Recent reviews by FallonChace

Bit by bit, Tales of Seikyu grows. It's been a fun, chill experience and so far, the devs really do have something magical.

I'm taking my time with Metaphor. Kinda wanna savor this game.

Caravan Sandwitch is an absolute blast! I've always gravitated towards games that give me a sense of exploration and puzzle solving and this game gave that to me in spades. The open world didn't feel too compact or needlessly stretched out. This is especially helpful in that there isn't much of a "fast travel" system in place.

The game's art and lighting is gorgeous. The quasi-cell shaded look of the characters didn't feel out of place in the world at all! The score and soundtrack are spot-on as well, comfortable and not invasive, but I do feel the background music had a bit more variety. The twangy guitar and soft vocals fit well but seemed too repetitious after a few hours of play.

Gameplay controls were consistent and responsive once I got used to not oversteering the van around tight corners. I particularly liked how snappy Sauge was to play. Her movement was fluid and jumping was tight and controllable. I never felt like the devs took any shortcuts with movement in this game.

Now as for the story, Sauge is simply trying to find out what happened to her sister. The various characters she come sin contact with during the game offer clues and insights as to what happened, usually by asking you to do a quest for them. Now there were a few times where the quest information or map locations seemed in consistent or somewhat vague, so I hope the devs take a look at that. Now as far as the ending goes... well I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but the ending needs some work. It was a bit abrupt and I didn't feel like it offered a proper emotional payoff.

Finally, there were a few buggy moments in Caravan Sandwitch. A flight of stairs and a door threshold I found seemed poorly aligned with the floor they were on or next to. Easy to get around though with a quick jump. There was also an issue with am activation button disappearing later in the story, but a quick exit and restart of the game helped fix that. There were also a few occasions where the van had to be parked in just the right spot or else Sauge would fall off the tether when she got close to the ledge of the buildings.

Overall, I'd say this was a fantastic game. It kept me entertained to the point where I even managed to get all the achievements for it. That said, I did have to use a guide two find the last two I was missing. There's a hidden fetch quest in which you have to find 6 stuffed toys in game. Completing it will net you Community Service and New Look provided you've done all the other content in the game.

I do hope that there's more to this universe than we've seen before. It would be great to see Plane Toast revisit Caravan Sandwitch again in the future.

Just a chill, relaxed experience.

Coming from games like Myst, Riven, Obduction, and so on, I wanted an experience I could sink my teeth into. Something with wickedly clever puzzles that fit the world, themes, and narrative of the story.

I can honestly say after playing through all 4 The Room titles in the span of a week, I am seriously amazed. I cannot get over how good this series is and how it really scratched that puzzle-solving itch.

Here's my quick opinion on each installment as I'll be copying this review for each game I've played in this series so far.

1. The Room - Starts of with a strong hook and made me want to know more of the story and world.
2. The Room 2 - Fantastic follow-up and a fitting sequel to the first and a perfect wrap up to the first major arc of the series.
3. The Room 3 - A more mellow vibe that kind of wandered off-track here and there. Overall, it felt more like a stand alone story. I wasn't a fan of the multiple endings. The Room series works better with concise, canonical endings that stand to move the overarching narrative forward from game to game.
4. The Room 4: Old Sins - This was like a whirlwind new direction for the series. It felt fresh and intense in all the right ways. Focusing on one set piece, the dollhouse, I could not stop trying to uncover everything. Fireproof really up the ante for this and now I HAVE to know what's going to happen next.

Coming from games like Myst, Riven, Obduction, and so on, I wanted an experience I could sink my teeth into. Something with wickedly clever puzzles that fit the world, themes, and narrative of the story.

I can honestly say after playing through all 4 The Room titles in the span of a week, I am seriously amazed. I cannot get over how good this series is and how it really scratched that puzzle-solving itch.

Here's my quick opinion on each installment as I'll be copying this review for each game I've played in this series so far.

1. The Room - Starts of with a strong hook and made me want to know more of the story and world.
2. The Room 2 - Fantastic follow-up and a fitting sequel to the first and a perfect wrap up to the first major arc of the series.
3. The Room 3 - A more mellow vibe that kind of wandered off-track here and there. Overall, it felt more like a stand alone story. I wasn't a fan of the multiple endings. The Room series works better with concise, canonical endings that stand to move the overarching narrative forward from game to game.
4. The Room 4: Old Sins - This was like a whirlwind new direction for the series. It felt fresh and intense in all the right ways. Focusing on one set piece, the dollhouse, I could not stop trying to uncover everything. Fireproof really up the ante for this and now I HAVE to know what's going to happen next.

