Recent reviews by Sparkwave

Amazing game. Very much recommend. Remember to always punch Poppo and also check out their other games.

I'll contribute to the dislike flow with this review.
Do not play this. Play Resonite instead. It's literally the same thing, by the same devs, even by the same lead dev (Frooxius), but without crypto.
Neos is a horrible crypto cesspool that was ruined by its current owner, Karel.

A complete dumpster fire ever since Saber purchased it. A poor PC port from the console version with comically oversized UI, and weird restrictions. Overpriced DLCs that add very little new content and modders can simply copy features from them to the base game. Every game that Saber owns is eventually ruined, so unfortunately the same happened to Teardown. Do not buy, and if you do, either downgrade to 1.4 (1.5 is the offending version) or prepare for mod incompatibilities and oversized UI. Very unhappy with what happened to one of my favorite games. Shame on you, Saber.

Rivals of Aether was developed and published by Dan Fornace on March 28th 2017.
It's a physics sandbox shooter for Windows and was also released on Xbox and Nintendo Switch.

The game looks really good for a 2D pixelart game. Its parallax effects and move visual effects look pretty good, and its stages and their backdrops look just as great.
9 out of 10

The gameplay is very fun and keeps you on your toes at all times. There is plenty of content to enjoy, and the game is extremely fun to play in most of the modes.
9 out of 10

The controls are very tight and responsive like in Super Smash Bros. Melee, some people say that they're more clunky because of that but generally they're fine. There's multiple control profiles which are all highly remappable, and the game even supports keyboard controls, although it is clearly made for a controller.
9 out of 10

The UI is very stylish, very responsive, easy to navigate, and in-game obscures very little of the screen while conveying a lot of information. The training mode UI can also show inputs and some other settings, which is really cool.
8 out of 10

There isn't that many sounds in the game, and the vanilla characters don't have any voices. However, the game's sounds are iconic to the point they're even used in some workshop characters.
6 out of 10

The music in the game, courtesy of flashygoodness, is simply said really good. Every track is a banger and very pleasant to listen to, and sets the atmosphere of the stage perfectly.
10 out of 10

This game is GPU heavy.
The game is extremely lightweight and should run perfectly on anything that can run Windows 10, which makes it for instance great for playing on the go on a Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch due to its super low battery consumption. The only reason the game could slow down is a very terrible GPU, which can be fixed with frameskip or disabling certain effects in the settings. Overall, it's greatly optimized.
10 out of 10

The game has an adjustable difficulty. Its skill floor is pretty low, and it's very easy to pick up. Meanwhile its skill ceiling is through the roof, with extremely advanced, frame perfect techniques. The game has a very good interactive tutorial as well as a training mode.
5 out of 10

There is an unlocking system for pets, based off of "coins", as well as one for stage skins based off of playing a lot with a single character. Both are very enjoyable, even though each only has about 16 unlockables. Lastly, there's the Abyss mode unlockables, which are small but stacking upgrades that also works in certain types of matches.
8 out of 10

The game's story is rather simple, but works well enough.
6 out of 10

The game has a few singleplayer stuff, including singleplayer matches with bots of adjustable difficulty, as well as a story mode which is short but can be challenging. The best part of the singleplayer is definitely the Abyss mode, which puts the player against waves of various harder and harder threats and then allows them to unlock upgrades from it.
8 out of 10

The game's multiplayer is phenomenal for the most part. The game has up to 4 player local multiplayer, while still retaining all of its features. It also has rollback multiplayer, which seems very glitchy in terms of connection with more than 2 players, but with 2 players it works extremely well, even with high ping. It has many modes such as Abyss Versus which uses upgrades from the Abyss mode, Ranked, as well as Tetherball, a special mode which is exactly what it says on the tin. Workshop characters/maps/pets, a turbo mode, and a few special rules can also be used in multiplayer.
10 out of 10

The game has a somewhat active community that both hosts regular tournaments and creates workshop content. The community is somewhat small but for the most part very nice.
8 out of 10

The matches are usually limited to 5-8 minutes, but due to the fast pace of the game they usually end way earlier. Because of this, this is generally a game that you can pick up and play rather quickly.

