Recent reviews by PointOfGravity

Now don't get me wrong. The single player is great, and I'm coming from a place where I spent the most of my RoR1 time behind a desk with no internet, and no one could see if I was playing games on my MacBook. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I was used to RoR1 single player, and Hopoo has thrust this amazing multiplayer experience unto me.

The truth is, with this game going Third Person Shooter it is perfect with multiplayer. And I'd say an even better experience with controller. It's one of those games where you don't exactly need precision aiming, just slap on your space helmet, jump in your escape pod and fire off into the distant roost. Take down a few Lemurians, find your first chest and before you know it you'll be facing off against 3 Magma Worms, 2 Stone Guardians and a Wandering Vagrant, all while whizzing through the map with an odd assortment of masks, fungus, needles, etc. stuck to your character symbolizing the many power ups you've acquired on your journy there.

Risk of Rain 2 will definitely keep you glued. The game is a roguelike, however much in the vein of Rogue Legacy it provides replay value on an unprecedented scale, with character unlocks, monster logs for every type of monster you fight, log descriptions for all the items (and there's a lot), and multiple paths of endgame content. All while challenging you as you play as the difficulty increases the longer your run lasts.

And I mean that in a good way.

When you play a 4X game, you don't expect to finish a session in one day. Hell, maybe not even a week if you don't have that much free time on your hands. However, Endless Space 2 will shave off months off your downtime weather you like it or not. And it's because it's just that damn good.

If you're ever wondering if this game is worth getting because of its release date, it is. I have owned this game since August, 2018 and it's been a game that I've consistently started game after game after game. I don't even know where to begin.


Endless Space 2 is a 4X space opera game that currently features 8 playable factions witht he base game and an additional 2 more in DLC, with one more coming out soon. However, you don't even need to buy the DLC to keep enjoying the game well after you've played and completed sessions with all 8 factions.

There are so many combinations of map placements, minor factions, quests, faction relations, etc. that every time you start a game it feels like a different game as it forces you to think situationally about what the best course of action to take is. Are you in a position to fight? To Trade? Diplomacy? What about your faction's government? Socialist? Republic? Democratic? The predicuments the game can put you in are so vast in number, and the sessions lasting so long, you will feel like you're never playing the same game twice. That is why I feel that this game has been done exceedingly well. The replay value is just so great that unless you have days on end free, it never feels like you can accomplish everything. When you jump into a game, from start to finish, and even beyond, the possibilities the game puts you in truly feels endless.

You appear on a fort like island. There’s ensuing chaos as everyone starts shooting each other in the head, until you see a list of names, crewmen that have applied to be captain of your 7-man squad. One of them has the reason “im gay” under his name. Seems like a good enough reason, you give him your vote (leaving the one with “I have amazing captain experience” in the dark). The gay guy goes to the foreman and constructs a fine ship; purple in theme, 4 cannons each side and two in the front. It’s a beauty. You and your crew dive into the murky waters and climb aboard “The im gay ship”, it’s glorious. Your captain drives you a few hundred metres out into the great blue until one of your crewmates lets a shrill “LAND LUBBERS ON PORT SIDE” into your ear. And I mean like, absolutely blasted into your ear. Wouldn’t hurt to turn VoIP volume down at this point.


You get to a cannon. And idle crewman gets to swab the poop deck for a week, not something you fancy. Gunpowder loaded. Cannonball lugged in. You prepare your ramming stick and jam them in there, and push the cannon out. You wait for the captain’s orders. Enemy ship coming up to port side.... FIRE! All hell breaks loose as you see a cannonball smash the crewmate next to you into a million pieces. He’ll be back soon, no need to grieve, but now there are several holes in the hull and the ship is taking in water. You break out your trusty hammer, and in true Wreck It Ralph fashion a couple wallops from it patches the whole up magically, while another crewmate uses the ships pump to pump the water out of the ship. But wait, we’re not out of the woods yet – in a moment of insanity, your captain announces “RAMMING SPEED” with maniacal laughter. The ensuing barge subsequently obliterates crewmen near the nose of the ship, but it looks like the other ship suffered the same fate. Cutlass drawn, you head to the nose and jump over aboard the enemy ship. First landlubber to the left gets a swift chop from you, and you draw your trusty blunderbuss to take down as many as you can.

