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Something ominous is going on in the city-state of Newton. A mindjacker copies the minds of experts from widely differing fields and kills them. Newton's central AI assigns the case to Regis, an aging detective with scientific past, and Lao, an ever-sarcastic young tech wiz. Mysteries pile up. Someone starts to blackmail Regis. Central maintains that something Regis and Lao saw couldn't happen. And why on Earth would anyone want to assassinate Mandala, an unimportant unemployed VR addict? If you want your cyberpunk point & click adventures to excel in storytelling, you've just found the right game for you. If you play them for the puzzles, read on, but I practically beg you anyway: give Technobabylon a chance! It certainly deserves one. + Fantastic storytelling. Toward the end, I was on the edge of my chair, even though it's a P&C adventure - a game you play at your own pace! And I still get goosebumps whenever I think of the game's finale. + Real cyberpunk substance there, not just an action-filled story on a futuristic stage set. + Pixel graphics done right, giving the art a hand-drawn feel. + The game's divided into self-contained chapters with limited maps and doesn't flood your inventory, eliminating the usual adventure "use something you forgot you'd collected on the other side of Earth ages ago" problem. - Some of the puzzles are just bad design (and some very nice - but that should be a given in P&C games). Thanks to the previous point, it never stalls you for too long, but it's still the reason why I can't give Technobabylon five stars with clear conscience - even though I'd so much love to! + Polished. Minimum quirks, no bugs. + More than just the sum of its parts. The story, graphics, and music create a wonderful atmosphere that elevates the experience. Verdict: Do you like cyberpunk? Do you like stories and ideas that keep you returning to them in your mind long after you've finished the game? You. Should. Play. Technobabylon.
Something ominous is going on in the city-state of Newton. A mindjacker copies the minds of experts from widely differing fields and kills them. Newton's central AI assigns the case to Regis, an aging detective with scientific past, and Lao, an ever-sarcastic young tech wiz. Mysteries pile up. Someone starts to blackmail Regis. Central maintains that something Regis and Lao saw couldn't happen. And why on Earth would anyone want to assassinate Mandala, an unimportant unemployed VR addict? If you want your cyberpunk point & click adventures to excel in storytelling, you've just found the right game for you. If you play them for the puzzles, read on, but I practically beg you anyway: give Technobabylon a chance! It certainly deserves one. + Fantastic storytelling. Toward the end, I was on the edge of my chair, even though it's a P&C adventure - a game you play at your own pace! And I still get goosebumps whenever I think of the game's finale. + Real cyberpunk substance there, not just an action-filled story on a futuristic stage set. + Pixel graphics done right, giving the art a hand-drawn feel. + The game's divided into self-contained chapters with limited maps and doesn't flood your inventory, eliminating the usual adventure "use something you forgot you'd collected on the other side of Earth ages ago" problem. - Some of the puzzles are just bad design (and some very nice - but that should be a given in P&C games). Thanks to the previous point, it never stalls you for too long, but it's still the reason why I can't give Technobabylon five stars with clear conscience - even though I'd so much love to! + Polished. Minimum quirks, no bugs. + More than just the sum of its parts. The story, graphics, and music create a wonderful atmosphere that elevates the experience. Verdict: Do you like cyberpunk? Do you like stories and ideas that keep you returning to them in your mind long after you've finished the game? You. Should. Play. Technobabylon.
