Recent reviews by Kasiir

Fundamentally a time-management action RPG. Take a pass on this one if you're expecting a chill time grinding, over-leveling, and winning at your own pace. In the main game mode (Saga) you'll have to quickly scavenge resources from specific creatures to craft (not find) good gear, complete limited time quests, and protect the town each night from regular raids.

It's Ragnarök, and you're on a doomsday clock. Beat the big bad in under 15 days, because you're not going to get anything done once the eternal night sets in and you're constantly defending the town and staving off crazily scaled mid-bosses. If you spend your whole run cutting down every tree in sight, punching every rock, and killing every thing without stopping to think about where or why you're doing it, you're not going to get geared and you'll lose. That said, winning every run is not expected, esp. due to the randomization elements. Sometimes you just can't find those 8 Nidhoggr teeth you need, the trading sorcerer is AWOL, your friends are doing corpse runs from falling into pits, and a Jötunn is banging on your door. You can cut your losses (or claim your winnings) by escaping through the Bifröst however, giving you meta currency for alternate recipes, load-outs, and cosmetics. These don't have a massive impact on gameplay, but some are quite handy, esp. the weapon recipes. Having more build flexibility means you're more resilient to randomization.

I've had a lot of fun with this one, but I like time management in general as a mechanic (Dead Rising 1 & 2 are my jam). I have a few points of criticism for Tribes:
[-] Combat is simplistic and some classes require a large number of players for good synergy.
[-] Some runes and skills just aren't useful, and you have very limited slots for both.
[-] The "platforming" is just bad. Rolling off cliffs and building scaffolding to get up to high places can routinely get you stuck or kill you in the absolute dumbest ways. The build preview feature that was added helps, but it's a half measure.
[-] This game has *premium* currency and only a finite amount can be grinded without spending real money. The game at least needs to give players a way to turn golden horns into platinum coins if they're going to shoehorn this in.

Now, I can mostly overlook these things since they're not all that important. It's a time-management game, so the meat on the bone here is the decision making and optimization. I'd give it about a B overall, but would up that grade if we got some more detailed combat & class mechanics.

Super fun. Overcooked is famous (and I highly recommend it) as a stupidly fun and frenetic multiplayer cooking game, and while it's clearly superior graphically and in control-feel, PlateUp!'s strategy & randomization elements add sooo much value to the experience.

Rather than being almost entirely reactionary to orders and kitchen layouts - in PlateUp! there's many opportunities to plan your service & reorganize the kitchen. Random modifiers introduced throughout the run give players plenty of control over the risk, rewards, and play-style of their restaurants. It's so refreshing to be rewarded for forethought and creativity, not just reaction speeds or button mashing! There's constant room for improvement, optimization, and even experimentation - I didn't realize how many ways there were to play until after I played with 4 different groups that all played differently (and could all still win!).

I love having so many choices in a cooking game like this - I didn't know how much I was missing it until PlateUp! delivered. Kudos! I hope the updates continue for a long time to come!

Was not expecting Unrailed! to be nearly this good. Played about 30 hours in a week, so I'm definitely hooked. Check out some gameplay videos if you're interested (trailer doesn't do it justice), or maybe remote play with a friend!

Has an excellent "fervent meditation" quality. Very simple game on the surface with surprising depth & mastery. Overcooked meets Pipe Dream/Pipe Mania. Finding a good group and having everything click into place as everyone finds a role and goes above and beyond to solve the next hurdle, save a bolt, or salvage a blocked engine from destruction is extremely satisfying. It's all the more impressive when you're playing with random players (public match) and everyone is communicating solely using emojis.

It's similarly depressing how one obstinate person can throw off an entire run though, so it goes both ways. Would like to see more controls to prevent griefing & educate new players (host controls for kicking & shop voting, better in-game explanation of what buying an engine does, more information in the session browser, etc.), but most public matches have people trying their darnedest and are all in good fun.

Strongly recommending Unrailed!, especially if you enjoy Overcooked, computer puzzle games, and graph theory.

RAD is... Not rad. It's ok, and I was hoping for a lot more. A lot of mechanics seem fun and interesting at first, but end up LAME. If the game made better use of the player's time I could be more forgiving, but there's a lot of time wasting in this game for the modest amount of content.

