Look, obviously you manage SpaceX, starting from day 1. It's basically only a trip-down-memory-lane for those of us who have been following SpaceX news from back when they were launching from Kwajalein Island. The graphics are exactly what you see in the screenshots. The UI flows to pair up payloads with rockets and launch the rocket are somewhat out of order, and sometimes lack a bit of information you would want at that point in time. For example, if you try to launch a payload from-the-contracts page, I have not yet figured out where it tells you which rocket-size you are putting the payload ON until you literally have the rocket on the launchpad. Purchasing a rocket didn't incur expenses immediately. You only realized profit or loss when the rocket actually launched. It almost makes sense, if you consider “building a rocket and storing it” to be OpEx rather than CapEx, but still odd. You pick up contracts, but the penalties for being late seemed to be small (at least on easy, I never managed to trigger it on hard mode). The contracts were obvious parody names to stand in for actual contracts that SpaceX competed for and won, so that was a nice trip down memory lane There seemed to be a “Colonize Mars” win condition... I got some stuff built on Mars, but lost interest before I managed to land any people. The music fit well, I thought. Don’t get me wrong, as a rocket nerd, I enjoyed it. I had fun going down memory lane. I had fun seeing rocket-reusability-econ start to crush my competitors. But it’s going to be entertaining for “rocket-nerds-who-might-like-very-light-management-sims-that-are-on-rails”. It is NOT a mustache-twirling tycoon game. It is NOT a rocket sim. It is NOT an economics sim. It is NOT a complicated puzzle. It is “Play as the CEO of SpaceX”, and that’s it. To the developer of this game: I enjoyed this game, truly. Thank you. But the v1.0 game showed some threadbare spots, polish-wise, and it feels super incredibly niche.
Gather, farm or buy your ingredients, prep the food for your guests, brew a range of beverages, and -- when you're ready -- flip the sign to "open". Serving your guests, cleaning the tables and floors, and ejecting customers who have decided to loudly share their opinion (at others) will keep you busy all evening long until you put up last call. The vibes are very similar to Stardew Valley, but with no deadlines or quests. Relaxing grind. Strongly recommend. Zero stress. No deadlines. Hope it stays that way. I estimate 20 hours of content, 40 hours of entertainment. Not much replayability for me. Totally worth it. Pros: Delightful gather ingredients -> bartender gameplay loop. The gameplay loop *works*. The guests are always different, I have not spotted a repeat or a duplicate yet. The guests laugh, chat, eat, and accidentally drop dishes for you to clean up. Despite being 2D sprites, the loving attention to detail on the sprites and animations bring character to the guests. The bar comes to life when the candles are lit, the guests are chatting with their table-neighbors, the fire blazes in the hearth, you're serving up a Porter you brewed yesterday (straight off the tap), and a guest exclaims how the world needs more places just like your tavern. Chill, simple soundtrack that delightfully complements the game. Subtle touches show polish, like guests having appropriate dish sprites at the table (rather than a generic one), and guests ordering a different item if you have just run out. Sticks firmly with the medieval theme. Cons: Ordering from the mailbox sometimes does nothing or forgets my order. Recommend ordering one thing at a time. (or that's just me being distracted.) No quests or story yet. As such, farm, grill, brew, expand the tavern, and unlock recipes and buffs is basically the only gameplay so far. But done well. Eventually end up with a surplus of gold that I haven't found an outlet for. Dunno how to rename my tavern from default.
