Recent reviews by KnightNick

I already love this, can't wait for the full version.

I LOVE building towns out of garbage. When I started this I kinda thought I was going to have to build my town up into the sky because the water rises. But the water actually starts to go down over time and you build your way down while also uncover new areas underneath. It's really cool.

Right now the performance is fine but my laptop does run a little hot, so I turned some of the settings down.

If this looks interesting, try out the demo! It's really solid content wise honestly it's a little baffling how much of the research tree you can already go through! Really excited what else will be there in the full version!

I got this because it looked fun. I am happy to report it is EXTREMELY fun.
Cool artstyle, fun character designs, the music is bringing me back to my childhood playing Monkey Island.

The devs made a huge mistake thinking they could offer me multiple characters thinking I surely will switch through them while also providing me a character that attacks using ROUND FROGS.

When I first tried this game I accidentally stayed up til 7am because I was having too much fun with it. Whoops.

AI assets - BOO 👎👎👎

"This game is about racism/what it means to be human/empathy/ect." while these are certainly topics this game comes into contact with, the game is overall and mainly about machines replacing humans. And it is not subtle about it. Yet we never get to actually be a human or see anything from the perspective of one of the humans.

First I would like to prove my claim. The game starts with „This is not just a game, this is our future“ seems a little cryptic right?
The entire game is littered with information about machines replacing humans and you might think about “work” first and foremost but people are having android children instead of real children, there is music and art by androids that is much more successful than human art, the game states that men specifically would rather be intimate with an android than a real woman.
The creator of androids also clearly states that androids are better at everything and that it is normal to prefer them over human partner as they never say “no”.
By the end of the game, if you gain rights for androids they are “becoming human” the first step in replacing humanity as a whole. But even if you go all violent with Markus and Connor ends up killing North she states “It doesn't matter, my people will rise again”.

Personally I think the game is badly written and has little nuance. We almost never get to see “the other side”. It constantly states “all humans hate us” while not showing this at all? Yes there is Todd, the second cop, that weird guy that builds monsters but like the very few NPCs in the streets that are kinda unfriendly or aggressive are very justified? People are shown homeless, jobless, suffering and it is the fault of androids taking over. Am I supposed to believe they are in the wrong?
And besides that. Humans are famously so extremely empathetic towards things and creatures that are not human, people cry over their broken Roombas. They will pet any animal they can get their grubby hands on. You want me to believe that ALL humans just hate androids and the androids all act like they have no idea why when it's very clear why?

A great example of the game not being well written is Carl. If he dies Markus is like “DAD!” and later on he tells North that Carl was like a father to him. No? He was not? Or that was not shown? He was polite and friendly but I would hope that is the general tone you would have for your CARETAKER. “I can't look after you anymore you need to think for yourself” What does he mean? Where did he look after him?? He literally did not.
And also his son was so justified in being angry at him? Carl had a child with a fan and didn't care for the child until he was 16 and then Leo has to watch Carl be more caring to machine than to him. OUCH. The reason why Leo was an a**hole is probably because his father neglected him. But no no we do not get to see this from Leo's side because he is a human and this game is not about them!

The androids are machines and not alive and what I believe proofs this is the fact that Kamski staged the entire thing. He MADE Markus with the intent to start an android revolution. Markus was programmed to encourage this outcome. Kamski wants this to be the next step for humanity, androids as a more perfect human.
And it's so weird for Markus to walk up to an android that has clearly not “awoken” and therefore is NOT alive as it should not feel anything at this point and hack it to “awaken” it.
Fiction does not have to be realistic but for me it has to make sense within the world it has created. And this just doesn't make sense.

I also find their fear of dying unbelievable WITHIN the universe. Connor can die. And Kara technically died too and they state outright “her memory had to be reset” because the damage was so intense. Which means that generally memory CAN be restored which makes them essentially immortal. And you want to tell me that in a world where you can buy a high tech android that looks and sounds just like a human and does all of your housework for just 8000 bucks they don't have a cloud with backups for their androids? Maybe not for the cheapest models I would be willing to believe that, but not in general? Don't make me laugh.
Btw I hate how Connor can identify the serial number from the blue blood. Please explain how that makes any sense? Does it mix with something unique within the body of the androids which then stores the serial number? Yes I AM overthinking it because the story and it's world has so many little errors and logic flaws that it becomes impossible to ignore for me.

