5
Products
reviewed
293
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Recent reviews by Mel Gibson

Showing 1-5 of 5 entries
4 people found this review helpful
0.7 hrs on record
Before I get too harsh with the game, let me say it is pretty charming and the developer(s?) seems eager to continue updating and improving it, and I'll be glad to edit my review in the future.

But right now the game feels just like that "kinda cool" demo that you play once for 15 minutes and forget about forever. The engine is there and the premise is interesting, but the actual game features built on top of it are still too barebones.

It seems like some promising mixture of Lego and Replicube, but it fails both as a relaxing sandbox due to the cumbersome and finicky controls, and as a stimulating/challenging puzzle game because it's nothing more than moving, rotating and (painstakingly) joining together a bunch of 3D primitives into a predefined configuration while a hidden timer ticks in the background. So the only challenge, if you're looking for one, is to follow the recipe faster and misclick less next try. Nothing to think, calculate or optimize. Just click faster.
The early levels are just about a dozen pieces and they already felt like a chore, the last level (pirate ship) is over 400 pieces and I can only imagine must feel like torture.

It's possible that I'm the wrong public for the game, maybe it's more directed toward modelling hobbyists or something like that, but I suspect someone who is used to do this with their hands in the real world will feel even more infuriated when forced to do it with a mouse and a screen than I did.

And the absolute lack of music, especially after the genius simplicity of the Poly Bridge soundtrack setting the bar so high, was the final nail in the coffin for me.
I'd say try the demo if the trailer appealed to you, but other than that wait to see where the game will be in a semester or two.
Posted 23 April.
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2 people found this review helpful
44.0 hrs on record
A "roguelike card-based tower defense game" may sound like a lot of buzzwords and I would usually avoid an indie game self-describing as such like the plague, but I knew the developer of Tiny Civilization wouldn't disappoint, and I wasn't wrong.

Transport Legion is very unique, looks good, mixes a ton of seemingly random mechanics that blend together inexplicably well, and as a plus has all these gamey history/fantasy elements that just feel right in a game like this.
And despite the cutesy visuals, the game can be surprisingly challenging. You think you have it completely figured out just for the next family to throw in a new twist that changes everything. The RNG can be frustrating and just plain unfair sometimes, but I'd take that over a boring scripted game every time.
There are a few balance issues and questionable design choices, like how some enemy waves randomly come out extremely compact, making AoE heroes overpowered and the normal ones borderline useless, or how quite a few of the cards are so situational you just end up beating the whole game and getting all achievements without ever picking them. But the developer is still active and drops a few tweaks pretty much every week, so it will probably get better with time.

I'd definitely recommend getting the bundle with Tiny Civilization (both are fully translated by the way). Both games are great and I'm looking forward to the next ones!
Posted 24 November, 2025.
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3 people found this review helpful
13.4 hrs on record (4.6 hrs at review time)
"Clean code" cultists in shambles!
THE CODE MUST SHRINK.
Posted 1 May, 2025.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
26.7 hrs on record (3.4 hrs at review time)
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Posted 1 December, 2024.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
815.0 hrs on record (692.3 hrs at review time)
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Posted 3 July, 2020. Last edited 28 November, 2023.
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Showing 1-5 of 5 entries