Recent reviews by Hugoos

Wow! I played about 4 hours and reached transmission 52, still in act 1, I glanced over the achievements and there are (at least) 12 acts.

This is a very fun game so far if you enjoy STEM-like gamified problems. The premise is that an alien meteorite has landed on earth which is transmitting a signal and a team of multidisciplinary experts including you have been tasked with investigating the signal.

In practice, so far this means you basically get some data and the goal is to figure out what signal to send back depending on the data in the signal. A simple example would be to finish a sequence 1,2,3,4, and then you would reply 5. If your answer is correct the signal will change and evolve in complexity over time. If you're wrong the game will sometimes provide optional hints to help you.

The issue of course is that the signal is from an alien civilization which does not have the same conventions as us humans, the goal so far is to translate these aliens concepts into human understandable vocabulary. The game provides a dictionary where you can enter aliases for concepts to make the data more readable, one thing I particularly enjoy is that the game will give you little snippets of dialogues if you choose certain aliases to show you that you are on the right track.

So with the dictionary it also makes the game somewhat similar to language translation games like Chants of Sennaar, I'm expecting the game to go deeper into this later.

The game also has a nice story in the background to tie it all together, it's quite enjoyable and I like how it all evolves over times, keeps it interesting and stops it from getting stale.

There was one issue I had that made me lose a bunch of time: If you have Japanese IME active then the game won't let you use enter to input an answer which will eventually softlock you at transmission 29 if I remember correctly.

It's not often a game makes me lose track of time in this way, for that I just wanted to give an early positive review, it reminds me a bit of Advent of Code in some of the problems. The premise of basically a semi-guided decoding of the reverse Voyager Golden Record is very interesting to me. Can't wait to see how it evolves over time!

I've been asking myself what the right time is to write this review, I've full-cleared 3 areas out of 25 and finished what was possible so far of another.

This game is basically two things, the first is a variant-nonogram game and the second is a fantasy novel.

The map of Homgard consists of tiles which each are a 5x5 nonogram, tiles can combine into areas to form larger size nonograms. Some of the cells can be different colored and each colored cell has a specific variant rule associated with it. For instance, all connected red tiles activate all at once or not at all. I've not seen all the rules yet, but I know they combine together later in harder puzzles, the first areas are focused on just introducing a single colored variant rule.

Now, once you've cleared a puzzle you reveal the map underneath and most of time you will reveal one or more snippets of lore, this is where the fantasy novel part of the game comes in. Homgard contains many shortish snippets of lore that combine together to form a bigger picture of the world. You might see a conversation captured between high-ranking individuals, an ad for a potion, a letter between two individuals, some ancient inscriptions or perhaps some deeper truths that hint on what really is going on. There is a lot of it and it's well-written.

So far the nonograms are a bit on the easy side, 5x5 nonograms generally offer no challenge and there are a lot of those in the beginning, but they do serve for a nice palate cleanser in between reading the story snippets. As you get further out though the difficulty increases and you start seeing larger grids. I'm sure it'll get harder later since I'm still in the beginning stages of the game.

The large amount of 5x5 nonograms in the beginning do make it so you have a lot of reading in the beginning which could be hit-or-miss, on one hand it does help you get into the story faster as there are a lot of names/concepts and it takes some time to figure out who everything is, and what is important. Luckily the quality is good and I haven't wanted to skip anything yet, which the game does let you do, you can skip all the story if you want and just do the nonograms.

There appears to be some chronology in the snippets too, so far, each area appears to have its own theme that it focuses on. As you get further out the story progresses and stuff happens, it seems the anchor of the area contains the most important snippet, so I've been full-clearing each area in an order I found logical, finishing at the anchor and then doing everything that unlocks after the anchor. Though, it does let you choose whether to rush to the important stuff or take it slow. Some areas are locked behind gathering dreamer cores.

The progress of slowly unlocking each area is very pleasing, especially as you look back and see the world taking form.

I also really enjoy the music, there are lots of good tracks that are a real bop and keep you in a trance-like state.

Some things I personally still would like to see:

There is so much lore, it's initially challenging to keep track of it. I was thinking it would be cool to have some kind of trivia or (fill-in the blank) detective element like in Return of the Obra Dinn and The Case of the Golden Idol, where the game could ask you to fill in who each of the contenders of the throne are for instance, there are some areas which are empty of nonograms that could be used for it, they could link back to the snippets it's asking questions about. This might not mesh with the vision of the creator, but I would enjoy it.

I also would like some kind of search system that highlights the unlocked lore snippets (and specific text therein) where your searched term appears. This would be useful if a name is mentioned and you want to remind yourself where you saw it before. The snippets could even be set in chronological order according to the date of the snippets. Edit: This has been implemented now, I'm very happy!

The creator also says what is in the game currently is only the first book of the story with 3 more books being planned filling out the remaining 75? areas. I like the game very much so far and looking forward to continuing the game and reading more of the story.

I have been waiting for this game since I played the demo, back then I just entered my paper puzzle phase after playing the DEG demo. The Artisan of Glimmith is a logic game with region division puzzles in the style of logic paper puzzles with handmade puzzles. It is by Lunarch Studios who also made Islands of Insight, which was a pretty good game with good handmade logic puzzles, but bogged down a bit with a multiplayer aspect that never really found its purpose in that game.

This game cuts the parts that didn't work in Islands of Insight and focuses on where its strengths lay, in the handcrafted logic puzzle levels with different combinations of rules and not a lot of extra fluff. I've been really enjoying the game so far, it's pretty relaxing, until you find a level 6 or 7 puzzle, then it's time to sweat.

