Recent reviews by Truehearted

Grime is a satisfyingly brutal metroidvania, with great character customization, and a incredibly unique setting.

I have never seen such a fascinating unique setting, It won't take long for you to understand where the game takes place, no ruined kingdom with grand castles, instead, bowels, stomachs, spines, nerves, limbs, you will be exploring a rotting corpse, and like many others, you will be born from a fragment of a shattered womb; you will play as Akhlan, a rock man with a black hole for a head, you and your cohabitants are fueled by the last breath of your "parent" which also functions as your basic healing resource, but for your "brothers" it may cause great existencial pain, their factions, beliefs and struggles, make for a believable and lived-in world.

If you hunt or defend yourself against others, you may absorve them, making their characteristics your own, mimicking them, while traits from great creatures improve exploration capabilities, others combine with the souls-like attribute system, allowing for fun character customization that supports many playstyles, but not only you, your tools also mimic living beings, armor and weapons made of still living mutilated body parts, jaw maces, spine whips, fang dual swords, and others will improve your chances of success, but what drives you forward? Is it Curiosity, yearning, or ravenousness? Others will take notice of your actions and judge your silent and ominous visage.

Grime would be a pretty gory experience, but tactfully, all inhabitants and their surroundings are made of stone-like substitutes of their meat equivalents, combat and platforming are precise, ruthless, and satisfying, especially the parry and counter mechanics, the beautiful orchestral songs and stunning backgrounds accompany your journey from beginning to end, the world and it's inhabitants, induced such a powerful sense of wonder in me, that I was hanging at every sliver of worldbuilding I could find, every area, every word and the feelings within, to be thrown into such a harsh but compelling world is a fantastical experience.

Grime was certainly made with passion, and it oozes it from every single frame and sound, definitely one of the best metroidvanias I ever played.

I've played plenty of this sweet management game outside Steam, and it gives you as much you give to it.

The game follows the titled Recette, a neglected child trying to pay off her absent father's debt, and Tear, a softhearted loan shark, who decides to help Recette keep her home by assisting in the opening of a shop, both hopping to clear the mountain of debt papa Lemongrass has accumulated; the girls themselves are quite the racket, and like most characters you meet, despite having depressing backgrounds and troubled lives, have goody and fun personalities, specially Recette, this hungry airhead never let's the world get to her, she has this contagious cheerfulness and hopefulness that makes everyone around her better people, this lightheartedness and good humor, in contrast to surprisingly serious story beats and world make for an enjoyable tale.

The gameplay itself is divided in two parts, town and dungeon, in town you can visit a handful of locations to witness some story events, combine items to get new ones, acquire your shop's stock, prepare for customer orders, hear the news to predict, or react to supply and demand, but most importantly, manage your shop, what to sell, what items are going to be the eye candy on the window shelfs, what to stock vending machines with, what decorations to use; all of that contributes to what sort of clientele you attract, each client has different disposable income and interests, thankfully, regardless of chosen decorations and shop stock, each character also has also a improvable reputation level, which decides how much they are willing to spend on items.

In the dungeon, you can play as the adventurers you hire, to explore, fight monsters, and collect items, but most importantly, meet new potential employees and clients, thus unlocking most of the available story content, new characters start with reputation on 0, so you must sell them cheap stuff, before going back to your usual stock, all of that would have been fine, if not for the fact that the dungeons are repetitive, and the rewards are meager at best, I consider it a complete waste of the player's time, thankfully, most of the bosses you fight have actual mechanics instead of stat checks (already better than 3/4 of all RPGs), and the player may take useful items to dungeon with them, reducing some frustrations.

But the dungeons are still a pain point that may decrease a player's patience, and reduces the chances of paying your weekly debt installment, it's much better just to resell town items, it's baffling how much of the game is locked behind it's worst feature, even if the trouble it gives vanishes after the debt is paid, I have some reservations about trying to guess the customers allowances, the overwhelming effectiveness of vending machines, on how the game could have been one week shorter, and how the difficulty vanishes after you have a basic understanding of the mechanics, but games that grasp the town merchant aspect as well as this one are few.

Ultimately, Recettear has fun management gameplay and story, leaving a sweet aftertaste, despite some disagreeable bites, certainly, a dessert Recette herself would approve of.

