Recent reviews by Rogue Fox

I think it's fair to call this game a very cozy zachtronics-like with an incredibly unique core mechanic!
The integrated community (CubeNet) is fun to explore and see what others have come up with. (Btw, this community is insanely talented!!!)

I look forward to updating this review and changing my recommendation to a positive one once the game's state improves. It has great potential with a fantastic story and atmosphere... I just hope they get the change to fix the many problems with the gameplay before it dies or is abandoned...

The recent patch has fixed a lot of the issues that were game-breaking. While there's still plenty to fix, it's a huge step in the right direction and shows to me they want to make it work! I'm changing to a positive recommendation!

The publisher, with it's inexplicable decisions, was called Humble Games. But it's desire to push a game out of Early Access too soon, brought that game to ruin. Humble Games' greed... it is boundless.

Jokes aside, I REALLY want to love this game! I am in fact, in love with its potential and lore and I can't wait to play more in future updates! Right now, it's still a little buggy (after their first post launch update, before that it was nearly unplayable). The lore and world building is amazing and immersive, and the movement is really fun- especially the puzzles sometimes built around it!

If you can put up with a few bugs, I'd consider this a fun one to stick with. Consider it still in early access though, as it's far from ready for a 1.0 release :/

An absolute joy to play with friends!!! Super fun working together to find a way up and pooling your scarce resources, only to have barely enough to push just 1 member of your party to the peak! Very silly, kinda challenging, extremely fun!

I'll come back to edit this once these issues have been addressed, but there are some issues with the saving / loading right now. I really love the idea and atmosphere of this game, and look forward to changing this review to a recommendation, and continuing my playthrough (or starting anew if needed).

There are some character features that aren't actually saved, such as eye color (that I've noticed are missing from the save file), and several things that don't seem to load correctly in the world itself. This includes quests that have been completed acting as if they've never been done, resources that shouldn't be able to respawn coming back on load.

It's a lovely game, but right now if you want to save and come back, be ready for bugs to occur unfortunately.

I love Sniper Elite and figured after playing all the others, I should give the OG a shot even though it's pretty and it shows...

I wasted my entire weekend on that... It's not an 'old but good' game... it's not even an 'old but bad' game. It's a horrendous game (if you play through on Sniper Elite difficulty).

I have absolutely NO idea how this got any sequels, but I'm deeply glad it did because those are wonderful games. Get the rest, skip the first.

I've just been informed that one of the big frustrations, the ice-skating movement... that's a bug and not intended apparently? Interesting. Despite that, I still have significant gripes with the enemy omnipotence at times combined with their ranged accuracy while hipfiring a damn lmg from 200m.

How have I not left a review for this game yet?!!

This game is fantastic, especially with friends! Learning the dangers of the various environments and enemies, while also experimenting with new builds has been an unbelievably enjoyable experience!

What I want to praise most, is the GSG dev team behind this beauty! They are, in my honest opinion, the "platinum standard" that any and all dev teams should aspire to be!

Outcore... Where do I begin? In my opinion, it's a beautiful meta-game combining some wonderful storytelling with a lot of very neat tricks making it a meta-game. In short, I can't recommend this game enough, especially because it's 'free'. I say that in quotes because, yes, you can play it through 100% for free, but I would also recommend one of the supporter packs. Not because of what's in the packs, but because this game had a lot of soul poured into it and it shows.


Without spoiling the game, I'll say there's 2 types of gameplay. There's the meta-game which you are greeted with right off the bat, introducing you to the game in such a way as to tell the player 'Hey, this is going to be filled with a few neat tricks! Pay attention, because we sure are!'. The second type of gameplay is both a platformer and a lot of storytelling. This is also where a lot (and I do mean a lot) of references are made to games similar to this one, such as Undertale, Megaman (right?), Celeste, Danganronpa, My Hero Academia (not a game I know), Doki Doki Literature Club, and plenty others I believe.


Outcore is about recovering the memories of Lumi (who is in my opinion, one of the most adorable characters every and I wish I could keep her around forever). While the order in which you recover the memories isn't quite chronological, it tells the story of Lumi travelling to her world's edge, and literally leaping into the void of nothing in search of what's beyond her own world. The reason for her memory loss is because of this process causing her to repeat her memories an uncountable number of times, recalling her journey to get here and driving her mad. This resulted in Lumi's memories being fragmented and scattered across your computer's filesystem until the two of you recover them.

