Recent reviews by [SPAYED]Bud

Fun game, somewhat the Dice alternative to Balatro. I really like what the developer has done here but there is clearly some balancing issues. Some thoughts for the dev if you are seeing this:

There are really only 2 dice you need to hunt for: Treasure Die, and Alpha Die. Once you have those and paired with any number of relics, especially Rings + Ring Box, you can win even the last round on max difficulty in 2 rounds easily. It makes the other options moot. Would love to see more incentive to use other die that are still competitive against Death 4.

The advanced relics are too constrained and really require you to go all in on the Pickaxe. At the higher difficulties you don't really want to waste your rerolls to make sure you get the Pickaxe first so you can stack other relics on it, so I just ignore all of those related relics unfortunately

Would also love to see more variety, especially with Trinkets, but I'm sure this is just the start and the Dev will have to figure out how to balance having so many options available, probably need a mechanic to help manipulate the RNG choices.

That said, really fun game, only takes a few hours to beat, unless your NorthernLion. Look forward to more content.

EDIT: I just realized only 0.1% of players have achieved a win on Death 4 and 5.5% on Death 2 at time of writing this. I think this is because, at least in my experience, literally all other die are basically unplayable in the late game. You just need Treasure Die + Alpha Die and you win. Pair it with some weaker die like Dice (die) of Many Faces, Viper's Kiss, Salve, or Draupnir (if you have rings) for a little extra support. I hope they provide more viable options at some point :\

Fun middle of the road ARPG. Way more depth than D4, less complex than POE. Has all of the QoL you'd want. Best Loot filter and stash management systems I've ever seen. Crafting has the right balance between control vs RNG. End-game is pretty decent and lets you curate your own experience. Many home-brew builds are viable into high corruption.

Made it to the top, went AFK to wait for my buddies. Came back as a ghost.

Friend got glitched between two rocks, smacked him with a marshmallow while he threw marshmallow sticks at me until he got unstuck

10/10.

I'm actually shocked by the amount of positive reviews. I heard physics and thought, that'll be fun! but the only physics are against your teammates, or the loot you are desperately trying to keep from getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥ by said physics. Otherwise, the enemies couldn't care less, at least from my limited time playing until I said f it.

Stamina is way too slow. the crawl you go through is painful to grab one piece of loot to haul it back to your cart.

This also misses the mark of entertainment when you are dead. LC has good pacing and fun chaos to watch. Being dead is 10 minutes of watching your teammates slowly crawl around looking for loot.

As someone not terribly committed to the DC universe, I had a blast with this game. The story was serviceable but I knew going in the campaign it was just a tutorial to the end game. If you expect more, you may be disappointed.

Because at the end of the day, It is a Looter shooter. If you like looter shooters, you will like what this game offers. The schmovement in 3rd person adds a nice touch that I haven't seen in an ARPG before.

Is the game grindy? Yes. Are looter shooters grindy? Yes. If you don't like grinding, you won't like this game. But if you are ok with games like PoE, Borderlands, Diablo, or any other true ARPG, you are going to enjoy the progression and power creep offered in this game.

Too many people wanted this to be Arkham but with the Suicide squad. I'm personally glad they took a risk with the mechanics.

My best guess is Gothem Knights did not perform well for WB and they wanted a Service game. So they forced the developers of Suicide Squad to make a replacement. I'm not necessarily upset. But it feels a bit obvious this game was quickly turned into a Service game. That is my only gripe. There isn't as much end-game material for you as there should be, but I'm confident future seasons will produce more content by the time I max out my toons.

Zombie Party is an overall solid roguelike experience, studded with a variety of weapons, characters, pets and enemies. It has permanent progression elements and enjoyable coop (online and offline with splitscreen). As of this review, the game is still in early access and it will show from time to time. This hasn't deterred me from enjoying the experience alone and with friends. It supports controller, but I find it is best played with a mouse. If you like top-down rouguelikes, especially ones with permanent character progression, I would recommend this game at its current price. It's a no brainer at $5 or less.