Everything is hyper designed to make you feel for the poor androids, look, they are JUST like humans yet nothing in the game actually proves me that they ARE. There is no proof for the sentience and it most likely a program made by Kamski to simulate human emotions (another proof is that they all know of “rA9”). Another thing that supports this in my opinion is the fact that the trigger to “awaken” is fear as a response to mistreatment. It's a very rigid pattern.
Not once was an android shown that said something along the lines of “I heard a song that was so beautiful something happened / I saw a sunset that awoke something within me / this person made me laugh so hard and I didn't understand why”. They are human because they fear dying? Animals fear dying too.

And don't get me wrong, I don't hate the androids AS characters in the game, in fact I very much enjoyed Kara's and Alice's story and found it very touching. And generally speaking I like to help as many people as I can in games.

I hate how it almost forces the player into sympathy for these machines claiming them as human “because it said so”. Of course the player will react in human ways when playing these androids, the player IS human.
And the entire thing really feels up in it's own a** and it's sooo proud of it too.

Also, yeah. This review is 100% fueled by Anti-AI rage, because I agree. This is our future.

So. I don't think... I should recommend this.
I don't think it's like... a good Fallout game?

Unfortunately tho I love running around, exploring, hoarding ressources and decorating my little camp. And collecting blueprints for plushies. And now I can also catch fish and hang them up on my wall... Every year this is my most played game, I can't help myself.
BETHESDA! I need more decoration space please.

I will say tho, my experience with other players has been basically overwhelmingly positive. One time a guy ran into my house, looked at my bear collection, ran away and came back with the one bear I was missing and then waited for me to put it up, gave me a thumbs up and then I never saw him again. Which is a memory I will always cherish.

Honestly? This had no business being THAT good, fun and interesting as it was. Story was fun and engaging, exploring is awesome, map was waaaay bigger than I expected, Characters were fun and interesting.

I am very unhappy with the cam control for decorating mode tho, it's extremely bad.

It looks pretty good for it's age, especially the backgrounds are beautifully detailed. The main characters look pretty good and the NPCs look kinda scary!

The story was intersting and engaging, the characters were pretty basic.
I enjoyed the switch back and forth between Victoria and her grandpa.
And what really got me was the mystery around the case and how the game made you wonder and question stuff, this was really good and fun.
I will also let you know, regarding the story. It does not have a proper conclusion and you barely get any real answers for the case and if that's a game breaker for you, you should know before you buy.

The majority of the puzzles were good and fun. The rest of them... were some of the worst trial and error "puzzles" I ever had the displeasure of solving.
And once you come near the end they also shove in a lot of puzzles for the sake of having a puzzle and even if they work as puzzles they often make so little sense in the game world that it just takes me out of it.

The screens don't have proper indicators for where you can leave screens or indicators for items. Some of the items you need to pick up are TINY and even if you go over the entire screen with your mouse you might just be unlucky enough to miss them.

You also can't open the map you always need to walk back to your car and that means lots of just walking through essentially empty screens. I was also really over the elevator animation by the end of the game. At first I thought it was cool that Victoria has diffrent animations for it but by the end of the game I just wanted to skip it.

Very often Victoria will simpy not communicate what her current plan is and you will just try your best to guess what she would like you to do.

If you can grab this on sale and you have the knowledge that frankly a bunch of the puzzles are bad and you should use a walkthrough for them, I do recommend this. the story was fun and engaging and it is short enough to not overstay it's welcome. But the last few puzzles really pushed it!

Started the game, character models didn't load in, only teeth and eyes. Restarting did not help and neither did changing the options. After uninstalling and reinstalling it worked.
To my shock the models look much worse than the models from the first game. Very lifeless faces. Victorias hair is a shaggy blob.
The backgrounds look much worse too.
Honestly I thought the first game looked pretty nice and detailed for it's time (besides the NPCs which were really ugly!) but this is overall just ugly and often pixelated.
The animations also often stutter.

The camera angles are awful, you don't get an indication where you can change the angle and even if you saw from another angle that there is space it does not mean you walk there.
You also still don't have any item indicators so good luck scanning your entire screen with your mouse to see if the mouse icon changes.

