Dystopika is not so much a game as it is a construction kit, a diorama piece, a video toy and somewhat of an art toy as well. It's no Sim City 2077, there are no challenges, disasters or decisions to make, you just plop buildings on your grid, add light brushes and props for extra effects, unlock more props to decorate, discover that some buildings can deploy platform crossing between them when you put them close, add roads and monorail lines for flair, walls for style, remake the central pyramid of Blade Runner because of course you would, add holographic propaganda, even import your own pictures for holographic ads displayed on the side of buildings, and you just enjoy playing with the excellent photo mode, you can also make videos of you going around your city with the camera, with various settings on the keyframes, duration, and movement effects. The music is chill, relaxing synth that wouldn't feel out of place in Blade Runner or when reading Snowcrash or the Sprawl series. While I don't think I'd have bought it full price, it's not super expensive, and there's mod support, which I haven't tried yet but if it's possible to make your own buildings and proprs it's quite cool. Perfect as a relaxing zen garden game of sorts or for making set pieces for an RPG session. Just don't go expecting a game and you'll find plenty of interesting small things to love in Dystopika.
Stellar Interface is a fairly simple game, you have a ship abd your loadout, (blaster, machine guns, lasers, torpedos, shotguns and so on), your consumables, a dodge maneuver and a map you unlock piecemeal in each run. Each run includes missions for bonus consumables for the next run, each successful run unlocks a new boss, some levels will have a challenge to unlock a new ship and while it's all fairly simple and straightforward, each run doesn't wear out its welcome. The graphics and mucis are simple, if not a little simplistic at times, but it's always fairly readable and clear and doesn't make the action confusing. After each cleared level you can choose a powerup and sometimes you'll find a shop on the map, which will allow you to swap weapons and get more consumables. All in all it's a game that prides itself on being simple and clean, and since I got it on sale I genuinely find zero reasons to complain. If you like games tailored for lunchbreak runs, this is it, just like Tower of Guns for FPS.
I got Bears in Space on Steam. The game tries to mix the horde-style FPS opf Serious Sam with various mini-games and gags. The first problem is that the guns aren't very fun to use and a lot of enemies are just annoying. Unless you've learned the wave patterns of the arenas youre going to get flanked a lot and flail around in confusion. By the way, turn off checkpoints and turn on auto-respawn, it's too frustrating otherwise. Also, the "bear"-serk mode when you eat honey is limited to specific scenes. The bosses are mostly bullet sponges with bullet hell patterns, but mostly they're annoying. Until they patched it, the weapons also took way too long to level up by killing enemies, which made unlocking their potential a slog. At various points you can fill up and buy upgrades at a shop, but often you'll feel like replaying chapters to stash up coins so as not to feel under-equipped, given that some sections are way too annoying. There is a doomsday device that kills you once you shoot it and it takes forever to rev it up first, the joke is flat and dumb. The second problem is the writing. Very soon what little of it is thrown out the window in favour of referential humour and dubious parodies that I didn't feel paid tribute to the originals. Also the characters are either unlikeable or unremarkable, Your character is literally a cardboard cutout (as seen in photo mode) and you're basically strung along by the braindead bear that you share a body with due to a freak warp accident. Who, by the way, is an unsufferable character in the way of the worst of 2000s Cartoon Network and MTV, which seems to be the main inspiration for the writing. The jokes tend to wear out their welcome and the game listens to itself way too much. Fortunately the dialogs and cutscenes skippable. All in all, it's a passable game that fortunately got patched with QoL and nerfs to the difficulty, but the jokes won't carry it. I can't recommend it full price, only on a discount over 50%.
Metal Ujnit mixes roguelite, platform and action. While it's a mechanically sound game, it stays sadly on the surface. The story: weird monsters have invaded Earth after a catastrophe, aliens came to help. You are Joanna, pilot of Metal Unit 11 and your sisters Hana and Yuna are in trouble with the monsters. To battle the horrors and rescue your comrades, you'll have to conquer 4 areas with randomly generated rooms, discover treasuress, upgrade yourself and triumph over strong bosses. Last zone is a boss rush. Once conquered, an area can be revisited at will to farm for items, secrets and materials, with a different boss at the end. There are many secrets and the first three areas also have an extra dungeon providing special gear and skins. You have 6 slots, plus one on your companion robot (unlocked by upgrading), which allows you to combine various guns, melee weapons, armors, suoper powers and assists to turn yourself into a war machine. When you die, you lose all money and weapons (those you have mastered are saved at your base and the more mastery pointsd you have, the higher the grade of your armory and after each chapter you'll unlock a level in a safe to preserve items you might need for crafting later. After beating the game you'll also unlock NG+ (with increasing reruns as in Dark Souls) and a challenge mode. The game plays nice and the combos feel good, if a little stiff at times, but after a while it turns quite repetitive and empty once you're done. Some things burned me out: first, the fact it's actually quite a short game, even when doing farming runs in the 3 first regions. Second, the ending felt bad and left me very unsatisfied. Third, some bosses and the challenge mode are very frustrating and the rewards don't feel worth it. The pixel visuals and music are great though, the sum is decent, but in the end it could benefit from an expansion to tie things up better and extra regions to explore. Give it a shot on discount.
