Recent reviews by Teacup Tanuki

This game is a dream come true. Such a fantastic MMO-like experience with actually fun action combat and so many little quality of life features that with other games they'd never dare to do because they want people to grind endlessly in repetitive tasks to push engagement. Nothing that drops binds to a character, feel free to trade any and all loot. between your alts, between other players. The only limit is level requirements and some class requirements to be able to equip certain things.

It's like someone took the idea behind PSO and added in so many positive things learned from other games. There's a token system from dungeon bosses to buy items if the item you're looking for doesn't drop. There are "outside" dungeons that can just be done freely by whoever's around. You can play on a small server or solo if you want to, or play with a larger community in a public server. Your characters can skip around to what ever you feel like playing.

It is a furry game, and honestly, furries make some great games so who cares? Honestly, what other games with breast physics actually care how boobs squish when you put your arms together? Or when you wear different types of clothes There's a level of care with how things are designed that speak to the designer's love for what they do and for wanting to craft a fun experience for the players. The game is still early access and while there's at this point only about thirty levels of content and the subclasses that you unlock a that point are highly unfinished, i have gotten more than my money's worth in time spent and enjoyed and I look forward to the continued growth of this game.

Vampire Survivors is a game that does two things very well. The controls are dead simple (you only move your character around the screen) and everything you do feeds into progress of something. With just these elements Vampire Survivors has led the way for many imitators. While some of these have added features or approached the gameplay from different angles, Vampire Survivors still stands above the crowd for it's wealth of content, something that's not as easily replicated as its gameplay.

The graphics and writing help a lot too, but the wealth of options in how to approach each run of the game that grow exponentially as you progress and unlock ever more weapons, items, characters, stages and upgrades means that you get a lot of choices in how to tailor your experience. Whether you want to explore the possibilities and optimize the various types of progress or if you'd rather find and stick with a comfy set that you enjoy, the world is your bat-shaped oyster.

A fantastic little puzzle game where you try and fit block-shaped cats into block-shaped spaces. It's charming and cute and fun to spin the pieces while listening to all the mewling as you try and figure out how to Oragnize Cats, Neatly. If there's one thing that's not fantastic is that the game is incredibly linear. If you get stuck there's nothing to do but take a break and come back later. Each puzzle is unlocked in turn and I'm not sure why there are separate achievement tracks for stages and cats met since every player will hit those milestones in the same order.

In all it's a couple hours of entertainment and a good time waster if that's what you're looking for.

Have you played Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt? If not, go play that first. When you're done, come try this out. It's a bit shorter, but there's multiple boss battles now and you now pick a dating partner to bring with you that changes how your flask button works. It's pretty neat. The graphics are just a bit more artistic with the two-color per tile segment artstyle, which is also nice. And there's some new bullet types that keep things interesting.

On the downside, A Heap of Trouble feels a lot shorter, and now the shot powerups come specifically only from the bosses making it feel more like you're being gated rather than letting you explore and rewarding you for it. The dating system is interesting, but some flask types are definitely more useful than others. The writing also didn't feel as fun as the Wash-Olaf joke was omnipresent and run into the ground until it was fine specs of sand. And while the boss battles were interesting, there wasn't as much exploration with the normal battle enemy types and it just felt like there should've been more fights to really get some interesting stuff like A World of Hurt did.

My final thought is that overall A Heap of Trouble has the quality of a free game while A World of Hurt is worth the $3. The gameplay is just as fun though, so if you enjoyed A World of Hurt you definitely should pick up A Heap of Trouble.

In short, go play Chip's Challenge 1 instead.

In long, why the heck is this nearly 200 megs? Especially given the lack of features and overall bare-bones presentation. It's ridiculously bloated in terms of memory footprint. There's a lot of new puzzle elements, some of which seem like they overlap a lot, like did there really need to both be one-step tiles that turn into water AND one-step tiles that turn into blocks instead? And the point flags, different colors of theives, and blocks that you can only pass if you _DON'T_ have a certain item? It's ridiculously bloated in terms of puzzle elements as well!

