Recent reviews by sallachim

It's a short game, which would be even shorter if we had access to a sprint button. Alas, we don't, so what this game ends up being is a typical walking sim to painfully trudge our way through with notes to read, narrator voice to hear out now and then and some non-puzzling puzzles.
The setting stands out positively, both in its bleakness and in resulting visuals - but the ending kind of ruins everything.

As such, if you are interested in what the screenshots show then go for it, but I don't think I'll ever tell anyone they should play it.

The game as a whole is giving off a very disjointed feeling.

First off, the story. The game's store page claims it's a science-fiction game, but game proper starts off with wall of text information dump that is entirely in religious/mythical realm. Sure, there are some SF elements, but it's much closer to esoteric, spiritual experience than to SF one.

Secondly, the gameplay. While the game is completely linear, it's made up of segments. Most segments play as 3rd person platforming game, which manages to make the big, cool jumps feel awful with lack of mid-air control, amazingly glitchy camera and losing control over the character when "falling" from steep terrain. Any claims the game makes about "exploration" go out of the window when you realise there is nothing to explore for. Sure, you can get off the intended path, but there is never anything there to see. For example, in around the middle of the game, I wasted couple minutes climbing huge stairs to the side only to find absolutely nothing of note on top. To top it off, I think you start each level looking exactly where you are intended to go. All we get is awful movement and expansive, empty levels that drag on for longer than they need to.

Then we have segments of other types. Racing, combat, obstacle courses, time attack, freefalling. Some of them are awful, some are quite good, and in contrast with rest of the game, I found myself greatly enjoying the last 2. However, they are exception to the rule, and in the end, game ends up playing horribly for most of its duration.

Thirdly, the visuals. Giant structures, otherworldly environments, low poly graphics. Nothing to complain about here, except for the fact that they end up being merely props in otherwise empty world. Not empty in a desolate way, but in the amount of content provided way.
On the other hand, game segments are separated by cutscenes, and they give off a really interesting feeling - as if somebody with spark of inspiration managed to make a lot with very little. They're janky - but it's quality jank.

Lastly, audio. It's just low quality, with music loops which get annoying quickly and the jump whoosh sound. I probably suffered more due to trying to explore the levels and spending way more time in them than necessary, but still, the complaint stands.

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All in all - game has some nice elements to it, but as a whole, they just don't stick. The different gameplay segments feel more like an attempt for sake of learning to emulate different genres with very varying results (mostly bad though) rather than something meant to improve the experience or serve any particular purpose. The world is beautiful but ultimately empty. The narrative strikes hard at the beginning with wall of text, only to change into something you might try to figure out of wordless context and cutscenes.

The little nuggets of gold in it can't outshine the fact that it's a slow, inconsistent mess of a game that is painful to play through. Not recommended.

I like sudoku, minesweeper, kakuro and nonograms. All being logic based number games, I hoped this game to be at least decent. And I'm happy to say that it's actually good.

Best way to describe it is to call it a hex-based (hexy?) kakuro, where instead of numbers 1 to 9 you only have 1, 2 and 3 available to put into the hexes. Now, that applies only to the core aspect of the game. As levels and zones go, we get to experience 3 mechanics (that I can recall) that pleasantly refresh the formula and force the player to rewire their brain and start thinking under new conditions. Those changes in pace are good in the way that they prevent the monotony from settling in, but they come with a caveat. As usual in puzzle games, player is given the simplest level to acquaint themselves with new mechanic. Such difficulty/complexity reset prevents the game from going into really difficult places before the zone ends, and new zone appears.

Then again, hard mode doubles the amount of levels, so it's not a tragic situation. Merely annoying for me.
There are also a couple challege levels in every zone that do not impede the progress. They were usually pretty nice to solve.
As for basic levels, easy mode has some amount of levels that at some point need guessing as far as I could see, which is less prevalent in hard mode. But it might have been me not noticing the solution. Interestingly, having both types of levels in the game made it more interesting somehow.

The level menu uses nice background and a music fit for exploration themes that nicely fit the game, while never actually distracting the player from the focus of the game - the puzzles.

All in all, a solid 4/5 logic puzzle game with some flaws. Recommended

Sadly, this game isn't really worth your attention.

But let's start with the good stuff.

Graphics are really nice. While levels are mostly static, the background pictures rewards that fact with nice eye candy. Friendly and player characters also have a nice design - which can't be said about 2 colored enemies. These however usually either move around too fast, or die too soon to admire them.

Music is distinct and helps immerse the player in the world. That's all it does however.

Lore is quite decent as well, told either in comments to the story, spoken by characters in very neat waiting room between missions, and more thoroughly explained in written notes or descriptions we can unlock. Caveat is - the unlock uses the same currency as character upgrades, meaning most players will optimise their unlock order so that the lore exposition is dead last, making it a very weird decision to make by the devs...

Interestingly, the focus on masks and the map I unlocked at the end of the game remind me a lot of Bionicle, which admittedly is pretty cool. These ideas aren't really explored however, so it's just an observation of mine rather than a point for or against the game.

Now, for the bad stuff.

The main problem the game has is that the gameplay is tragically mediocre, shallow and in result - boring. For most of the time we stand in one spot, aim at opponents rushing us from 4 main directions (but generally from all directions) and use one special power chosen from several available. Sure, the game has opponents with differing attack patterns which you can defend yourself against and counter in one way or another, while juggling the entire horde rushing us, but the challenge isn't really fun. The player simply can't do enough things to have fun.

Alternative mode (fly mode) allows us to fly around in 2D area with only other difference being that we also get a dash skill, separate from special powers. This finally approaches other games where you can run around and at least kite enemies - but the mode is brought even lower by extremely badly placed camera. Our field of view is awful, and unadjustable.

