Recent reviews by Lucky Thirteen

Beholder 2 is an office work simulator set in the dark, dystopian world of its predecessor, Beholder.
You take the role of Evan Redgrave, a newly hired employee of one of the many Ministries of the Great State. The game gives you the illusion of choice in the terms of approaching your tasks, but punishes you for not playing the way the developer intended.

Prepare for a slow, mind-numbingly boring gameplay that kills every semblance of fun with its unfortunate design choices. It's all the more painful because in my opinion, Beholder 1 already had the perfect formula - the devs only needed to take that gameplay loop and expand upon it. It would have worked just as well in this new setting. Unfortunately, they chose to try something different and personally, I'm not happy with the result.

Credit where credit is due: Beholder 2 kept the unique graphic style of its predecessor, which I personally like a lot. And once again, the developers did an exceptional job portraying the atmosphere of oppresion, fear and mistrust.

I saw Ninjahtic MInd Tricks has gotten achievements since the last time I played it a long time ago. Wanted to run through the first level real quick to get one just for fun. Little did I know that "real quick" isn't how this game rolls.

Patient gamers who're looking for a game that's about avoiding sets of spikes over and over again (by which I don't mean that you'll be dying that much, I mean that there is a LOT of spikes) will enjoy this game, but I don't have that kind of patience nowaydays.

The controls are fairly standard, but are slightly unresponsive and can't be rebound. The levels are longer than they need to be, enemies are not particularly deadly (at least early on, I don't recall what comes in later levels), but the combat feels rather slow and for a "ninja" game, Ninjahtic MT doesn't feel very dynamic and lacks a certain "fluidity" that I would expect.

It's easy to see why the idea behind Distrust looked good on paper. Manage a small team of polar explorers while they are trying to survive the harsh climate and escape the alien-infested station somewhere in the Arctic region. That does sound interesting. Sadly, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

The developers describe Distrust as a "story-rich survival adventure". Instead, it is a fairly dull excercise in patience with no real story to speak of. You get a short intro when you start the game, then presumably (hopefully) some sort of a closure at the end. That's it.
If you are looking for an actual story-driven adventure, look elsewhere.
Should you decide to play this game, you will spend your time babysitting a duo (or trio) of characters as they fumble around the tiny levels, regularly getting injured while rummaging through cabinets and dying from common cold. Yes, your supposedly experienced polar explorers are no match for the most trivial illness known to man.

The survival meters are... actually not terribly annoying!
There's warmth, stamina and the staple of survival genre, hunger. They don't go down super-fast and you have time to get something done, although individually managing these bars on two (let alone three) different characters soon starts to feel like a chore. In this regard, I found the experience somewhat enjoyable after one of my characters died and there was only one left to take care of (keep in mind that you can revive "dead" characters, I simply chose not to).

Now, the main reason why I cannot, in good conscience, recommed the game:
you will not be able to enjoy the full experience unless you play on the so-called "Challenge Mode". Playing on the "normal difficulty" only lets you unlock a few of the characters, locks you out of one of the endings and only lets you earn 5 out of 56 Steam achievements.
This is not mentioned anywhere on the store page, falsely leading potential players to believe that they will experience the thing they purchased to its fullest on their own terms.

Stories: The Path of Destinies is a brilliant chose-your-own-adventure type of game dragged down by some bad decisions on the developer's part.

The writing is great and the narrator does a very good job reading it to the player. Thorough your journey, apart from regular bits of story when you reach certain choices, you will be accompanied by amusing remarks related to what your character does (like opening chests or starting combat). The combat is rather simple but flows well, and one can only imagine how much more enjoyable would it feel had the developer bothered to port the game properly.
You see, Path of Destinies has the least convenient control scheme I've seen in a long time.
Forget WASD, forget those pesky E and Q keys! Spacebar? Never heard of that.
In all seriousness though, I cannot stress enough how important it is to implement a proper KB+M support when porting a game to PC. One would think this doesn't need to be mentioned considering that keyboard and mouse are the primary way to control a PC, yet many console ports completely fail in this regard. The keybinds cannot be changed, either.

https://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2806061589

All that said, it is possible to get used to the awkward KB+M controls and play the game from start to finish, as there are no boss fights and the combat is overall on the easy side. If you do die, you will usually respawn right before the encounter, so no problem on this front. However, as you keep playing, another flaw starts to surface. Due to the nature of the game, you will be repeating the same levels multiple times to take different paths (i.e. make different choices) and unlock more endings. The levels are short and easy enough to navigate, but all the narration is unskippable.
This means that you will be hearing the very same bits of story several times, waiting for the game to give you control again. The third time around, this really starts to feel like the developer has no respect for the player's time.

Last but not least, there is one major issue that absolutely deserves to be mentioned:
your cursor can randomly disappear, not coming back until you restart the game. You can play through the levels more or less normally without the cursor, but as you can imagine, this becomes a problem when you need to make a choice or navigate a menu. The checkpoints are distributed well, but they only save the progress when you quit to the menu screen. Quitting to the menu screen doesn't fix the cursor problem. Quitting to desktop puts you back to the beginning of a level.