Coming from games like Myst, Riven, Obduction, and so on, I wanted an experience I could sink my teeth into. Something with wickedly clever puzzles that fit the world, themes, and narrative of the story.

I can honestly say after playing through all 4 The Room titles in the span of a week, I am seriously amazed. I cannot get over how good this series is and how it really scratched that puzzle-solving itch.

Here's my quick opinion on each installment as I'll be copying this review for each game I've played in this series so far.

1. The Room - Starts of with a strong hook and made me want to know more of the story and world.
2. The Room 2 - Fantastic follow-up and a fitting sequel to the first and a perfect wrap up to the first major arc of the series.
3. The Room 3 - A more mellow vibe that kind of wandered off-track here and there. Overall, it felt more like a stand alone story. I wasn't a fan of the multiple endings. The Room series works better with concise, canonical endings that stand to move the overarching narrative forward from game to game.
4. The Room 4: Old Sins - This was like a whirlwind new direction for the series. It felt fresh and intense in all the right ways. Focusing on one set piece, the dollhouse, I could not stop trying to uncover everything. Fireproof really up the ante for this and now I HAVE to know what's going to happen next.

Coming from games like Myst, Riven, Obduction, and so on, I wanted an experience I could sink my teeth into. Something with wickedly clever puzzles that fit the world, themes, and narrative of the story.

I can honestly say after playing through all 4 The Room titles in the span of a week, I am seriously amazed. I cannot get over how good this series is and how it really scratched that puzzle-solving itch.

Here's my quick opinion on each installment as I'll be copying this review for each game I've played in this series so far.

1. The Room - Starts of with a strong hook and made me want to know more of the story and world.
2. The Room 2 - Fantastic follow-up and a fitting sequel to the first and a perfect wrap up to the first major arc of the series.
3. The Room 3 - A more mellow vibe that kind of wandered off-track here and there. Overall, it felt more like a stand alone story. I wasn't a fan of the multiple endings. The Room series works better with concise, canonical endings that stand to move the overarching narrative forward from game to game.
4. The Room 4: Old Sins - This was like a whirlwind new direction for the series. It felt fresh and intense in all the right ways. Focusing on one set piece, the dollhouse, I could not stop trying to uncover everything. Fireproof really up the ante for this and now I HAVE to know what's going to happen next.

Quern is a game that has long intrigued me. I purchased it a while back but it just sat in my backlog for the longest time, but every now and then I'd skim past it and wonder what kind of experience I'd have. So I bit the bullet and downloaded it to give it a try.

What I expected, based of the reviews and discussions I've seen on Steam and elsewhere, was a love letter to the Myst series. I can honestly say that the developers did just that. The entire game is steeped in atmosphere and immersive visuals that, along with the great soundtrack, makes it feel like a homage to everything Cyan has done with Myst over the years.

Unfortunately, Quern just doesn't have much more than that going for it. The story feels bare bone and rather shallow. The reason for the player to have been transported to Quern, the antagonist, and the overall plot really didn't offer anything surprising or unexpected. As much as I was hoping for a story that would drop me into the deep end of the world of Quern and its lore, I just couldn't get there.

My main complaint about the game is that the puzzles seem to follow no real story purpose. The antagonist simply gates the player behind puzzles which, after a while, become almost ridiculously obtuse and overly complicated. Many of the puzzles required frequent back and forth travels around the island to find clues, connect puzzle logic, and puzzle components. Even with sprint on, it just felt needlessly tiresome to move around more of the Island as it opened up during the course of the game's runtime.

Speaking of the puzzles, I found them to have sudden difficulty and complexity spikes. Most notably the circular stone wheel in the cave and the Mechanics room. In particular, there was a sound puzzle in the Mechanics room which requires to player to learn and play back a series of notes in sequence. However, the sequence would change so there was no clear way to play back the same note sequence repeatedly in order to learn it. If the player doesn't get it right the first time, then they're out of luck.

Ultimately, the puzzles killed the joy of this game for me. Having been a lover of Myst and Myst-like games for almost my entire life, I was hoping for something similar from Quern. For myself, the puzzles need to tie into the story and feel like a natural extension of the world they exist in. Overly complicated puzzles that are that way just for the same of being unnecessarily complex just isn't that much fun.

Aside from the visuals being updated and the game looking more gorgeous than ever, It's still the same wonderful classic that it's always been. There's nothing really super new to this iteration for features, but the atmosphere is still dense and impressive.

(Update)
I genuinely hope this means we might see Riven given the same treatment and SOON!