Ok, the player can do very little. However, there's more. More enemies at the end of each wave that is. When enemies spawn, their purpose is simply to overwhelm the player. And throughout the entire playthrough, you will inevitably get drowned in enemies. No matter how skilled you are or if you grind up a bit of currency in alternate infinite challenge mode or which upgrades you chose, you will always get overwhelmed eventually. Not fun.
The only time that I really managed to perfectly defend myself was past the end of the game, when I unlocked all upgrades and best gear, and even then you need to choose where and when to shoot carefully. Still, by then I was obviously done with the game. That's just way too late.

Progression is also very slow. Since we often get overwhelmed, our point multiplier often gets reset, meaning that we stay poor for much longer. But even high scores don't bring much money, meaning that with 42 levels in first part of the story, from the very beginning to the final boss, we can gen an upgrade maybe every 2nd level at best. So not only do we get stronger slowly, the bad level design makes us feel even worse with interrupting our multipliers not by our own fault. And the upgrades all give +10% to singular stat on every step, so they're not even really felt or visible until we get at least 3 of them, aside from select few.

Story is very basic. Not bad on its own but considering other faults of the game it doesn't help.

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All in all, the game is shallow and not fun to play. Any kind of skill, strategy or even plain grinding are ineffective in face of badly designed difficulty curve. Progression moves at snail's pace and is at odds with unlocking other interesting stuff the game has to offer. And whatever good stuff the game has to offer, it's just not enough to outweigh the negatives...
Solid 2/5 game.
So yeah, just don't. Don't.

In gaming, the gameplay is king, and this game certainly is part of the royal family.

Something can be said about realistic, but functional graphics that don't distract the player from seeing what they want and need to see to know the situation.
Somthing can be said about low key banger soundtrack.
Something can be said about the story happening in the background, painting the world outside of the arena as more rotten and chaotic than we could have assumed, and corporations so dystopian in their messaging that it becomes an entertainment of its own.

But frankly, none of the above matters when faced with what you will play this game for - the gameplay.

So in this game, you get 3 main classes that can be immensely customized with special abilities, weapons, and consumables into so many variants that you are certain to find something that fits what you want.
You want to be a tank running around with a hammer and bashing through walls? A mobile sniper? An invisible swordsman? Or maybe enter infinite teammate revival loop with 3 medics on your team? Nearly all options are valid, limited only by your skill in utilising them.

Multiple game modes that feel different are available - which makes it that your game sense and tactics are as valuable as your ability to aim properly and get kills. Vertical gameplay is the basis of the entire game, and maps are designed to reflect that. Maps - of which there are couple, and more are on their way. Destructible environment along with some small options for environment creation further increase the amount of stuff you can do.

The gameplay tempo is fast, but not as fast as what I remember from Call of Duty multiplayer fast. The huge size of maps does contribute to that.

As for F2P stuff - game is completely free to play at this moment. All the things you can buy for money are cosmetics, which you'll get a ton of even as a forever free to play player. No pay to win present here.

All in all, I'm having a blast playing this. And if you like FPS games, chances are you will too. I'm absolutely recommending this stellar game.

After I played the 1st game in a series and found it an enjoyable point & click game, the 2nd part is a disappointment.

First the good stuff. Game is bigger in its scope. We get some really nice new puzzles and lots of new and various environments which are a treat for eyes in this hand-drawn graphic style which I just love. I feel like there's an improvement in sound effects and background noises as well, which set the atmosphere for some locations quite well.

However with greater scope came a lack of design. Main hub location is a convoluted mess which is a pain to navigate. A single puzzle happening in 2 locations will require lots of clicks to move between them. And the worst part is that some puzzles are just very bad, including the last one required to finish the game. Even when knowing the solution I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to figure it out without a guide or hours of trial and error just clicking 70 buttons split between 2 locations.

I also found same bug in 2 different places that froze my game, but at least the game autosaves frequently, which allowed me to experiment how to overcome the bug, which turned out to be possible. Still, it's a game freezing bug, so...
And while secret hunting in previous game was quite nice and fun, here it's just annoying to some degree in every case.

So yeah, the game is now more pain than fun to play than the previous one. Not recommended.

A small point & click game with style reminiscent of older flash games.

Puzzles can be a bit absurd at times, but they aren't needlessly overcomplicated or too simple most of the time. Secrets are also very findable.

So yeah, interesting locations, hand-drawn graphics with good style and mostly no-nonsense puzzles that are very doable without a guide make it a good enough game to recommend.

Quite a boring game most of the time - bees are numerous and visible enough that the game becomes a tiresome clicker feeling more like "spot the bees" rather than"find the bees" until you are left with few bees that you can finally have some fun (or pain) looking for. And in half of the pictures bees aren't really hidden either, but rather strewn around the picture.

Game has some good stuff though.
Most artworks are really nice, however the big ones (which I liked more) suffer from getting pixelated upon too much zoom. :/
I really liked the selection of ambient background noises for the pics, they really set the atmosphere. Help button is also very neat, (literally) pointing you in the right direction rather than revealing the solution outright.

A solid P&C adventure game taking place in modern setting. It's free, takes about an hour to finish, and plays just as a good game of this genre should. While not outstanding, it's definitely worth your time.

At its base it's a really simple point & click adventure game. Ability to make your playthrough into a comic book pdf file sounds neat, but is frankly useless to 99% of people. In 2024 (7 years after the release) in my very first playthrough I encountered some bugs, which is honestly bad as well, but fortunately they weren't game breaking.

However the game has a lot of humor in it, and to be honest, just playing this game from start to finish in about 40 minutes was a dose of fun that was worth it, so in the end - recommended.
4/5 - Good game