Recent reviews by VariablyGeeky

I am neutral to this game largely I would say but lean more toward do not recommend considering their newer game is more enjoyable. I saw what I am about to say as someone that 100%ed both this and the newer game.

Skip STRAIGHT to the latest game from them, Boxes: Lost Fragments. It was a much more enjoyable game, albeit much shorter around 4-5 hours and would mostly recommend on sale. This game feels dated and hollow. I completed this game to complete it by somewhere around Chapter 2 it started to feel empty and like I was doing much or solving much.

There are 3 chapters, but the third chapter feels almost like they had 2-3 levels they wanted to put in the game but had to justify a third chapter to do so. Chapter 3, Level 13 is effectively a duplicate of a previous chapter down to nearly every move (unless I had a bug) and at least the last third of Chapter 3 feels like they rushed it and just reused concepts from previous puzzles, made it so you barely had to do much manipulation of objects, and the final levels were a conglomeration of puzzles from previous levels... in which even then of a collection of 5, they made 2 the same one puzzle and 2 others the same puzzle, not even making each one unique and a true overview of the previous logic puzzles.

You could feel the puzzles kind of fall apart as the game progressed by even the sense that in Chapter 1 if there were 2 locks on a door, you had to find 2 keys. So by the time you get to chapter 3, that thinking is still in your head. Except, they started to let you re-use objects. Now, this is great, except it feels much more for the reason of the devs didn't want to hide a second key to be found and you spend time still looking for a second key since there are two locks forgetting that you can now use the same key on both locks. This was definitely my fault in my line of thinking, but a line of thinking the devs had created by the way they designed the first levels.

In the end, this game definitely feels not so thought out, like the devs lost their interest in making levels for the game but felt forced to add more content, and like the ported mobile game it is. Now, for quick levels to do a bit at a time, this is great. It's just the FEELING of it feeling like a mobile game mixed with everything else that largely makes me say skip this title. However, if you can get it on massive sale and enjoy mindless logic puzzles that you want to fill your time with it's not a bad game to play through on the side. But there are better logic puzzle games out there worth your money, including games that came out days apart from this game and are a much better experience and make you think more. It's at least worth playing the Demo!

Do I recommend this game? That's a hard yes or no question.

I played shortly after official release and I really enjoyed playing with people. Players were usually willing to work together and rarely came across lonewolf players.

Fast forward about 1-2 months after release and you could FEEL the queue times. Looking at states on steamDB revealed this game officially launched at under half of it's early access launch and despite devs attempts at player injection, players just keep leaving.

I can't say I blame them as it does not feel the devs actually care about majority of players and are hard focused on turning this into an esports tournament title now. They stopped short of enough events that would have rewarded long term players enough in game currency to get the Season 1 Battle Pass for free (I was 10 VP away) and updates seem to come when it just feels too late. For example, you can multi-queue now instead of choosing only one game type you can be thrown into which ever fills more. However, that was needed halfway through Season 1 as long queue times started making themselves feel felt. This is only made worse by the restrictions in match making the further up in ranks you get.

If you have some time and want to check it out, it's not overly hard to jump into but you should expect to wait and at this point I am not confident this game will continue to be supported. At least in any capacity that is for casual players. The launch of Season 2 only saw a boost from around 700->1300 for about a week before it dropped back down and continues to fall. This is far from the 15,000 players the game saw upon official release and nearly 50,000 players the game saw over the first month it hit Steam Early Access.

At this point, while they continue to update it largely feels like the casual player base is not important and that feels makes it less appealing to invest more time into the game. But it's worth checking out for a short bit to say you played it, while you can.

This game sells itself largely on TCG aspect that has become popular, except that it hardly implements it. Even when you find cards the accomplishment and feel good vibes are severely lacking.

This game would be better served being called "Landfill Simulator: Find, Collect, Sell"

The bird addition seems like it was added for extra something for no reason. Maybe developer really likes birds? Or is trying to send a message about the loss of bird life in landfills? However, you aren't giving much other than "put bird in nest; here is a little about said bird". EDIT: After reading the latest release date post, it turns out I was right in that it is about raising awareness about birds. However, two things must happen. The dev has to talk about this more in the game and make this known that there is a purpose to it. But before doing this, the core concepts of the game need to be expanded and improved because it seems right now more like this message was jammed into a game they were already making or made a base game to raise awareness. I am not sure the intentions from playing the game and I should.

The birds don't really add to the experience in my experience. The gameplay is already lacking. In the 2 piles I cleared in about 2 hours I found 3 cards in the first pile and 1 card in the second. Again, the TCG aspect of it is severely under-rewarding and shouldn't be a core marketing mechanic in the title (even if it is funny). It's not like you were given a binder and told what cards you previously had and got to fill them in, they randomly go into a binder and while there is rarity to them, there is no value to them. It's not like you can sell duplicates you had or anything like that. I feel misled when it comes to the TCG aspect of this game.

The cart was unusable as it would not hold items. The Dog when I eventually figured out where that came into play was not useful as 90% of the time even though it said $30 for the use of dog it would tell me I did not have enough money even though I had over $100. The Dog also seems like a cop out and I mimic some other players when I said I would rather have additional tools for pick up or have the dog help fill a bag. $30 also seems very unbalance since it will come back with a valuable with at least 2X value and I feel this kind of defeats the purpose especially if you can keep doing this for $30. Seems like it maybe was implemented in case you couldn't find a valuable and you needed it and didn't want to search the landfill or were out of money. Which, doesn't really matter as you can go in the negative buying energy.