Recent reviews by Dapper Shark

Note: Recently the game received a pre-underwater update that's required me to change parts of the review, a large part of this review is unchanged, but, theirs some changes worth noting. I've also started a thread in the forums about issues, some new with this pre-update update and listed here, others more long standing that I haven't spoken about here.

Sunken Engine is a Lovecraftian, Business simulator, you take contracts to repair ships, while doing so you can loot them on little odds and ends to sell to customers at your bazaar. The day breaks down into a day and night with daytime being from 6:00 to 20:00, during the day, certain locations will be open like the general store where you buy supply's to repair and salvage ships and the mayors office where you purchase permits to work on bigger ships or new repairs such as configuring a navigation console or repairing wiring.

Come 20:00 you will no longer be able to access certain location and customer and contracts waiting to be accepted/dealt with will leave for the night, however new locations like the pub and occasionally the circus will open.

The game has a fair few different ships and since I originally played has added emergency contracts that hang around for a limited time that when accepted require you to deal with an emergency, for example put out the fires on a ship before it burns and sinks into the ocean, it also has a mirror with rich customers that will hang around your bazaar for a limited time, they pay more but also ask for higher quantities of items.

With the Pre-underwater update they changed bags, its no longer used to hold nails, planks and other ship repairing resources, but instead hold items from ships, fishing, the carnival and cursed ships. A nice change however, it is hard to determine how much is in a bag without opening it first to check.

Unfortunately this is where the good ends. This game shipped with story up to act 2-1, which as far as I can tell is still were the story ends, (if, that's no longer the case ill edit this review) while their is little lore notes, I've not personally taken the time to read these, my standing is you need to have a solid story on your own otherwise I'm not reading 100 different notes about the lore.

So story aside your left grinding the same minigames on ships at a certain point, repairing wiring, unscrewing and screwing in lightbulbs, searching for that one bugged trash that's hidden behind a filing cabinet that you need to do some janky stuff to pickup, doing the same number pressing memory game that has a delay between finishing a sequence and you being able to press buttons.

This can take all day, so you go from I'm cracking through 9+ ships a day to oh god, were is this one light bulb/wiring repair I missed and so while you absolutely could spend all day on the ship, you will realize hold on the ship doesn't leave when the clock strikes 20:00, so your loop then becomes I've got to go to the shop, stock up on materials for repairs/buy license upgrades, pick the highest paying contract, focus on the bazaar for the rest of the day till the clock hits 20:00 and your bazaar customers leave then you focus your efforts on repairing/salvaging trinkets from the ship.

Further you will find your self getting stuck on thing or being clipped out of bounds and while they dev has appeared to fix some of these sticking issues such as the stairs up to your office stuff like bridge to the ship lowering and clipping you into the ground, or getting stuck on drawers found on ships when in the out state.

They also changed the fax machine to a radio system and while its an Interesting change, they have created a lot more problems with this change, for example in the old system you would go about your day and up to 3 contracts would be on your desk you could glance over it, the tier, what needed to be done, the tasks on the ship and decide from their, compare this to the new system, you access the radio, theirs up 2 jobs currently, you can glance at the tier and pay, but to see what tasks need to be done you need to click the job and wait for a text blurb to play out, then you can see tasks and accept the job, however, if you back out and re-enter that job you have to repeat this every time with no way to skip.

Essentially a big summery, this game is fun for your first hour or so, then quickly becomes a slog grind fest of repairing ships and dealing with bazaar customers to afford the next upgrade, the story is incomplete and based on this game dropping October 16th last year and taking 3 and a half months to get its first major update, of which the next major story update is another 2 major updates away, your only going to be able to progress the story mid to late 2026, if all goes well.

I'm not going to mince words, here in the games current state, DO NOT buy this game, its a grindy slog fest, that has the same repetitive minigames, story being shoved into hundreds of notes scattered on ships or interactions with people instead of being funnelled into actually releasing the story. If you buy the game currently all your buying is a shallow ship repair simulator.

This game is not worth the £4.25 its currently on sale for (09/02/2026) its definitely not worth the £8.50 full price theirs charging for it, spend your money on something else.

Will edit this review when I reach new story or if theirs any changes required.

Chronoquartz is a short but sweet, strategic puzzle game. Your goal is to stop the evil demon Morthas from conquering the world — but what's the catch? You have 10 turns. On turn 10, you reset and the loop begins anew — a Groundhog Day scenario if you will. While the puzzles aren't too complex, they will have you scratching your head trying to fit all the puzzle pieces together to achieve the desired result in the loop.