It doesn't happen that often that developers throw a lot of themes, genres, gameplay elements, and ideas into the cauldron and the result is not an indigestable mess but a game as delicious as Druidstone. It's a thing of beauty. It has beautiful graphics, beautiful music, the plot includes some very original ideas, and - best of all - it is beautifully balanced and has beautifully crafted missions with polished gameplay. On the one hand, every turn matters, and you often think, "Oh, this has just cost me the battle, I should have done X instead." On the other hand, most missions have multiple ways to victory, based on which skills you'll decide to use. The story includes a fantasy setting in a parallel universe, druids, an evil Sorceress, and an old technologically advanced race that seems to have escaped from a sci-fi novel. Characters? There's the Archdruid's daughter, a strange being called Oiko, the Warden - a human-like creature created by the Menhir Forest itself when in danger, a Japanese-speaking karate girl (no kidding), conscious stones, minor deities, mail-delivering intelligent birds, a spacetime demon... And it all just works. The gameplay is a perfectly working mixture of turn-based strategy, RPG, a puzzle game, and a card game. You level up your characters, which earns them new spells to learn. The number of times they can use the spells during a mission and their strength are determined by allocating gems you get for reaching the missions' objectives (some mandatory, some optional). And while some missions are about careful planning and outsmarting the enemy, others are more like puzzles where once you understand the main idea, you'll just do the trick and win. Add a big dose of humor, music ranging from lyrical to monumental string action to a tribute to arcade game tunes, throw in some pop-cultural (rather game-cultural) references, shake, then stir, and you'll get Druidstone, a game I spent 110 hours with - and don't regret a single minute.
(Disclaimer: I haven't played the game prior to 2020, so this review isn't fueled by nostalgic memories.) To make a great puzzle game, you don't need 4K graphics and a string orchestra. You need a reasonably sized set of rules (to get variety but not chaos), several creative minds to design the puzzles, and a solid coder who'll make it all bug-free. Red Rat Software had put together exactly that, coming up with a result that decreased my work productivity for three days due to lack of sleep. Pushover is a domino game. You have to find and push the one that will cause all others to topple, plus there's one special "trigger" domino that must fall last, opening the door to the next level. To make it more interesting, there are several special dominoes - one flies up instead of falling down, one keeps on rolling until it hits another domino, another can bridge a gap between platforms, etc. Graphics? Nothing special but do their job, with several really funny moments. Music? Ranging from slightly repetitive to really annoying. So why 5 stars? Well, there's just one factor that decides whether a puzzle game is good: the "just one more level" factor. It's there. Definitely. Oh boy, is it there! The game simply excels at level design. All of the game mechanics are used, creating great variety. Sometimes you have to carry a domino somewhere else in time when the other dominoes are toppling already, or the main challenge isn't starting with the right domino but reaching the exit in time, or you have to find a creative use for a rule that usually works to your disadvantage (no spoilers here). And sometimes you just lean back and enjoy the satisfaction of seeing the dominoes topple. Verdict: Pushover is a piece of game designing brilliance. It went for the right size concerning the set of rules, number of levels (doesn't overstay its welcome), and difficulty, having injected variety, creativity, and humor. Definitely recommended. And by the way, I don't like puzzle games.
If you're an old school gamer like me and this game has caught your eye, do some research before you buy. You might like it, but you might as well not. Personally, I'm leaving La-Mulana unfinished, and the sequel goes off my wishlist. I like games that don't hold your hand, I like challenge, don't care much about graphics, and I still play games on my Commodore 64. Yet - over the course of about 12 hours I've spent with it, La-Mulana hasn't clicked into the place supposedly reserved for it in my gaming heart. It's not just one design decision that wouldn't fit my taste, it's more like the whole game is designed askew. You play as Lemeza, a young whip-wielding archeologist who comes to the ruins of La-Mulana, where his father disappeared recently. As you progress through the game, you collect coins for which you can buy software for your laptop and better equipment, and you solve puzzles, whose outcomes are treasures and access to new areas of the game. So far so good. Now the bad parts. First and worst: the puzzles. They remind me of bad text adventures that require the one precise verb and won't accept any of its synonyms. Here, you often know what to do but are stuck looking for the way the game wants you to do it. No fun. Also, a good adventure game gives you several puzzles, so when you can't solve one, you can try another and return later. La-Mulana floods you with puzzles. So many of them that you first lose sense of achievement, then you lose track, and then, finally, interest. Monsters respawn? Fine, but as you do much backtracking (even later after teleporting is introduced), killing the same enemies for the 50th time isn't fun; nosiree. You have to use weights to open hidden doors, and once you leave the screen, the system resets. You have to buy more weights for the money you get from the respawning enemies. Music that tries to sound epic so hard that it gets annoying... Sigh. The game so much looked like something I'd love, and so much isn't it!
