Recent reviews by LuckyDave

I played the demo a ton. The finished 1.0 version is so much fun! There's a huge variety of what can happen in combinations of gems, levels, augments, and miner specific abilities. The different enemies can create such interesting challenges to solve, and the different maps each prompts a different way of thinking about the game. I'm so grateful that just as my nostalgia for old Warcraft 3 tower defenses was becoming unbearable, I found this game's demo last fall. It's a consistently gratifying and fun progressive puzzle experience. There's just the right variance each time I run one of the maps in Gem Miner TD to keep me coming back for another try!
Also the art and sound effects are really charming :D

This demo is incredible! I can't wait for the full launch. After hours and hours spent on wintermaul forks, Nintendo TD, and other tower defense maps in Wc3, this scratches that nostalgic itch in ways no other contemporary game has. Add to that, the improvements they've made to the gameplay loop are so much fun. I love the complexity of gem selection each mining round, between where I want water, which merge I want to get to first, etc. It's a blast!

This checks a lot of boxes. It's a pretty fun metroidvania with nice movement and combat. The soundtrack is catchy, thematic, and lots of fun to listen to. The art is staggeringly good! Like, such beautiful environments and sprites. All of the animations have a ton of appeal. The writing is solid and the progression of relationships with various NPCs is fitting and titillating. The H-scenes are each fairly concise, but all delightful. I hope this isn't the last we see from this team.

It's pretty cool! The custom deck sheet making utility is nice, and playing with homemade game pieces is a real plus to this interface. I've also just enjoyed a nice round of Go with my brother! Hard to beat the classics.

Much better with people you know than with pick up groups, but it's dope. My favorite way to do socially distant social deduction. People keep killing me while I'm busy with a toddler puzzle!

When I was growing up, I played the original Seiken Densetsu 3 for more than 100 hours, and I can recommend this remake without reservation. This is based solely on the demo, but the innovations of design that I have encountered so far speak to a lovingly crafted restoration of the spirit of the original, sacrificing none of its charm, and creating more wonderful experiences than were possible on the SNES.

The combat is snappy, strategic, cartoony, and fun with minimal to no unnecessary slow moments. The animation is delightful and overpowering in its charm. The voice acting is, in my humble opinion, top notch (short of a few awkward pauses born out of the dubbing process). The items and progression systems are better than the original, without losing the thread of their roles. I can't wait to keep my saves from this demo going and get to my first class change!

Play this Demo. Buy this game on launch. You will not regret it.

If you were a fan of the original, I won't spoil any of the great bits that they've improved, but I guarantee that for every moment of this demo I was drawn in by the designers' decisions. Some of the decisions were of dedicated faithfulness, and other decisions were in the spirit of refining what was already there in the game.

Hades is brilliant. Incredible interest curve. The run durations are terrific. All of the art is delightful. Terrific voice acting and storytelling. And the controls are tight and exciting. It's not that each build is strictly balanced, but that's a good thing in my book. It feels like a real accomplishment if I get far without having a Deflection ability, whereas if I want to see more of the game, I try hard to get a boon from Athena. Each of the weapons feel really different, and I like the ways that they try to encourage the player to switch it up.

Really, altogether, I couldn't be more please. As I was reading Lore Olympus this year and getting wrapped up in the romance of Persephone and Hades, listening to the soundtrack of Hadestown, I found myself wishing for an awesome action game themed around Greek Mythology. I thought about the OG God of War for a minute, but this is loads better for today (no disrespect to God of War. I played that game for over a hundred hours when I was a kid). I'm sure I'll be playing this not only long hours all through the rest of development, but long afterwards too.

Thank you, Supergiant Games! I loved Transistor so much, and now I have an ARPG that's even more fun to play and loads more replayable.

At this point I've played flinthook for 20 hours. I'm almost level 50. I've unlocked a ton of the RPG-style character advancements from the blackmarket, tinkered around with the daily and weekly challenges, and I've so far only defeated the first boss. I am so happy with my purchase. When I was young, I loved a game whether I ever beat it or not; hell, I was happy if I got through the first few levels in Sonic 2, Rocket Knight Adventures, and Megaman X2. I may keep going through and try to find some secrets or beat the other bosses, but even if I never boot up flinthook again, I'll never stop singing its praises. This game is wonderful. ALL HAIL TRIBUTE!

Phantom Breaker is some of the most fun I've had with a beat 'em up in a while. In my journey into Mikoto's campaign thus far, I was constantly fondly recalling the hours I spent playing Guardian Heroes and Viewtiful Joe. It's a tight and fun system, with lots of color and light and excitement. I highly recommend this game. I believe that Phantom Breaker is to Guardian Heroes as Legend of Dark Witch is to Megaman.

Insanity's Blade is brilliant. It knows exactly what it is, and does what it should do wonderfully. It's the love child of the level and boss design of the first Castlevania and the action packed slashing and punching of Golden Ax and Streets of Rage, with the scenario ripped from the pulp rags where folk first read the name CONAN. Grab your dunkaroos and buckle in to punch some knives at hordes of dusty desiccated undead and wrestle some mace-wielding ogres.