Exo-mutations (your active skills) are a cool concept, but there's not much variety and the mutations are a very mixed bag. Some are amazingly strong (time slow + hyperspeed = almost invincible), but many are weak and/or tedious. Toxic dump and wither requires luring enemies into your path over and over to take damage from clouds/puddles left in your wake. Death roe summons/babies easily die so you have to spam them over and over while running in circles. Some abilities have long cooldowns and encourage you to run away until they recharge. These nuisances could be ignored if exo-mutations were less necessary, more balanced, or if you had more choice in what you were using, but that's not the case. With all the abilities enemies have, even slow/bad mutations are usually the safest way of dealing with them.

The enemies are a big pain and have an excess of anti-player abilities. They have melee counters, many can't be killed in one bat combo, can auto-dodge projectiles, may be immune to toxic, may be immune to charming, can leave damaging puddles on death, have sides of their body with 100% invulnerability, etc. Dealing with all these abilities usually requires the player to be patient and wait for openings between attacks, make frequent use of a clunky dodge roll, and limit their bat combos to 2 or so to prevent melee counters. This slows the combat way down, but there's a lot of enemies and you need to fight them to level up so you'll be doing a lot of slow combat or finding a way to cheese it with your exo-mutations and other skills (like slam).

The game is a rogue-lite and you will find solutions to a lot of these problems after playing for a while. Learning what abilities to reroll, how to collect all the elemental immunities each run to completely ignore puddles, how to maximize your money/keys and find secrets. Once again though, this min-maxing further wastes your time. It will require backtracking through the level (being careful to closely follow your previous paths for a movement speed buff), smashing everything in sight (no apparent indicator for loot bearing skulls and bushes vs. empty ones), swapping items around so you can use a scuzzy dongle to open a few chests because you ran out keys - and then going back for what you had to drop to make room for the dongle... This stuff isn't strictly necessary for a winning run, but it can boost your chances and that's all it takes for it to be worth doing, right? Backtracking is part and parcel of a rogue-lite, but RAD does a pretty bad job of making it easy or quick to do with your limited carrying capacity (1 usable item, 1 of each type of artifact), slow movement speed, and lack of teleports. Enter the Gungeon is one example of how to do backtracking better.

Now, there is some stuff in here I like. The 80's theme works well, the double apocalypse lore/setting is interesting, and the gross mutations are pretty distinctive. Even being reliant on a bad or so/so mutation can be mechanically interesting for a while - making the best of a bad situation. The game is sooo close to being good, but it falls flat just a few steps short. RAD needed more playtesting to see if mechanics were actually fun in my opinion, because it's close enough that changing a few numbers could have really helped the pacing.

A few quick suggestions to improve the game pacing: give the player the green path movement bonus speed as their base speed, dilute the anti-player abilities that enemies have (not everything after level 2 needs to have multiple defensive/counter abilities), increase consumable and artifact base capacity to 2, and let players choose between 2 or 3 exo-mutations for their first mutation. A rebalancing of quirks and powers would be a big help as well: death roe babies should have whatever immunities you have, mind control could work on more enemies at level 1 and not break on friendly fire, increase warhead damage, increase base meat drop rate and replace meat lover quirk, etc. Not holding my breath for any of these, but I've said my piece.

*Review edited to highlight some key points in bold

Highly recommended if you enjoy simulation or survival.

The setting of rimworlds is a fascinating one, and there's just enough depth to the game's systems and random events to keep gameplay interesting without being overwhelming. Once you've mastered the basics, there's a fantastic collection of mods out there to increase the game's variety, improve aesthetic, and "fix" parts of the game that are lacking in complexity or rewards. Would recommend this game on the basis of vanilla alone, but the modding community knocks it out of the park.

My primary complaint at this point is that too many mods can kill load times and frame rates on even the best machines, so be careful about loading everything that looks good. The game can also be micro-intensive at times (usually in the early game and during events and emergencies).

A fun mix of traditional deck-building with roguelite dungeon crawling. There's a lot of interesting card combinations and challenging, varied enemies to pit them against. In the majority of runs you'll rarely steamroll a fight, making the game a constant struggle for survival where one bad draw, one hard counter, or a minor misplay could end a run. Every choice matters.