The puzzle difficulty starting out is really strange, too. Unlike Chip's Challenge which has a nice slow ramp to teach you how the puzzle elements work, this game has a really long, boring single level that throws it all at you at once, then come some stages that don't feel like they're part of a cohesive plan, but rather just grab bag picked and strewn about. The difficulty level similarly seems kind of arbitrary.

I have a lot of fond memorie sof Chip's Challenge, and I appreciate that I'm able to go back and experience it again and see that it still was a decent puzzle game, but this sequel doesn't do anything that the first one didn't do as well or better. Take a pass on this one unless you're getting a good deal on a bundle with this and the Editor, because at least that can provide some value.

Otherwise: Pass.

Ludosity games always seem to have one or two issues that ruins their games for me. Whether it was the lack of significant meaningful choice in deckbuilding in Card City Nights or providing not quite enough information to the player in PsyCard* leading to a lot of feeling like success or failure came down to random chance. Luckily, Daniel Remar had his hand in this particular stew so I dove right in.

First off, I love the graphic style of this game. The 2-color 16x16 tiled canvas has some amazing pixel work to create a vibrant world where everything is nicely readable and with the sort of visual acuity that makes it easy to navigate.

In general, the gameplay is pretty good, you travel the land seeking out people who are suffering from various maladies and 'cure' them by taking part in a single-screen arena shooter match. It plays out sort of like a twin-stick shooter like Robotron or Smash TV, except for the part where there's a second stick, and that's where Princess Remedy sort of falls apart. It's not terrible, you only can shoot in the direction you're facing, but it adds a layer of challenge that's not really needed for this style of gameplay. And it's not that the various stages are really all that difficult outside of Master difficulty doing no-chests up to the secret chest, and then again at the last boss doing 101%.

The point is it just feels bad, even an old game like Robotron knew you needed to be able to control your gun independantly of your character! The hitbox on Remedy also feels off, which again for the vast majority of gameplay isn't really an issue, but she's a chunky sprite and there are times when it seems like she can squeeze between certain bullet patterns and other times when she gets hit. There not a good feeling of how many invincibility frames (if any) you get after being hit too, and sometimes bullets seem to do wildly different amounts of damage, though I suspect there's a bit of either overlapping bullets happening or some bullets are just allowed to hit the player more than once. Whichever it is, it's really too bad because it turns the game from feeling challenging to just feeling arbitrary.

Again, this is really only important at the highest difficulty the game provides. All in all, these issues don't completely spoil the game and I would certainly recommend Princess Remedy to anyone looking for a fun little game with tons of style. And I'm certainly looking forward to trying the sequel.

*While I can't really recommend this game, there's a super fun dungeon crawer style minigame that comes with it that's really fun and it's almost baffling they didn't make that into a full fledged game experience.

1001 Spikes is a game with two different jump buttons.

This is significant because when designing a game, generally you want to condense the controls as much as possible. Long have we been freed from the terrors of old PC gaming where every key on the keyboard provided some obscure function that required having an overlay or info card so you knew what to do if you wanted to 'q'uaff a potion or 'w'ear some armor. Which was different than 'Q'uitting the game or 'W'ielding a weapon!

But just like most forms of art, knowing when to break the rules is just as important as knowing the rules in the first place.

1001 Spikes is a masacore platformer where you're provided with a variety of levels that challenge you to clear them and expect you to die many times to do so. This is the type of game where it can throw surprise spikes from a wall or have the floor drop out from under you and after trial and error, you emerge victorious and ready for the next challenge. In that respect it's actually one of the easier masacore platformers that I've played. Certainly there's a lot of challenge here, and I'd recommened it to people of all skills levels interested in these types of games, but there's a lot more of just memorizing how to do a room rather than performing challenging maneuvers.

