With minimal gameplay elements and pretty graphics, this game puts you in the shoes of a paranormal investigator. There are a total of 10 "puzzles", or better said stories, in which you uncover step by step what happened to Ethan Carter. Not only that you are not forced to solve any of them (except the last one), you might actually miss some because sometimes they aren't in your main path. Rating: If there's something strange / In you neighborhood / Who you gonna call? Recommendation: the game is a short and atmospheric visual novel with minimal gameplay, are you into that? http://pixelloot.com
This game is a masochistic combination of permadeath and randomness, but in the end you end up with a lot of fun and many short games. The game has a high degree of replayability as your ship will be shaped by random encounters at every step (also you get to unlock other ships and different ships layouts for your next games). Rating: FTL: Fun Travel Lemon http://pixelloot.com
Great 2D platformer where instead of jumping you can switch gravity. The controls are not very smooth but everything else is great. While not very long (~4h), I managed to die 1126 times (I'm a huge n00b) but it was not a problem as waypoints were very frequent and in all the right spots, and with instant loading times. Even though I googled the solution to one of the puzzles much to my shame, the puzzles are very fun. Did I mention the soundtrack? No? Well, it's awesome (if you like chiptune)! *Editors' Pick & solid game award* http://pixelloot.com
Thanks to the color palette, the aliens look more as if they escaped from a circus or maybe that they are made out of candy. The game is more or less on the same level with the previous games in the series, and is doing the same things almost in the same ways. This game is a butchered version of the game that it was supposed to be but it can still be fun for the fans. Pros: more of that X-COM goodness. Cons: super exploitable and unbalanced which makes it very easy, especially the second half; RTS mode is unusable for higher difficulties. Rating: the double rainbow of alien diversity. Recommendation: only if you are a hardcore fan of the series; wait for openapoc. http://pixelloot.com
Also known as UFO Enemy Unknown. The original (1994) was super buggy and nearly unplayable on newer systems, but thanks to the guys behind the openxcom project (a mod that repairs the original game and gives you the option to add many new things), the game is now playable and with lots of bug fixes. The game is pretty unbalanced and exploitable, here are a few tips: Don't exit the craft in the first turn as the aliens, that have visual on you, will have full AP and will likely reaction fire. Always have the maximum number of soldiers in the landing craft (while this might be obvious, I saw people that don't do this, usually the same kind of people that spend all the APs exploring instead of having some AP for reaction fire or retreat). Put the most expandable soldiers closer to the exit of the landing craft because the first ones out are the likeliest to get killed. Don't hurry, especially getting your troops out of the landing craft. Advance slowly, only extend yourself when you have an alien’s location and you can kill it because you don't want it to have a full turn while you are in sight. Expanding on this, try to kill all the aliens that you see in the same turn that you see them; that's why it's usually best to advance slowly (to have lots of APs) and have lots of soldiers (and implicitly firepower). You should use scouts (~rookies) that at the start of the turn will try to advance but also retreat at the end. This way you'll create a buffer and decrease the chance of enemies sneaking close enough to the rest of your (more valuable) soldiers. Exploit: After turn 20 the aliens are generally going to come and try to find you, useful for landed/crashed UFOs. A very good starting location is in west Lebanon so that you will have cover over Europe and a lot of the downed UFOs could be in North Africa where the desert maps are pretty smooth. The beginning (or better said the first half of the game) is going to be pretty brutal, use all the force that you can and don't shy away from explosives and leveling buildings even preemptively in some cases. Pros: great feeling, nice combination of tactical game, researching stuff and base building while under pressure to survive. Cons: exploitable, unbalanced, bad spotting/FOV mechanic, you see as much as the aliens only in full light which will lead to a lot of frustration. Rating: now, we are prodding *them*! Recommendation: only if you are into this kind of games and you can tolerate/like the graphics.
