Recent reviews by ScriptPostum

Honestly when I first saw the game through the animated trailer I got hooked on the concept, and the soundtrack already sounded awesome. I got a little sceptical seeing it be a tactical grid-based game (despite having had a ton of fun with XCOM 2 and good memories of that Mario game with Rabbids I forgot the name of) but decided to give it a shot anyway. Almost 80 hours later, I think it's a certified banger. I mean, what other game's gonna let you fight God, on the moon, with a cat that heals itself by pooping and farting at it's own poops? :p

The highs:
Soundtrack is Ridiculously (get it, 'cause Ridiculon? The name of the band composing the tracks? Anyway '.w.) awesome, I don't think I can point to any stinker in the tracks that play, teasing you with an instrumental version of each area and hitting a climax at the boss, hitting you with lyrics that really compliment the fact you're fighting the boss .

I kinda thought that the game being confined to being a strategy would get stale eventually, but no! The game just keeps on surprising me still, 70 hours in, which is bonkers. There's so many skills and passives and synergies, even with disorders which always come with an explicit downside. Same goes for the mentioned before skills and passives, some of them have the capacity to screw you over more than anything, and that's okay with me. Not every experiment needs to be a success after all, and this game revels in the amount of experimentation it offers.

Story's a little bit on the cryptic side, basically nothing's explicit on the why you're doing anything of it, could be that I haven't reached the point where it's all explained (for context my save is at 60% completion and I only unlocked act 3 but I haven't been there yet) so I'm not gonna hold it against it since it doesn't feel important anyway. However, the dialogue and presentation is hilarious, each and every one of the people you send your cats to is funny in their own special way :p.

The lows:
While breeding IS undoubtedly rewarding, sometimes it's just quite frustrating with some factors not lining up (example that happened to me, a perfect cat that was Gay and I had to wait for a gender-fluid stray like 20 days, which almost ended the whole lineage I was building). I do approve of inbreeding being met with punishment 'cause that's realism and it does force you to not breed the same cats over and over again.

Sometimes the RNG can really screw you over, either in levelling up by giving you 4 skills/passives completely unrelated to what you're trying to build, or by sometimes having your cat die in combat before you could even move it (that last one is more of a speed issue on my part '.w.).

Some skills lack pretty critical information, particularly range, at most it'll tell you "adjacent", "in an x tile radius" or just "ranged", the latter still feeling a bit vague personally :/.

Overall:
Yeah this game's really, really good. No regrets on buying this one at launch.
It's a 9/10 though, a couple of stuff hold it back but I think they can get ironed out eventually -w-.

I've been following this game since before the pandemic*, when it used to be just the first 3 broadcasts and honestly, the end product is pretty good but there's some flaws.
*For clarification, I also have this game on my old account, I just bought it again on sale cause for some reason getting all the DLC would cost me the same as buying the complete bundle. Quirky stuff but it's fine.

Good things first:
The acting is great! None of the characters stood out as bad and they all felt weird in their own special way and it does give everyone a distinct identity and I find myself with everyone being memorable.

Soundtrack's fantastic, everything from the menu theme to even the silly ads you can choose to play have a fun mix of dread-inducing gut wrenchers to silly songs about getting shocked to unconsciousness :p

The comedy is fun, jokes are funny and hit you like a truck when contrasted with the daily politics and events. Favourite parts for me is having the characters crash out on your character and call you out on live television 'owo

Gameplay (on broadcaster difficulty, or normal) is the right amount of stress, given the stress-inducing job that editing a live broadcast would be, and it didn't distract me too much from what was actually happening. And the dedicated challenge room was honestly quite fun.

The story's serviceable and the dramatic moments are really tense, the sound design and acting (again) really manage to sell the gravity of the situations, and choices you make during broadcasts do matter, whether by for example censoring what the government tells you to or by letting your signal get hijacked by the rebels.

The DLC are generally fine (apart from Live & Spooky, that one's not great).