It becomes too much, and you are overwhelmed. Your crewmen are winning the fight though, with half repairing the nose to make the ship mobile again and half making the Navymen produce bloodcurdling screams. You appear back on your hull, and the vengeance inside you is seething.


Blackwake has a lot of potential, and Mastfire are certainly carrying the momentum right. The sailing is fun, and an intense amount of communication and cooperation is needed if you are to blast your enemies to smithereens. The boat mechanics are well planned and thought out, and the boarding is really fun. The swashbuckling and musket/blunderbuss/nockergun fire however does feel a little clunky – the developers have put a note under the melee weapons selection that it’s being worked on, so at least they listen to their playerbase. For me, it’s hard to aim some ranged weapons, which added to the franticness of person-to-person combat. However, don’t let that steer you away (I’m certain I’ve said that in another pirate themed game review) because it is chock full of fun, even at it’s alpha stage. The game offers three modes at the moment – 3v3TDM, “Capture The Booty”/ Capture the flag and their new experimental “Seige” mode, which involves sailing to the defending team’s fortress and invading their fort by foot, which is a nice layer on top of the ship battling base game.

The game throws enough environmental hazards at you to make it varied – there are storms, tornados, waterspouts that throw you 50 feet into the air, people can set you on fire, and I’m sure there’s more coming.

With all that though, I have to say it does take a little more than an introductory video to teach new players the ropes – most experienced players are a little less than forgiving, and it’s hard to balance out the player levels on each team. Hopefully the single player tutorial that’s on its way can introduce new players to the mechanics more interactively, and will alleviate this issue.

I have really high hopes for this game, and can see it becoming really popular once it is polished and out in the wild. Happy swashbuckling!

I'm not going to beat around the bush. If you're looking for a naval moba with the complexity of DotA and the thrill of Sea of Thieves, then you’re looking at the wrong game. However, don’t let that steer you away. Yes, I will litter this review with as many pirate lingo I can. As this is an alpha review, please expect things to change, but I have my hopes up for this game.

Unearned Bounty is a ship based MOBA where you roam a sea dotted with islands plundering trade ships, competing for neutral objectives and upgrading different parts of your ship. Different ships can be selected, all possessing upgradable hull, which governs your hit points, sails, which is your speed, cannons, which is how many cannonballs you can fire at once and damage dealt, and unique ability for each different ship. The method of firing is simple: use the mouse (or controller) left/right to control the yaw (direction) of your cannons and up/down to control the pitch (angle/height) of your cannons. You can then proceed to blow the man down and plunder as many ships as you encounter. There are neutral trade ships that serve as sources of gold for you to pillage in order to fund the expansion of your trusty ship, and also neutral objectives that appear throughout the match.

As I said before, the game is simple. You go around blowing ships up with your cannons and ability. Surprisingly, the simplicity makes for a very fun multiplayer experience – the aiming and firing is somewhat of a challenge when aiming at faraway scallywags combined with trying to make sure you don’t drive your boat into islands or other ships. It won’t be long before you realise that the best way to survive is to avoid encounters and farm up on trade ships at first, until you get an advantage over your opponents. As it stands now, most of the opponents are bots, but I can see this being really fun if more people started playing.

Going further in depth, the game at the moment has 4 modes: a normal 15 minute long match with multiple objectives, a shorter ten minute mode, a player vs AI mode where all players are on the same team and a new horde mode where up to three players can join together and face waves of enemies. I’ll have to say, the horde mode seems to be being worked on as it is quite overwhelming at the moment, but hopefully with enough feedback in the Alpha Phase they will make it more accessible.

