Recent reviews by feind

indie horror slop. cool idea, neat graphics, horrible writing and puzzles tho

I love this game, but I do not love playing this game. I wish I could love playing this game! I love the lore, art style and music, and I deeply appreciate what it did for Metroidvanias as a genre. I love that it had the success it had, and wish there was a "neutral" option on Steam Reviews.

Unfortunately, gameplay-wise this is another one of those games that does not quite understand the distinction between "tedious" and "challenging". It's simply not fun to spend hours getting stuck in same-y locations looking for the one path you didn't take yet, or spending 10 minutes backtracking your steps to a boss for every attempt.

For a game that requires experimentation and exploration, both experimentation and exploration are punished very harshly. The "die twice and all resources are lost" I can accept, but the insane time spent backtracking because you took the wrong path, or hours spent running to vendors because the save and fast travel spots are positioned way too far from any points of interests...

"Respecting the player's time" is the current buzzword of the month, it seems, but it has become increasingly important to me as well. I'm not 15 anymore; I don't want to grind and I don't want to backtrack. My time as an adult is valuable. Other games understand and respect that.
When I die in Hollow Knight, I don't get mad at losing my currency or my butterfingers or my utter lack of gittin gud, I get annoyed at knowing that I'll now have to spend 5 minutes of my life jumping over pointlessly convoluted platforms for another 30 second attempt at the same boss. That's a bad ratio of "time spent playing games" vs "time spent enjoying games", and this is why I eventually had to click "No" when Steam asked me if I'd recommend playing this game.

As of 2025, I'd recommend playing something else instead. Other games just do it better nowadays. Maybe give Blasphemous a try -- or maybe Silksong?

It's a good game. There is always one statistically best move.

Less of a game and more of a skinner box that will absolutely fry your dopamine receptors. I’ll probably keep playing it.

Undeniably one of the best games of all time / one of the most important meta games.

Great graphics
Works flawlessly on Steam Deck
Romans are just really cool

But:
The gameplay loop is fun for 30 minutes, which is bad since the game takes 6 hours
The level design feels like early 00‘s tunnel maps
Storywriting is shallow and a bit silly (in a bad way)

All in all not really worth the hours spent.

what really sold this game for me is how lifelike the cat moves

man I love cats

f2p really killed the soul of some great franchises

Developers just retrospectively removed some short but integral story parts from the game in an attempt to garner controversy. Seems it worked.

incredibly shameless Left4Dead ripoff, but well executed. plus it has some RPG mechanics thrown in, and of course, it's Warhammer