Recent reviews by Liquidlazor

Things that go bonk in the night.... It's me, playing this game

Not much I can say about Oblivion that has not already been said. Unless I like tell you about my cool battlemage build or something idk.

Maybe in these days I would say Starfield could have learned from the endgame bloat where many dungeons use pre-fabs to fill out the world which adds too much fetch-quest tedium. But looting unique gear in these locations is nice.

I think there is work to be done in how the game manages endgame. Maybe a dynamic faction standing system.

But overall Oblivion totally holds up IMO and falls into that category of games I don't think even needed a remaster.... Time that could have been spent on sequels.

Simmiland is a nice game, its like a God Game Town-builder Card Battler.

Now that I've grown accustomed to the games from the Sokpop brand... I see there are ones I like and others maybe not as much.

There is enough of a game-loop, secrets and mechanics to discover to make it engaging for more than just a few hours.

The procedural generation of the game is a nice touch. The way empires could turn good or evil in nature based on the narrative is an excellent addition.

I would say the game suffers a little from feeling like a game-jam game... where some games turn out better than others because of crunch. This is somewhat evident across the Sokpop library but I would reserve entire judgement until I've played more. Some are still in my library waiting to go because I have somewhat bought into the concepts the games deliver in some cases.

I think its a commentary on how game dev has advanced and the capacity when dealing with the right tools and experience. But I think Simmiland has overcome those considerations that delivers on its premise... To such an extent that one wonders where it could have led if more polish was applied.

This is the wildest 'idle' game I've played in a while. You better have a full-auto level of clicking skills to keep up with this one.

You know the drill... Plant stuff, harvest stuff, get money, buy upgrades, plant more stuff, get more money....

Realistically to 100% this one, three hours of endurance rapid fire clicking, a day's idling, three more hours endurance rapid fire clicking, a day's idling, three more hours endurance rapid fire clicking and you're done.

Trading cards included is worth a mention at the price it was purchased at....

All in all, a nice polished title for fans of idle/clicker games which doesn't overstay its welcome with obtuse grinding mechanics but does ask a concerted effort from the player...

Because, just watching your helpers auto-harvest taking there sweet ahhh time? That doesn't work for me brother!

Also the horses farting the horseshoes is pretty funny. Sounds will make someone in the next room ask what is going on there maybe lmao.

An el-cheapo Foddy clone, which provided its challenge to a competent level...

Given the dev has another game 'Just Ski' which has similar mechanics but provides procedural generation as well, I would say there was an opportunity to add more to this game, if not procedural generation, at least maybe more than one mouintain, meticulously designed to provide the specific challenge in its intention, but also means some sections are purposefully obtuse to deliver on that vision.

Take note the achievements are insanely difficult... My 1st finish had like 2400 successful jumps and over 1000 failed ones, which included jumps where you don't care how you land as you're just making distance.... But there are achievements that demand 100% perfection with no failed jumps.

So this might not be one for achievement hunters unless you specialize in rare achievements. Most might just frown at its obtuse implementation. Like you wanna tell a dev yknow what... you should first finish your own achievements before you're allowed to dictate them to others.

But whatever... It's like a Flash Foddy game and did just that for the 7 hours I played and didn't expect more than that... If that's your expectation then that is what you will get.

A good synopsis with good execution and on-point self-aware atmosphere... It does many things right for like a starter indie game. The game itself is just three levels and some secrets so it's over way too quickly, that's my main criticism. I would also add that the essence is captured well but could have a little more polish in terms of feeling less like a repurposed gamemaker game and something that leaves its identity undeniable. Nice beats too, which obviously comes across as a sample due to the shortness of the experience.

Decent tavern manager simulator with a slightly lacklustre end-game. If you're happy just enjoying the tavern-building its great. The final achievements will have you staring at your screen with nothing to do for ten hours though. Maybe time to continue touching up I guess.

I've seen some complaints that it becomes a 'barrel-filling minigame', well not quite because you get tech to auto-fill your barrels later. But yeah you're just gonna keep sending parties out once a day to gather 'event ingredients' and then waiting for said events to happen on scheduled days.

So many days of clock-watching in-between events towards the end. Its a slight lost opportunity... maybe the DLCs are worth checking out in light of this. I might go back and idle the other achievements.

A game that suffers a little from over-balancing... like you can tell 100000 players' data was used to determine the parameters of the RNG. Thus, working towards a broken build is a rarity, but rather it becomes more about hanging on until you're surprised with RNG that turns into a winning strategy, IF you act upon it...

And If you don't happen to fall into that specific RNG you can often end up in unwinnable battles. And that's fine to an extent...

It adds an element of realness where things don't always goes your way. Y'know where many games are the opposite where as long as you excise basic motor skills and enter desired prompts, your hand is pretty much held and guaranteed success.

There is enough content, mechanics, variety and challenge to warrant Slay The Spire as a very rewarding and engaging game. But some of the RNG elements do peek at you from behind the curtain a little to make you aware that the game is not naturally-occurring but indeed a construct.... Which I think takes away a little from the players' triumphs because of the level of RNG dictation.

I still rate it very highly as the polish of completion of the product offers great value and a break from traditional gaming tropes of what constitutes gaming, but of course at the time of writing the card-battler genre has seen many pretenders rise to the fore, and in light of that Slay The Spire still shines beyond the pretenders who failed to innovate or offer the same quality of experience.

Game Dev Story is a fun little tycoon game and takes you through the game dev cycle in an engaging and competent way....

The games you make are however graded on a curve towards the end-game, which makes it a very on-rails experience in terms of 'doing everything right' will still get your games rated mediocre for majority of the game.

So you only really get feedback from investing in the development and upgrade loop rather than getting rewards for building good games and synergies in relation to specific eras of gaming. So get used to mediocre ratings no matter how good your game is for a long time.

Also at one point the special employees dry up in recruitment to force the development narrative so you're either wasting millions on recruitment that amounts to nothing or investing millions in tedious training of staff to then get them to the level the game deems necessary.

Otherwise if you're just happy to enjoy the process then there's some fun to be had along the way.

At time of writing, you would have to use an achievement manager to unlock the first world's completion achievement if you want to accredit yourself 100% completion in light of this broken achievement....

Otherwise a solid puzzle city-builder where you add tiles to build synergies between biomes.... with quite heavy-handed RNG that adds to the challenge, like you feel a computer worked out the odds instead of trial-and-error playtesting. But beating the computer in this case slightly lends to the satisfaction.