Recent reviews by MelficeOne

A Cute little Factorio-Like thats more a mix of Stardew and Factorio.
You start out a little workshop and try to build towards a final goal, in this case the rocket your late mom worked on. All the while you revitalize the town by helping them with stuff, (re-) building town facilities and get the engeneering groove on.

one thing that kinda irks me is the lack of movement options, like ylu get a factorio style grippy arm that can move items from one space to another, a pusher that does the same but onto the next space in a row and the highly inneffective crane that moves one item from one spot to another at the brakneck speed of plate tectoncs (it becomes better if you use boxes to move stuff but its also the ONLY way to move things not into a basically directly adjacent space) and the other thing being that ore patches get emptied so gosh darn fast and at some point you spend the day just going around and reconnecting drills to new patches (or just ignoring the warning triangles altogether)
Oh and the days feel way too short sometimes, but staying up late only comes with a 4 hr time reduction penalty for the next day (at least actively useable time, factories still work while youre asleep so endgem when everything is set up you just go to bed five days in a row)

but overall, absolutely chill game, it doesnt reach the depth of Factorio but comes with its own issue to tackle, namely space optimization (because the townsfolk definitely do not like it when their path is blocked by a conveyor belt carrying around crates of coal.

overall tho, its a very good bang for your buck, pricewise. Heck, I probably could have gotten more hours in if I went for buying all the housing upgrades)

Man what a damn ride

In Stars and Time tells one of the worst possible type of stories to tell in an interactive fashion and to actually be interactive in - a Time Loop story. You get In Medias Res'd into the last Disc 4 dungeon before the final final boss of an RPG, but due to said dungeon being fiendishly desiged you have to loop back to right mistakes youve made

While on the surface an RPG this game is a puzzle game at its core, trying to find the set of triggers that advance the story and thanks to a sponsor you are always just a reset to base camp and a talk away from the OOOOOH Right moment that continues your run, and while lighthearted at first ... well lets say aimless repetition, a seemingly sysiphean task erodes the srongest mind at some point.

overall a powerful experience and a wonderful story with wonderful characters. Siffrin and Odille my beloveds

When this things demo dropped in my lap it was fun but didnt really sell me. Until we got to the end that is. a single scene riddling me with all sorts of feelings, anxiety, confusion, relief that I thought "Yeap looks like we got to go in"
and what I got was a story that brought the highest highs in laughter, the lowest lows in despair and the fluctuationist zaggies in confusion. Honestly a great story start to finish with wonderful and loveable characters (Cath my beloved)

Absolute recommendation, go in as blind as possible

There are some slight bugs still, like some rythm games not taking inputs sometimes (the menu option change click I hear might have something to do with this) or mouse interaction sections (pressing buttons or painting) sometimes not working on a controller. but those would be nitpicks, nothing too game breaking

Slight Buyers Beware, this technically is still a soft VN, so maybe not most peoples cup of tea gameplaywise, but honestly its still well worth it

Part of the Backlog Series

Finished it: No
Liked it: Hell no
played on: Normal

This games does not value my time.

While the game itself is a pretty nice concept on the tower defense genre with some neat mechanics and forcing you to plan well ahead for some things, everything takes just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ long.
theres a cutscene whenever you enter or exit a battle, and while the entry one is skippable, the exit one isnt because theres text happening on screen which is always "Strike Progress reached 100% the wave has died down!" followed by one of your active team members victory quotes.
there is a (skippable) cutscene when you get new refugees into your town and you have to manually check the box thats there which happens every mission. same with getting your funds. You HAVE to click the building that doubles as a material conversion center and it ALWAYS opens the thing up and tells you "dont you know you can convert crystals here?"

YES. YES I EFFING KNOW I CAN DO THIS BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME 20 TIMES IN A ROW.

the result screen takes ages, the same dumb unskippable voiceline when you level up. the insistence on involuntary grinding.

while the game is fun in a way all the ♥♥♥♥ above just makes it not worth it.

Part of the backlog Series

Finished: Yes
Liked it: Yes
Played on: Easy

right out of the bat the pixel art is absolutely gorgeous. the music is nice and ambient and the combat
I do believe that playing on something outer than easy also makes better use of the combos you can learn but the addittion was neat.

the story is... well. all over the place. for a cyberpunk adventure you still do a lot of stuff very mundane and the sudden shift between a kinda sorta "could happen everyday" plot to goshdarn evangelion-esque did do come out of nowhere and left me very confused for basically the rest of the runtime.

Also with the end it feels like this is supposed to be a prequel for something cause this thing ends with the biggest Mid 2000s Movie Sequel bait ever.

overall tho, good game.

Side note: is it just me or did they get some high tier VAing staff for this (I believe) indie game?

A cute little Sokoban-esque puzzle game. right?

right

if my playtime is any indicator - its not.
its still a cute little Sokoban-esque Puzzle game with tricky mechanics and their application leading to "I am a genius" moments, but its also so much more
a story about love and friendship, about perseverance, a weird excurion through multiple game Genres in total, sprouting very lovely pixel art and full art spreads I'd definitely call wallpaper-worthy.

and then you finish the game and its not over. The closest thing I would compare this to is Nier Automata. needing multiple playthroughs going deep into the lore of the game and always ALWAYS finding out something new. and the Music, oh god. not even halfway to the game I had to get the OST as well (be smart get the bundle from the get-go) if not for the amazing vocal track (yes vocal track. within very chippy that good crunchy MIDI music).

honestly keep at it. its the point of the game itself.
challenge yourself and go further
10/10 game
10/10 experience
would gladly tear up again
would gladly jiggle the Snitties 27 times in a row and be put on trial for it again

and with this, I bid you all a very happy

you can pet the cats for buffs and if that aint the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ best mechanic in a game ever I dont want to know

I can finally make my own Aum Shinrikyo

cool concept for an idle game, doesnt feel grindy at all

I dont like this episode of Black Mirror...