Recent reviews by rew!

Makes the absolute most of every moment; amazing and emotional from start to finish.

This game is very unpolished and clearly still fairly early in development - but what we have here is one of the most promising rhythm games I've ever played in terms of style and visuals. Really excited to see how far this one goes!

(I also enjoyed the short story about Beat and her origins - definitely hungry for more of that, as well!)

HEHE 69

MMMM VERY GHOOD YESS MHMMM HOT PEOPLE WOAH

The app itself is far from perfect but...

If you like Picross, you can't get much better on PC than this. Workshop support is all it needed.

If your friends can handle being gaslighted, lied to, and betrayed, its perfect.

The game has a ton of silly quirks that are almost surely a result of the game basically being completely unknown for 2 years before randomly blasting off in popularity. Excited for the sequel.

This is the best game of all time.

I loved hanging out with my best friend Sayori!

Game Dev Tycoon is one of my favorite "Simulator" games that I've played. The game can be a both hands-on game to play while completely focused, or a game to play while just passing the time talking to friends or getting other work done. It offers an interesting style of game creation, allowing you to pretty much take full control of your games while it being simple enough to do with a few mouse clicks.

In the game you play as the CEO of a game company, and it does a fairly decent job of conveying that. I enjoyed the wide range of custimazation options offered by the game, and I had a fun messing around with other aspects of the game such as Marketting or seeing what the fans of our games have been up to.

However, I got bored of the game rather quickly, as the actual combinations that would get you anywhere were quite slim. These days I only play it while waiting for another game to download or a video to upload. But it definitely does that job well. The replayability of simulators is there as always, and the many references to actual games and companies was fun enough to keep me interested my first run through.

Definitely a game worth picking up, but maybe not for 10 dollars. This is a very good 5 or even 7 dollar game, though, so if it goes on sale you should definitely spare the extra change. Again, the most fun way I've had to pass time or be a distraction.

Update: With the release of Deltarune, I've been thinking about Undertale a lot recently. I've matured a lot since writing this review, and my views on what makes a game good have changed. Do I still recommend Undertale in 2018? Yes. Heavily. I think its something everyone should experience at least once. It has hilarious writing, some awesome bossfights, and one of the best video game soundtracks of all time.

That said, I do think this game is far worse than I originally idealized. Now, Undertale is still better than most other games, but I think its important to understand one of my biggest issues with the game: the message.

The game tries to push this "be a pacifist" message. Now I think this is more to subvert the expectations of the player rather than to actually tell them to stop violence (I don't think Toby Fox is trying to end War with this game or anything), but my issue with all of this is how easy and rewarding the game is if you play it in a pacifist way. In my opinion, the game would've been much more interesting if killing monsters was easier and overall more rewarding - and yes, it does give XP and Gold, but I think it becomes abudantly clear pretty quickly that you are doing something wrong by killing monsters. Anyway, I still think Undertale is a great game despite some of its flaws, and definitely holds up today.

My previous review for more indepth stuff about the actual game, tho quite outdated:

Undertale is quite a unique game for 2015. It bent the rules of gaming stories on its head. It gave the player an immense amount of choice. The influence of Undertale in the gaming community and possibly games, in general, will continue for years to come.

But what makes Undertale the "big indie game" of 2015? The idea of implementing the Pacifist/Neutral/Genocide choice system. This simple mechanic is the key point of the game. Not the setting, not the music, not the spaghetti-making skeletons. It's the idea of choice. Yeah sure, sparing everything or killing everything completely changes the ending, but not just that. The subtle choices. Did you spare that Froggit and kill that Night Knight? The ending could change because of it.

I mentioned these before, but the setting and music are definitely still something spectacular. It feels like a classic NES game but revamped into the modern age, as many games, such as Shovel Knight, are doing. The world Toby Fox has built and the music he has composed are excellent examples of what single people are capable of.

I also mentioned the characters, or at least a character earlier, and want to clarify that this is a fairly major part of the game. If you have for whatever reason not played the game, this is probably the part you have seen the most of. They are everywhere, and even nearly a year later continue to be all over the internet. That's because each and every one of them is unique. From crazed fish ladies to lizard scientists, this game's wacky cast makes the world feel alive. Even the small monsters from random encounters each have their own style of battling and acting.

But battling and acting is the main gameplay, which is where I think Undertale has its faults. The gameplay gets very repetitive very fast, and if it weren't for the multiple endings I probably would've never even considered replaying it. The one saving grace is the boss battles, in which the majority of them are unique. I actually quite enjoyed some of the boss battles and I had at one point made saves specifically to battle the ones I liked the most.

There is another section to the gameplay, being the puzzles, which are quite challenging at first, but are extremely simple once you've beaten them once, so replaying the game to get that Pacifist or Genocide ending will often have the puzzles being more of a hassle than a puzzle. Luckily, a good chunk of them are actually absent in the event of a Genocide Run.

I would definitely pick up Undertale if you haven't already since it's fairly cheap and can be completed relatively quickly. Just a word of advice, though: unless you are a hardcore completionist, I wouldn't play the games to find every interaction and secret, because the gameplay just isn't worse it while there are so many hidden secrets in Undertale. Play it for the story and characters, don't expect any amazing combat.