Recent reviews by Offriender

This game was a good find. At its core, it's "XCOM with swords", but the devs have put a lot of work into making it its own thing.

The tips say that if your plan failed because of bad luck, then maybe it wasn't such a good plan. It seems, then, that the only good plan is not to play.

I talk to the brothers and encourage them during strings of bad luck. "It's okay," I tell them as they miss a shot they had a better than 50% chance of making, 8 times in a row. "You'll get them next time. You won't survive to try again, but I will."

Games like this remind me that I only have one life and I shouldn't waste it.

When I realized that this was made by the creator of MoneySeize and had much of the same mechanics, I thought to myself, "I hate this game and I hate its creator". MoneySeize is a free online game with a similar goal of climbing, jumping, and collecting, and it was absolutely not made for me. It was made for Major League Gaming types who can do pixel-perfect jumps with split-second accuracy several times in a row without a moment to pause on a platform and think about your next move. Only a very niche audience will finish.

I'm happy to say this game is playable and keeps the challenge that Matt Makes Games puts in his games without going overboard, although there are options to go overboard if you so desire. The core mechanics of jumping, dashing, and wall climbing are satisfying by themselves and each chapter has its own mechanic so the platforming doesn't get stale. (I particularly like the star blocks in Chapter 2. Using them just feels nice.) There are hard modes and things to collect for the completionist, but (unless the game is lying to me) the collectible strawberries are just for show and they don't unlock anything. That's an unusual design decision but I think it was the right one, because most people who want to play a difficult platformer like this are going to try to get them anyway.

You don't see FPS roguelikes very often but Blue Manchu somehow made it work.

I appreciate the fact that it runs well with low system requirements.

Great take on sports games. Supergiant's artist is amazing. I like it.

I think this is a great game but there are too many bugs that break it. I could see myself highly recommending this after a patch or two, but as it is, the player has to be very patient and willing to restart a day over a random bug in order to make the progress they feel they've earned, and that's not a good kind of frustration for a game to bring.

There are other games that flow in a similar vein to this but I feel like I don't have a word for them. It's kind of like Papers, Please or This War of Mine in that the gameplay consists of frantically completing day-to-day tasks and dealing with unforseen disruptions, but there's an overarching goal throughout it all. I wouldn't compare it to a casual game like Diner Dash because it's about surviving, not growing your empire. As a beat cop on this busy New York street, you have to clear your name of a theft you were framed for, while handling quotas and calls from your precinct, and trying not to piss off the local gangs too much.

Unlike the other games I compared it to, this one has more of a humorous bent, and its aesthetic was clearly inspired by the 80's, in the same way Hotline Miami was. The pixel art works really well with its tiny details to give it a really nice retro feel.

There's a lot to do every day and it may not be possible to do it all-- especially when you have to respond to a robbery on the opposite end of the street. That said, sometimes you'll feel cheated by the bugs when you do every step of an objective perfectly and the game says you missed it, or when you show up for a meeting at 4:00 but the game already made it happen at 3:00. These things made me wish I had waited a month or two, or however long a patch takes, to get this game.