Recent reviews by Bird Cryptid

A game that rewards players for being skilled with their movement and pathing with satisfying movement, an interesting setting, and expertly executed stylistic choices. I cannot wait for more super structure to struggle to climb out of as I grip my computer mouse harder than I ever have before. Highly recommend for people looking for a first person rogue like experience focused on movement rather than combat that will have you thinking to yourself "Man I should have done Y instead of X" every time you fall, or sighing with relief at a risky move paid off all while you sweat bullets dangling meters away from death, The skill floor can be a little high which might make accessibility an issue for some people, but the game comes pre packed with a decent tutorial and an endless training facility for players to make themselves more familiar with how the game plays, the only thing I would change is not barring some of the endless modes behind completion of the game or its hard mode, for people who want to climb without the threat of being fused into something that very much wants you dead.

Really pretty game, hell of a lot of fun hunting down robotic dinosaurs, engaging story thats got me itching for the next game, whats not to love?

Didn't enjoy it, can't really recommend it, Im sure some people like it but unfortunately I am not one of them.

This game has an interesting concept that I like, but I honestly can't recommend it at this time. I do understand that its early access so I'm gonna talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly that this game has.

TLDR: Game has a cool setting, gameplay mechanics are frustrating, game is buggy, and QoL is extremely lacking in this game. Wait until its more developed and check reviews before purchase.

The bad (Why you shouldn't buy this game): I encountered a game crippling bug about 3 hours into the game playing casually. This was encountered while doing the stepping into darkness quest when I died to a dullard sneaking up behind me. I was halfway through the quest when I was no longer able to turn on the electrical boxes needed to unlock the door holding the blueprint. I tried restarting the game and that didn't work so I decided to just return to base and ready up for the next quest. Turns out I was unable to even do that as I was no longer able to interact with any of the crafting benches and was effectively soft locked due to a relatively minor mistake of allowing an enemy smack me from behind. In addition to this bug, there are bugs where reloading a checkpoint allows for ranged enemies to hit you through the walls before they are able to load in, and there is at least one wall in the shipping container town you can just walk through.

The Ugly: The story has an interesting premise, the execution of it seems a bit janky though, immediately calling an unknown character over the radio by name is a little jarring after a slightly odd animation of inspecting your hands for some reason when you pick up the radio. The player character does in fact have a reason to know the name of the radio contact and its frequency, but this is tucked away in the journal that I would have never encountered if I hadn't been looking around in the journal fragments for hints on how to get to the floral research facility. Only other oddity that sticks out to me is that Natasha (I think that's the name of the creature you encounter in the floral research facility) is mentioned to potentially have boobs for some reason? Maybe I missed similar quips in other enemy entries but this almost felt out of pocket with a lack of establishing the character as someone to make such quips. Either you should establish that they make these comments regularly about the things that try to kill them, or just remove the comment that basically destroys what I'd imagine is supposed to be a tense moment of you hiding from a mutant you are clearly not ready to fight when you look back at it.
Since it'd be easier to just list the QoL issues I had, here's a list
-Inventory management sucks, moving things from your inventory to storage is tedious as you have to re-select an item once the previous stack has been moved over one item at a time. Collecting plants from the hydroponics tables is annoying as you need to select the individual plant and harvest individually to the point I just stopped bothering during my short play through.
-Ladders are extremely annoying, seriously, having to put an input E to interact to get on makes sense, but having to climb up slowly with the sprint making it only barely faster, only to hit the top and stop to have to hit E again to start a slow animation to get off the ladder is frustrating and basically resulted in me finding any other way to get up or down from things if I could to save time. Thankfully ladders are generally avoidable, or rarely required.
-Combat, basically I did my best to run by everything I reasonably could, or if I needed to fight, did so boringly cheaply or by trapping enemies on geometry or in one case, the ground itself. The player fights slowly, enemies are kinda stupid, dodging isn't taught to the player and was discovered by accident. Dullards are way too tanky and hit way to hard. This is likely to encourage players to use Serums that give blunt resistance, but its honestly easier to just run in circles around them to lock them into a spinning around attack thats easy to avoid (while other attacks seemingly home in on the player) and just click until bad guy horizontal. Actual placement of the enemies is alright up until you reach the container town's greenhouse, where you get spammed with ranged enemies to just run past or do what I did, and kill them individually in the dark. The floral research facility however is a much different story, locking doors behind generators that activate the plant enemies. This is a great way to force the player into combat, except the execution is god awful as they also have Dullards which require your attention to safely fight while you get peppered from several angles by plant enemies waiting for you to turn on generators. Once you suffer your way through that you get more generators with more dullards, plants, and now tentarats for even more ranged damage. Get too far away from a Dullard while you're dealing with this and they will run back to their spawn point and instantly full heal once they reach it, prompting you to continue to retreat for net zero progress, or risk further damage chasing them down if theyre low enough to kill. This full heal happens regardless of how close the player is or how much health they have, once you proc their return to spawnpoint behavior they are going to blindly run back to heal. If youre lucky youll get them stuck on something they can't reach you behind and just kill them for free. Enemies do respawn but very slowly thankfully.
-Healing items such as bandages and painkillers should tell you that they are usable, not just 'don't use them' resulting in me scrapping a lot of supplies that would have made my life easier.
-Respawning is basically worthless in most situations. You can just quit to menu for free and then reload the last checkpoint which the game gives you plenty of. Its better than death being overly punishing, but losing your items because you died is easily bypassed by just jumping back in time and not having to deal with making serums to get your old stuff and continue on. I do appreciate though that respawning lets you keep weapons and serums though, this makes death a bad thing without being punishing with how bad combat is. I discovered this by accident when I overshot with my mouse and returned to menu when attempting to respawn, and then kept doing that afterwards.
-As mentioned by other reviewers, the games optimization needs some work. The gates work as good loading zones and hide this loading decently well, the biggest thing is just performance while actually playing. For clarity this game was being run on a hard drive and not an SSD.
-Pausing the game does not pause the timer. In game menus make sense, but if I'm hitting escape I've grown accustomed to being able to get up and take care of something.