I'm a huge fan of Crimsonland, and it has been difficult to find a game that harnesses the chaos of that game. Zombie Party scratches that itch for me. There are waves of enemies that constantly spawn in various places in the map, causing you to run, kite, and jump to control the masses. The jump mechanic adds an interesting feature to the top-down experience that I've come to enjoy. At first I largely ignored it, but it becomes necessary at tougher difficulties.

It provides 4 game types that are different enough to add some replayability. Game modes will resonate with you depending on the type of experience you are looking for. Personally, I enjoy the dungeon and arcade modes as they have a sense of game progression (as opposed to survival mode or deathmatch).

The leveling system is simple but effective. You have several different attributes (damage, hp, speed, magic dmg, fire rate, and luck) that you can increase either permanently on the character screen, or temporarily as you level up during a run. It seems to cap fairly quickly though. There is a variety of loot and plenty of drops. There are modifiers for your weapons, spells/equipment, potions, and special weapons that you can only acquire through drops. Arcade mode also has power-ups that give you temporary boosts. Overall, the modifiers and spells are the bread and butter of the combat. It's entertaining finding the perfect combination of modifiers for your favorite weapon to ravage the masses while spamming your favorite spell.

If you are a completionist, there are a ton of characters to unlock and max out. There are also several pets that you can collect and level up.

The content is a little sparse. If you're a veteran at top-down rougelikes, you'll breeze through Dungeon mode within an hour or two. Arcade mode has some variety but you'll see repetition with added difficulty. The game never seems to get more difficult in terms of bullet-hell, they just add more health to the enemies, causing everything to be bullet spongey. I'm not a huge fan of bullet sponge games, so this was a minor deterrent. If you enjoy survival modes there may be more replayability for you.

Another con for me was, although there are plenty of spells/equipment, I find most spells overshadowed by the mines and grenades. They seem to have the lowest cooldowns and lowest mana cost which is vital for spamming at all the goons chasing you. The stats on spells are pretty random, but you can always attain the same spell with better stats. However, when the game increases difficulty, the loot doesn't seem to scale. Overtime, spells tend to lose their value and you are better off just selling everything you pick up to buy more skill points.

One last thing that may bother some is any gold acquired, whether spent or saved during a run, will be retained when you die. This eliminates one aspect of roguelikes with permanent progression that I enjoy: balancing your choices. You don't have to worry about saving gold, so you can spend it on skill points or other items in the shop without any consequence. This makes it pretty easy to blow through the content in a single playthrough.

There are some serious frame rate issues with this game. In Dungeon mode, for reasons I can't explain, the frame rate gets progressively slower. It feels like you are constantly using a slow motion power-up. There are also spells that cause fps drops for all players. Here's a clip[clips.twitch.tv] to give an example. Since this game is still in early access, I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume this will be fixed eventually.

The mechanics of this party game are great. I love being able to whip this game out and everyone can play as long as they have a smart phone... but it gets old rather quickly, especially if you can't find new people to play with. I'm seeing a lot of up-votes and the down-votes are not being taken seriously. I'm going to have to be that guy here and advise you not to buy this game in its current state - at least for said price of $25. The positive reviews are warranted, but would I buy this game for $25 if I knew what I know now? Absolutely not. This is for two simple reasons.

1. There really are only two games worth playing in this pack: Fibbage and Drawful. You could argue You Don't Know Jack, but if you'd played it once, it's nothing knew. Besides, if you have more than 4 people in your party, you can't play this game, so it is almost always excluded at most parties. Word Spud isn't even a game. End of story. I wouldn't pay a dollar to play it. Lie Swatter is ok, basically a guessing game between two questions and the luckiest person wins. I never played it enough to see how many questions it contains.