The flaws:
Going for all achievements was very painful, the list of them requires you to re-play the whole game A LOT of times.
Which brings me to the fact that there's no way to fast-forward or skip broadcasts that in the end are meaningless. Sure you have a save system that allows you to go back to a specific segment of a broadcast once you've finished it, but usually I've been going to the more important decisions which are a bit further back. Which means having to sit through more of the same broadcasts over and over and... yeah that drove me a bit insane -_-

The between broadcast sections where you make decisions for your own family are neat in concept, but in the end they're kind of meaningless and they don't really amount to much :/

(Disclaimer: I don't know much about politics, I generally try to avoid them. It's usually bad news to me :/)
I feel like the political messaging which is at the core of the game is a bit much? Especially after playing through the DLC, I'm convinced the game works MUCH better as a comedy rather than a dystopian game like Papers, please, which I'm 99% sure someone made that comparison

Overall:
It's a pretty fun game as long as you don't think too much about politics imo and if you don't torture yourself for the 100% achievements '.w.
7.5/10

I'm a bit sour about Live & Spooky. The main "puzzle" being "guess who's supposed to go where" with no hints whatsoever is not fun, especially given that if you mess something up there's no way to skip the filler bits of the show which last minutes on end, a gripe I also hold a bit to the base game given it's achievements make you replay it a lot. Achievements which this DLC also has (joy). All for an okay, mildly interesting story.

Performances are mildly enjoyable personably, always fun to hear Patrick Bannon lose his short-fused temper... that's about it, the rest of the cast are either not that memorable or annoying. They're only fun when they end up in the prop room and end up getting kidnapped by the chair, never to be seen again.

4/10, I don't recommend you go out of your way to buy it :/

Had a good bit of fun with this one, I enjoyed Dave making a comeback after him existing solely to be your tutorial guy in the base game. Jokes are really fun, Eamon makes me lose it anytime he loses it xD

All the different paths are quite creative, taking the titular Bits of Your Life show in all the different directions by messing with the order in which guests come in.

Though, the gripe I'd have is FINDING said directions initially. For context I played with some clues cause it seemed like the intended way to play and I'd often just find myself blindly guessing which guest, which I wouldn't exactly call great puzzle design. Especially when if you mess up it can set you back something like 8 minutes at worst, as despite being able to fast-forward the ads (which thank crap cause those are 3 minutes like the ones on Youtube on the TV), you can't fast-forward the show itself.

Anyway, aside from that, it's a solid 8/10 I think. Personal favorite ending, angry and drunk Peter Clement kills a man

Honestly, this DLC is proof that this game's strongest attribute is the comedy. Out of the three and the base game, The Timeloop easily comes out on top comedically compared to the three and beats Bits Of Your Life in terms of it's overarching puzzle(s).

And the main gimmick, The Timeloop you and your boss find yourself stuck in, makes for some really funny moments throught the entire duration of it, and the creativity behind the scenarios are really commendable!

Really strong recommendation from me here, 10/10. Only hesitation I have is it's quite linear but hey, if it helped them make the thing THIS fun then think I'll forgive them for that.

Playing this game makes me more and more realise this game would make for a very interesting social study, especially considering just how generally (and by that I mean playing solo cause I got no friends '.w.) people generally don't shoot eachother DESPITE the very clear advantage of killing someone, all because of the looming threat of drones that blow you up or turn you into swiss cheese.

Also holy moly so many moments happen each time I play, it's like a campfire story generator and I love it

I quite liked this game, doesn't feel like it aged too badly honestly (apart from recognising a couple half-life sound effects, which was a little goofy :p)

Gunplay is quite good, with a great variety of weapons either given or acquirable during the game, each with some pretty creative attachments (personal favorite, the quadruple barrel shotgun)

The atmosphere is immaculate, it makes you feel claustrophobic in the dark metro and dread the bleak unbreathable surface

Enemies are quite varied and fair, from humanoid nosalisks that will tear you up close to the demons that fly over and grab you if you linger too long in the open. My only gripe is in early sections where the game just swarms you while you have to make it through with peashooter weapons.

