Recent reviews by Palidian

Quick, fun mini-metroidvania. It's difficult in places but not unapproachable, though I did find myself getting frustrated in the bonus/DLC area having to backtrack upon death. There are plenty of shortcuts to open at least. Controls are pretty tight even though the default layout isn't what I prefer. For only $3, I got a good hour or two out of it.

Staying intentionally vague to avoid spoilers, Blue Prince is a fantastically polished rogue-lite puzzle game that has you placing rooms in a mysterious mansion in order to uncover the secrets within. I had a lot of fun scrawling down notes and piecing things together to solve puzzles and getting continuously surprised by the depth the game had to offer.

However, this recommendation comes with one big caveat. Much like shrimp and ice cream are both delicious on their own, but not necessarily combined, I feel that this is an issue with combining puzzles and roguelike elements. The puzzles that are contained in a single room are mostly straightforward, but as you progress, the scope of things increases until you're working on leads that span the whole mansion.

As more and more loose ends are tied up, you will find yourself butting heads with the RNG more and more. You might know what you need to do or where you need to go, but you just can't assemble all the pieces for a dozen or more runs when everything aligns. There are a few ways to mitigate this somewhat, but it takes quite a while to get to those options.

Overall, I loved the game. The puzzles, the environment and the storytelling are all top notch. You're constantly discovering new things and unraveling threads even when it feels like you're not making "progress" toward your supposed goal. Just be aware that there are a few sticking points that may end up being frustrating [aka if I have to solve the dart board puzzle again I'm going to scream.] =)

At it's core (keeper), Core Keeper is a fun game, especially with friends. The gameplay loop of exploring, gathering, fighting and upgrading is tried and true and the game does a lot of things well, even if a lot of it cribs heavily from Terraria. I love the addition of pouches for various materials, though I wouldn't mind an easier way to trash things on the go as you will be picking up a lot of random cruft.

I have only two main criticisms of things that I feel are holding it back. The first is the pacing/progression. The game is split into different biomes with the beginning areas separated from the later areas by boss drops. This is fine, but it felt like the later areas were largely not as interesting to explore. I got new ore, crafted new weapons and kept exploring. I found tons of weapons and armor, but none of them were better than what I had or else were incredibly underwhelming compared to how difficult it was to obtain them. This especially goes for any of the legendary items which are outclassed by easily crafted alternatives. It doesn't feel rewarding to explore the dungeons like this.

The second is somewhat related to the first and that is skills/skill points. There are 12 skills to level up through out the game from mining and crafting to the various kinds of combat. Barely any of the talents you unlock feel meaningful and the time it takes to max out a skill is way too long. For example, I got to 100 in farming and it only took planting/harvesting what felt like 5000 crops to get there which is more than I'd need through the whole game. The same goes for crafting, cooking or any of the combat. I reached endgame and wasn't even at 70 for my most used skills after 60+ hours of play. It just feels a bit padded out and it doesn't make me want to unlock the achievements for it.

Either way, Core Keeper scratched the itch for more Terraria even if it's not quite reaching the same heights. That's a high bar though, so take this with a grain of salt.

This is the first game I ever got on Steam and it's a hot mess, but it's kind of fun kicking enemies into the conveniently placed spikes that are leaning against practically every wall and clipping through everything with the rope bow. Would I recommend buying this in 2025? Honestly, no, but for $2, go for it!

It's an overall fun game and building an aesthetic and efficient factory is pretty cool. However, it's next-level janky and missing a ton of basic QoL options. Did you misplace a building by 1m? Disassemble it and move it, but now everything that was attached to it has to be reconnected manually. Not so bad the first 200 times but it gets really tedious doing it constantly. Heaven help you if you have to move large portions of your factory. For a game about automation, a lot of very basic things have to be done manually for the entire game. Making a 3D factory building game is extremely ambitious and I respect the amount of effort that's gone into it, but there are still a lot of rough edges. I'd be going absolutely insane if I wasn't playing with friends. That said, it's also a game that you will end up playing until sunrise without realizing it.

Please add an auto-run. I'm getting RSI from holding the W key.

UFO 50 is a fantastic collection of games spanning many genres. Each game is incredibly polished with it's own lore, music and easter eggs. At less than 50 cents per game, even if you don't love them all, you'll still find enough to get your money's worth. These aren't mini-games either. These are full games that will take at least an hour or two (or sometimes a lot more!) Don't make the mistake I made playing Barbuta first and judging harshly.

A few favorites in no particular order:
Mooncat
Mortol
Kick Club
Warptank
House Party
Pingolf
Night Manor

I've never played Harvest Moon or any of the games this plays homage to and so I initially dismissed it as not my cup of tea. Turns out I made a huge mistake! This game is delightfully cozy and relaxing, extremely polished and generally great to play! There's tons of content and the modding scene adds even more. All of this coming from a solo dev is incredible and I'm sorry I slept on this one for so long.

Quite impressive to make a 20-year-old, non-native VR game work this well in VR. It's definitely not perfect (and HL2 has definitely aged a bit in general) but if you're a fan and you have a headset, it's worth poking into it for a while while you save up to buy HL:Alyx.

From the trailer alone, I expected to love this game. Grapple Dog is an adorable 2D platformer that has plenty of small touches that made me smile (such as the ability to reward the protagonist at the end of a stage). However, no matter how charming the aesthetics, something about this didn't quite click with me. Even though I really wanted to like this game, I found trying to beat more than a level or two in a sitting wasn't very fun.

The grapple has a few restrictions that felt limiting rather than allowing you to be more free-form. The level design was overall good but I found it annoying when I accidentally jumped into a cannon or something and got blasted to a new area when I was still trying to explore for gems. Boss fights felt like they dragged on far too long. Movement feels a little wonky as well with air adjustments having a bit of an arc to them and sending me into hazards more than a few times. The music is the same for every stage in a world and while some of them were okay, others I was tired of immediately and I ended up turning the music off for much of the game (looking at you, world 1). Giving a thumbs up because there's not a neutral option, but probably wait for a sale.

I have complicated feelings about this game. The art and environment is detailed, the music fits well and the story has a certain emotional resonance regarding loss, isolation and depression, even if it's somewhat contrived at times.

The puzzles are mostly good, though I found myself stuck a few times in frustrating ways because the game wasn't clear about what it wanted. For example, I spent about ten minutes trying to figure out how to recycle pee and was frustrated almost to the point of just telling him to drink it straight. After looking it up, I found out what I thought was the recycler was actually in a different area of the ship.
The control scheme also takes a bit of getting used to as there's no way to drag things from the inventory or environment (or I'd accidentally hit the 'put this back where you got it' key and have to go retrieve it again.) There aren't a ton of items and the interactions are fairly limited, so it was only a minor annoyance.
Overall, this game feels experimental and not everything worked perfectly, but it does enough right that it avoided the thumbs down I was going to give it during the pee debacle. =)