Recent reviews by Macromedia Flash

The younger, experimental sister is Story Mode. She's been given the core rhythm game components, but decided to branch off with minigames, nested story arcs, and combat mechanics embedded into songs. Story mode's rough around the edges, and there's times when you'll need to be patient with imperfections like slow points, bugs, and large areas that seem unfinished. Story Mode seems to me like she had greater ambitions than what the game's development could finish in time. But last I checked, ambition isn't a crime (music is), and UNBEATABLE's Story Mode DOES reward players' patience with UI that creatively characterizes the protagonist's internal monologue, amazing spectacles and flashy set pieces with clear effort from the hype department, and a narrative payoff, slash musical finale, slash emotional gut-punch that you'll remember for weeks.

The older, more dependable sister is Arcade Mode. She knows what you're expecting when you're buying a rhythm game, and absolutely delivers on a polished two-button rhythm game experience with a low skill floor and high skill ceiling. Even if you're not a sweaty tryhard who absolutely must top the leaderboards, you can still have a lot of fun coming back to improve on your own scores, simply because the tunes by Peak Divide are "replay freebooted uploads on YouTube until you cave and buy the album on Bandcamp" levels of fun to jam out to anyway.

If you want to support indie devs who aren't afraid to take bold risks in the name of achieving their creative visions, but you ALSO want a rock-solid rhythm game with some damn catchy songs that make you feel like you got your money's worth, then UNBEATABLE is the package deal. That's all there is to it.

Solid recommend.

As someone who's never beaten "Baba is You", the level of challenge to these puzzles feels just right. You won't instantly be able to figure out solutions, but you can either stop and plan out the order of steps in advance, or you can trial-and-error your way through the problem-solving process.

The visuals are both enjoyable to look at and easy to understand (minus the occasional directional floor arrow being hidden by a wall in the foreground). The tiles and enemies make sense for what they're supposed to do. I like that the game doesn't have to spell out the order of different actions when you make a move - you can intuitively understand it yourself.

The music is amazingly crafted with care, and worth buying the soundtrack for. In fact, I bought the game after becoming aware of it by following Fear Of Dark on YouTube. It seems impossible to get tired of any level theme, and I've occasionally listened to the songs outside the game.

I only have a few criticisms for the devs, but they're not enough to overrule my recommendation to buy.

-I know people don't play puzzle games for the story, but the writing for the 5th puzzle master wasn't impressive with the 4th wall breaking, and felt like it cheapened the quality of the other characters' roles in the overall experience.

-The game still has no audio control settings, which is a problem if I'm on Discord with friends and can't hear them. At least this can at least be resolved with my computer's volume mixer, but I don't think I'm acting entitled to ask for this as an in-game option.

-The gems and floppy disks are a tried-and-true way to give players a greater optional challenge. In the short term, they feel rewarding WITHIN each stage ("Yes! I SUPER beat this level!") , but they don't feel worthwhile in the long-run ("How much do I really want to go collect more?"). It'd be terrific if different amounts of collected gems or disks could unlock something fun like cutscenes, or secret dialogue with the Puppet Panics, or lore or backstory.

Risk of Rain, for its price, is a great game to play for a short time and forget about later. Its visuals are appealing, the mechanics feel right, and the variety of characters, abilities, and power-ups help its replay value.

I'm not a fan of the difficulty-altering mechanic, however. You've given the impression that you can choose your playstyle: speed through each level as fast as possible to beat the difficulty creep, or seek out each treasure chest and budget your earnings effectively to utilize what power-ups are given to you. However, there's no chance of surviving if you choose to take your sweet time anywhere in this game.

Also, you'll find that local, same-screen multiplayer to be a much bigger pain than online co-op. Local involves sharing the same screen, which really inhibits your ability to spread out and find chests and level exits, which is the entire goal of the game.

Despite its faults, it's good fun for about a week with a friend.