Recent reviews by Olivaw

This game makes me feel like Jackie Chan in a way that basically no other game does. The combo building and environmental attacks really capture that desperate, almost slapstick feel of the best Jackie Chan fights. This isn't just a Vampire Survivors clone, it totally stands on its own. It's involving to play, makes you feel cool, and has some nice pixel art. Oh, and the soundtrack is pretty great too, real cornball 80s stuff. Great vibes all around!

This game is short, sweet, and kicks ass. The gameplay is smooth, fast, and with generous autoaim on guns and throwing knives, so you never need to slow down. It does an incredible job of making you feel like a super soldier, with a bopping EDM drum-and-bass soundtrack, and it also has a story worth telling with some really exceptional voice acting. It's got one of my favorite final levels in a long time, with a killer needle drop, and a very satisfying ending.

Pick this up if you love shooters, moving fast, getting S-ranks, or that one subgenre of action movies about guys who used to work for the government who quit working for the government. Strange Scaffold really out here doing it. They don't miss!

This is one of the most unique, most amusing, most compellingly odd games I've ever played. I'm a sucker for typing games, especially RPGs (which are rare) and this system, combined with how you learn new skills, combined with the reactivity from the narrator? Truly, there's nothing else like it! I hope the devs are proud of what they've made, because they should be!

The writing's a little flat so far, but the delivery is consistently good, and mechanically there's a lot more going on with the combat and the RPG systems than you'd think watching gameplay. It's fun, the environments are dense with a lot of meaningful stuff to find, and the combat is satisfying, if a bit mashy to start. There might yet be a moment that makes me cringe so hard my skeleton pops out, but by and large? This is a real return to form for BioWare! I very sincerely hope that they continue to produce this style of single-player action-conversation-RPG, and don't get eaten and dissolved into nutrient slurry by EA like so many other studios before them.

One of the best sci-fi Lovecraftian psychological horror stories around, one of the best survival horror games since the PS1, and the best Silent Hill game since 2. Deep lore and great atmosphere, and with the inventory rework and difficulty selection it's very accessible. If you're a horror fan, whether it's the classics or the modern day, you need to play Signalis. I finished it over a year ago and it still lives rent-free in my head.

This is a great little game for a great price point, but while it has a similar structure to Vampire Survivors, the actual gameplay is more similar to the ancient and beloved Crimsonland. Shooting is not automatic, and the combat is therefore more active.

I'll say though, that as much as I like it and as much as I'm recommending it for this price point? The game feels... off. The shooting is good, the music and presentation are solid, and most of the design is there, but with certain combinations of characters and weapons, the game feels somehow even more luck-based than Vampire Survivors in terms of run success. With only one character able to reroll upgrades, no ability to banish abilities from appearing in the pool, and leveling a much less frequent event, there are times when you have a build you want to get to and are simply unable to get it, run after run, because the dice just don't come up your way. And if they don't, you probably won't be able to survive the full twenty minutes! This sucks! This feels bad, every time!

Obviously, Vampire Survivors is, in many ways, an easier game than 20 Minutes Till Dawn, and there are permanent upgrades you can get that do significantly help, but at the same time? The game that feels more like a slot machine is somehow the one that involves less luck! Something to consider, I guess!

Anyway it's three bucks and I've played it for five hours, I've gotten tons of fun out of it and so will you. Just don't get frustrated if you keep spinning that wheel and not getting your number, y'know?

TL;DR: game good, very stable, good Dune feel, bit pricey for its content at launch.

This is a very solid foundation for an early access title! It's remarkably stable -- a full campaign and I encountered no bugs, visual or gameplay, that I could see. The structure is a bit bare right now, with one game mode, four factions that play a bit differently, and no tutorial or story campaign or multiplayer skirmish implemented as of writing. If you're looking for bang for your buck, thirty bucks is a bit steep for this content right now.

