Recent reviews by ACarr

I've been looking forward to this game since its Kickstarter days of yesteryears, and. yeah. it's peak, your honor.

It's hard to describe how much heart and soul is packed into every corner and dialogue box in this game. It has a lot to say all under its whimsical exterior, and you're constantly rewarded with some surprisingly deep rabbit holes and character moments the more you snoop around in each corner in its world, even beyond major story beats. The optional scrying//bestiary/journal feature is really, really fun to fill out and read if you're also a Notes Freak like me, and it provides some interesting extra insight into the world and certain characters, including the protagonist themselves.

The bosses, of course, go insanely hard as well. And, depending on the difficulty you set, can BE insanely hard to beat. What is mostly otherwise a fairly relaxed exploration experience becomes a hectic bullet-hell experience with soulslike patterns of learning a boss's moveset and slowly adapting to it and persevering, providing that same innately rewarding experience of finally cracking it open and defeating it.

Despite being in Early Access, what's out now is an incredibly well-rounded and complete experience that leaves me so, SO curious and excited to see what's next. If you're even remotely interested, odds are you're in for a treat.

what can i say man. i diced in that dungeon

i said it once and i'll say it again: this game is unhinged

Underneath the silly satire and irony, though, is a passion project that's so unafraid of doing whatever it feels like doing, even if the devs had to learn something new to commit to it. A lot of sections of the new endings, especially, feel like the result of some new, novel system they wanted to try making themselves. There's minutes-long orchestral music for sections that take seconds for most players. A lot of it feels like the devs pushing themselves to practice, to make stuff for the challenge and for the sake of it, so managing to put it all in a complete, presentable package, rather than a throwaway project, is really inspiring.

On top of that: game's good. It's delightful how so many ideas actually work, both mechanically and comically. It's exactly the type of game you expect it to be, and I mean that in a very good way. Check it out for the price of Free whenever you have about an hour to spare.

As of this review, I'm only a small part of the way through the main story (only just about to challenge my 3rd ranked coach), but I'm having an absolute blast with this game so far.

The tactics-like battle system sounds fairly simple, and it is at first, but you're slowly introduced to new moves and combo moves with their own unique effects, which I've had to think harder about for both my team's offense AND defense. Predicting and planning against your opponent's moves is super satisfying when you pull it off in the early game alone, so I can only imagine what a late-game match would look like.

The difficulty is well-balanced, too: I felt like I had to work to win a lot of fights against other coaches and actually lost a few, though you thankfully don't get punished for losses and can just try again. Wild beastie encounters get very easy if you stick with one team, but it doesn't seem like they expect you to fight every beastie you come across (and numbered/"coached" beasties are properly leveled, too).

The beastie relationship system is wonderful and helps beasties have more layers beyond just sprites, stats and movesets, something I think a lot of creature-collecting games struggle with. I like most of the beastie designs so far, too, but it's hard to fully judge a lot of them since there's quite a few that haven't been fully animated, drawn, or recorded yet. Still, that's one of the only noticeable signs that this game is in early access.

That said, you're still bound to run into a few bugs, but it's a complete package with a full main story (and I've heard there's a post-game too, but I have no idea how it plays), something you can't say for the majority of early access games. I can already tell this game is one for the ages, and I can't wait for it to grow even further up to it's 1.0 release.

(Post-game update: Yeah this game still rules. Pretty much everything in this review still stands. One thing I've noticed is that you'll start noticing a LOT of unfinished beasties in the endgame (at least as of the first early access release), so put that into consideration if you're thinking about picking this game up in early access or waiting until later.)

(Updated January 2025)
Feels smooth as almost-butter. Its movement and pacing doesn't hold a candle to Rivals 1, and without enough practice you'll accidentally fall off-stage a LOT, but it's almost up there at the top as the smoothest plat fighter. Characters like Etalus and Forsburn lost a lot of the sauce they had from the last game in favor of more defensive gameplay, sadly, but they're still all designed well.

There's a long way for the game to go, especially when it comes to features for new/casual players that are currently lacking at launch (advanced tutorials, workshop, more single player/casual modes, etc.), and I've heard that the netcode feels worse for less-than-perfect connections than in Rivals 1, but what you get right now is still worth the cost if you're willing to try climbing over the game's initial (and steep) learning curve. There's some rough edges here, but I get the feeling this game will only get better and more refined with time.

Eggsqueezite...

A joy to play through that's shaped up to be one of my favorite platformers. The controls are intuitive and the abilities you can get are simple but creatively utilized. The game has a nice difficulty curve that isn't frustrating to deal with, but there are some SUPER difficult levels waiting to challenge you if you can manage to find them.

Speaking of finding things, this game is FULL of secrets, even beyond what you might initially think. As I went on I was constantly surprised with how deep the rabbit hole went with some of the game's more obscure secrets. That's one of this game's biggest strengths.

Garbanzo quest is a must-play if you're even remotely into platformers. or games in general. or lil' dudes named after beans. or beans. buy game.