The Good: I don't want to leave the review off with nothing but frustration and talking about the games failings. Its an early access title that appears to be shooting for triple A status/quality and is priced accordingly. I thought briefly about refunding but was getting enough fun out of it to keep playing up until my softlock encounter. The story premise is really strong, the enemy designs are interesting and fitting for the mutation theming, learning how to craft items by scrapping them is a great fallback incase you scrap an item you need later or cant find it. Resources respawn at I feel appropriate timings and the hydroponics farm has the potential to be massively useful if it weren't for how time consuming it was. The timer mechanic feels well done, giving players an incentive to return home eventually as well as making time a manageable resource. Pausing the timer at the home base as well is a massively good move. The visible changes to the players hands and arms as you distort more with each serum use is a good touch. I hope to see this game do well in the future.

Stayed very true to the original game, and felt like almost like I picked up the second book in a series with how well it transitioned from the first game to the second one. I absolutely love it and highly recommend it.
There's new mechanics to the game and how it plays, but it feel natural to the first one and is enjoyable. The way the game teaches you how to use new abilities that you pick up is great, It'll tell you the button and give you a good area to practice it.
The game is visually attractive and stunning, easily one of my favorite games in terms of how things look, Ill even stop and look around, something I don't often do outside of in games like Firewatch or Death stranding.
The sound is amazing, there was a lot of time and effort put into all the small details, and nothing has sounded out of place for this game.
Easily one of my favorite games and I plan on spending much more time playing it and exploring the world that is the Ori series.
One thing to note is that there is still some bugs here and there. While I praised the sound designed, there is still a bug with it involving movable boulders. I'm sure the devs will come out with and update and fix this things, but the game is still already a strongly recommended one from me.

A nice little game where when you start you don't expect to become attached to your colonists like everyone else says they do, but as you play more and more you being to care more and more for those 3 little people who's space ship crashed onto some random planet. You begin to worry when they are upset and smile when you see that they are in a good mood, and become aggressive to the other people on planet who are trying to steal from you just to survive. You feel sad when they die and happy when a new person joins you lovely little community. At that moment you begin to realize you also fell victim to caring for your colonist much like me and many other people have. They become your little children and you love each and every one, no matter how many are 70 year old women with Mohawks and machine guns running into battle against teenagers.

Great game, even for being 7 freaking years old! Nothing like fighting off teletubies while in a multi player match to watch an Elmo hunter dive arcoss your screen and pin that one team mate that has done ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for the team!

This game is one that won't leave you unsatisfied as it is brutally hard, and when you die you rarely get upset and think; "I could have done that instead" or "maybe that wasn't a good idea, I should avoid doing it again" (only time I've gotten upset is when I die fighting a bad medusa gang member, almost dieing, then getting killed by a stray dog)
1. The game is terrible when it comes to forgiving mistakes, which makes it brutally fun as you either get punished or punish others for making a bad move like attacking you without weapons while you have a large knife and the strong skill. It can also destroy you if you make a bad move and give you no chance to save yourself
2. The npcs seem player like, some either hunting you down and causing trouble just because they can, others thanking you for not trying to stab them while on their way to go do something. Some ignore you too. Great realism to how some people see, like they would act in an event like this
3. It's a hard game, both to learn and play when you at least think you have the ropes down, a pocketknife, and a yellow canary lighter in your jean pockets since your grocery bag is full of more grocery bags and food. And don't think "oh it must be the bad kind of hard because you need to learn stuff yourself and everything is brutal" since it's a fun game and the only time the game isn't hard is maybe the first few moves when absolutely nothing can move yet and get you. It's a good kind of hard that makes you feel warm with the feels for your characters health and well being as he try's to figure out what the ♥♥♥♥ happened and why he can't remember ♥♥♥♥.
4. Even when you think you got things going well it can still go bad. The run I was the most equipped on was ended by a dogman who was hungry for human flesh, mine to be specific after he killed an npc and ditched the body. This keeps you on your toes as you sneak from building to building hopping to find a crowbar or bow or at least a lighter while the building doesn't give away under your feet and you fall to your doom or fall down some stairs and hit your head, breaking your neck and dieing right away.
I live the game, also a great tip is don't take your necklace off, no gear, no matter how strong, is worth taking it off. If you need it that badly then make room for it.
Keep your yellow canary lighter close by and what ever odd tool turned melee weapon and named "mr head basher" or "stabby stabby craby" or "I dunno what the hell to name this" ready to bash/Stab what ever wanders close enough at night, even a deer or bunny

I LOVE the game... that is all i have to say... its simple, fun, and awesome rolled into a game... Its hard to explain it to someone who hasnt bought it so the best thing to do is try it out

Dont buy this game till they fix it! So I have couple things say. One the developers need to make a KEY MAP or something to tell players how to control their pirates who will get themselves stuck in a corner and ruin the game, make it easier to control the pirates, make it cheaper or better so its worth the 10 dollars, and they need to add a refuned button so if the players want to they can get their money back.