The Deadly Tower of Monsters can be described by just two words: style and fun. This twin stick shooter is a brilliant parody of action sci-fi B-movies of mid 20th century. You have to guide the hero, the heroine, and their robot sidekick through a giant tower that reaches into cosmos. The strongest asset of the game is its attention to detail when it comes to its movie style. There's a continuous commentary by the movie director for the DVD re-release, some monsters have slightly visible strings attached, others look like being animated via stop motion, there are plastic boulders that deflate on being destroyed, the cinematographer obviously loved lens flare, and you can't even skip movie sequences - you have to fast forward through them! Throw in a few pop-cultural references for a better taste, and if you like your games funny, satisfaction is guaranteed. The gameplay is fluid, there are a plenty of weapons (melee and ranged) and a huge variety of monsters, and apart from the shooting, has a few puzzles (mostly optional). Near the end (took me about 10 hours to complete), a bit of fatigue of too much of the same came, but the game made up for it by the final twists of the story. Verdict: It's a bit odd kind of maths, but anyway... I'd give The Deadly Tower of Monsters 5 shining stars for style (incl. graphics and soundtrack), the gameplay deserves about 3.5 stars, but the overall score with me still is 5. It's a unique game that deserves your attention.
(Disclosure: You don't give a bad review to a game you've spent 1600 hours with.) The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut is an ARPG set in steampunk fantasy environment. If you like your ARPGs just dark and serious, you probably won't like it. Otherwise, you might be in for a blast. I certainly had one. Your character - son of the Van Helsing character of Dracula fame - and his ghost companion, the ever-sarcastic lady Katarina, come to Borgovia, answering a call for help. And so starts a long and winding B-movie-esque story that will take you through a vast amount of diverse locations, from woods and mountains to a city and the otherworld called the Ink, all populated by lots of different monsters. Graphically, the game is very nice, and the music is even better, featuring many strong themes. What I liked best was the playability and its versatility. 6 classes, difficulty gamut from real easy to real hard with the option of permadeath, nice learning curve and varying pace and dynamics of the missions kept me entertained throughout the game. When you spend ages with a game, you also get to know its less rosy sides. There are surprisingly few of them. One game-breaking bug (don't ever lure/kill general Breda out of his arena!), some areas near the end are less inspired, there are a few bugs in the crafting system (one can be exploited to get an infinite supply of epic items and money)... Neither of the above stopped me from enjoying the game though. Where the game excels is hidden content. Even over the 1600 hours, I didn't manage to find all the secrets, even though I'd actively searched for them wherever I'd gone. The hidden content ranges from prompting extra missions to loot to pop-cultural references. There are a plenty. Dracula? Sure. Harry Potter? Check. Grimms' Fairy Tales, Half-Life, Terminator, AC/DC, Aliens, ... This all without turning the main story into a farce, which is a feat in itself. Verdict: one of my favorite games of all time.