The game has 18 characters (4 of each element and 2 special guest ones, Shovel Knight and Ori) and 15 unique stages, with a few reskins. Each of the characters has very unique and polished movesets as well as their own tutorials, Abyss mode, Abyss upgrades and ending themes/art. Each stage has its own hazards that make it more interesting for casual gameplay, as well as a Basic mode which makes it symmetrical, simplifies the layout a bit and turns the hazards off, for more competitive matches. In addition to that, there's a bunch of cosmetic pets and character recolors/skins.
9 out of 10

The game has several modes for both singleplayer and multiplayer, and a lot of customization within them.
8 out of 10

The game has a modding community that regularly creates lots of new characters (both from popular media and original ones), skins or modifications for existing characters, new stages, pets and special modifiers. Both vary in polish, ranging from basic stages from the in-game stage maker and extremely low effort characters, to content that rivals (pun intended) the base game or even surpasses it, with custom menus or game mechanics. The game has its own coding system for mods, which allows for a lot of flexibility. There's also a very simple custom character recolor editor.
10 out of 10

The updates have stopped because a sequel is being worked on which will change a lot of things about the game. Because of that, don't expect any more updates or support. However, the game is still beloved by the community which keeps hosting tournaments and making content for it.
2 out of 10

The game is $30 which is a considerable price for an indie game. I wouldn't say it's worth the price except on PC, which is where all the workshop content is, and all the former DLC characters are included with the package.
5 out of 10

The game has a few purchaseable skins, as well as in-game pets that can only be obtained by buying real life merchandise. However, all of this is strictly cosmetic and all gameplay elements are 100% for free.
8 out of 10

The game has a few bugs that will probably never get fixed, but for the most part it's seamless and there's no major game breaking bugs locally or in singleplayer. In multiplayer playing with more than 2 people is very glitchy and has a lot of issues though, which is a huge downside.
6 out of 10

On PC, if you care about the workshop content, yes. It's a great platform fighter with a lot of cool community content that keeps fueling it.

Final verdict: Best Smash Bros. replacement for PC.

BeamNG.drive was developed and published by the BeamNG team in early access on May 29th 2015.
It's a physics driving/destruction sim sandbox game for Windows.

The game started out having some pretty bad graphics, but as soon as the game got PBR support, the focus suddenly shifted a lot towards the game's visual side. Nowadays, the graphics are really good, with the exception of very noticeable terrible aliasing at all times, and no radial blur on the tires, both of which are getting fixed in the future. People have already compared this game's graphics to GTA 6.
9 out of 10

There's a lot of modes and activities to choose from. The game features open world sandbox maps, but also numerous missions placed on them, the game has great racing, drifting, crawling and police chase missions, and a story mode is coming.
8 out of 10

The controller config is very clunky, but the controller support is actually really amazing. The game supports force feedback and is very good when played with steering wheels of any price range. However, the game also plays amazingly well on controller or keyboard, due to the various steering assists it adds, to the point even drifting on keyboard is intuitive and easy.
10 out of 10

The UI is extremely laggy, inexcusably so. I have no idea what causes this, but in general, the UI has its own framerate (usually much lower than the rest of the game) and is even its own process, meaning browsing it isn't always intuitive. Browsing the main UI on controller is also very painful, but the radial menu is amazing and mostly fixes that issue. Regardless, despite being laggy, it's very customizable and useful.
6 out of 10

The game uses tons of very realistic car sounds that are very pleasant to listen to. Things like hydraulics and crashes have custom sounds, and even places like interiors of cars or tunnels change how sound works in them. Overall, pretty good.
8 out of 10

The game has no music, although the trailers have very nice music.
2 out of 10

This game is CPU heavy.
The game is pretty demanding due to its advanced physics calculations. Users of lower end CPUs might need to turn on simplified physics. In terms of GPU demand, it's surprisingly also pretty high, with many people reporting better performance with lower graphics settings. However, the game still runs (if not great) on older hardware, and it's clear it's been optimized as much as it can be.
7 out of 10