2. Fibbage and Drawful are the bread and butter of this pack. These together would be worth the $25, IF they actually had a reasonable amount of stock questions. From what I've heard Fibbage has around 200, and Drawful has ~600. Drawful obviously has the most replay value, but Fibbage seems to always be the favorite at parties. Unfortunately, after a few short hours, you see more repeats than you'd like to admit. Now if you like being the host of a party and don't mind the repeats, this isn't so bad, as long as your guests are different people every time.

However, I really don't understand why new questions have not been implemented. Or why there isn't a way to have the community submit their own, or at least create your own for your own game. I'm sure the framework was never built to do those things, but why they thought 200 questions would surely be enough is beyond me. Even with Drawful, you begin to see repeats fairly quickly.

What's worse is the developers state it is impossible to get repeat questions until you've gone through them all if you host on a single system. This has been contested by several gamers and I too challenge this statement. I've only hosted on one computer and seen repeats within a few hours.

I might as well also note there are a lot of bugs: throwing people out of games, randomly not being able to select answers, etc. They are a nuisance, but don't really seem to deter me or the people I play with as the games themselves are so lighthearted in terms of competitiveness. If that is something that is going to bother you, then I would add that to the list of reasons why not to pick this up at its current price tag.

The developers themselves said they won't add new content unless the demand is there. Well consider this my demand. I want to support these guys, but I feel a little cheated. I expected more out of this game than 5 hours. They've opened up an interesting platform, but I think they or someone else could do this genre better justice and increase replayability. They state you’re gonna need more than one party for this, and that's absolutely true. Because otherwise you'll burn out your audience real quick!

UPDATE (1/5/2016): This review received more attention than I expected, so with the successor out on steam now, I feel compelled to give an update on the state of the game. It appears the developers due indeed believe there is demand for more content. Unfortunately that content is in the form of a sequal and a price tag of another $25. I can't speak for the this game's successor, but I can give an update on this games current condition. Unfortunately, there isn't much more to say... This game resurfaced for me on New Years Eve with a (reasonably) fresh audience. The game was still littered with bugs (i.e. no one being able to enter in answers, freezing, booting players, no input recognition, etc.), and the newcomers seemed to agree that only Fibbage and Drawful (though primarily Fibbage) was worth playing. Overall an enjoyable experience for the newbies, but a little lackluster for those who had played with me before. Simply put, the game still lacks polish and solid content.

It is a shame the developers have decided to neglect this game and move on to other titles. The platform they've created has a lot of potential, which I feel has gone mostly untapped. I think this platform yearns for a DLC format. Similar to the Heads Up mobile party game, you could buy
themed DLC packs for Fibbage or Drawful for just a few bucks. Hell, have a Star Wars themed pack, that would sell like hotcakes right now. Another idea is to sell additional games as DLC to add to your party pack. Giving users the abilityto hand-pick and personalize their party pack for when they host! This would increase the replayability of the game, especially with the same crowd. But at the very least, if they continue down this business strategy of separate releases, it would be helpful
to connect the games, so you can access all the jackbox party games you've bought through one interface... Though, I don't see myself buying another one of these any time soon at a 25 markup.

EDIT: After a year hiatus, I decided to give this game another shot, seeing they are still frequently updating it. I must say, the developers have made massive improvements. Not just to local coop, but the game itself.

First off all, I quickly realized all previous characters are pretty much rendered usless with the new changes, irritating players who have put some serious hours into this game. I understand that frusteration. But with that said, the game feels like a much more enjoyable and polished experience. Most of the bugs I encountered have been squashed. There are still some issues with local coop, but they are manageable.

Secondly, the drop rate and quality of gear is now appropriate for the given difficulty. Since leveling attributes is still painfully slow, good equipment is your best bet. This is something the game severally lacked when I originally played, and made the slow paced leveling system frustrating. Now that gear appears to be better and rewarded more frequently, I am okay with level added attributes points being somewhat meaningless. You also get an enormous amount of gold, but I haven't found much use for it yet.

Difficulty of bosses, crypts, and dungeons has been adjusted and scale more appropriately for the given difficulty. I love the randomness of this game, but no longer do I have to fear a boss is going to spawn and immediately one-hit my whole team. The optional instances are still dangerous and serve as a gambling mechanism for the game, but are no longer completely off limits. I can go into dungeons and crypts and actually feel like I have a chance now.