Like many other deck builders there's a lot of chance involved in each run, so be ready to fail... a lot! This game will prove a challenge of endurance for most, where even small victories (a first boss, an elite, or even just one more fight/floor) can be big triumphs.

Good luck! The heart awaits...

Underappreciated gem at an exceptional price.

Starts a bit slow and linear, but quickly becomes a strong metroidvania. There's a nice variety to the required progression power-ups and optional bonus attack & stat items. Bosses are interesting and varied. It's a bit short compared to other games in the genre with 8 replayable stages, but that helps it from overstaying its welcome (which you may start to notice when redoing levels for 100% completion). The story and characters can be overly goofy at times, but help give the game unique character.

Hoping to see more adventures with Dr. Banfield in the future!

Equal parts fun and "make you hate your friends" managerial nightmare.

Overcooked makes for an excellent couch coop where you and your friends try to manage a kitchen and push out as many correct orders as possible within a limited time frame. While simple enough at the start, the levels quickly grow in complexity as the shapes of the kitchens become more obtuse and the hazards (like rats stealing your ingredients or counters sliding and changing the shape of the map) become increasingly difficult to circumvent. Deft coordination and communication is necessary to manage the kitchen with 3 or 4 players in these situations, but such cooperation does not come easily. It can take more than a few tries to get the best rating on every level, which if your friends aren't all on the same page, can make for a frustrating affair. The light hearted visual style and storyline makes it hard to get mad at the game, but the same can't always be said for your friends... Luckily, there's built in "swearing" and "punch" buttons in the game, so they've got you covered as far as venting those frustrations.

The game is at its best when you have 3 or 4 people, in my opinion, as much of the resource management puzzle solving is oversimplified with only 1 or 2 playing (although, that can be helpful if you're trying to get better ratings on hard levels). That said, it can be difficult to gather so many people and controllers locally at times and the game does not currently include online play, so bear that in mind before purchasing. The game is also fairly short, but like Portal, the experience is unique enough that I think it more than justifies its pricetag.

Even with it shortfalls, Overcooked is a refreshing and excellent addition to the couch coop collection and easily earns my recommendation.

An excellent (dare I say, awesome) 2D MOBA battle royal. Matches are quick 3v3 bouts that you can hop into at any time (no lockouts for someone leaving) and wail on your opponents as soon as you join. The fact that the game gets away from the constant creep farming and last-hitting of other MOBAs and focuses on quick twitchy combat is a nice change of pace. There's more than a dozen unique Awesomenauts to play, each with various possible builds and extra DLC costumes, and mastering the nuances of their skills is a big part of the fun and challenge of the game.

For anyone looking for a good-old fashioned 2D brawler or a minimalist MOBA, Awesomenauts is a great contender. Take into account the fact that is has great online play AND local "couch" multiplayer and you've also got a spectacular party game that will make a fine addition to anyone's steam library.

This game is the spiritual successor of Demon's Souls, taking a nostalgic trial-and-error approach to third person medieval RPGs. The game is designed to be extremely difficult, but also very fair. Weapons carry a realistic feeling heft to them, environs are wonderfully mysterious, and bosses are delightfully challenging and fear inspiring, but if you find enemies beyond your abilities you can always invite a stranger for coop (part of the very ambience focused multiplayer) or grind up your gear/level for an edge. Your greatest advantage in the game will always remain your skill (second being equipment), however, which makes for very gratifying gameplay as you learn and improve.

For me, this game lies in the uncanny valley that approaches perfection. It is so breathtakingly good that it makes its few flaws all the more apparent. Gameplay balance for weapons, classes/stats, and multiplayer seems a bit off and adds a certain frustration to a game centered around skill, but the core single player experience can be played alone if any of these strike a nerve. Additionally, the game is nearly impossible to play on a keyboard without extensive modding/remapping. Regardless, Dark Souls is easily one of my favorite games of all time, providing a fun ambience filled challenge reminiscent of Resident Evil 4 and old Castlevania titles and I can hardly do it justice with simple words. If you're going to try it, just remember to bring a controller and be prepared to die... a lot. Bonfires are your friend.