AMID EVIL wants to be a visceral old-school FPS set in a surreal dark fantasy world. In many ways the game feels inspired by Painkiller: baroque weapon design (closer to Conan in Amid Evil), collect souls to power-up your berserk mode, large-scale levels with rushing monsters and huge bosses. However, while Painkiller had tight weapons and responsive combat, Amid Evil is all over the place. The levels are huge colorful and beautiful with with intricate architecture, platforming and secrets galore, but with the dizzying colors and weird lighting, and zero map, it's extremely confusing to navigate. Also they're mostly empty once rid of monsters. I insist it looks really good, but exploring often feels like a chore with a lot of confusing backtracking if you miss a jump. So not very fun unfortunately. The weapons lack punch and I feel like the shotguns have a massive spread/distance issue which meansyou can miss an enemy straight in your reticle. Some monsters either have zero pain reaction and overall they are HP bags. The "adaptive AI" mostly meant to me that projectile monsters lead their shots more and more and the melee rushers would zig-zag more, but it just becomes annoying. I feel like even on Normal enemies deal too much damage relative to you, so you're always on the lookout for HP (in a bad sense). Ammo is badly distributed, with some weapons underused (at leadst in the first 3 episodes) and you grab some power-ups before figuring out what to do, and they're half-mandatory for some sections. Some platforming puzzles demand reflexes so as to shoot switches in a continuous sequence, but the movement feels too heavy and weird. So very soon it all becomes frustrating with little incentives (at least no fall damage nor drowning). The developers' heart is in the right place, but the game is a bit of a mess to me, it's not bad, but not great enough to warrant a full price, it's too frustrating even though there is true potential in there.
Just no.
Forced Showdown is a roguelite arena battle game with a deckbuilding gimmick. You play as a contestant in a galactic deathmatch game show. You choose a champion, a companion and a deck, and it's on to 3 battles and a final boss stage. Each battle consists of 2 stages (out of 4) with random effects and a boss stage, and every stage is set to 8 rounds. Each round can reward you from points and gold (dropped from enemies). Points allow you to get boons (upgrades for the run) and gold is used to roll a gacha (no IRL money whatsoever to spend though) for more cards to build your decks. You start at 1 and increase to 8 mana by the boss round (there is a boss in every stage), but some cards give you extra mana. At the start of each stage, you can play the cards you've drawn in exchange for mana (upgrades, spells or consumable items. All aid you in various ways, some being purely beneficial, others setting a risk/reward mechanic for big results. Once you've beaten a championship you can replay it with modifiers for more gold and rewards and an increase in difficulty for even more rewards and challenge. The controls are fine and the controller support is great too, I feel the game is more comfortable to play with a controller, but that's just me. A champion has 1 attack, 2 skills and a passive power. Those can be modified during your run by playing upgrade cards. They also have 4 slots for consumables. You can stop you run and quit the game at any time to come back later, and the battles are usually short and snappy, it's relatively easy once you've gotten a grasp of the mechanics to play safe, also quests gove you upgrades making the game easier. All in all, I like the addictive nature of the game and tthe dynamic and various fights you're facing, bosses may repeat on a single championship but it's fine. In a nutshell, it's a casual roguelite set on arcade action and I have a lot of fun. Maybe buy it on sale rather than full price, but you'll have hours of fun.
Star Vikings Forever is a port of an iOS game, but don't let that deter you. It's the upgraded version of Star Vikings. It's a throwback to 80 Saturday morning cartoons with silly dialogs and characters and a clever puzzler. You're the Star Vikings and get elbroiled in a weird story involving space snails and Ragnarok (because of course) because of an idol mistaken for a table wedge. In each level, you have to clear a path for your vikings, each is on their own lane and must move forward, but enemies can and will attack. Some vikings can switch lanes using a special power though, which can help find shortcuts. You can have up to 5 vikings on screen and and their powers can synergize in interesting ways, setting up and racking big combos for extra XP. XP is used to level up, gold to buy items, skills and recruit new vikings. Every level is has RNG based NPC placement (which can be reset by exiting back to the map and re-entering) and some levels use extra modifiers (more enemy health or damage, random damage on screen, traps even later on) to keep you on your toes. The mission can be defeat X waves, kill X enemies, open X chests and so on. Mission is per level and doesn't change. The game also has daily missions for extra XP/gold/fuel (which opens chapters and allows to roll for hats later on -hats which grant extra boons you'll want like more energy, XP increase or damage boost). The recruitment stations reset every 24 hours, so new charactrers with interesting perks can always be found. While the gameplay is simple, clearing a screen is always satisfying and the game has that click that makes you want to play one more level. The various classes and their different builds also keep things interesting. If anything, favour monobuilds (ie if you get a certain upgrade, double down if available) to increase you chances of passive bonuses. For the price you'll get hours of a very fun timesink with neat mechanics and fine jokes. I've been going back to it regularly.