Each loop you will learn something new, and each time brings you a loop closer to stopping the demon and breaking the cycle.

We Were Here Expeditions: The FriendShip, is probably the most challenging we were here game I've played, not because it requires using your noggin to the point of it turning to a puddle, not because of the random element nature of the game, but, because I cant go 5 seconds without me and my partner having some kind of connection issue. This is the only We Were Here game we have played with this issue.

We Were Here Expeditions: The FriendShip, is a game that sounds great on paper, but in practice leads to what feels and looks like a game of chance. I don't think anyone who has played The Friendship is under the Illusion that this isn't a game of chance, why do I say this?

Well From the opening couple minutes (and the trailer), you see you are in a carnival, once you and your partner split into your sides, you are presented with an introduction to the ticket system, there are three kinds of ticket, a reset, bronze, silver and gold ticket, reset being you have to play the game again and gold being the best ticket, these tickets upgrade your boat in various ways (however I cant say fully to what extent as we played till we got gold tickets and didn't settle for anything less).

I wont go into too much specifics beyond that as to avoid heavy spoilers, their are 3 puzzles total.

The first gave us the most trouble as with our lag we had issues where the timer would start and run out before my partner could even see the curtains fully open (this was due to lag issues).

Puzzle 2, we didn't have to compete with time but random elements, sure their is some element of skill to this game, we had several rounds where we got close however wound up being impossible to complete because the necessary tiles or towers we needed did not spawn in on the final round meaning we have to restart the entirety of puzzle 2 for the gold ticket. After a few more hours, a mental breakdown and the rng gods blessing us we completed puzzle 2, It defiantly is a step up in challenge from the 1st puzzle however, it mostly comes down to an unhealthy amount of luck and a fair bit of thinking, I would say the side placing towers is easier that the side placing colour patterns (Wont say more than that as to not delve to heavily into spoilers.)

Today we completed Puzzle 3, I will say puzzle 3 is probably the favourite of them all, however, if your like us and you have severe and frequent lag issues, then you will have problems with this puzzle. However, we found that a lot of this puzzle can be memorised and with a bit of counting and listening can complete a large majority without your partners help, their was only 2 sections in the final puzzle that required the aid of my partner.

Talking a bit further on network connectivity, I will stress this again this is the most buggy We Were here game we have played, boats starting off with one person in then, clipping through things, puzzles bugging out, issues before we have even got into proper gameplay, this is BY FAR the buggiest We Were Here Game.

All that aside however, the game is that We Were Here art style we all know and love, with the music to boot, I also am also a fan of the carnival look and feels they have manged to achieve, the corny lines from a pre-recorded voice, the tunnel of love feel (although technically its probably closer to something like Disneyland "It's a small world after all" or "Pirates of the Caribbean" feel with animatronics), theirs also posters for you to ogle at and a map of the park at the entrance, this place is dripping with that theme park charm.

To close this out however I will have to give this game a not recommended, even on sale, as this game was as previously stated the most buggy and with the lag experienced through our entire playthrough this caused the puzzles to be a slog to get through, on top of fighting the random chance nature of these games, I do applaud that this is thematically correct and an interesting idea and their where certainly some parts that where enjoyable, sadly their were enough issues and being a person thats not overly keen on random chance games, I could not fully enjoy it.

Split Fiction, Is a game that can be explained but is better experienced, I was first truly aware of this company when I played and thoroughly enjoyed It takes two, However, unlike it takes two, Split Fiction consumed my being. It was and still is something that consumes my thoughts, It touches on topics that while not 1:1, deeply resonates with me.

Split Fiction, is a game that while challenging at times, is a master piece, it doesn't blend a variety of game genres as It Takes Two did, but rather blends Sci-fi and Fantasy while telling a Fantastically Sci-fi story.

For a more stat oriented people, I'd estimate about 14-15 hours for a first time playthrough, maybe half that for a second depending on if you skip over side story or how fast your pace is.

To conclude this ramble though, I'd hearty recommend this game, going so far as to say you owe it to yourself to experience Split Fiction.

Pools is a blend of spaces familiar but uninhabited, unnerving yet relaxing. Their is no monster trying to kill you, the only monster you will find is your imagination. Siting down in a chair I thought I could hear the splashing of others footsteps, Walking around I expect to hear the yelling and ruckus of a swimming pool instead nothing but eerie silence and the only noise made is you and the water swaying, finding sculptures that are these warped depictions of peoples faces.