Overall, this game has come a long way from the last time I played it. It is much more enjoyable, great coop, and reminds me of a more fast paced D3 with cute graphics. If you like dungeon crawlers & rouge-likes with some persistent elements (like Rouge Legacy or Vertical Drop Heroes) I would recommend this game.

==Initial Review==

First off, this review is purely for local coop. I bought the game due to my love for rougelikes and local coop games. I cannot speak for the multiplayer features as of yet. If you are thinking of purchasing this game because it has local coop, heed my warning:

As I've heard many people say, this game has great potential, but for a game that has been out for nearly a year (and has DLC), there are too many inexcusable bugs and problems.

The Bugs:
Local coop is riddled with issues. So much so, I can't recommend this game for coop play. Multiplayer may be a different story. Here are the bugs I ran into in my short 4 hours of local play time:

- Player 2 does not retain charms, but Player 1 does. Charms are the only retained items in the game. This leaves you severally crippled later on in the game as the charms (especially the rarer ones) help you immensely. We were too afraid to switch the character in the player 1 slot to the player 2 slot in fear the character would lose their charm, so we have always kept one character charmless.

- Players will have their stats and/or attributes reset and randomly rolled! After about an hour of consistent game time, I loaded up another round and I suddenly realized my characters stats and skill points were redistributed. Every time this happened I had to spend 30 gems to reset. As far as I can tell, you only get these gems when you get achievements, meaning they are a limited resource and eventually I won't have a solution to this bug!

- Players can get other players stuck in dungeon/crypt puzzles, causing you to have to reset the game. Careful where you stand when figuring out the puzzles, if another player hits the reset button, you could find yourself stuck in a pillar. (stay out of dungeons)

- Dead teammates are your worse enemy. Players can die in too many inconvenient spots. Since you can't walk over dead teammates, you are assured the same fate (i.e. a flame wheel kills your teammate in front of you, you can't move past it and you can't go back because the flame is already on its way back. Any last words?). This happens more often than you would think. (stay out of dungeons)

That was what I found in ~4 hours of local coop. If these bugs were resolved, the game would be much more enjoyable and I would absolutely recommend it. However, I can't recommend it in terms of local coop. There are also several general game play issues I'll lay out below.

General Gameplay thoughts:
The first thing you'll notice playing Hero Seige, is you die way too often without even knowing what hit you. The maps are fairly detailed. Couple that with the bit graphics and it can be quite the challenge to see a tiny red ball one-hit kill you. Some may enjoy this challenge. As an avid fan of rougelikes, it is always a good day to die. But I found it somewhat aggravating suddenly realizing you are dead, with no explanation. If the kill screen didn't tell you what killed you, most of the time you'd have no idea. These instantaneous deaths come quick and often, especially with bosses (which spawn every 6th wave).

Speaking of bosses, their difficulty is incredibly random and unpredictable. It has charm and replay-ability, but it can often crush what seemed like a good run, leaving you somewhat discouraged. Once in coop, we were having a great run, when suddenly a boss spawned and immediately killed my friend and I using his laser ability (pretty sure that was a bug as boss skills visibly charge up). The same goes for the randomly generated dungeons and crypts. Deaths happen so quickly without explanation. I don't recommend venturing forth into the unknown without leveling up a bit.

The character progression is ungodly slow. This is somewhat understandable considering there is no max level. But without the addition of charms and relics you won't notice a difference between character levels.

Despite all those complaints, the rest of the gameplay is exciting and entertaining enough that it is probably worth the $5 if you want to play singleplayer. It plays well on a controller, though It would make more sense that each of the four skills is a button, rather than the trigger scrolling. The variety of enemies, obstacles, and traps keeps the replay value high.

For now, the game is too buggy to recommend for cooperative play. If the devs up their game, I'll reconsider my review.