Similarly to another of my favorite games, OneShot, Lumi will eventually ask for your guidance on an incredibly difficult decision. And similar to that same game, I have only made the one decision I too, would have myself made if I were Lumi. In the end, Lumi decides she will make a new world, a virtually infinite world, for everyone who lived in her world; to explore at their will, preventing them from suffering her previous fate of near insanity for a small infinity. After this, she awaits the player to be ready for her to make her last decision with the player. She says because she's the one who created the new world, there's little reason to explore it. She wants to instead explore the internet, and will have to leave you behind. When she does, she will complete the cycle that set her on this path by taking a screenshot of your desktop, and sending it to the new version of herself, in the world she's from. This sets up the game from the beginning, ready to be played again.

I love this game for two and a half reasons. The half reason, is the gameplay of the platforming sections. I really did come to enjoy it quite a lot, though it's only a half reason because it's nothing in comparison to the other two. The first major reason was the technical implementations of the game and its meta-game components. I truly loved how the game itself is specifically about breaking the 4th wall having Lumi interact with your desktop, the windows on it, and the filesystem even! The references within the platforming segments are also wonderful, and might have inspired me to go back and start an Undertale run I actually finish haha. The second major reason, is the story and how it's told. My favorite game of all time, is Nier Automata and that's almost entirely because of the story as well as how it's told. While this game's story doesn't have nearly the same intense theme of grief and loss, it does have a wonderful theme of curiosity and suffering. Not the sadistic kind, but the kind brought on by one's own actions which, while incredibly painful and frightening, they overcome with the help of others and a desire to sacrifice for others(a theme brought on in the very final act of Nier Automata which I loved so much... RIP my save). The way the story is told in a non-linear fashion, such as her dad's behavior being explained towards the end, is beautiful and a bit heart wrenching to me at the same time (for that, I love it).

Outcore is a beautiful way of telling a wonderful story, and unlike other 'games' which attempt to base themselves largely around storytelling and small gimmicks, this one has done so in a way that is well deserving of both high praise, and payment. Unlike a lot of other free games, this Outcore truly has the developer's souls poured into it, and I can't praise them enough for allowing people to experience it for free. (If you feel even a quarter as enthusiastic as I do for this game, go ahead and grab a supporter pack!)

I went over the character limit on my first attempt... I'll make this quick since I wasted the last 30m typing that last attempt up. If Steam had a rating system besides +/-. I'd give this ☻☻☻☺☺ (3/5) for the potential it clearly holds. But I can't recommend it in its current state sadly.

I (probably like many others) was expecting an experience similar to Barotrauma, with some refined and unique mechanics based around the new environment we'll be working with. Unfortunately, the only similarities between the two games appear to be the atmosphere (kinda... but Baro certainly does this on a whole different level), and the general appearance of the games are rather similar (though again, Baro looks a bit more refined but that could be due to the limited opportunities you have to really observe the terrain in Baro).

What Hidden Deep delivers on, is a remarkably clunky game with so much promise to it! From the many issues with basic movement (usually centered around ledge and other interactions), to equipping tools and weapons, to the very physics of the game at times... The game shows so much promise, but every time I found something good to point out, there were att least 2 other 'clunk' factors that got in the way.

I want to not just like this game, but love it, as it really has a lot of potential! But there are a few major things that need to change for that to happen.

1. Have some play testers go through the game and take their feedback / make some serious changes to many aspects of how certain actions are performed. Hopefully this will help in removing a lot of the 'clunkiness' from the game that I personally find is holding it back.

2. Have those same play testers give feedback on how well they felt information was presented to the player, as well as look out for potential soft-lock issues (I found at least 1 where you're given a team member who has an O2 tank, and that tank doesn't refill on death).

3. The physics when it comes to multiple dynamic objects interacting (and sometimes just a long dynamic object such as a box or moving crane platform) need some double checking. For example, stacking boxes in the back of a truck.... let's just say they don't stack. And setting a moving crane platform down on a slope in such a way will result in it pinging off with some significant force. Furthermore... driving a vehicle off a moving crane platform often results in the platform moving out from under the vehicle as if the platform had absolutely no inertia.