When upgrading your ship, each quality you can upgrade can be upgraded twice, coming to a total of 8 levels of upgrade, each requiring more gold than the previous. Also, activating your ability costs gold, and if you don’t have enough then you will not be able to use it in your time of need.

The map is a seamless continuous world, looping back to a particular point when you go to far. This is really great because you can chase your opponent through the map and not stop, as there aren’t any bounds to be restricted to.

All in all, to me this game is promising. The Wind Waker-esq cel shaded graphics really tug on my heartstrings, you can see the influence of it directly by the ambient seagulls that fly by, bearing almost exactly the same resemblance as the seagulls in Wind Waker. The dev team handles communication (shoutout to co-owner WeNavy) well, communicating and responding to bug reports and suggestions via steam forums and Discord and plays with the community regularly. I haven’t played on a community playtest day, but I’ve heard promising things about it and from my experience I can tell it’ll be fun in a populated map with players. There also seems to be a dire need of some sort of tutorial for new players and a description of what the different ships abilities are, since I had to take a while to figure everything out myself and had to teach my friend without the help of the game. However, I can expect to see this when the game comes out of alpha. The tone of the game is done really well, with suitably triumphant soundtrack, and a few piratey dialogue lines heard here and there when firing upon land lubbers, but not too invasive that it distracts you.

Well done Extrokold , keep up the development and for the love of Poseidon, please do not change the art style! Maybe a few ads are needed to draw new players in but at the moment, the bots offer more than a challenge.

A short, simple story about a boy who meets a bird, and goes on a whimsicle journey together.

A fan of Freebird's previous work, To the Moon, I came to the understanding that this isn't supposed to be anything like a sequel or a full game.
But to me, there is a fine and skewed line to what can be called an 'interactive story' and a 'game', and it doesn't really impress me to cover it up with the words 'interactive pixel animation'.
Now, before you jump to conclusions - yes, I did enjoy the general feel of this game. The artwork was smooth, the controls felt acceptable, the soundtrack and sound effects were beautiful. It impressed me up until the point where the words 'interactive' were introduced.

The story follows a boy, seemingly walking a blurred line between his imagination and reality, finding a bird, and going on a whimsicle journey together. I have to qualms with the story, although it didn't really strike me much, but the interactions of the adventure felt limited to one or two directions - the game often popped up a little box showing you which direction keys, or enter/space, to press, at what time. Sure enough, you can walk up, down, left and right if you want, but you're still forced to take a certain direction to progress the story. I know it is required if you're an 'interactive pixel animation' to keep the story going, but it felt more like you were being ordered to do soemthing rather than properly interact with the pixel animation. Go left. Press space. Go right. Keep going right. Although the music gives the player some emotion whilst going through it, I was left just keeping my finger on one of the directional buttons, only to be distracted if I bumped into a tree or something. I'm not going to lie, the 'waiting period' I experienced whilst keeping my finger depressed on a directional button was met by some anticipation to get it over with. Maybe I just didn't have the patience, but a lot of it was just going back and forth, and I felt it didn't really add much to the story.


And that's another area I think the game fell short on as well - the story. It's slightly interesting, but at the same time I don't think it conveys the ideas Kao had in mind. One minute you're in your apartment, and the next you're in school, and then you're in a mixture of both - yes, the symbolism and 'blurred line between imaginary and reality' does play a part in this, but I don't think it really has a purpose. Why is this boy blurring his lines? What do the treetops coming out of the lockers mean? What is it actually meant to symbolize? With these burning questions in my mind, I became less and less intrigued with the story. It was good for the start, but I think it didn't need to keep 'blurring the lines' so constantly - so much that it was a blur altogether.

A Bird Story does have some good ideas in mind, but at this price I don't think it adds up. It isn't bad at its core, but the amalgamation of all its shortfalls makes it an 'experience' that tests your patience rather than immerse you in story. It has great art and music, and I can tell a lot of effort went into the sound effects and background art, but the linearity of the story doesn't quite do it justice. That being said, Freebird is at least offering a refunds policy to people that feel genuinely ripped off, so that's nice of him.