The difficulty varies a lot. Some of the missions might prove a bit too challenging to beat for inexperienced players, but there's also ones that focus on putting players against each other or giving them multiple goals of varying difficulties to reach.
5 out of 10

The game doesn't have any unlocks at the moment, however the upcoming story mode will feature unlocks.
0 out of 10

The game features no story, but it's upcoming.
0 out of 10

The game is pretty much made for singleplayer, it might seem a bit barren and empty at times, especially with traffic disabled, but it's still mostly just meant to be a huge sandbox to enjoy by yourself, and it's doing a pretty good job at that.
10 out of 10

The game has no multiplayer, but since there's a very popular multiplayer mod called BeamMP, I will count it. It's really good, it tackles most of the issues with multiplayer in a physics heavy game like this, and it works really well. It's also relatively easy to install, at least on Windows. With other players, the game is even more fun at times.
8 out of 10

The game has an amazing and a very supportive community which keeps engaging in discussions about the game, creates many videos about it, and also creates content for the game.
10 out of 10

Due to this being a sandbox game, the session time is completely variable. When it comes to missions, they usually take less than a minute, sometimes more, up to around 5 minutes with some time trials, especially modded ones.

The game has a plenty of base content, with more to come. It contains many different types of fictional cars, from old classics, through cheap JDM three wheelers, to modern supercars. It also contains a multitude of maps, including city, wilderness and desert settings. There's a lot of missions and props as well, there is no shortage of base content in this game.
9 out of 10

The game has a multitude of gamemodes. Obviously, a sandbox one for freely messing around. Various missions on almost all of the maps, including races with AI, collecting markers, offroad crawling, drifting, police chases, package delivery, hypermiling, precision parking, a bus mode, a large amount of time trials, and more.
9 out of 10

The game has an amazing community that keeps making lots of mods for it, including cars, car configurations, car parts, props, other kinds of vehicles, custom scenarios, maps, UI apps, and more, all of which are installed from within the game. The game also features built-in modding tools. There exists a garage feature and a track editor, but both are very janky and limited, the former expandable by mods though.
9 out of 10

The devs keep delivering large updates to the game regularly, adding not just new content, but also revamping the existing one and adding a lot of new features. They also take lots of feedback from the community and do exactly what the community wants. This is one of the best dev teams that there is.
10 out of 10

The game costs $25, which is a little above average for an indie game, but considering its insanely high quality and the amount of content and possibilities in the game, it's a fair price.
8 out of 10

The game has no in-app purchases whatsoever, you get all future content for the game for free once you buy it.
10 out of 10

The game has a few bugs but they are always quickly fixed by the developers. Modding the game is often a pain due to how everything can break once some things become outdated, but as long as you don't install mods, you'll have a bug free experience.
7 out of 10

Absolutely yes, this is the best sandbox racing game in the world. It's only going to grow in content and features, and with the story mode, it will be a full on beatable game with a set goal.

Final verdict: Best sandbox car game.

This game is causing me way too much motion sickness, which no other VR game does, and is extremely hard and frustrating for no reason. Do not play unless you're a masochist or just wanna get an unlock everything mod and go into sandbox mode.

Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades (H3VR) was developed and published by RUST LTD. in early access on April 5th 2016.
It's a physics sandbox shooter for PCVR.

