Recent reviews by TotalPleb

An extremely fun roguelike, where the upgrades you take change the way your character appears. It's quite good.

A lot of fun! Grab a friend who isn't awful at communicating and have yourself a blissful 45 minutes of jolly cooperation.

This is an incredibly fun premise, I look forward to what future updates may hold!

This is a markedly short game, with very little in the means of captivating writing and interesting mysteries.

The use of AI-generated content is fully disclosed by the developers, and they seem to have a reason to use it. So I won't mark it against them, but it certainly doesn't do this game any favours.

The voice-work is also subpar, with the player-narrator mispronouncing multiple words and failing to lend their emotions to the work well.

There are moments when things shine through, some of the puzzles are interesting, and the journal/spellbook idea is probably the best of the lot. It is, unfortunately, underutilised. With the addition of more nouns and verbs, needing to reference your spellbook in real time for combat or puzzle solving? It could be the basis of a genuinely interesting game. Alas, the shortness of the game prevents it from ever really getting to evolve to that point.

In my personal opinion, this game would serve better being free-to-play, as all the above complaints I had are really only as this is a paid product. It is obviously not wrong for a developer to want to be paid for their work, but The Nameless City does not feel like a product worth the price of entry.

A very charming demo. I had feared the gimmick would be just that- But judging by the quality of the puzzles in this demo such fear is unfounded. I would recommend this game to anyone looking for a puzzle platformer.

Though, I personally hope that the full release does more with the claymation, as it feels as though they simply have modelled the character then used squash and stretch to flavour their motions instead of animating them directly.

Whoever decided to have delivery target for the Courier's Ration be able to cause damage to the Courier's Ration is going directly to hell.

I do not often write negative reviews, but in this case I'm making an exception.

I am a fan of Elden Pixels other works, specifically the duo of Alwa's games, these have always struck me as exceptionally good examples of a Platformer done right.

This is an exceptional example of a Platformer done incorrectly.
The biggest sins this game commits is in having no interesting mechanics and a simple and boring story, that alone should disqualify it for purchase.

But I will lay out all my complaints, in the hopes that it helps someone.

Movement
Movement feels unnecessarily sluggish, especially during the multitude of times when the player will be moving boxes around. In addition, movement is never iterated upon, no item later in the game grants you the ability to run, double jump or otherwise do anything other than amble about the screen. The platforming itself is stupidly easy, the player is never asked to do anything even slightly challenging platforming on their journey through the game.

Items
All except one item in this game is a key. Crowbar? Key that opens barricaded doors. Jerry Can? Key that solves ONE puzzle. Rope? Key that opens downwards doors. It lacks substance, especially when you consider the mandatory backtracking one has to do after acquiring these items. I cannot fathom why such a decision was made, it lowers the players agency and serves only to pad the run time of this game.
And then there's the Flare Gun. Which, should you choose to play, will be the first and only item you collect which does something other than open doors. It does that too, but it also is used for...

Combat
Your Flare Gun is slow and clunky, to the point where you will most likely opt to avoid encounters with the 'Empties' whenever you can. When you use the Flare Gun, your movement is fully halted, and you have to slowly wait while a bar fills up so that you can shoot it. Why is it like this? It is just meaningless padding to an already slow gameplay loop.
There are also only three enemy types throughout the entire game.

Puzzles
Or the lack thereof. Flick a switch, shoot a circuit breaker, push a box. This is all every puzzle boils down too, there are never any moving parts, never anything more complex than 'Move the box first, the shoot the switch'. It is actually baffling that this has come from the same studio that made the Alwa's games, which had this stuff so effectively handled.
And then there are the snake puzzles. Now look, I could give everything else a pass and say 'oh, this game must be intended for people who don't play very many games', but then these puzzles exist to spit in that sentiments face. You are essentially asked to play Snake with 2-frame windows to input each move, which is so far out of whack with the rest of what the game has you doing that it boggles the mind.

The Story Spoiler warning.
There are around eight cutscenes that have dialog in them, and of those, four are the male lead repeating 'cabin in the forest' and seven are the female lead repeating 'I have to save everyone.'
It is clearly the writer's intention to set up a story of noble sacrifice, but the characters are given next to no time to be fleshed out, so it ends falling on it's face.
Additionally, END GAME SPOILERS If you spend the entire game being told a character is going to die for the sake of everyone around them, only to pull the 'everyone lived' ending, then that is just bad writing.
And they save everyone with the power of love. I wish I were joking.
In regards to environmental storytelling, there isn't any. Bar a few morgue tables set up in random sewers. You never hear about how the world is reacting to the 'Empties' or the disease, which may have actually been interesting, instead opting for every NPC in the game to have no dialog at all.

And as a final note, this game is listed at a higher price then Alwa's Legacy. Which it is absolutely not worth.

If you want the same type of gameplay and story, but with better overall quality, play The Final Station instead. It even costs less than this trainwreck.

And devs? I really expected better of you.

An incredibly snappy platformer. The controls are simple but hide a tonne of depth.
Each room is it's own unique puzzle, some of which have a specific element which isn't used again in the game.
The power-ups are awarded based on total collected pumpkins, so you are never punished for going against the obvious path- In fact, you can beeline straight for the final area right at the start of the game and start doing most of the hardest challenges immediately. How you solve certain rooms will change based on which power-ups you've attained, so there is a bit of replayability involved in getting certain pumpkins with or without double jump/sprint.
It's extremely condensed- You'll beat the game in under 2 hours playing blind. But the game says it's piece very well during that.
And you simply will not find a better platformer at this price-point, either.
Seriously, pick this one up, it's fantastic.

Short and sweet. There's only about 15 minutes of content here, but it's an excellent display of atmospheric art. The ambience and setting are phenomenal, exploring the house of a purported suicide victim at night and in the rain.

The puzzles aren't that difficult, but it's fine. It feels like the tutorial level to a much larger detective game.

There are a few grammatical errors in the notes, but it doesn't really take you out of things.

In short; this seems like an awesome stepping stone for the developer to create more games in this genre, and I hope they choose to do so!

This is a very enjoyable game with a great deal of customisation available for different playstyles. Combat is deep and thought provoking, and the different classes offer many different solutions to the problems it presents.

The difficulty system is extremely in depth and at it's highest levels offers and incredibly challenging experience that one must truly have mastered the mechanics to be able to beat.

The overworld gameplay is interesting in it's own right, with navigation very similar to the overworld boat segments of Donkey Kong Country 3, though far more expansive, and with an interesting combat system based on traditional naval combat. (Cannons on the broadside, etc.)

I highly recommend this game if you are a fan of tactics games like Into The Breach, XCOM or any of the other SteamWorld games.

This game easily places among the best Souls-likes. In it's price range? It's hands down the best.

The only downside is that it isn't that long, but boy, the you will not regret the time you spend with this game.