An 'impossible', yet perfectly working blend of a rhythm game (you can even use your own music) and RPGs from the early '80s. You dance (solo or local co-op) through a cave, kill monsters and collect equipment, seeking an exit to a deeper dungeon. After three dungeons, a boss follows. Reviewed after 53 hours. The good: 1) The idea actually works, and the game is fun and addictive. 2) Style. Even though I hate games with big pixels (retro shouldn't stand for big pixels but for hand-drawn feel of graphics), here they work. The style is perfectly chosen and set. The levels also kinda feel like dance clubs. All of your enemies - and there are lots of them! - dance! And if you make it to the end credits, they all also have nice music-related names. Another pro is the four completely different bosses. --- The bad: 1) Lack of content. There are only 4 zones, each of them consisting of 3 levels. The game tries to make up for it by unlocking more characters with different play styles, but most of them don't feel organic but rather like a desperate try to add more variety. 2) Too much randomness. Each level is generated randomly, and so are the power-ups and monsters. This generator could use some tweaking, as sometimes all the loot you get is junk and you arrive to the boss practically naked, and sometimes you get equipped so well that you toast him. 3) The bugs. The characters you unlock get tougher and tougher gameplay, including one for whom a missed beat, as well as a single hit, equals death. There aren't many bugs in the game, but if you get killed because of a bug after a long game session, you're not particularly happy. --- Verdict: Crypt of the Necrodancer is a totally unique game. First you're distrustful (this can't work!), then you fall in love with it (wow, it works, and beautifully!), but ultimately, you'll start suffering from the lack of the final polish. I sincerely hope the game will spawn either a sequel or a 'spiritual successor' that will do it right.
Deathtrap is a mix of action RPG and tower defense that works surprisingly well. You set traps and then run or teleport between them and help them do the job. As you progress through the game, you upgrade the traps and gain access to new ones, and your character levels up and gains access to new attacks and passive skills (the game is set in the Van Helsing universe, so if you've played the Incredible Adventures, you'll feel at home). Reviewed after some 280 hours. The good: Graphics and music. The neon colors and epic music we usually want from our ARPGs. Replayability. The three characters require different enough strategies for you to want to try it from a different angle, and after you complete the 13 maps, you can play them again on higher tiers (there are 4 in total). The higher tiers often have special traps or a very different set of trap slots, which often requires a completely different strategy. On most of the maps, I had more fun with them on the higher tiers. It's usually not "the same map on higher difficulty", it's "a very different play on the same stage". The bad: Lack of polish - e.g., I'd have appreciated at least a little end sequence after completing the highest map on the highest tier (there's one only when you complete tier 1). Also, I felt too much nudging towards multiplayer. It didn't make me try it, it just irritated me. And there are some balance issues. The last few maps on the highest tier practically require you to completely change the build of your character for each of them in a certain way. This build-to-fit-the-map trial x error detached me from the characters. And while on each map, you can level up max 2 levels in the campaign mode, I played one game on one map in the endless mode, made it through about 30 waves of enemies - and got from level 63 to level 84. Then you go, "Why do I bother with the campaign?" Verdict? A fun blend of ARPG and tower defense. I had the fun for almost 300 hours but am not leaving with "I want more!"
I grew up with They Stole a Million, perhaps THE game that started the heist genre. The goal in each level was to plan and execute the perfect crime. Miss Take is the opposite of that - there's very little planning and too much randomness. At the first glance, the game is very nice: excellent jazzy soundtrack and rather simplistic, yet stylish graphics. But the positives end at that. Controlling the game with mouse is far from precise, while keys are not remappable. Gameplay is slightly bizarre. First you rob a gallery with Miss Take, then you rob the same gallery with a different character (with different playstyle) to steal some other parts of your collection, and then you rob it for the third time with another character. Then you proceed to the next gallery (there are 25 of them). It soon feels repetitive, in spite of all the tries to inject some more variability (Miss Take can use tape decks to distract the guards, smoke bombs to hamper their vision, glue to slow them down, and teleports - really!). Gallery visitors are happy to see you steal stuff, unless it's a so-called masterpiece. And if you trigger alarm, the guards will run to the area, but even if they see that something got stolen but they can't see you, they'll just return to patrolling, as if nothing happened. When not chasing you, they (and later also dogs - don't you know every good gallery has some?) move randomly, so planning is out of question. This kills all motivation to do the perfect crime - you just keep trying until the random generator throws dice in your favor. Yet the game keeps your fastest time, as if it was just all craft and no luck. And then there are bugs. Sometimes you get caught through a wall, the guards can see into a closed elevator, and if you play for several hours straight, the game slows down significantly. Verdict? 2 stars. The stylish gfx and msx can't make up for the game's bad controls, bugs, repetitiveness, and lack of logic.