All in all, Stories: The Path of Destinies is still a game worth playing. For the story and the narration, if nothing else. Just note the problems and decide whether they are a dealbreaker for you or not.

Note: this was originally a negative review because of an unexpected gameplay change later in chapter 3, which I assumed would remain till the end of the game. Luckily, this didn't carry over to chapter 4. Updated review below.


Tales of the Neon Sea is an adventure game set in a futuristic cyberpunk world. The pleasant visual style coupled with a fairly interesting story and decent (if slightly confusing) puzzles make this a thoroughly enjoyable experience. There are also parts where you play as a little cat, so that's another reason to give a thumb up.

For the most part, Tales of the Neon Sea delivers a satisfying mix of puzzle solving, collecting items and doing some detective work, with minimal amount of backtracking. However, later in chapter 3, there is a somewhat frustrating sequence of events that rely on good timing, followed by a timed puzzle. Also worth noting is that if you get killed by a drone (which, spoiler alert, is what happens if you time yourself incorrectly) while interacting with an object, there's a chance that your character will be unable to move.
Fortunately, this doesn't last very long and chapter 4 again focuses on logic rather than timing.

Endless World is a unique idle game with ARPG elements, colorful world and a 4th wall breaking protagonist. Pretty, relaxing and mildly amusing, there is no reason not to give this game a chance if you are looking for a new clicker to play.

For a F2P game, Endless World features a tolerable monetization that won't make you feel left behind, although the developers recently introduced their first "DLC pack" which could come close to pay2win. But the developers have so far done a solid job of communicating with and listening to the players, so if they keep resisting the cash-grabbing temptation, this game will continue to be great.

Realm Grinder seems like a nice enough clicker/idle game. As you play, you can choose from three alignments (Good, Evil or Neutral), each with a couple of different factions favoring different playstyles.

What I see as a negative is the lack of events and the fact that it appears to be very difficult to obtain premium currency/bonuses without spending actual money (a lot of clickers I played would usually have a way for non-paying players to earn bits here and there).

Project Pastorate is a bit of a wasted potential.
I like the art style and the "religious dystopia" setting the devs are aiming for is something I find appealing. The audio fits the scenes perfectly and the writing is mostly fine, with only minor errors here and there. Unfortunatelly, the game suffers from its (supposedly) episodic nature.
The characters are quite shallow and even though they do have hints of personalities, they aren't given enough space to properly express themselves and some of their dialogues feel forced (like that time Vinnie talks about his marriage). The story starts off well enough and shows us that there's something much bigger going on in the background, but it doesn't take the time to go deeper, to explore the plot twists and show us more of the world. And then the ending makes it feel like we just barely scratched the surface.

That's the problem with episodic games. You just don't get the full experience until all the episodes are out (and it doesn't look like we're getting another episode of Project Pastorate anytime soon). Chances are that if this was a full-fledged game with a deeper, finished story, I'd be writing a positive review right now.

There is no real in-game menu to speak of and pressing ESC quits to desktop. This is something I'm personally becoming quite allergic to. Menu screens, please! An option to adjust the text speed would be convenient, too. There are separate sliders for music volume and SFX volume though, which I appreciate.
Then there is the combat. Good idea, not-so-good execution. The combat is a minigame where an enemy plays a card, then you have to play the correct card in response. Sometimes, it's intuitive: for example, the enemy plays a "Hostage" card, you play a "Negotiation" card. Other times, you just have to guess what the developer had in mind, like when the enemy plays a "Chain Whip" card and you're supposed to know that the correct answer is "Hold the Line". You can only make one mistake during this minigame, the second mistake means you're dead (note that the minigames can be skipped).

Also, I have a problem with some of the features listed on the store page:
Lifelike dialogue? Close, but not quite.
Enthralling battle system? Depends, but the word "enthralling" might be too strong.
Unique puzzles? No. There are four completely irrelevant riddles that you can (but don't have to) solve and that are in no way related to what is going on in the game.
Multiple endings depending on your moral choices? No. The only "choice" you can make is whether you want to be rude or friendly on two occasions. This doesn't affect anything, there are no consequences and no multiple endings.

All in all, Project Pastorate isn't something you should avoid like the plague, but do keep in mind that the game isn't what it seems from the store page, and that there might never be more episodes.

Crusaders of the Lost Idols is one of the best (if not the best) clickers out there, with regular events and updates even now, years after release. If you are looking for a relaxing time-waster, look no further.

Lakeview Cabin Colelction is a game (I use the word very loosely, since there isn't really any gameplay to speak of) in which you are supposed to achieve something, but it completely fails to tell you what is it that you are doing or why. Nothing about it makes much sense, I can't help but wonder if all the people leaving positive reviews played the same game that I did. Seems slightly suspicious, to say the least.

I'd recommed to stay away from this thing, unless you are looking for some horror themed randomness.