Recent reviews by Velvet

They did the impossible they made paper doll pixel art look good

So I'm just 3 hours in roughly. And I noticed theirs no reviews so I'll post my thoughts I'll probably come back and edit this properly later with a more well thought out review.

But my first impressions? It's kingdom rush but like 10x better. I never got hooked on kingdom rush but this game takes that formula and amps it up 10x.

Theres a lot more to do as the rounds are going on. All things considered even on normal difficulty theres a good amount of mid round management to keep you busy and the game isn't to punishing if you suck at that with 15-20 lives on every gamemode.

The main thing I think shines here is graphic design though and I don't say that because of cute girls. I say that because it makes this game "feel" so good. a lotta gamefeel is visual and audio and this game nails it in a way I haven't really seen from most tower defenses. I especially like the hero abilities that are a targeted strike on a small area they are soooo punchy I love using them.

Theres also a lotta meta progression, it's simplistic admittedly but I don't really have to big a problem with that. But towers have a general skill tree with like 3 points for each tower (Not much room for build crafting because of that admitedly) and heros have a slightly more interesting skill tree where you can upgrade their 3 main abilities with points and choose how far to invest in upgrading one skill compared to others.

The levels also ooze charm everyone seems to either be full of small easter eggs or a gimmick specific to the level, it's basically btd6 style gimmick and easter egg level design but done on almost every level.

Now normally this is where I would include my problems with the game but I'm only 3 hours in and genuinely have none so far I'll come back when I eventually find some gripes with this game just to keep the review more fair then mindless praise but for now the first impression is VERY strong.

- Post Completion Edit -

So I just finished the game. beat everything on hard mode and did every challenge, took about 17 hours. I guess long story short do I have any gripes, yes but very very few most is small polish related things rather then actual serious issues, for instance theres a fire tower but when buying a tower a different tower group uses fire as its sprite causes me to get confused and buy the wrong type of tower. This wouldn't be to annoying but for some reason you can't sell a tower instantly after buying it, you need to walk away and walk back to the shrine where you buy/sell towers for some reason.

Pretty much all of my complaints are stuff like this, and even then there aren't many cases what i listed is by far the most annoying examples but its no where close to deal breaker for me.

The game is just incredibly polished and addicting to play, the progression feels good and satisfying to which is really nice. It's based off kingdom rush but the design philosophy itself from the meta progression to the active gameplay requiring you to pay attention start to finish feel much more like plants vs zombies to me then kingdom rush. It's definitely its own twist on the genere then either of those two but if you like one of them i could easily see you liking this.

It's an easy recommend for me, probably the biggest hidden gem i own right now unless this catches on in the coming months.

This is a weird one. I put off buying this for a while I don't know why in hindsight the price is so cheap it's hard to not recommend it unless it actively breaks your computer.

But hey maybe 2$ is a lot for you sometimes it is right?

The games shockingly good. Short about 2 hours for 1 playthrough though.

I do have some gripes with this game like how much of a pain in the ass replaying it to see the other ending is (I literally pulled it up on youtube because i didn't want to waste another 2 hours of my life.) And honestly at the start the story can be hard to follow. But it comes together into something beautiful at the end.

I hear some people call this game "pretentious" and a "I'm 14 and this is deep" which admitedly isn't to far off at times. lol. But most philosophy comes off cheesy when you've heard it before. If your new to the thing or just a sucker for philosophy presented with anime flair its hard to call it a down side in my book.

The story itself though when it stops being a cheesy philosophy book and focuses on its main theme really speaks to me though its just a lovely short read.

This is really a great game. I'm not a fan of most games inspired by balatro. They just lack the polish of it. And this is no different the ui and sound design are laughable in comparison to balatro but the gameplay itself? Actually really, REALLY good.

Basically think of every chess gimmick and variant concept posted online ever thrown into one game.
That sounds stupid. It is. Its lovely.

You also might be thinking "its chess that ♥♥♥♥♥ hard" and you would be right but this game has so much room for casuals that don't know a single thing about chess from a limited set of undos to easier chess bot ais. It's just really beginner friendly.

It's stupid fun easy recommend for me

Its a creature collector and does the main things that involves very well, easy recommend if your a fan of the genre. That said this game does have some pretty big flaws. The biggest being the story if you play rpgs for the story I cannot stress enough dont even bother lol.

The story has next to no reoccering characters the writing of the few characters you speak to is all bland and boring. The "story" is just to guide you place to place through events that are sometimes just loosely connected. Theres no twists and turns, theres no grand mystery unfolding, theres no reason to sit down in the middle of things and ask "what are x's intentions" or any other common thought well crafted storys bring.

But the bar for creature collectors is a lot lower then most rpgs and I cant say this is any worse then some others I enjoy. But dont go in expecting an indie masterpiece.

Story driven platformers. Not a common genre but this game is executed surprisingly well. The platformer is based around a grappling hook mechanic and is by far the most polished grappling hook mechanic I have seen from a platformer. It expands on it in interesting ways and I really can’t complain much on the gameplay front.