You can feel how each level is handcrafted by professional setters, there are a lot of different ideas being explored even within the same puzzle type.

For new players: This is game 13 in an ongoing series, Don't start here, go look up Trails in the Sky (First Chapter) or the remake Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, although this game includes a term library that updates as you go which gives some background on events of all previous 12 games, word of warning that it will spoil what came before.

I'll try to avoid giving specific plot details here but talk about aspects of the structure and length.

Really liked this one, it's better than Daybreak 2 but slightly worse than Daybreak 1. It's quite slow I would really call this the setup game to rule all setup games. It really takes a while to get going but the further you get the more interesting long-awaited lore implications get revealed for the main meta-story.

I appreciated each mini-chapter being around 10 hours, that made it more piece-meal despite being quite long clocking in at roughly 191 hours for my full-NPC run. Which makes it the 4th longest Trails game before Daybreak I, Cold Steel III and Cold Steel IV.

Act I is a bit of a drag sadly, being a bit monotone, but later in the game there is more variety.

I really enjoyed the localization, thought it was well-written and consistent in terminology with characters having a good "voice" as in, way of speaking making them uniquely identifiable. The voice acting was also good with Damien Haas again giving a stellar performance as Van and also voice actors from previous games reprising their roles.

The battle system is more refined and slightly more fun than the last game, though the optional dungeon was a bit worse.

Music was again great, got a couple of new favorites.

Game ran well at max settings 144 fps with DLSS, but I had to decrease the resolution for DLSS a bit to make my fans not drown out the sound of the game after a certain point nearing 100 hours in for some reason.

I'd probably rate it at the upper-tier of Trails, a slow Act I dragging it down a bit.

Looking forward to see what's in the store next!

I've been in a bit of a paper puzzle phase after playing DEG a while back. I was doing Shikaku in the latest Puzzle Communication Nikoli and the same day this demo gets released. This is a logic game with region division puzzles in the style of logic paper puzzles with handmade puzzles. It is by Lunarch Studios who made Islands of Insight earlier, which was a pretty good game with good handmade logic puzzles, but bogged down a bit with a multiplayer aspect that never really found its purpose in that game.

This game cuts the parts that didn't work in Islands of Insight and focuses on where its strengths lay, in the handcrafted logic puzzle levels with different combinations of rules and not a lot of extra fluff. I finished the demo and I really enjoyed what is there already, the game also has hidden levels which I thought were fun to search for.

Some small QoL I was missing was that I couldn't find an option to go above 60 fps in the game. This has been implemented now.

Goes to the top of my wishlist.

100% the demo. Really liked this one, very addicting, I like how you need to search for the tutorial areas to solve different puzzle types. It does have some really challenging puzzles. I've been writing in crosses rather than using the in-game marker because it's much clearer which cells cannot be filled. Controls could use some work, accidentally deleting all your notes, even if you can take them back is quite stressful. Looking forward to the full game.

Fun little Roottrees-like, not as good or long as "The Roottrees Are Dead" but I liked it well enough to recommend it. Certainly worth it if you enjoy these kind of deduction mysteries. I hope the developer considers making more of these.

For context playing Genshin, Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero. I just beat Phantom X up to the current end of content (just before the 2nd palace boss). Phantom X is most similar to Star Rail.

I enjoyed Phantom X much more than I was expecting. The quality is very similar to the Hoyo gachas. The gacha leveling and pulling is almost 1:1 with the Hoyo games, however this one begs a lot more with FOMO packs where you have only a couple of days to buy them. After getting further in they stopped doing it so much, the last one was a "congratulatory" pack for clearing the first palace.

It also has a greater focus on community with guilds and mild competition between PVE rankings of players. These things are of course not really fair as they about who has the biggest wallets (p2w).

The actual game is A-rank Persona 5 if the original was a S+-rank game. The quality is higher than expected and I enjoyed doing the palaces. I think the first palace was better than the 2nd one as the 2nd one has a lot of repetition and easier puzzles. The palaces have a lot of repeated rooms with a slightly different placing of stuff inside them, it doesn't come close to the original Persona 5's hand crafted dungeons but they are enjoyable enough.

Combat is exactly what you would expect of the Persona 5 combat modified to work in a gacha setting.

There are Confidants and City Life but they are compartmentalized into their own section where you can use 5 units of time per real life day (barring using limited items to restore) you can spend time with your confidants, do part-time jobs and clubs.

Of course it doesn't reach the original Persona 5's heights, but I enjoyed it enough that I'll be adding it to the pile of daily gacha's for now.

Pretty fun so far, the different gathering and crafting jobs I've tried feel quite samey at the start, I hope it diversifies more later other than being reskins of the same minigame. There seems to be a lot of content/maps and it's quite addicting. There are some Animal Crossing and city building elements which are interesting and a larger open world which reminds me of Breath of the Wild a bit. I'm sure if you liked the 3DS game you will like this too.

It's a pretty good puzzle game, but some of the randomness and grinding annoyed me to no end in the endgame. Like you might just want to do one more run before bed, but then you find something you need and the conditions are right, but all it requires is an indeterminate amount of rng until you get what you want. And in other games I would just shut the game down and do it on another day, but this game having no auto saves makes it impossible. Then the game kinda forces you to spend potentially hours (plural) or try to get the conditions right again on a next run. It just felt like the game did not respect my time nearing the end for various reasons.

It was still very good for the first 80 hours or so, but the final 20 hours or so just makes me end on a sour note.