From this game, I can only partially see what to expect in To The Moon's sequel, but unfortunately it was hampered by what could have been a great preview of it. I wish all the people at Freebird all the best, and I'm having high hopes for To The Moon's sequel despite me feeling underwhelmed by this game.

Always Sometimes Monsters: the game with a heart.

Now, seeing the introspective person I am, playing this game really gave me an insight on how life plays out, depending on the actions you choose. Always Sometimes Monsters is a true choose your own adventure game; you're a character and you have a goal, and how you get to that is up to you. You could go round doing some odd jbos, you could make a quick buck off some poor sod or you could just wing it and go where the mood takes you. Either way, you'll end up with an ending somehow. Going through the game, it really gave me a sense of purpose in it, even though it didnt particularly feel like it when I was doing the tasks - sometimes I had to cut corners, and sometimes I had to do things the 'proper' way - that being said, the game makes it extremely clear to you that there isn't a 'right' choice to make. What you do is completely up to you but nevertheless you will get to your objective. It really did feel like a journey, and one that was worth writing about - I'm not going to spoil the premise, because that's kind of the whole schpiel, but the actions you take really do feel like you're working towards an ultimate objective. It's the kind of game where you can get so engrossed in the story, but you still have the freedom to choose what you'd do in the situations it gives you.

The message is clear in the game - you're in control of your own fate, but you can't control everyone else's. It's really rewarding working around all the circumstances to get to the objective you set out for yourself, be it making money or getting someone's trust. That being said, you need to really look into yourself to be able to make moral decisions, for example do you sell a stray dog to a training facility, or do you try and find its owner? These kind of choices make up the fabric of the game.

The art style and the music really gel in well with the atmosphere, with groovey tunes by Laser Destroyer Team setting in feels wherever you go, and the art style reminding me of old school indie pixel art games. You can really feel the indie game vibe going on in this game, and it's not suprising considering it was by Devolver Digital.

Overall, this game left me feeling sad; not in a bad way, but the story actually made me feel sad. It made me reflect on life, our journeys, and the fact that you might not get what you want. But this is what this game excels at - it can teach you a lesson about the natural order, and it can provoke conflict within the mind. If you're a fan of exploring stories to their edges, then this game is for you.

One Way Heroics is one hell of an interesting concept - A mix of 'forced scrolling' RPG concept, as said by the developer, Smoking WOLF, himself on his triumphant Playsim product page:

Originally posted by Smoking WOLF:

Over time the belief that I could create a fun Forced-Scrolling RPG got stronger, and I decided I’d give developing it a go. The result of that attempt is this game: One Way Heroics.

I have to say, it is strangely addicting at the least, and the addition of forced scrolling really adds an extra level of depth to an RPG concept.
The game plays like a rougelike 8-bit top down JRPG, if you can imagine that - every step you take, and every action you take, a turn is made. The game will then play out the rest of the character on the screen's moves - damage taken, monsters moved, status effects applied. There's a catch, though. The world you are in is subjected by an encroaching 'darkness', which will move from the left edge of the screen by one pixel every turn. A cold, chilling touch from this darkness will send your body flying into the air (or so you're told) and your character will die from what I assume to be asyphxiation from the cold vacuum of space. So effectively, you must plan your next moves, and be sure you aren't trapped or caught fighting, or else succumb to a frosty death.

Combat in the game is that of classic rougelike RPGs - press a button to attack, and you will attack in that direction. This makes combat smooth and doesn't impede on the sense of urgency the scrolling darkness imposes. You will soon find yourself trotting along the landscape, uninterupted and fleeting from the ever-infringing darkness. However, it does have the challenge to it - after all, it is a rougelike and will have different layouts if you so choose to play a randomly generated one. Sometimes, the game will throw obstacles in your way that require you to think ahead in order to escape the deathly left edge of the screen - climbing mountains, swimming through water, fighting, breaking down walls will take precious turns, and you must decide weather if you can wing it, or play it safe.

