Recent reviews by Mickyan

As a big fan of the first game, at first I had mixed feelings about the party system and while it takes some time to adjust to the new tactics, it's just as satisfying as the first once you get into the rhytm of setting up combos across multiple characters and put each other out of harm's way

Banger soundtrack as usual. I preferred the silhouetted art style of the first game and the extra visual details on top of having more characters on screen makes it a bit harder to tell what's happening at a glance but I mostly got used to it after some time

Abiotic Factor takes the stale and overcrowded genre of crafting survival games and turns it into something truly special with its unique premise, smartly designed gameplay and an excellent atmosphere that perfectly swings between goofy and terrifying

Still a bit rough around the edges but co-op games with high player counts are rare and this one is definitely worth checking out

The strangest thing about DD2 is just how much it feels like you're still playing the original, you can almost forget they are 10 years apart

It's bigger and better, but also keeps many of the weird quirks of the original

It's a very different game from the original Subterrain and while I was skeptical about the move to a turn based system at first, depending on your tastes it's much better off for it. Expect methodical decision making and a much more story driven experience.
Combat and resource management is challenging without being brutally unfair like many similar games of the genre.
There's a few rough edges with the UI which can take some time to get used to but nothing too bad.

Plays much more like a strategy game than a colony builder which sets itself apart quite a bit from its obvious inspirations. There's a much bigger focus on defending your dungeon while putting together war parties and attacking enemies without the hassle of micromanaging resources and production.

There's a surprising amount of depth to the ways you can use its systems to get an edge on your enemies, although it has a pretty steep learning curve and the tutorial is a bit lacking

The unique balance of urban survival, management and exploration makes for a truly captivating experience. Manage your apartment block, uncover the weird and creepy mysteries of the Obenseuer, try not to die in the process.

Possibly one of the most interesting games to come out in the last decade, I was extremely skeptical about all of the things it promised: a procedurally generated city, every single citizen with habits and routines fully simulated, procedural murders happening in real time whether you're there to witness them or not. All things that sounded way too good to be true and I was never more glad to be proven wrong.

As an early access release it has some rough edges on both technical and balance sides but for a game of this scope and complexity it is remarkably stable as a first release, performance is a bit hit or miss on my 1070 but perfectly playable and it's not the kind of game where a lower framerate is really going to impact your experience anyway

Very experimental and perhaps too ambitious for its own good, Ostranauts still feels like a proof of concept at this stage but we need more games that break the mold like this

Scrapping junkers to build the space ship of your dreams is entertaining enough to be worth the price of admission, but that's all there is to it for now, hopefully one day it can be much more

Building your own level, watching replays of people playing through it and making adjustments to it on the fly can be extremely addicting. Despite some needed limitations that can sometimes feel too constraining there's enough tools to make some really clever traps and level designs to outsmart raiders and (hopefully) make sure everyone has a good time, as you don't lose any resources if someone successfully raids your base. You get resources for every raider kill, but there's no upside to making players ragequit.

The raiding part can be a mixed bag, as is expected from community generated content.
Although there is a rating system that tries to incentivize making levels that are fun to play, it doesn't quite do enough to stop people from making levels that are simply as tedious and frustrating as possible.
Still, there's plenty of fun levels to play out there for now, it remains to be seen how the meta will shift in the future and whether or not interesting maps will eventually disappear in favor of cheesing for resources