Which brings me back to the two jump buttons. In 1001 Spikes, you can do a small jump or a big jump and while many games just check for how long you hold down a single jump button or test the pressure used, this game smartly splits them up into two different buttons altogether. I say 'smartly' because a lot of the game is designed around using the correct height jump and knowing which to use in each situation and splitting them up removes any execution barrier and any ambiguity in what the character is going to do. And this sort of design smarts shows throughout the game. Every part of the design feels so well thought out that it's a joy to experience and play through.

There's a variety of different play modes and tons of characters to unlock who can have unique abilties that change the way you play, too. So what it comes down to is that there's a lot of content in here and it's all fun.

Wings of Vi is masacore platforming done right.

The gameplay challenges ramp up at a good pace, you slowly get more movement options and the game really makes you get the most out of them as it you progress. The bosses similarly are frustrating at first, but so rewarding when you manage to defeat them. Even moreso if you beat them without getting hit even once!

Unlike some games, there's no 'gotcha!' elements. Apples falling upwards or sudden attacks from off-screen you need to die to in order to predict them. Even longer sections of the game let you preview what's coming up so you can plan for how you're going to tackle each challenge.

There's a nice bit of non-linearity to the game, too. Lots of hidden treasures are off the beaten path and some sections of the game can be completed in any order the player chooses. There's no real backtracking, though you eventually can get an item that will allow you to return to previous sections of the game with access only to the abilities you had gained at that time.

The difficulty selector is well done, with extra checkpoints or platforms at the easier difficulties. The easiest difficulty has so much of this though that even the worst gamer should be able to brute force their way to the end! Not that I would recommend this sort of the game to someone who wasn't into a tough challenge. It makes that difficulty setting's existance seem a bit odd.

Wings of Vi isn't absolutely perfect, though. The biggest problem I had was an early vertical auto-scroll section where the player's hitbox did not seem to conform to the area the player's sprite took up and would seeming hit or miss obstacles in the same area without rhyme or reason. More minorly there was one instance of being confused on where to go due to wondering if I needed to find some upgrade to pass a certain platforming challenge or if I was missing some puzzle element and while the bosses for the most part do a pretty good job of giving enough feedback to let you learn their patterns, the ability to use a stage element to stop one boss from doing an unavoidable attack eluded me for the longest time.

All in all, while there's a ton of features, a variety of gameplay and the character dressup is fun to collect and mix parts for, the most important part of a masacore game is how it plays and the level design and Wings of Vi absolutely nails these. If you're into platformers that give you a difficult challenge then you absolutely should pick this up.

BEWARE. This game does not allow you to change the volume settings or any options until after you beat the tutorial stage. This is important enough to be the first line of this review because if you're like me and like to chat with friends over voicechat, you may need your master volume turned up pretty high and adjust games as needed. I almost didn't even play this game because of how loud it was on startup and there was nothing I could do in-game to fix it. Eventually after some googling I took some time away from friends to mute everything so I could pass the tutorial and actual fix the in game volume.

Now, after that this is an extremely fun game. The arcade action is quick and fun and there's a ton of different configurations of parts to make your Rauser out of. Well, if a ton is equal to One Hundred and Twenty Five. Still, there's a lot of variety and each part has it's own mission objectives, giving some direction other than just scoring and adding to longevity to the experience. The four color aesthetic works wonderfully and the music plays to the action very well. Besides the red and sepia look there are other color schemes to unlock, most of which I've found are completely terrible, but they are completely optional and don't take away from the core experience which is so fun that the only real complaint I have with it is that I wish there was more!

Even at a dollar during a sale, DLC Quest was too expensive. The core gameplay conceit isn't anything new, but if it had taken more than a half an hour to play through maybe it could've been a fun experience. The whole game takes place over two moderately sized screens and even going through and collecting everything for achivements wasn't enough to squeeze even an hour out of gameplay.

Spend a dollar on a mobile game instead. At least then you'll likely get more than a half an hour of entertainment.