Admiteddly the story is a little basic but it does a fine enough job of getting you from location to location, though most of the details are behind collectible diary entries which are walls of text.

Overall, 8/10, I had a pleasant time

I've been absolutely obsessed with this game ever since I tried the demo a couple weeks ago. TL; DR is this game is an amazingly relaxing game, even for a ball of constant nerves such as myself.

The artstyle is pretty nice, I like the mix of camera-following pixelated sprites, low poly but detailed environments and cozily painted character portraits, they all go together pretty neatily in my opinion. And of course, all the characters are cute, which to me personally is a slam dunk.

Gameplay-wise, there is quite a variety of things to unpack here:
- Farming, which while may be the first thing that the game offers, didn't quite grip me, it follows the Stardew Valley formula of sow, water every day, eventually forget when you unlock sprinklers. But that's okay, it's not supposed to be the deepest thing and I like that some seeds have different crops depending on how long you leave it to grow, even though there's not much variety but oh well;
- Fishing, which I admit here is not the greatest, you blindly cast a rod at one of 3 fish shapes and pray that you happen to find the one you need for one of the many quests that involve that, I had to go into the wiki VERY often to find what I had to catch which is not the best;
- Gathering and mining, which has an interesting mechanic where you can either spam-click to mine faster but use more stamina, or charge swings to take a bit more time but use less stamina. It does leave a relatively small choice to make but I like it, and you can also modify later in the game with gems. As for the resources, I appreciate that there's no particularly rare (annoying) resource to gather, and it is satisfying to do so, particularly later in the game drilling blocks with the kart is super satisfying and never gets old to me;
- Combat, speaking of the mines, offers a bit of variety through whacking the enemies with any tool, using a bow and arrows or even magic, and it's also pretty satisfying to mow through them. It's not the deepest thing in the world, but it's good for what it is;
- Completing shrines, personally my favorite part of the game, offering puzzle challenges which may be simple, but the real fun is getting these done fast by getting creative with the movement system. A real shame that there's not many of these, but I hope the devs put more of these eventually;
- Building, which while I may not have gotten in depth much, I've seen people making some pretty amazing stuff on that, and the builder is pretty in-depth so it definitely allows a lot of room for creativity if you wish to give it a shot;

Difficulty is what I would call Stardew Valley but with a waaay more forgiving time constraint, which works in this games favor as you can take your time and not need to rush through anything, not even punishing you if you're not home when it's too late and actually just allowing you to sleep wherever you want. Definitely reinforces the cozy and carefree vibe the game is going for.

Then there's the story and overall writing, which I found pretty charming and cute, with jokes that did get a chuckle out of me on multiple occasions, with characters that do feel realistic (and with one in particular that felt like literally me)

And lastly the soundtrack is pretty good, I could see myself try to relax to it instead of blasting my usual mostly metal playlist

Overall, while it does have some flaws and the occasional bug, I adore this game and it feels like the game I've been looking for to break up my usual gritty shooter diet. And the devs are really active, so far I've seen them patching the game daily, which is frankly insane but very appreciated, they're clearly passionate about their game and I'm rooting for them

Objectively I'd say is a 7.5-8/10, but to me personally it's a 10/10

Speaking as a mainly solo player since I don't have any friends to play this with (I have left the group of "friends" that tricked me to buy this game only to have me bullied), so be aware I am basically in the minority when it comes to the target audience.

This game does not feel fair to me. I can complete the first level like 1/10 times cause I just get oneshot or steamrolled with what feels like no counterplay possible. I am very much aware that I could just suck and I'm generally not a great fan of horror, but I've given my all to try and enjoy the game and it's just not for me. Really a shame since I see the devs really passionate about their game.

TL;DR, it's not really good as a singleplayer experience I think, it holds up better as a game with friends (with good ones at least)