What I love about this game and has kept me intrigued is the progression, not only through one game session but across multiple game sessions - a la Rouge Legacy, at the end of each session you will gain 'Hero Points', points that allow you to unlock various different starting perks, and allow you to purchase new classes if you don't want to meet the objectives for unlocking them. From this, I take away a kind of Dark Souls mentality - your starting class is just what you start with, and what you make of your character during the game is up to you, for example I could start with a knight class, which has low agility, but stack agility starting perks to make him agile and combo more hits in an attack turn. This allowed me to decide right at the start of an adventure what kind of character I wanted to play - the treasure hunter, who has a high lockpicking skill, the ranged hero, who is quick to escape, or the tank, who has high vitality. It also has the allure of getting benifits from NPCs, too. There is a gold system in place, and you'll find yourself picking up strewn items (which are abundant) from the floor and selling them for cash at the next town or city you come across.

Overall, the game definately hits all the right RPG notes whilst still maintaining action. Characters can have party members, different classes, spells, abilities and must actively manage their time, stamina and energy to escape the darkness and ultimately defeat the demon lord. You can also choose the level of challenge you want, each world you choose will give you the option to play 'A Walk In The Park' mode which pits you against the boss at a certain distance travelled, or 'Afternoon Stroll' where the boss will appear at different intervals. Music will change dynamically depending on the terrain you're in, for example in a dungeon or in a town, and the art style is the classic 8-bit sprite look.

If you're a fan of roguelike RPGs like Sword of the Star and Half Minute Hero, then you'll love this game, and the apocalyptic twist of darkness chasing you will add a refreshing approach to the RPG genre. That being said, it is a very unique experience and you'd really have to try it out to understand the game.

Strangely enticing. It has somewhat of an Animal Crossing feel to it, where the overall look and feel of the game is cutesy, and mentally engaging.

You play as the Devil, and you've somehow gone and blown all your money. So what does the ruler of the underworld gotta do to make a load of money? Naturally, it's become a landlord. Before long, you'll have monsters moving into your four apartment block, and you'll have to tend to their furniture needs whilst fighting off various 'good guy' types that come to try and thwart your money-making plan.

Eventually, things start getting a tad busy - you begin to have multiple floors in your block, and tougher invaders will start showing up. I found myself truly exploring my devilish side when this started happening - monsters that live in your apartments have the capacity to skip out on the rent you set for them, and I thought 'well, if they're not paying up I'll just send them into battle first. And they won't get the furniture they ask for.'. Not before long, you've got lavish rooms that act as bait for 'cannon fodder' monsters - ones that don't seem to do well. From then on, you're in between taking up various challenges from the quest board, and maintaining your monster's satisfaction, since they will gain power based on how happy they are.
The concept sounds simple enough, but beleive me Petit Depotto certainly did not skimp out on any detail of this game. Monsters can attract mates, engage in...er..'pillowtalk', have kids, go to work, do the housework, go for a walk, play outside...it's a very clever comedic factor when you click on a room and see one of your monsters are 'reading an erotic fanfiction' or 'sexually harrassing a pop star', and injects a very 'slice of life' feeling into the game: you see these monsters have lives, and fight, and love - you're the Devil, doing his everyday administration. The whole concept is a very cute, 'a day in the life of' thing, and is bound to put a smile on your face when you play it.
The music alone leaves me grinning at the monitor like an idiot.

Overall, this is creativity in indie gaming to the maximum - a solid, novel twist on the tower defence type game and beautiful to experience. The art is like it's straight out of a picture book and envelopes the player with warmth, but when the going gets tough, you gotta be prepared to flex your brain muscles. If you're a fan of action-micromanagement games like Plants vs. Zombies and Recettear, then this is for you.

