adding tons of new content to the game! There are new girls and the new Phone Flings content is a lot of fun!

Additional, additional note: still going strong a year later! Guess which award I nominated it for #PamuSellsOut. I've really loved the voice acting and writing for the most recent girls. My only regret? No additional lines from Ayano about the LTE girls. They have lines about her but not vice versa. It is the smallest quibble, and I get that they might be unable to add more and/or get the VA back, but her lines for everyone else are hilarious.

Chroma Squad!
Is it good? Yes.
Does it capture the feel of Power Rangers and sentai? Definitely!
Does it have issues? Well...

Combat can be frustrating for the simple fact that attacks knock people around. The system seems similar to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, or Tactics Ogre, but every attack will knock the target back. Even a basic attack nudges enemies. The exception is group attacks, which somewhat solves the problem of ganging up on a target as otherwise you'd have to ping pong them between your heroes, but the biggest issue is doing multiple area effects. Attacks are centered on the character using them so AoEs always shove the enemies away from the attack user and, unfortunately, spread them out further. Added to this issue is that most bosses have AoEs which will shove your team around quite a lot which makes lining up team attacks annoying. One of the roles, Lead, has some abilities which can move your team around and it feels like they're absolutely necessary to complete most objectives.

Some fights seem specifically designed to stymie only the Director's instructions and would otherwise be simple enough to complete; this is a bit expected but when a boss has a set of powers and AI which stonewall a specific objective it feels less like a game, or a challenge, and more like a chore.

The biggest flaw in the game is the crafting system. It's not all bad: the method of crafting the mech parts is simple while being easy to swap around, there's a wide variety of looks for suits and helmets and you can recycle old gear to get some materials. The flaws are that it's too random, there are finitely limited resources in the game and that crafting isn't really necessary.

• Unless you're building a specific team, and demand certain stats for each character, the store bought gear is perfectly fine and ends up saving you more money.
  
• Materials are randomly dropped in battles, which is expected, but there are a limited number of fights in the whole game -- there is no "grinding" possible. Two players both doing all the objectives for every mission, and taking out the same enemies, might have vastly different amounts of materials with no ability to grind for more. Materials can be bought but come from buying (in-game currency, there are no micro-transactions) randomized loot boxes resource packs. These same two players could buy all the same packs, spending the same amount of money, and still have vastly different materials to work with. Materials can be converted to higher versions of their type but cannot be sold or traded and, unsurprisingly, recycling equipment is a (usually unfavourable) chance and only awards small amounts of the materials used in making the item.
  
• The final frustration is that most crafted items have set bonuses and a number of randomly-generated additional attributes. This doesn't seem too bad until you craft a few things and realize the crafted items will not always have enough additional attributes. Crafting is the only way to figure this out as there is no indication in-game that items might not have the listed number of attributes when you craft them.

So the game doesn't drop the materials you wanted (random and finite drops), you spend money (also finite) to buy packs (also random) eventually getting what you need (and a pile of stuff you don't) and finally make the item only for it to have fewer attributes than the game said it would (random) and what it did generate isn't what you wanted (it's so random). I can't help but feel like the designers have worked in mobile games for a while (they did make Knights of Pen and Paper, after all) and can't quite drag themselves out of the kind of layered RNG which is meant to frustrate players into spending money on micro-transactions. If just one of these RNG factors was dropped, or there was an ability to sell/trade materials, it might be tolerable but, to me, it's a step too far into frustration.

Do the flaws ruin an otherwise fun and engaging game? No. My experience is that these flaws make the between-missions management sections stop the action dead but don't ruin the action itself. It's counter-intuitive drudgery in an otherwise fast-paced and exciting tribute to Power Rangers and sentai. If you like that sort of action go ahead, get Chroma Squad, but ignore the crafting and buy your gear.

Is this game fun? Yes, moderately so
Does it get frustrating? In a few places it can, but it's not too bad
How is the story? A lovely, warmhearted tale but not because reasons that are spoilers
Does it take long? Nah, just a couple hours if you know what you're doing
Is it worth the price? At full price, sure! On sale, yes, definitely, I mean it's the price of a large coffee go buy it

Pony Island is a warmhearted tale of friendship, ponies, game design and [INFORMATION CLASSIFIED]. Go on, try it. Tell your friends! Enjoy the state-of-the-art system designed to keep you playing.

Forever.

HuniePop is one of the few dating sim games that owns its premise.

It makes no qualms about admitting it's about getting laid with hot anime chicks who conform to various stereotypes.

The most progressive part of the game is that it allows you to be a pimpin' standard male or female character (though for all of the image sets you MUST be MALE or you miss out on the messier images >_>).

The humour is on-point and self-deprecating although far more accepting of the male viewpoint than the female despite the options available.

The biggest complaint I can offer is that one of the hidden characters says their age is 2 years old; this makes every interaction after that kinda skeezy and uncomfortable despite the situation that the character represents. If you say "nope, I'm done here" at that point I wouldn't blame you. "Alpha Mode" itself is fairly sexist in many ways but kinda fair considering that rest of the game is sexist in the other direction. So, basically, if you want to enjoy this game you need to remove any part of yourself that may be associated with the letters S, J and W. Thank you and goodnight.