4. Online multiplayer. If the game had multiplayer (not just local splitscreen), I would've spent quite some time with a few friends playing this and probably enjoying some of these bugs and silly deaths together. Instead, it's less endearing to encounter these repeated bugs or clunky issues alone. Also, this seems like such a great game to play through with friends! Imagine the first time you're baited underneath a that Half Life 2 style ceiling leech that just slurps you up and kills you, but now your friends got to see it happen right in front of them and are terrified hahahahaha!

With about 17 hours playing with friends, I can confidently say $10 is very well worth it!

It's incredibly fun, with several characters who I still have yet to fully explore. I'd say points to look for improvement going forward include:

1. Improve civilian movement to include occasional side-strafing, perhaps looking at a different target for a moment while moving to a point.
   
   
2. Optimize the poly-count of certain objects. Seriously, I'm running a 3060TI and looking at the small model ships on one of the maps drops my frame rate to below 40fps. It can also dip on the first map pretty bad when looking from the indoor balcony out to the lobby.
   
   
3. Additional maps. After about 17 hours, I'm beginning to get a good feel for where everything is on certain maps (namely the casino as that's the perfect layout and size for a group of 4-6 friends playing). However, the game's only $10 right now, and there is a workshop with loads of maps. If more were to be added in the future, I'd expect a price increase and it would honestly be understandable.
   
   
4. Allow Vigil cam alerts to be 'acknowledged' in some way so that a dead body doesn't constantly ping a vigil cam, or allow cops to move bodies so the cam doesn't constantly ping.
   
   
5. ADS in the gunplay is a bit wonky, often zooming the camera in without the actual sight picture until a second or two later. Just a small bug, and I'm nitpicking at this point.

This is a great game, I highly recommend getting with your friend group, peer-pressuring them into getting this game, and having several hours of fun executing the dumbest of heists, making ridiculous plays, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about with eachother.

First and foremost, this game's sound track and story are beyond outstanding! I've only played through once, but I'm certainly going to go back and see what other story lines I can get and I can't wait.

Secondly, the combat is surprisingly satisfying and very enjoyable. I wasn't sure at first if I even wanted to keep the game, as the controls were one of the things that were difficult to adjust to. Once I did manage to adjust, I found myself enjoying combat a great deal, and experimented with several different fighting styles. I'd recommend playing on the normal difficulty, as it felt like enough of a challenge without being frustratingly difficult (less than 5 deaths through my playthrough, but it wasn't all easy).

Now the visuals. The game in my opinion, is a bit of a mix between stunning visuals, and some lackluster ones. When it comes to effects and lighting, the game truly looks quite nice. The character and weapon design is incredible as well, but the scenery is where there is room for improvement. The buildings specifically are what could use some touching up, with those standard early 2000's repeating textures observable on larger structures. However, another positive... the camera. It was somewhat jarring at first, having the camera jumping around and locking itself, but it doesn't do this nearly as often as in the first 'tutorial' area, and it was used very well imo.

Lastly, and this is the main negative of the game. If you're going to play this on PC, you need to do 2 things. Firstly, you need to be comfortable using a gamepad (controller). I didn't try mouse and keyboard, but I'm almost certain the experience would've been more... difficult that way. The one exception to that would be aiming your ranged weapon, as a mouse would certainly make this easier.

The second thing, is to download and install a fix for the game's port to PC. Yes, it will run without this, but it won't be as enjoyable of an experience if you ask me. This fix includes a number of tools for improvement in the game, but the primary fix here, is the framerate. The game is capped at 60fps (I don't understand why developers do this when the game's physics don't seem to be tied to a framerate), and it doesn't hold that very often. Since the combat requires quite a bit of reacting to incoming attacks and some careful positioning, the unreliable framerate really makes things more frustrating than fun.

Here's a direct link to the installer ( Installer [github.com]). Download and run this after installing Nier Automata from Steam, and it'll run with the game as normal. Ctrl + Shift + Bkspc will open the interface, after which you want to find and toggle the box that says it will remove the 60fps frame cap limit. There's some other settings you can fiddle around with, such as lowering the lighting (recommended if you're running somewhat slow).

If you wanna check this out, it's called FAR (Fix Automata Resolution) and there's a Steam guide for it here .