Recent reviews by ronzilla

"Roottrees are Dead" in an office org chart, with pets: surprisingly good!

Not super long, puzzles aren't super obscure either. But totally worthwhile if you like this sort of deduction game. Personally I would play more of these.

Also, every time I saw it mention the fake business social network "ChainedIn", I laughed.

The UI feels alpha-quality--in a sequel no less. There are far better mining games out there.

Unstoppable! 100% worth your time. If you're a Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem fan, this will be right up your alley. And if you're an Advance Wars or Wargroove fan, allow me to suggest giving it a try too.

The care that's gone into all the interactions, the art--it's all really well done. This game will probably get scant press/attention due to the genre, but honestly: if you're at all on the fence about a purchase and you've enjoyed any of those games above, you'll be delighted by this.

The gold standard for the Advance Wars style of game. The campaigns are worthwhile, Conquest mode is its own interesting keep-your-units-and-upgrades setup, multiplayer maps can be huge, and there are some new units with push/pull/immobilize mechanics. Totally worth your time, and will still play well 20 years from now.

Surprisingly good deckbuilder! The non-battle events are in the same map locations each time, and given the time-loop narrative, you can visit each event to explore its options. The world map has some honestly interesting choices, unlike most deckbuilders.

Note to devs: card text like "At the beginning of the turn" should probably read "At the beginning of every turn"

If you like Return of the Obra Dinn and/or the Golden Idol series, you'll enjoy this.

I really wanted to like this game--I'm all for puzzles and wackadoo plot lines. But the controls and the screen mangling make it tough to enjoy.

Controls:
Lorelei uses a "one button does everything" approach, and it means you'll be constantly manipulating menus to confirm or cancel things. Even cool features like your character's photographic memory can't be accessed while you're looking at a puzzle, which means you have a painful number of button presses to get to the cool stuff...and then get back to the puzzle. Every time. Most games use separate buttons for "do it", "cancel", "inventory", and "map"...this would have been a great choice/option.

Screen mangling:
A few hours in, and Lorelei likes to start the camera shaking as you walk around, along with flashing the screen white a bunch of times. This is probably meant to indicate the main character's state of mind, but after a minute or two of this, it becomes a "don't play this game" signal. An option to turn off camera shake + flash would be a huge help.

I'd love to keep diving in to this game, but the controls & camera are turning me away.

If you enjoy Slay the Spire or Monster Train -esque roguelikes, this game will 100% be worth your while.

I played the itch.io version so much that I had to uninstall it because I wasn't playing any other games. Happy to re-pay for it here on Steam.

To me the dice element doesn't feel RNG-heavy, given that the dice can be modified into interesting combinations and you know exactly what the monsters will do ahead of time.

A much worse version of Hotline Miami.

Still the best ninja simulator around, even after all these years.