Recent reviews by Hype

What if your favorite collectathon was fast?

I bought it and didn't get up from my chair for 8 hours.

I'm pretty sure this game rewired my brain to give me permanent Tetris Effect. If you like Picross, buy it with no hesitation. Two notes: 1. Two colors may appear the same, but it can be really difficult to tell them apart. Doubly so if you're colorblind. 2. A lot of the completed puzzles are logos/references from Chinese internet culture that made no sense to me

(This review is for a previous version of the game.)

- I have a steam controller which works great with this game.
- The game is hilarious. There are a few hundred lines of dialogue in game, and half of them have a unique character portrait. Even things like tutorials will be entertaining, like the one for textboxes cracked me up. When you parry or damage enemies, they all react in unique ways. Giant werewolves whimper, skeletons stand dumbfounded contemplating their (after)life choices... it's fun to see everyone cower from you as you blast through the level.
- The game is fun at its core, if a little unpolished. I don't know if this is intentional, but in a single jump you can toggle between the neutral-air and up-air attacks to dish out attacks as rapidly as your fingers can execute, which juggles an enemy very effectively. This makes many bosses (except for that damn Lamia) trivial. Combined with the run button, you can clear out entire hallways of enemies without slowing down. It's extremely satisfying when you can pull it off, but I feel bad not using lesser attacks like the buzzsaw or the dash-attack. Finally, the main gimmick of the game is the necrolepsy, where a timer counts down and once it hits 0 your nightmares become reality. The game is named after it, but it doesn't happen all that often or change the gameplay too much (maybe I'll eat my words after playing always nightmare mode).
- The feel is like a Sega CD game. For example, the map screen has some palette-cycle animation on the water that, combined with the music, feels like it has some of that inspiration-- actually throughout the game I kept feeling like I was playing a modern Popful Mail.
- The music is strong and memorable, though this is definitely an indie game soundtrack. Like all the soundbanks were straight from a Roland MIDI synth. Intentional or not, it makes it seem like a retro game that has "CD-quality audio!" proudly advertised on the jewel case. That's a good thing in my eyes, it's charming. My favorite track is Ctarl Caves. I wish the title screen theme was more memorable.
- The UI could use work. I found myself wanting to use B to go back in menus but having to scroll to the "back" item. There's also some strange layouts, like on the load file screen, I can't tell what I'm reading. The ingame map screen looks like SotN, but I really wish it marked entrances and exits to help with the hunt for collectibles.
- There are some visual errors which might be because I was playing at such a high screen resolution. Single-pixel white gaps between textures, that sort of thing. There were also some cases where I or an enemy got stuck or had a glitched attack pattern.
- The character design is great. The art for actors/living things is stylized, cartoonish, 90s animeish, could definitely use improvement but still a joy to look at the body and facial expressions. The art for the level and inanimate objects is not good. For example, in most indoor areas, a platform is a single floating texture with hard edges and no outline, and the background is just a darker recolor of that. The pixel art for different things onscreen have variable pixel sizes, which I should admit is a pet peeve of mine.
- The main game is replayable due to different gamemodes and achievements, and the extras like the boss rush or the beach (where you juggle a beach ball using your arsenal of attacks) help give some postgame content. My record is 32 attacks.
- I already said the game's script is funny, but it really does need some more proofreading. There are typos like "Guarenteed", "Slliding", "Sitch", etc. But that's just nitpicking

The sense of humor and combat system are the strongest parts, and are what drove me to complete the story. Bottom line: if you are already on this store page, you will likely enjoy this game, but you'll need to look past the rough edges.

Lots of content is pay-only. No incentive for making a good dungeon.

my GOTY 2012. honestly one of the most fun stealth games I have ever played.

it's like if gta4 didn't suck