Recent reviews by Altune

A fascinating tile puzzler who's cheery visuals bely a sense of eerie unease, Once Upon a Tile is a simple yet captivating experience. Carefully laying down tiles to escort your little forest creature seems simple enough, but if you aren't thoughtful in your placement it's very easy to find yourself doomed by your own hubris. There isn't as much going on within the runs to differentiate them in the way a rogue-lite like Slay the Spire, but it's better to think of this more like a puzzle game like Dorfromantik. With that comparison, the four characters and their subtly different upgrade trees and play-styles do a wonderful job of making your many runs exciting and varied. Under is best girl, more love for ratties!

The only two cons I can think of are: most of the achievements currently seem to be broken, and sometimes when there are multiple paths to an objective, the game will just straight up lie to you about the path your character will take. It can be very frustrating to make what the game told you is the perfect play, only for your mouse to decide hey, I know I told you I was gonna pick up that sword... but these three traps, tho...

I've played quite a bit of this game and I can thoroughly recommend it to people. A deeper-than-it-looks business management game, where stacking incremental bonuses eventually hits a tipping point and puts your profits through the roof! Every new area does a good job of ramping up the scale you're working at and making you feel a hint of those early struggles all over again. While it doesn't take itself too seriously, there's a bleak message to be found under it all with tiny threads of hope hidden throughout, and the game-play does such a good job at playing with these themes. By the late game you'll have gotten impatient or angry often enough to have accumulated significant Ruthlessness and find yourselves having to make sacrifices to bring yourself back from the brink of falling to the very systems you're meant to fight... It baits you into engaging in the same kind of economic evil that causes a lot the societal issues it comments upon, while still recognising that ACTUALLY, doing good in and for your community is often much better for you in the long term, as a healthy and happy customer base will actually lead to more growth than carelessly chasing quick and easy profit. Incredible as both a game and a work of art. It's easily worth the asking price, please give it a try if you're at all interested in the themes presented!

This Demo is a strong proof of concept and contains all of the bones of a very good game. The core loop of exploring the map and picking up objects to solve puzzles is inspired and while most of them are kept pretty simple in the demo there's a ton of room for exploration in future levels. There's a little bit of jank with some of the interactable objects in the world (looking at the railway piece and the switches), hitboxes need some adjusting, but the developer is very friendly and open to feedback and I have full confidence that by the time of the full release this game will be something special. Be sure to follow this project!

Going into Moonstone Island I knew it was going to be a game For Me. Creature collectors are the genre that brings me the most joy, and card battles are up there as well, I've even been known to dabble in life-sims, so why not? I came in expecting one of these aspects to fall short, they often do when a development team is juggling so many genres, but to my surprise and great excitement, that was not the case.
The creature designs, the card mechanics, and the life-sim elements are all strong on their own and feed in to each-other in satisfying ways. I found myself carefully juggling my time as I rushed out to find a new mine to harvest, constantly watching the clock to make sure I didn't miss my next date. The world was wide and fun to explore, and it made the time constraints feel way more engaging than in this game's contemporaries. I always needed just ONE MORE HOUR to finish my list of goals for the day. I really need to load up on Time Dilation Potions...
The card battle system is comparable to something like Slay-the-Spire, with each element of spirit being a "class" with a shared draw pool. All of the cards in a particular element have interesting identity and synergy, making each one feel like a unique playstyle. On top of that, each spirit within an element has a special ability unique to their type that further tweaks how this base class plays, sort of like the more interesting relics within a run of Slay the Spire. Every new creature I found tickled my brain as I wondered about their own specific synergies, except for the spirits who instead changed the way I operated on the overworld! I was almost more excited for those ones! Make sure you bring your Snorcko with you if you plan to spend the day fishing!
Mechanics aside, special attention needs to be paid to the writing of the game. All of the villagers on the eponymous Moonstone Island are diverse and interestingly characterised. It is to my immense shame and regret that I waited until Summer of the first year to engage with the Date system. At any time, you can ask one of the characters in town to spend a day with you, if you succeed in a dice role (with modifiers based on how much they already like you!) you can go out together at 20:00 and spend the rest of your evening with that character. There'll you have an engaging conversation, followed by a question. The correct choice is usually intuitive, but not immediately obvious. After deliberation, I almost always came to the correct answer, except for one- I fumbled a date with Ferra because I engaged with her on the surface level interpretation of her character, but further conversations with her allowed me to understand the mistake I was making... I came out of the experience with a legitimately better understanding of the character on my screen. Next time Ferra, we're gonna dig that big ol' hole! Since you can start going on these dates right at the start of the game, and each of them is comparable to a "heart event" in something like Stardew, you can get right into the fantastic character writing as soon as your start your adventure. And you should! The dates seem to be by far the fastest way to progress your relationships, and they should not be slept on. Just make sure you don't die to a dungeon boss and miss the date!
I've only played 17 hours so far (all on stream if you're doubting anything I've said so far) and I don't think I have it in me to play anything else until I've seen all the content there is to be found here. With 84 spirits to collect, 30 dungeons to delve into, and 4 temples to conquer, this is a game that'll keep consuming my mind for many evenings to come. I hope I helped you decide to give it a look for yourself, it's worthy of every bit of attention it gets! Just make sure that if you're a completionist, you get yourself a glider and a moonstone scythe as quick as you can. I'll never forgive myself for missing the dark islands' spring seeds in my first year... If I had just one more day...