Recent reviews by Lily

I enjoyed this game a lot. Definitely the best in the Steamworld series. Although some parts of the mine-sell-repeat loop get noticeably easy and repetitive, depending on what part of the game you're at, most of the 10 hour game time was meat and potatoes to me. Digging your own path through the mines was fun and personal, and clearing the more linear challenge areas was satisfying.

I wanted to leave this review to highlight one detail I really liked - the game contains a set of deliberately designed "sequence breaks" that allow you to get all of the game's MacGuffins before getting the final major upgrade. Pulling this off requires mastery of the game's mechanics, and the upgrades you have up until that point. I stumbled into it organically and you get an achievement for doing it, confirming that this was all set up on purpose.

After that, I went and got the final upgrade - one that dramatically increases your movement options (a jetpack) - and looked back to see just how easy it WOULD have been to clear those areas with that upgrade. It was very fulfilling and fun. So I just wanted to come here to appreciate the game design :)

If you're interested, buy it! It took me about 10 hours to beat, both doing these sequence breaks and finishing with 95% completion, so real achievement hunters would probably get 12-15 hours out of it. It's not the hardest game in existence but also not tiny-baby-easy.

If you're not interested, at least check out the soundtrack, because it's fantastic.

One of my favorite puzzle games ever. Simple rules about blocks interacting with each other and restricted movement of the player creates tons of engaging puzzles through some clever level design. I wish there were more levels, but there's plenty for the price. It took me about 10 hours to 100% and I had a lot of fun.

i'm enjoying it a lot and look forward to updates :) it scratches an itch for a particular kind of resource management / incremental game that you rarely find. it reminds me a lot of Neverending Legacy, not in the exact mechanics but more in the "feeling" of progression, discovering the unknown. there's an emphasis on cleverly combining spells to create bursts in production, almost like puzzle solving. it's impressive how all the different mechanics influence each other.
there's still plenty to do at 15 hours in so it is well worth the $5 asking price

been enjoying the game a lot playing through it in 2 player. it's pretty simple but is a fun spin on the action / exploration / base building type of game. you create a base in a set "island" in the world, and travel outwards to other "islands" by warding off the death mist. you find plant friends called drakes and take care of them by producing food and water at your base with wells, planters, and similar stuff. you also find crafting materials and such out in the world. enemies raid your base on a set schedule so you have to go home to protect it every now and then. once you finish exploring a zone, your base "island" travels to a new zone and you start over. i'm 5 hours in and i hear it's about 15-20 hours long right now.

not being able to rebind keys is very annoying. pressing ctrl to dash is very annoying. please add key rebinding.

the gameplay loop is simple and gets repetitive, but is fun to play a few hours at a time. i hope that the basic loop gets expanded a bit in updates.

i really like the world, ambience, and music.

you might not feel the game is worth it at full price, but i think it's really fun!

love it

an extremely fun game and a master class in how to run early access. i always come back to it, both for multi and single player. if it looks like something for you, just get it.

tree of life has a lot of cool mechanics and ideas going into it. it's a runescapey/sandbox game where you just grind and progress for the sake of it. the combat's simple, the crafting's simple, and the game doesn't hold your hand much, and that feels great.
however, the game has completely lost direction and the developers *regularly* ignore their playerbase. they basically do whatever they want and don't bother to fix bugs or prevent hacking. as of the official release, the game absolutely favors griefing and picking on new players. there is NO penalty for robbing and killing people. if you decide you want to go kill new players and steal all their stuff, you can and they can't do anything about it. unless you have a very active, very large group of people, your guild will get destroyed very quickly as soon as you leave the starting area. after spending about 5 hours in the starting area, i decided to move my guild of two people to an area adjacent to the starting area, and within 5 hours it got robbed 12 times and then completely destroyed twice. it's very easy to avoid the defenses that someone can build in their guild, and very easy to destroy the whole guild.
i loved this game in early access. people didn't ♥♥♥♥ with you and there was even a neutral faction where you and your guild could be pvp protected so you could just enjoy your grinding. the pvp factions just happily fought amongst themselves and everyone else relaxed. long ago the game was very pve focused, but now the pve content is just for building up your guild defenses to protect yourself from griefers. now there's absolutely no way to be neutral, and these features were removed for absolutely no reason. it's what i mean by "the developers basically do whatever they want".
some people will probably enjoy the game as is, but everything that made me interested in this game is gone. i guess that's what you get with early access. i won't be playing the game again until these features get restored, or i can at least spend an hour offline without my guild and all the defenses i can possibly build getting destroyed.

this was like my favorite game ever as a little tween and i hope it gets a sequel of some sort in the future. i would most certainly spend hundreds of dollars over many years again like i did on this one.

kawaii