The controls are nice and tight (I'm in my thirties; adjust reflexes accordingly), and the game rewards a little bit of thought and tactics. (examples: knocking on doors to kite enemies close to the breach door, throwing your last grenade, plinking enemies from exterior windows, etc.) I think of this more of a puzzle shooter. You don't have much health, and the game often will give you a breather before every door. Many times you have visibility into the next room so you can plan your attack. If you run-and-gun the whole way through you will eventually get plinked by a lucky shot. You can't just Leroy Jenkins the whole thing. Fun, and each level only really lasts about 5-15 minutes. Played great on a Logictech F310 hooked up to my pc. Has a few basic variants: Story Mode, Zombified Story Mode, and "Infinitely-Tall-Tower Mode" which I sucked at. Possible Cons: There's a level-up progression to the (shared) player classes. I think it's possible to build "sub-optimal" builds, but at least they do have a re-spec button. You end up re-playing a lot of levels in order to 3 star some levels to unlock more. (fortunately there's enough randomness to keep you on your toes but enough sameness in a repeat mission that you can kind of learn a strategy or rhythm.) There's an "earn-stars-to-unlock" progression to a lot of the higher levels, leading to a bit of grind in order to see new levels. There's a few timed (bomb-defusal) missions that I suck at and required several re-runs to find an optimal path. There's just a handful of enemy types, and you learn their patterns. (The complexity is in the enemy placement and level design, not clever AI behavior). Some amount of grind for 3 stars. Bottom Line: I had a lot of fun. Recommended if you want a relaxing puzzle shooter that rewards precision, planning, and learning a few repeat runs. There is some grind to unlock levels. Friendly couch co-op is also fun. ("Ok, we breach on 3...") (I did not try online co-op.)
Isometric twin-stick-ish shooter RTT semi-stealth game that's got a synth track and some quirky dark cyberpunk lore to it: a) stomping a mech through houses playing peekaboo with hostile tanks b) laying down an acid gas cloud trap in the neon-glow of the road intersection that I can lure the enemy mech into but realizing I am now kinda low on ammo c) blowing up that one big target building and realizing I have kicked over an anthill of hostiles with more firepower than I have, as my screen lights up with red tracer fire d) boxed in by buildings, tracers flying, I pick a direction with the most enemies and open up with all the direct firepower I have left, unable to see what I'm stepping over due to sheer explosions and smoke clouds, knowing if this doesn't work, I'm hemmed in and doomed. e) and me panicking and realizing I need to make a mad dash for the exit with the narrow sliver of health I have if I want to keep all my <> mercenary contract winnings Fully destructible environments. It's also a game that respects your time. There's a single-randomized-level option that plays out in 10-15 minutes, you can get into the groove of the game even just in that one level, and you can customize the difficulty of even that level just by changing out your pilot (which affects aggro), vehicle, and weapons -- and the game rewards you for cranking up the difficulty level. Upgrades are not gated other than “points”, and it's not going to take you long to put together a build that you kinda like. The deluxe edition comes with 4 albums of music, and a 7 hour audio book. At least one of those albums (the first one) has a decent groove to it. The audiobook is about what you would expect from a Battletech but gritty. Things I wish this game had added: a “keep this as default weapon loadout for this vehicle” checkbox. That’s it. Disclosure: got this for free at the holiday giveaway. Would totally buy it again for full price given how fun and flexible this is.
(PC review) Cat Quest simplifies the RPG mechanics down to its core -- fetch quest, kill all the baddies, get random loot, level-up, repeat. You'd think it would get boring but the cat-puns are fresh and the dialogue knows when to be tongue-in-cheek. The action combat is similarly refreshingly simple, it's Attack, Magic, and Dodge, the controls feel tight and fast. Strongly recommend playing this on a gamepad attached to your PC (Logitech F310 worked great with the default config). The enemies get a little bit familiar, firmly tied to their magical attack pattern, but that just means you get to slip into the war dance rhythm. The art style is gorgeous and bright, energetic and just fun. Crisp lines, deliberate animation design. Each creature, landmark and NPC has its own character. Some NPCs are borrowed but most are fresh or at least remixed. Cons: There’s a touch of grinding when you hit a cave that’s harder than you expected and you want to level up your magic. I recommend trying out all the different magic spells and find a few different ones to get comfortable with, as the first fireball attack doesn’t level enough to carry you to the end of the game. Another con is that all loot pickups, even the “store” is all RNG and there didn’t seem to be a way to sell or even trash your unused gear (you just have an infinitely big sortable inventory). In some ways this is “the simplest inventory system you could possibly design”, and in Cat Quest’s pursuit of elegant simplicity this is almost forgivable, but awkward. Story was solid in the beginning, went a bit confusing with the final boss fight, but had a nice happy resolution in my opinion. In all, I had a lot of fun with this game, the controls were tight and fun, and the dungeon fights kept me on my toes (but in a relaxed way, if that makes sense). 4-6 hours of entertainment. Perfect for kids. Worth it, if only to see “here’s what an elegantly simple fun action RPG looks like”. Probably low replayability.