Dead in Bermuda feels like a sliver of a better game, and it's likely not worth your time.

The game starts after a passenger plane crashes on a island, you must manage a group of survivors by deciding what they should do with their time, and more importantly, who they spend that time with, "relationships" as the game calls it, are just as, if not more significant than the RPG-like list of skills characters have, good rapport can cover for an unskilled participant, letting you exchange characters when one becomes unavailable, this seemed like the recipe for a pleasant experience, but the game misses the mark with every single system it presents, it's disappointing.

The management is slow and painful, you must click and drag everything, the same repeated actions, over and over again, there's a shortcut wheel, but it's of little help when rotating characters between tasks, there aren't any key binds to use as shortcuts for characters nor tasks, nor a programmable action system, maintenance of buildings is completely manual, aggravating this problem; the game uses invasive and game-stopping popups to warn you of low resources, an actual usable UI that displays important information could have been an immediately better option.

Resources needed to craft, build, and maintain stuff seem incredibly inflated, and like many moderately realistic survival games, after you can get food and water with modicum of success, everything else is just a grind, paired with the randomness of some tasks, the difficulty feels artificial, and utterly bothersome after the first two weeks, nothing escalates nor changes, which shouldn't have been a problem for this game's story, since it does delve in the occult, the island becoming more violent to keep up with the players could have made the game less boring.

What also could have made Dead in Bermuda less boring would have been the so called "relationships", it's more of a "cooperativeness" system really, little values called "relationship" go up or down based on a character's depression and time spend together with others, and that becomes another factor in the effectiveness of a task, regardless of the characters actual relations and behaviors during story beats, which do change the "relationship" value sometimes, but never change the nature of it, making it superficial at best.

There some exceptions though, the game follows two, (almost linear), secondary story lines, who the leader of the group gets to romance,and who the spy gets to kill,and only one of those has actual consequences (no prizes to guessing), that's about it, "relationship" doesn't evolve, nor changes the behaviors and interactions of the characters, interactions that only happen at a set time, everyday, even when a character dies, most of those are also random, non reactive, and some are even just "filler", dialogue that can be used by a character to any other character and are repeatable.

Unfortunately, "relationship", boiled down to selecting the children who will fight each other less, focus on the task at hand more, and have the appropriate skills, skills of which felt underutilized, used only on their tidy little boxes, instead of skills they could have just improved the trait system, made it personal and tailored, instead of random each time you start a new game, trait randomness just raises the annoyances pile, and can possibly, and justly, make a player reset after it cripples a character.

There are so many hiccups, the main story is almost something instead of just a bunch of fetch quests, there's an annoying tutorial that can be thankfully turned off, but only on the main menu, it cannot be simply dismissed, and the game doesn't progress if you don't follow the instructions, the map marks all points of interest with a bunch of repeated "!" signs, the lack of UI and QoL could have been easily solvable by learning with other similar games, even on 2015 there were plenty of management and RPG games around,the ending is an unsatisfying cop-out,and don't even get me going on the roman numerals, and, oh, the visual bugs, gosh, it just goes on and on.

But there were things I certainly liked, the character writing, their actual personality "traits", their nightly conversations, those I will surely remember for a while, the art at the ending credits was also pretty nice, allowing for some closure, but I, cannot, in good faith, recommend this game to others, if you are interested in the design, or for any other reason must play it, prepare a podcast, or something to complement your time with, because Dead in Bermuda, unfortunately, isn't it, it is the small fragment, the mirage, the dream of a greater game, and that, is what, actually, kept me going on my playthroughs.

If I ever play Dead in Vinland or Dead in Antares, I will edit this review to notify if I think that greater game has finally been made.

A cute game that gifts you an unbridled fun time.

A simple strategy game that sets out to do a single thing and does it really well.

In Kingdom: Classic, you plays as a solitary monarch, by day, you will acquire subjects and build a prosperous kingdom, by night, you will be attacked by personified greed, if your judgment is erroneous, your crown will be lost, but not your legacy, a new monarch will arrive, carrying a new crown and past knowledge, and may their kingdom finally send greed from whence they came!

The gameplay is simple, there’s only one resource, gold, it is both your life and power, there's only enough text to teach you basic mechanics, letting you figure out the rest, the soundtrack can vary from hopeful to ominous, with some songs digging into your soul and pairing so majestically to the beautiful pixel art, animations and reflections on the ever present river, this is a clean, straightforward and short experience.