Sound design is super annoying, turned the sound effects waaaaay down almost immediately because there are a lot of random ambience sound effects and they repeat often.

UI is horrible, reading the tiny phone screen to navigate is a task for sure.
The inventory system is so bad it's kinda offensive. You can carry 16 spaces and each item is a number of spaces big. If your inventory is full you need to put stuff into storage. So essentially, this exists to waste your time and make you run back and forth.
Also the first thing my character did was shove an entire mattress into her pocket. She did not tell me why she did it. She did not commented it. She didn't even look at the mattress before.

You get thrown into the game, Victoria is on a new case with a new partner, she has been for a while in fact. You get a loooot of text to catch up and there are a lot of names you have never heard of too. It does in fact not pick up where the first game left you! And reading other reviews on this it's not looking good either.

There are scenes now in which you can die! Isn't that exciting? You get to replay parts of the game you played moments ago again and again if you are too slow or make a mistake! So awesome.

There are times in which I would love for the player character to share their thoughts with me, so I know what in the world they are trying to do. This was a problem in the first game too. What was not a problem were unnecessay stupid comments like when your phone rings (obnoxiously) and the character goes "Oh! It has to be X calling me, I should probably pick up my phone and maybe they can help me!" What in the world, just pick up the damn phone?

I only played a bit but I had a bad time the entire time and it's not because the game is old but because it is very badly designed.

I got this bundled with "While We Wait Here" from the same devs.
If you see this on sale it really is a steal. This is a good indie game and if it looks interesting you should grab it!

The gameplay is fun and very much what you would expect. You certainly need to pay attention and switch from cooking to tailoring very frequent in order to be efficient!
Unlocking stuff feels rewarding and it's fun to see and make the new recipes. And it's very cool that you can unlock several outfits and even wallpaper and floors?

So I really disliked Sweeney Todd because I thought the story and ending were stupid. Maybe the singing made it worse, I don't really know.
This on the other hand I really enjoyed.
I liked the characters, they were very much over the top with very extra and fun voice acting. I especially like Hildred who in my opinion does the most work in this tavern. She is not getting a break running from station to station to make food and chop up fresh meat. But I really liked her story bits! And I think there could have even been a little bit more with Peter and her feelings towards him and herself!
Very much would have enjoyed getting a deeper look into her and the overall origin story!

Something that I think would have been really nice to incluce would be some sort of newspaper while you progress through the story. I appreciate the letters you receive but I thought we are killing a ton of people in this town and you would assume that has an impact on the town.
Wouldn't even have to be super detailed, maybe at first there's a small article on the side about missing people and then later on it's on the cover page.
Because besides Mr. J's letter I felt very safe with my crimes!

Speaking of his letters, I think it would have been awesome to have them voice acted because he is writing some really disturbing ♥♥♥♥ and I think a fitting voice actor would have really made his personality come out!

My one little complaint is that you sometimes can click through the table station. And then Hildred won't pick up the food and it feels like you just wasted some time! It's not that demanding so it really isn't a big deal but the clickable area around the table stations is a little weird because yes I 100% clicked on the table it just wasn't highlighted.
But that's also really all of the bugs I personally found!

I had a good time and I certainly will keep my eyes out for more stuff from the devs!

This game is excellent.

I did not expect this level of detail with everything. It is very nicely stylized and you have a lot of options to turn certain effects down if they bother you. It's fully voice acted (by real voice actors and not garbage AI!) and it is voice acted REALLY well. I was really surprised by how well everything was animated, from the characters during cut scenes to the main character prepping food.
Also the story was short but very well rounded, I enjoyed it a lot.

It is not really horror in my opinion but there is a feeling of dread as you play because you know something isn't right, you just don't know what it is.

Super recommend it, also if you are someone who enjoys creepy games and stories but is a little more skittish I think this is a perfect game for you, the atmosphere is really good but it's not a stressful scary game.

Obviously, as this is a horror game it does touch on some heavier topics, unless you have SEVERE triggers you will probably be fine.
If you have any triggers you need to look out for I made a page on "Does the Dog die" for this game, obviously this will spoiler stuff for you so be aware of that.