The story is where things both get more interesting and more cracks start to show.

The presentation ranges from super solid to forgetting to add spaces to text. Like this is a bit more gameplay related but there is one enemy where when you die the screen fades to white only to abruptly fade to black then putting you back in the game which just hurt my eyes and took up a ton of time to get back into the game. The ending contains one of the best quotes in the game you're seeing in reviews regarding innocence but it comes from a text dump where they spell the story out for you point blank in case you were too dumb to understand what happened up to that point...

This isn't to say the story is bad, it's very memorable and when the game hits. My god it hits. But it’s not the spotless presentation you get out of some games and I had slightly higher expectations than what I received thanks to the 98% positive rating at the time of playing this.

That said, this game is a good platformer, with a fairly engaging story and a complete steal for 15$.

So this game is complicated. A little history for why my playtime wont line up with what I say. I played this game a few years ago and put it down because I had more important things to attend to only to return to it recently. Now the review.

To put it simply this game exceeds at everything it attempts. The story is great, visuals are amazing with some of the highest quality pixel art you can get, and gameplay is snappy and fun. The game plays almost like a puzzle game with you needing to figure out how to approach each room to kill all the enemies. So to put it simply this game is great.

But, it's really short. I finished the game after playing for 4.5 hours. Which for a 20$ price is awfully short even for me which normally doesn’t mind as long as the game’s good, which again this is very good. But it's hard to recommend outside of a sale because of the price.

This game also has the potential to annoy some people with its ending. How do I say this? It gives a conclusion that I personally find satisfying, but does leave some loose ends and a blatant “TO BE CONTINUED” screen. All for a DLC that has no release date even 5 years after the games launch. With the last update simply being gameplay of level 1, 1 year ago. Though I was able to find a post by one of the game's artists on Mar 5, 2024 showing some Aseprite files that could be for the game, but its vague enough I can’t say for sure it's directly related to Katana Zero.

The current ending isn’t any worse then most games that leave room open for a squeal matter of fact I think it's better than most games that leave room for a squeal. But if you are wanting an ending with no loose ends whatsoever, you're in the wrong place.

TLDR: Its a great short game with a more open ending. If you don’t mind a quality over quantity approach go for it, can’t recommend it unless your one of those people.

Its a more casual ark that had a baby with pokemon, with a hint of automation. This is far, far better then I ever thought it would be, possibly my new favorite creature collector if we're not counting my person sentimental attachment to a few titles.

Just don't go in expecting an RPG, this isn't "pokemon with guns" as much as its "ark with pokemon... and guns"

I went into this game expecting nothing more then pixel art eye candy. Instead got one of the highest quality games I've played in a while and one that has permanently changed my opinion on turn based combat.

The visuals of this game are stunning its everything you could hope for a AAA pixel art title. Animations are so abundant that NPCs ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BLINK. This game really made me realize how much pixel art games rely on visually implying actions instead of animating them. Not to mention this game is full of sprites of all resolutions, you fan of classic 16x32 npc sprites well you get a ton of those, a fan of more modern massive 80x+ sprites well this game has more then I have ever seen in a game before. This title is next to flawless visually speaking I only saw 1 graphical bug and 1 case of clipping in my entire play through.

But the combat system blew me away in this game more then anything else. I personally though turn based combat systems could never match the excitement, the adrenaline of its action combat counter part. Not that I dislike turn based combat it just has always felt more like a chess match then anything else. But this game slapped me in the face and called me an idiot. Not just does this have the classic min maxing you expect from turn based titles but it's fast paced, every character plays completely differently and the BP Guard and latent power systems make this game so satisfying to play. The boss battles also easily run away with some of my favorite in the genre, the music, story and gameplay come together to create amazing moments. And Throné's final boss had me laughing with joy at how over the top it was gameplay wise, easily becoming one of the most memorable turn based combat encounters I've ever had.

The stories are also all solid. Very much play into JRPG tropes but quite frankly if your looking at this game I doubt you have a problem with that. The character writing is super strong every character has completely different mannerisms both vocal and physical, which doesn't sound like much but so many games fail to do this, but when done it makes every character so charming to watch.

I really only have 2 complaints.

A: The party doesn't interact with each other much. The individual stories are strong enough I don't go crazy over this but the second you start doing crossed pathed missions you immediately go "I wish there was more of this"

B: the final chapter isn't bad but its really short. The villains don't really get time to grow into their roll and it all just happens at once. Not to say it's bad whats written I actually quite like, this kinda grand plot tying 8 stories together as you see the subtle influence the big bad has had this whole time is really cool. It just needed more time to breath and because they didn't give it that it goes from a potentially great story to fairly average.

That said those complaints are far from bad enough for me to leave a negative review this game is so fun and has attention to detail everywhere, and the sound track is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ killer, I haven't been satisfied by a sound track like this since playing Nier Automata last year. This title is a must play if your a fan of more traditional 2D RPGs or simply want to see the most visually appealing pixel art game in the industry.