Hitman or Houdini: either take the guy out, or create an intricate jouney of events to confuse him and espionage your way to the objective. Tom Francis's brainchild 2D stealth puzzler Gunpoint takes on a vast, open ended approach to making the player formulate ways to complete an objective, however that may be.
Grainy pixel art complements the noir-esque anonymity that comes with espionage - a shady setting but a brightly lit housing that seems impossible to penetrate unless you have a plan. Gunpoint's main character gives the player the means to think of a hundred and one different ways to sly yourself to the end of a level, be it superjumping, window smashing, door slammin', or wire trippin'. I couldn't help but reminded of the frantic formulation of a plan in my brain when playing games such as Monaco or Hotline Miami when confronted with a devious challenge - you have a destination, and you have the means to get to it, but in what order suits your style? Truly, this kind of game can be tackled in any way a player wants - smash a window on the other side of the building and quickly flip a switch to confuse him or maybe jump and hang on to the ceiling and watch his every move for an oppertunity.

Story wise it is a clever peice of work. Witty, RPG-like dialogue is exchanged before each mission through the player's phone (which is coincidentally the menu screen) gives the player an array of responses to NPC storylines that have the player both intrigued and tickled at the same time, whilst the spy-themed bass-driven jazz sountrack gives them an immersion into the noir genre. Player-chosen dialogue responses have an effect, too: you can either go for the funny guy spy approach and annoy the NPC or interrogate with vindiction about a certain case. On the smartphone-clad menu screen, players will have the option to chooses between missions, deciding how their story will play out.

All in all, it's a very sharey "I did this at this point" kind of game, which takes the user through a brilliant plot orchastated by ingenious mission layouts. Players are allowed to experience this game at their own pace, awarding merits for the amount of violence, stealth, anonymity or time used at the end of the mission (just as a guage, though- completion of further additional objectives allow you to earn extra money to spend on upgrades to your character). Cleverly executed, you'll find yourself conjuring clever schemes to outwit the level in this game. Worth every penny.

There are those indie games that truly captivate your attention and keep you engaged for hours on end, and you know it's a gem when you find yourself spending the whole evening mining, collecting, running and blasting your way through zombie space.
MiniMax Game's Space Pirates and Zombies was developed by two blokes in Canada and boy, for two guys this game sure does outstand in the indie pool. You start out as a little 4-hardpoint ship, just plunderin' the good plunder. As you progress through the story you'll find out something crazy has stirred up at the centre of the universe. Something that allows flesh eating monstrosities to biologically enhance and drive their own ships, despite being mindless husks. The story has an enormous gravity to it; as the plot progresses, your fleet of AI-controlled ships, blueprints, hull types, weapon types, subsystem effectiveness, mining ability and the like go on the up as well. Doing this makes the player feel the gravity of the situation: there's a huge threat of space zombies capable of surviving without oxyen floating about at the center of the universe and you're going to need all the help you can get.

I suppose the reason why I find this game so enjoyable is an amalgamation of perfect game dynamics; the tactical RTS-like command of your own ship, with a main player-controlled ship and up to 4 other AI controlled ships, all of which are available for the player to directly take control of any time during flight. Missions are undertaken for either the civillians of a star system or the UTA - the universe's private military force, and doing favours for one faction often angers the other. The ever expansive tech tree is a delight, as well - research data, the space equivalent of experience points become increasingly important to get that rank of weaponary, subsystem, engines, or armour that you know you're going to need at the current system. As time seems to go forward when you jump from planet to planet and star to star, the players get used to planning a route according to a star systems ecosysem, 'difficulty' (measured in civillian or UTA strength) and managability.

With the addition of vicious money-hungry bounty hunters to the mix, I've never enjoyed any space-sim-top-down-physics-based-shooter as I have with this. I've found myself dedicating chunks of my gaming sessions to mining, exploring, trading, or fighting in this game. And when you finally get all the blueprints, all the ship hulls, and high-tier tech skill upgrades, you're still finding yourself having a blast dealing with pesky space zombies. In a nutshell, I haven't quite experianced any game like this but I can sum it up into two expressions: YARR and BRAINS.