In Prison Architect you build and manage a prison. The game is pretty basic but complete and with nice artwork. There is a short campaign that also serves as a tutorial. The game is not very challenging in itself and seems pretty hard to really mess things up. I also believe that the inmates get ahold of "contraband" too easily. Version 1.0 comes with "Escape Mode" where you get to play a prisoner. It's a very fun experience to try to escape from a prison that you built. Rating: What are you in for? Downloading a car... :( http://pixelloot.com/
Welcome to "Game of Thrones - A Telltale Games Series" the game where everything goes bad and the choices don't matter. You're more like a passenger to a side story in the "Game of Thrones" where the game mechanics try to involve you as much much as possible. I liked it because of the universe in which the game is set and you get to meet character from the show/books. While the story is decent and in tune with the franchise, it can get frustrating to be given limited options for complex situations that end up not making any real difference anyway. Rating: Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself! http://pixelloot.com
The spiritual successor of Fallout 1 & 2 is also a post-apocalyptic RPG where instead of starting with one character, you get to build a squad of 4 desert rangers. Pretty much all you do in this game is combat and unfortunately combat is not that great. There are no formations for your squad and there is no stealth, so engaging in combat can be a lot of micro-management. Characters have to be positioned individually while the enemy might come close enough and start combat themselves and ruin your plans. Just because you positioned somebody before the combat, it doesn't mean that they'll keep their position when the turn-based combat starts and each character has to belong to it's own square. Repeat this enough times and you'll get enough of it pretty soon. The range of the weapons is pretty limited and you can't target anything outside of it. Makes sense that you have penalties when firing rifles (very) close range but 0% is ridiculous. I disagree that this is really an open world game because there is not much else to be done besides the "main quest". Your party can have a lot of skills for situations other than combat and you do get to use those skills. Those skills give you a success percentage for a particular action, so even if you have a 10% chance of something, you can abuse the game with scum saving until you succeed. A way to make the game more challenging (and fun?) is to never re-roll your skills check. The main difference between the difficulty levels is in how much damage you take and deal. A higher difficulty, while extra challenging, might not be really worth the pain of a poor combat system. Rating: Three goats. And they are all the best! http://pixelloot.com
The spiritual successor of Fallout 1 & 2 is also a post-apocalyptic RPG where instead of starting with one character, you get to build a squad of 4 desert rangers. Pretty much all you do in this game is combat and unfortunately combat is not that great. There are no formations for your squad and there is no stealth, so engaging in combat can be a lot of micro-management. Characters have to be positioned individually while the enemy might come close enough and start combat themselves and ruin your plans. Just because you positioned somebody before the combat, it doesn't mean that they'll keep their position when the turn-based combat starts and each character has to belong to it's own square. Repeat this enough times and you'll get enough of it pretty soon. The range of the weapons is pretty limited and you can't target anything outside of it. Makes sense that you have penalties when firing rifles (very) close range but 0% is ridiculous. I disagree that this is really an open world game because there is not much else to be done besides the "main quest". Your party can have a lot of skills for situations other than combat and you do get to use those skills. Those skills give you a success percentage for a particular action, so even if you have a 10% chance of something, you can abuse the game with scum saving until you succeed. A way to make the game more challenging (and fun?) is to never re-roll your skills check. The main difference between the difficulty levels is in how much damage you take and deal. A higher difficulty, while extra challenging, might not be really worth the pain of a poor combat system. Rating: Three goats. And they are all the best! http://pixelloot.com
This is the first part, out of a 3 part adventure story, where the main character is Rufus, a pathologically egotistical individual, that wants to escape from a planet that is now all filled with junk. I found out that middle click would highlight all the objects that you can interact with, close to the end of the game but I didn't had any real problems finding objects as the art style is pretty well done. The game has humor everywhere and unless you really get stuck, it's a really fun experience. I don't normally play adventures, so when I say that I didn't use any walkthroughs, it means that the game is not that difficult and things are generally intuitive enough. There are also a few fun puzzles thrown in there that you can skip if you want. *Editors' Choice* Rating: I, me, and mine! http://pixelloot.com
