Recent reviews by The Real HELLCAT

Small sticker shop, with great addictiveness :-D

Do I recommend it?
Well, as usual, "it depends".... on how much spare time you have:
1 - Have a lot of spare time: YES!
2 - Don't have a lot of spare time: Well, MAKE THE TIME! (then go to option 1 once you have it)
So basically, yes. Highly recommended.

What starts with "oh neat, lemme create some cute stickers" quickly ends in "omg, that late, already".
At first you have a limited set of elements you can create your own creations with, as you sell those stickers to the customers sending in orders to your sticker shop, you gain coins and hearts which you can use to unlock new sticker elements, shiny and sparkly foil paper to print them on, colorful packing materials and even goodies to add to your packages to make every receiver of your "adhesive decals" (the game called the stickers like this once, I had to "lol" quite literally XD) even more happy.

And here's the first trap:
When you finish an in-game day (to save the game) you're quite prone to the classic "oh, c'mon, let's do those few new orders quickly as well, and THEN call it a day", and you'll do this again. And again. And again. And eventually your alarm goes off 'cause you played through the night.
If you didn't get lost in letting your creativity loose with creating more and more stickers, already.

Oh, and if you're a Twitch Streamer, your viewers can order stickers directly from the chat as well!

AND since the game actually lets you save all your sticker creations as PNG images, you CAN actually send them the stickers :-D

So yeah, tl:dr:
Very neat and cozy game to be creative, have lots of colors on your screen, incl. sparkles, and all that with a hint of salesperson sim.

Oh, and last, not least: The background music! Super chill, never gets boring, never draws too much attention.

tl;dr: A great game, that unfortunately suffers from too aggressive in-game purchases that sometimes can even be called "pay to keep playing".

So, first the good things:
It's a well made Shmup with nice graphics and solid gameplay, zooming through the levels and making all the enemy ships into lootable scrap is really fun.
Paired with that is a shop where you can trade your collected loot for new ships, additional weapons or upgrades.

Then you have kind of a galaxy map where you can travel between planets/systems to do the missions there.
Doing enough missions at a system makes it produce some of the loot that you can use at the trader.

Overall, it's not reinventing the wheel, and sticks to established mechanics and implements them well designed and executed.

Gameplay rating: 8/10

Another nice thing is for if you're also playing this on mobile, the game gives you a profile ID and PIN with which you can "log in" to said profile and play on the same savedata on multiple devices.

The dark side of the moon:
The micro transactions that should be called "macro transactions" - as per usual you can buy "crystals" for real world money, and things that cost real-money crytals, in the game, they gonna cost you hard.

The worst thing is where the game basically lock you out from continuing to play, when you need to repair your ship:
First you already pay the loot scrap for the repair (which is totally fine, and a normal mechanic) but then you ALSO must wait sometimes FOR HOURS(!) for the ship to actually being repaired - unless you pay real-money crystals!
And you can play while your maybe only ship is undergoing repair.

This is just greedy and wrong. The worst kind of F2P.
A fair approach would've been to either spent my loot scrap for repair, instead of buying more upgrades OR pay via real-money crystals, something like this.

F2P micro-transaction rating: 0/10

Bottom line:
A fine game, that you CAN play (to a certain extend) without mortgaging off your home.
It's really fun, if you're a Shmup fan, give it a try.
The over the top micro transactions just leave a bad taste.

Overall rating: 7/10

Where do I begin....

The Stanley Parable "Ultra Deluxe"?
What's deluxe? Does it support comfy pillows? Fluffy floofs? A personal waitress to bring me cold drinks while I play?
NO! It just gives you a bucket full of.... yes, full of what?
Of "New Content"? Well, once you've played the new content, the new content isn't new anymore, you know it, then. It's maybe not "old" (yet) but at least middle aged. Old New Midage Content, kinda. Why can't they make the new content stay new? So I can play it to my heart's content.

Sometimes it feels like you're not playing a game, the game is playing you!
Well, at least it's well adjusted.... (Play it and you know what I mean.)

Though, I'd've liked to see a Stanley Parable 2, or a 3, heck, maybe even a 12th or 15th one. Granted, 8 would be it, yes definitely 8!
Stanley Purrable 2 - The Search for Cats. Yes. That would've been it.
Stanley Parable 4 - The Voyage of the Voyeur, maybe?

Nah, 8 is the thing, no matter how hard you try.

So, to not cost you, the lovely person actually reading this, not too much of your precious time (unlike the narrator in this flick, who does nothing short of slowly gnawing your ears of and there isn't even a freaking SKIP option.... unless I missed it, maybe.... now that I think of it.... is there?) let's come to a conclusion:

Would I recommend this.... game?
Well.
On a scale from 2.4 to cloudy, I'd give it a Soylent Green!
Make of that whatever you want.

I'll be going back to pushing some buttons now, mind you.
Need to find more new content. And maybe some more old one as well.

Bye.

Cute puzzle game with a nice mechanic of "switching" between kind of "alternate realities" of one level to find/rescue these little guys, which are super cutely drawn and animated :-D

The difficulty of the levels seems a bit unbalanced, all of sudden you hit a rock hard level followed by a super easy one - but definitely something at least I can deal with.

Overall, if you like puzzles and cute things, you might wanna give this a try.

This game needs to be enjoyed with hot cup of tea.
Delightful puzzles in a wonderful, magical world, the art style and music creates a quite relaxing atmosphere.

A very nice touch to the puzzle mechanic that you need to control both characters individually and have them work together, as only together they can solve them.

While - depending on how good you are solving the puzzles - the playtime is not too long, but that time you do spend in the game couldn't be any better.