Is this game worth £8.50 maybe not, I got a good 3 or so hours out of it and explored all 6 maps. While I can give this games a thumbs up for its atmosphere and quality I would encourage others to pick it up should you see a sale in its current state.

So I'm not normally one to leave a review for a game, but I feel a duty, self imposed and maybe unwanted as it may be.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a solid idea, but, game-play that just had me feeling like it could be better.

The story revolves around two Banishers called Antea Duarte and Red mac Raith, through the course of their adventures through New Eden, you will decide the fate of living and dead. Sadly most of these cases where not thought provoking (at least for me) a few did have me go well what is the right thing to do here, but mostly I picked the Ascended option as my first play through was trying to show compassion to both the living and dead, further more it felt like most if not all the npcs where about as deep as a paper plate, the main cast do talk about past, Red mac Raith for example talks about his time in the war and a couple other bits and bobs but it doesn't feel like anything it has any bearing on who he is currently and sadly this is the case for most character you will meet it all means nothing, on another note their are points in the story despite some of them making sense and some not that had me riled up a little bit, the sensible is Antea gets aggressive toward Red at points and while some of it I can shake of as ghosts getting less them selfs as time goes on (the lore reasoning) theirs clearly some distatful politics going on that I'll cover a bit later in this review

Combat is fine for the most part its simple enough that within 10-20 hours I suspect most people will have mastered the basics, block, parry, light attack, heavy attack, rifle body/weak point (head-shots mostly) shots, banishing and manifestations (essentially magic). That may sound like a lot when I type it out like that but its really not and its fine as I said before. Sadly 60 hours in enemy's for whatever reason start acting strange, you may go to block/parry an attack and either will ignore the attack and not hit you, ignore it and hit you, or change the parry timing and you block or get hit and you will have fought most of the enemy's enough by this point to have an idea of those timings. You will be using both a combination of melee and ranged and depending on your play style (aka if you add Antea to your attacks) you will be using the manifestations you gain through out the story.

Build craft is also quite full, theirs a large enough selection of gear that id wager all players will have a load out unique to them, the stat distribution can be a little lacklustre for example I found roughly only 3 pieces of armour with strengths and dexterity on the stat list as I was playing a build where I was up close trying to parry and counter attack as often as possible while using a rifle when and where I needed to. Finally each piece of gear along side their stats has a unique buff for example a sword and torch that when you parry the next light or heavy attack does a bonus 75% damage so late game my heavy attacks after a parry where doing 500-1k dmg roughly depending on the encounter.

Collectables and oh boy is their a lot of them are scattered through out the world and while I've been able to collect most of them in this play-through I've reached the point where its hunting for the last few before i go to the final area, while theirs resources out their that mark locations of soul catchers and lore notes for example theirs no official resource that does this, so as much as id like to grab these remaining collectables that i missed its feeling a little disheartening to not see in game map markers to help late game grind like this.

Upgrades yes upgrades before all your equipment can be upgrade seven times, yes you will have to hunt down these soul catchers if you want to do that, you will have to repeat nests, elites, scourge and void dungeons to do these soul catchers, you will need to harvest world resources for these repeatable events so don't skimp out on any you see unless you stock up a lot of cash from quests, side quests and treasure hunts, for the shop resources, pray you also have good favour with the vendors also as they will bump up or down their prices by a coin or so.

As I said earlier theirs distasteful politics for me it boils down to the men week, woman strong and smart thing that has been going around for awhile now. Theirs some woman that are clearly really confrontational toward men for no seemingly good reason than what i listed above. I want to be clear that while I say all this stuff I support equal rights and while people will enjoy what they enjoy I think unless you execute your ideas in a tasteful way they should be kept out of gaming entirely. I'll say no more as I don't think I'm in a good position to say more beyond that.

Extra little notes here that don't fit anywhere else in the review, Antea talks way to much in and out of combat, if its not nagging you to dodge something you can clearly see coming toward you, or telling you to let here have some action, its point out the painfully obvious thing that you know is there and locking you out of using her manifestations for a solid couple seconds. Crashes sooooo many of them never figured out what caused them but i muse have had 20-50+ crashes in my play-through they where less as I progressed but still cropped up occasionally.

To wrap it all up it a neat ball, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a Flawed game, that really needs a patch to address the issues it has, for now unless this game goes on a 50%+ sale do not buy it, I sincerely hope the developers are hard at work fixing the issues that are present within the game but I cant in good faith recommend this in its current state.

To all those that read through this sorry for the wall of text mega review tried to consolidate it but not great at this but thanks for reading and hopefully helps make an informed decision. Also 2 hours is not enough in my opinion to know if you will like it.