Recent reviews by aetherspoon

I quite love this game - it is basically a reverse Simcity or reverse Factorio. I close my eyes and I see the grid to figure out where to place my cone filter. The extra content is excellent.

In general, if you enjoy builder games but also want to have a very satisfying time to some very relaxing music as you clean up a depleted world? Buy. Worth it at full price.

Really, my only complaints are:
1. The controls for Erw1n are... not obvious. I took almost an hour to figure out how to control the bot. The fact that Erw1n doesn't match the controls for literally any other thing in the game makes it where it isn't intuitive for me. This could be fixed pretty easily by a patch, and it honestly wouldn't surprise me that the devs would do that; Heatwave is new as of this review.

2. That there isn't an endless-like mode, like some equivalent of a Cities: Skyline map that you just continually clean up. This isn't a major complaint, of course. I don't even know how you'd do it, but I want it~.

An interesting take on the card-based rogue-lite genre of indie games as of late, Into the Restless Ruins is a fun (but sometimes frustrating) romp where you build your own dungeon out, then explore it to expand until you can reach the boss chamber. It effectively has a modern take to bump combat (no "attack" key, but positioning and timing matter in your movement) and encourages you to think strategically when placing down additional rooms.

The music is nice and thematic, plus it is nice to have a game themed off of Celtic and Welsh lore. Plus it is always good to support your indie devs.

The game isn't flawless though.

• I've found that the bosses tend to either one-shot you or you annihilate them - with nothing in between. Seriously, I find it a bit ridiculous that the hardest part of the game is simply the horde of monsters that randomly approaches (or is triggered on unsealing a seal) and the bosses are pushovers once you see them attack once.
  
• The weapons don't seem balanced at all. This could just be my play style, but it seems like almost all of the melee weapons you pick up come with such a large drawback that you're better off with the sword - the exception to me is the Spear, which is the only melee weapon I bother picking up. The Axe requires you to point in a direction and attacks slower... and doesn't do significantly more damage either. I wouldn't be shocked if the DPS is identical to the sword. The Scythe hits all around you, but is so slow that any of the flying-type or fast-type enemies will just tag you before it rotates around most of the time, meaning you end up hit more often in horde situations. The Dirk has such a short range that you end up getting hit by pretty much everything that moves faster than average... and has all of the disadvantages of the Axe outside of speed. All of those are worse than the base sword. The ranged weapons have fire bombs and bombs - nice in theory but their delay in going off usually meant death to me - the brooch which doesn't do enough damage to actually help you once you're more than 10% of the way in to a run, and then "everything else" (which work just fine).
  
• Hordes in the higher levels are just WAY too common. At one point in the final (as of two days before this review - they just added more content) zone I had triggered FIVE hordes at once. Either my weapons were slaughtering them all, the flying monsters would get me from behind because I couldn't see anything (and was too busy trying to dodge the projectiles coming from outside my field of view) or I'd die from bumping into five projectiles. And it kept happening, over and over again, basically locking any progress I had without just teleporting to the seals. The only way I've found to counter it is basically to be so overpowered that nothing stops me, and that's just boring. As a result, I don't like the late game much.
  
• The music gets repetitive. This was far more obvious in later levels where I had a longer torch, thus was hearing the same song just repeating forever.

Mind you - I still recommend the game. It is still a GOOD game, and the fact that the devs are listening (and still updating - they just updated the day I'm posting the review) is a great sign. Just... it isn't perfect. And it doesn't need to be.

For references to the above, as of this review I'm PL14 and have unlocked most things. I have beaten all of the normal levels, but the last normal level I've only beaten with cantrip help.

Legitimately one of my favorite games of the past decade.

Rabi Ribi is the first bullethell game I've ever played. I love metroidvania-style games, so that part I knew I'd like, but I wasn't sure if I'd be interested in the combat...

And then I marathoned the game, getting as close to completion as I could get with a single playthrough, bought all the DLC, and eventually bought the soundtracks. I want more. I want everything to do with this game, it just plasters a smile on my face to play it. It is genuinely FUN.

It does get quite difficult, and yes the game is a bit pervy, but I don't care.

Tevi is another great game from the same makers as Rabi Ribi. Excellent metroidvania bullethell game - maybe not as good as Rabi Ribi and the plot starts falling over a bit at the end, but the game is still really good. Also, the music is way better than most other AAA games, let alone indies. Seriously, the soundtrack is awesome, just play the demo for an example of some tracks.

Just... fair warning, it is a much darker game than Rabi Ribi. It is also a bit easier - I didn't die a single time on Normal+, whereas I could die a dozen or more times on a single boss in Rabi Ribi on Hard.

I mean, it is Rabi-Ribi, it was going to get a buy from me... and I happen to like chip tunes, so... win/win.

It sounds great. I mean, it is a soundtrack, I'm not sure what else to put here. :)

I'm not one for survival crafting style games. I tend to get lost and not know what to do next, or how to make various items, or just countless other stumbling blocks.

Factorio is different. Admittedly, I play with peaceful mode nine times out of ten, but I treat it more like the way I treat Cities: Skylines - a traffic simulator that is a good SimCity game as well. Factorio is an automation simulator.

Factorio also happens to be the best automation simulator and, once you finally have enough of your delicious factories and the like... that's when you add in Krastorio 2, or Space Engineers, or even both.

I love this game.

Basically, think Risk but even more random. That being the problem - the later levels are basically "did I not get screwed over by the RNG?" rather than any real strategy.

Also, the game doesn't change its seed, so trying the same thing again would result in things failing in the same way. Perfectly fine for a game like XCOM, not so great when you just die horribly because your first sea invasion fails to take a blank spot on the board.

Decent enough budgeting software, but it becomes quite nice with the Android version. Also possible to run in Linux, although it requires Wine and a bit of fiddling. Overall decent if you want a sturdy program.