So, if you like puzzles and are looking for a comfy experience and a nice story that develops over the course of solving those rooms, do look at this.

Ich hab dieses Spiel in meinem Twitch Stream ausprobiert wegen der Möglichkeit dass Zuschauer in gewisser weise Mitspielen und über Abstimmungen oder das Spawnen von zusätzlichen Gegensttänden und Monstern Einfluss nehmen können.
Meine Erwartungen wurden nicht entteuscht :-) Das Spiel selber ist kurzweilig und macht Spass aber die Zuschauer hatten fast noch mehr Spass - dem hämischen Lachen nach geurteilt immer wenn sie ein Mosnter beschworen haben das mich den Großteil meiner HP gekostet hat :-D
OK, der Fairness halber muss ich sagen dass auch ein paar mal Heilung geschickt wurde.

tl;dr: SPass für die ganze Fam.... den ganzen Stream, egal auf welcher Seite man sitzt, das werd ich in Zukunft auf jeden Fall noch öfter rein werfen.

You have a friendship that needs to put on a test?
This is your tool, and you'll even end up having a ton of fun!

"Can't Drive This" is a party-game to give you and your friends a lot of reasons to yell at each other and a reason for that making-it-all-up-again-cold-beverage afterwards.

The objective is simple: One builds a neat driving track, while the other has to drive it (yes, WHILE it is being built) and the driver must (in all Speed-ish style) not drop below a certain speed.
But that'd be way too simple, there is un-simplifying obstacles like windmills you can crash into, trapdoors you can fall down in, pinball bumpers that almost literally bump'n'kick you out of the screen, and many, many more the driver will hate the builder for placing right in front of them.

So, yeah, lots of chaos, lots of fun, lots of yelling :-D

Quick rundown of the most important features:
- LOCAL PLAY! While you CAN play online, this features local play, both players on one computer, a.k.a. "Couch CoOp"
- Multiple gamemodes (as of writing this some are still in development)
- Multiple vehicles to chosse from (that also differ in driving behaviour!)
- Customizable track visuals

....and more being constantly added (the game is in Early Access and being updated often at the time of this review).

So, if you need another hit for your next party, try this :-)

> Short version:
Gameplay: 8/10 - Graphics: 9/10 - Music: 8/10

> Long version:
Ridge Racer Unbounded is a bit different from the PlayStation Ridge Racer games most of us know.
The whole setting is less "party racing" and more "dark fight for domination", you're out to take the city - a bit like in NFS titles where you want to climb up the ranks to become the leader of the street gangs, just better ;-)
Also, unlike in PS Ridge Racers, you can crash and there is a (very simple, though) damage model (cars have a certain "health level"), this adds fragging your oponents, or be fragged by them, like known from BurnOut and the likes.
You also can destroy (and earn bounus points by) certain parts of the city along the track you're racing.

Yet, with all those differences to the PS versions, Ridge Racer Unbounded is a great game and a lot of fun!
The different setting is interesting and an OK change from usualy more "party" like arcade action of the other RR titles.
The damage model and intentional destruction of the city adds well to the gameplay and makes things more interesting and fun.

Also worth mentioning are the "frag cams", where your frags, crashes and destructions are shown in from a cinematic perspective.

Last but not least does the game feature a couple different game/race modes like normal races, drift attacks and the such.

The graphics are absolutely amazing and eye candy, the music fits well to the overall experience.

Bottom line: If you enjoy arcade racers, you will likely have a lot of fun with this one.
This is kind of a mix of PS Ridge Racer + NFS + BurnOut and the result is a very fun and solid arcade experience.
If you're still unsure wait till you can grab it at a deal, definitaly worth it's money, esp. with a few % off :-)

This is like the secret child of R-Type and ProjectX - 'nuff said.

If any (or even both) of those games ring any bells and you like those bells, you're gonna love this one!
It even has options to simulate the graphical look of many 8 and 16 bit machines. Lovely.

So, what exactely is this, you still ask?
It's a 2D sidescroller, scrolling to both sides (you can flip and change direction at will) with lot's of spacey weapons.
All you need to do is to shoot everything that moves and if something doesn't move, shoot it anyways.

A bit more details about the game:

- Gameplay:
Very solid, very fun, easy to handle yet hard to master, i.e. the game handles and plays very well and smooth but challanges you hard at times.
The direction change is a neat addition to the mechanics, at first it seems "nice" but after playing the game for some more it really adds a lot - the levels sometimes fell a bit bigger and more important you don't have to wait for the "rear-shot" powerup to hit enemies that passed you, you just turn around and shoot them anyways :-D

- Graphics:
"2.5D" can - when done well - look amazing while not disturbing the pure 2D nature of the game.
And this one is done really well!
While the game and all it's environments / levels are sole 2D, the actual grahpic is rendered using 3D models.
Looks great, plays well.

- Music:
An amazing soundtrack that is a huge homage to "chip tunes" and really drills into your ears, you might catch yourself keeping the game running just to have the music playing.

This game is a huge timewaster - but an unhealthy enjoyfull one at that.

You start of as a small asteroid, grow into a small planet, eventually you'll become a star until you go down as a huge black hole.
While being a star you can attract other planets into your orbit to form a complete solar system.
Large enough planets can sustain life that will launch a couple of spaceships and build shields around the planet and later on the star they are orbiting as well.

And that is pretty much all there is, you drift around in the universe as some stellar body, either avoiding or trying to destroy other starsystems you might encounter.

There is also a couple of missions you can attempt.

Bottom line: very nice way to kill some time, maybe not worth full-price, but when you can grab it during a sale or in some bundle, go for it.