The game has rather simple graphics, which are necessary to maintain the optimization in VR. However, it's also not an eyesore to look at, and the weapon models and certain environments look really good. It's no HL:Alyx, but it's understandable since it came out way before it, and its physics are aiming to be way more accurate.
7 out of 10

The gameplay is very enjoyable, there is a lot of activities and replayability, and even somewhat of a story mode. The reloading and aiming generally works well and the inventory management is intuitive after some practice. There's also a sandbox mode to mess around to your heart's content.
8 out of 10

In general, the gun controls are sometimes unintuitive (perhaps due to being made for the HTC Vive controllers, although an alternative setting that uses the action buttons is also available) and grabbing guns is clunky sometimes. Also, smooth turning isn't really smooth. However, the game has a lot of creative movement modes, which are very well done. It's a mix of good and not so good controls.
6 out of 10

The UI is detached from the head as it should be. The game features very little of it, only for menu interactions, various sandbox stations/tools, adjusting the sights, the minimap/inventory in some modes, and the wrist menu. The wrist menu is very intuitive and frees a button to be used for something else. The UI feels a bit dated but is, for the most part, very responsive and extremely easy to navigate.
8 out of 10

Many of the gun sounds are recorded from the actual respective guns, the game features different sound physics in different environments, and the sound design in general is very satisfying. The UI sounds are very iconic and pleasant, and the enemy voice lines are hilarious.
10 out of 10

The game's music, which is all original, is all amazing. There isn't much of it, but the music that exists in the game fits its respective scenario really well.
9 out of 10

This game is GPU heavy.
The game is pretty demanding to run. It requires an SSD due to how it loads assets. It also has occasional lag spikes. Without mods and on a decent rig, it usually works pretty well though.
7 out of 10

The game is very difficult, especially due to its realistic reloading and aiming, as well as the need to manage the ammo and inventory. However, it also has a few features, which if mastered, can help with it a lot. It also has a lot of difficulty settings to make certain gamemodes easier.
5 out of 10

The game has several unlockable guns. The unlocking process isn't really explained at all, but the unlocked guns and accessories are very interesting and worth the search. There's not many permanent unlocks beyond that though.
4 out of 10

The game doesn't really have a story, with the exception of its zombie mode, which has a very simple story, and a few lore bits. Outside of the lore, there's not much story in the game.
2 out of 10

The game's singleplayer is the only part of the game, and is really good.
10 out of 10

The game has no multiplayer by default. There exists a decent mod for asymmetrical multiplayer but only limited to one gamemode, and there exists a full multiplayer mod but at the time of writing it's very experimental and work in progress. Therefore, there's no real multiplayer available in the game yet, but this will change.
1 out of 10

The game has a very nice community that's very active on social media and talks a lot with the
10 out of 10

The sandbox portion of the game has a variable session time, however usually it's designed to be played in about 30 minute - 1 hour sessions, and most gamemodes focus on that.

The game has a lot of base content, only a couple of maps, but a large amount of different guns to choose from, from many ages, countries, and of many different types and calibers.
8 out of 10

The game has a sandbox mode, an infiltration-type gamemode, a zombie mode, an arcade shooting range with a gun shop, and a few other minor customizable scenarios and challenges. It's not a lot but all of it is replayable.
6 out of 10

The game has a large modding community that keeps adding new guns, gamemodes, mechanics and maps. It's also strongly communicating with the devs. There's also a lot of customization in the game, including an advanced gun attachment system with layered attachments, and a scenario builder system with sandbox tools and basic programming.
9 out of 10

The game is receiving regular content updates all the time, some of which are pretty large. The dev uses a ton of very bad game dev practices and refuses to change them no matter what, but also listens a lot to the community.
8 out of 10

The game costs $20, which is fair for it not being the most polished game, and is worth it for the amount of fun it provides.
8 out of 10

The game has no in-app purchases whatsoever. You buy it once and you get all future updates for free.
10 out of 10

The game tends to be pretty buggy sometimes but most of the bugs are fixed quickly. Overall, they're usually not game breaking.
8 out of 10

If you like guns and have VR, probably yes. It's a very satisfying gun sandbox with a lot of stuff to do in it, especially with mods.

Final verdict: A gun nut VR paradise.

Valve has completely abandoned this game and doesn't care about it. It's receiving some engine updates from time to time, but since it's completely unplayable due to bots, I recommend trying TF2 Classic instead.

Best Steam party game, very exciting and entertaining.

Very good app. 10/10