The game was fine, why did you do this Phoenix Labs?

A short, time looping, spot the difference horror game, with a handful of jump scares, that I believe is worth of your time.

PSA PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT LISTEN UP WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD ABOUT ELEPHANT IS A LIE THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL CREATURES THAT ONLY SERVE TO DO GOOD IF YOU STOPPED TO LEARN ABOUT THEIR LIVES AND WORLDLY CONTRIBUTIONS YOU WOULD FIND THAT MAYBE YOU HAVE MORE IN COMMON WITH THESE NOBLE CREATURES THAN YOU COULD POSSIBLY START TO UNDERSTAND TRUST THEM TRUST YOURSELF FOR AGAIN WHEN WILL IT BE LOVE INSTEAD OF FEAR THE ELEPHANT RAVE HAS BEEN A TRADITION OF THE ELEPHANT FOR GENERATIONS AND IS THE BRIDGE TO UNDERSTANDING THE BALANCE OF EVERYTHING WHEN THE RAVE IS RUINED THE ELEPHANT STOPS WHEN THE RAVE IS GOING THE ELEPHANT GOES AND WHEN YOU SEE HOW FAR HE GOES YOU WILL APPRECIATE HOW FAR YOU'VE COME LET'S RAVE LET'S GO AS GRAVITY LESSENS THE PRESSURES OF BEING AN ELEPHANT ARE CALMED AND WE SEE THE STARS AND HOW BEAUTIFUL THEY ARE AND LIKE THE ELEPHANT THEY NEVER FORGET JUST HOW AMAZING THE UNIVERSE IS AND THE RAVE CONTINUES ON THE DARKNESS HAS NO GRIP ON THE ELEPHANT AS HE EXPLORES THE UNKNOWN HE KNOWS NOT WHAT THIS PLACE IS BUT HE KNOWS THAT LOVE AND CARE AND COMPASSION AND HOPE KEEPS US KEEPS HIM KEEPS THE RAVE GOING THE WORLD GLOWS BRIGHT AS THE ELEPAHNT RAVES ON HE DOES HIS BEST AND WE DO OUR BEST FOR HIM DONT LOSE HOPE DON’T GIVE UP DO NOT GIVE IN HELP HIM HELP YOU LOVE IS LOVE SO WHEN WILL IT BE LOVE INSTEAD OF FEAR.

A bullet heaven that excels in every aspect of the genre, and raises it higher.

Picayune Dreams, has items that change your character visually, meta upgrades that are truly meta, not stat increases, but upgrades that change the game’s mechanics or adds new ones, and unique bullet hell bosses that require your undivided attention, with some of their attacks having pretty patterns that are satisfying to learn and dodge.

This game mitigates annoyances of the genre, experience drops are based on damage not kills, reducing the slow down from suboptimal upgrades or tanky foes, the game offers visual options to reduce screen clutter, stage selection that does not interrupt the action, it has a speed up toggle, and instead of having many types of upgrade currencies, it uses the player’s health points, gatherable bombs, weapons and curse stat as coinage, hence tying skill to buying options.

The presentation is great, from the menus to descriptions, everything fits and is accompanied by an electro soundtrack that consists mostly of surprising tasteful breakcore, most of all? Picayune dreams has an actual story with recurring characters that have endearing personalities and struggles, on a bullet heaven of all things, the games uses every tool at its disposal to make sure you know how the characters feel, their loss of self, loneliness, pressure and guilt, and that pushes you to play flawlessly and witness their endings.

Picayune dreams is certainly more than its precisely made parts, and the best bullet heaven I have ever played..

Neon Beats is a short rhythm platformer with memorable levels.

The base game is free and has 3 tracks, the dlc complements this interactive album with 5 more, every aspect of a level follows a satisfying sync with its song, despite that, levels still accommodate secrets, alternate routes, and different player strategies, the game constantly introduces new mechanics and requires the sharpening of old ones, always preparing you for the next stage, all 8 electronic songs have their progression tied to the player’s advancements through it, acknowledging the players movements, and that is what make those perfect runs so fun and satisfying to grind, no deaths, every secret, done quickly, and with a good sense of rhythm.