Visually, the game has a look to it, and it does feel like Dune (a bit of a cross-section of the movies and the books) but it's also a bit... bland. It does the job, and it doesn't look bad, but it's missing something. It doesn't have the hyperdetailed production value of a Total War or one of the latter-day C&C games, aiming for something more exaggerated, but it also doesn't hit the stylistic highs of something with a similar art direction like Endless Legend. I'd like the visuals to grow alongside the game, but what's here, while a bit bland, is easy enough to vibe with.

But the game itself is fun! It's a real-time 4X, reminds me a bit of early-days Stellaris. The ability to pause and the slow speed of combat and alerts keeps things relaxing for those of us who don't have the best APM, but the real-time nature means that you feel like you are constantly having to make small but meaningful decisions moment to moment. The constant juggling of resources so that you're never running a deficit, using those resources to build structures or units or engage in espionage, is a fun bit of plate-spinning, and while the early game starts quite slow, by the end something's always happening and keeping you engaged.

There's balancing that needs to be done -- why does a plascrete factory have a plascrete maintenance cost? why isn'not make it free but provide less plascrete? -- but nothing felt particularly broken, and the stuff that did was situational, temporary, and costly. The AI could use some tweaking too, though I found it a breezy challenge. I was on the receiving end of some nasty schemes and incited rebellions more than once, and past the midgame the AI's got enough troops to take a few villages and make some real trouble for you. But after a certain point I didn't really feel in danger, and while I enjoy the taut relationships between the factions, there should be a few more diplomatic options to go with the politicking and espionage. For example: the Landsraad is a very important and interesting little thing that the noble houses get to do, but the Fremen are completely removed from it. Couldn't they have a similar system, but with the various sietchs? I have to imagine that's on the feature docket.

Still, I've had quite a bit of fun in my first campaign, enough to write this review! If you're way into Dune and strategy games, and you don't mind dropping thirty bucks, you'll have quite a bit of fun! If you're just way into strategy games... maybe wait until there's a few more features or the price drops a bit.

The best game From Software have ever made. Huge, engaging, engrossing, gorgeous, wild with surprises, and with a wide variety of playstyles supported. Believe the hype.

Imagine Crimsonland, but Castlevania, and you're most of the way there. Vampire Survivors is an arcade run-based game with passive upgrades, unlockable characters and levels, and a number of achievements. It functions perfectly well and is a lot of fun to play, even in this early access state, and that alone makes it worth three bucks. It also smartly takes the shmup control idea of automatic shooting so you can focus solely on movement! It sounds a bit passive at first, but considering how you'd never stop shooting anyway, it just removes you having to hold down a button. That focus makes each run even more clearly a battle of positioning -- you have to plan your routes, mind your corners, watch for openings to juke through like an NFL player. And if you're good enough (and lucky enough with your upgrades) you can become a walking apocalypse, dropping frames as your very existence annihilates everything around you, which is its own kind of fun up until the thirty minute mark, at which point the game playfully congratulates you for "beating" a stage.

It's really an incredibly simple, profoundly satisfying game if you miss old-school sprite-based power explosions, where when you pop a bomb to clear the screen everything flashes white and the hardware almost hangs a bit. My only complaint would be that the very first level is somehow harder to "clear" than the second (the library), largely because of how past ten minutes or so, the game becomes a bit of a DPS race, and if you've been neglecting your damage, after a certain point you're basically screwed. But that's a minor complaint for an early access title.

Maybe I should be glad there isn't a mobile version yet. I don't think I'd ever stop playing it otherwise.

This game, as a game? Completely owns. Incredibly clever, lots of fun to figure out, with unique strategies that reward clever thinking, deliberate play, and even some quick-draw reflexes.

This game, as a free-to-play game? Cosmetics are cheap if you want 'em (the most you can buy is only twenty bucks) or you can slowly earn currency to buy a couple yourself, or you can just pay sixty bucks for the Free To Play Sucks Lifetime Pass and get everything they ever add, forever.

And unlike nearly every other battle royale game out there, every time I lost, I laughed and jumped right back in.

Astonishingly fun. The sort of thing I'd be proud to have thought of, let alone made! Give it a try if you like word games, it's dope as hell.