Recent reviews by talking_chicken

I think I've found a bug with the game. Every time I solve a puzzle another one appears on the screen shortly after. I try solving it to make it go away, but more keep appearing and I don't know how to make it stop.

This is a review of Strange Jigsaws. It's a game of strange jigsaws where you solve strange jigsaws.

The jigsaws were, in fact, strange, and I solved the strange jigsaws. Product is as described, no flaws here.

Neat little game that doesn't overstay its welcome. Only two buttons to learn and the rest is just clever interactions with the environment. Does a great job teaching the player how the world works without any kind of help prompts. Lots of neat stuff here!

The easiest way to describe the game is a labor of love by hololive fans for hololive fans (and others too!). It's worth noting if you're mostly a fan of hololive things that started after 2022 you're probably going to be a little disappointed; there are some odd references here and there in enemy designs but the game's cast cuts off at holoX. Sorry DEV_IS, Advent and Justice fans (though they definitely had an otomo with sway on staff :P)

The game is a classic stage-based action platformer with hidden collectibles in most levels. As the Warden of Time you have time powers that can either speed yourself up or slow down the world around you to help you on your adventure. You've also got some SWORDS and some cool movement abilities to help you get around. Stages are incredibly varied with a lot of new mechanics, and the controls are well handled. It helps that this game seems to use the Freedom Planet engine shares a project lead with Freedom Planet so they already had a good base to work with there. It's not as speed-focused as Freedom Planet is but there are occasional moments where you can definitely feel the inspiration. There's a wide range of difficulty modes as well, so whether you just want the story or you want a challenge you'll probably find something you're comfortable with.

The game's aesthetic is very well captured. The pixel art is all very well done by a large team of pixel artists. The writing shines especially well for fans - the writers did a great job at capturing the members' personalities and nailed a lot of their mannerisms (or at least the EN ones). And the game's plot goes surprisingly hard - though you can probably tell who the project lead ships. :P The OST also goes very hard. It's a mix of arrangements of existing hololive original songs and other assorted BGM along with a bunch of original music. Lots of people on the sound team too, some of whom actually worked on the official original songs.

And yet, the one thing that keeps eating at me when I play this game is that it accidentally ends up being a tribute to a lot of hololive members that have since moved on from the company, including 3 of the Council members. This is not the devs' fault, the game started development well before almost all of these members left. But I definitely got a little emotional in 3 of the game's 5 main worlds, which prominently feature someone that isn't there anymore. I hope they're all happy where they are now and get a chance to play the game at some point, even if it may not be in a place fans can see.

If you follow holo but not Kronii you should definitely still play this game. If you don't follow holo you also should still play this game. Yeah you'll miss out a lot on the inside references and not know too many people in the cast, but it's still a solid action platformer with a good story and if you want, plenty of chances to go back to previous levels and keep grinding for higher scores and times. There's also a codex that gives bios for everyone in the game if you're not sure.

Overall I really like the game, but as someone that enjoys hololive (especially Council/Promise) as well as Freedom Planet I am probably the easiest person to please with this. Still, even without the bias I still think there's a solid game there, so give it a shot if you're interested!

edit: updated to reflect that this is not the Freedom Planet engine, it's a new thing.

My Steam playtime is low because I've played and finished the GB version of the game on an Analogue Pocket, and it's great there too.

Very impressive first game from someone that is known for just talking about them on the internet. I love pencil and paper logic puzzles like this and there are some really cool ideas going on here. It's a very interesting mixture of Picross and Akari, with a bit of Bomberman flavor added to it. Some of the deductions can get pretty tricky, especially once you get into the later puzzles, but everything is logical and no guesswork is needed, just as promised. Watching the explosions happen after you've solved the puzzle is very satisfying as well, and sometimes the walls end up forming some very nice looking patterns. I very much appreciate that a lot of the space outside the puzzle is used for giving information about the puzzle to save the player time by avoiding tedious counting.

Minor gripes: I wish the puzzle was considered solved once all the walls are in their correct locations without having to mark every single empty square. I actually think the high-res theme on PC makes the game a little harder to read, but I think I'm just used to the pixel graphics. Would have been nice to see more variants on the rules, but the existing set of puzzles are still pretty good. An undo button would have been very nice but i'm sure hardware limitations (and maybe dev knowledge) were probably an issue here. Music would have been nice, especially for a GB game, but admittedly the barebones-ness of it kind of adds to the charm.

The game is very bare-bones for what it is, but the core of it is solid and the puzzles are good so I can't particularly complain for a $5 game. I definitely got my money's worth solving all of the puzzles. The inclusion of a GB compatible ROM is a very unnecessary but extremely nice touch, and I appreciated it. It's a great game, and I hope to see more from the dev in the future!

I really, really, like Nurikabe; it's been my favorite pencil puzzle for years because it's so satisfying to fill in the river and make islands until it's all done. This is far and away the best Nurikabe client I've ever used. The visuals are pretty, the ability to place holes and make non-rectangular grids is a very nice addition, and the included variants are kind of cool. The fact that the devs are (for now) putting out three new hand-crafted puzzles every day means there are reasons to keep coming back even after you've finished the main campaign. If you still want more there are currently several good campaigns and even more individual puzzles in the workshop that other players have created to keep you even busier.

As of this writing I've solved literally every non-generated puzzle in the game, including the user created ones, and I'll keep coming back for more. Keep up the great work!