Everything I’ve reviewed on Steam, Goodreads and VNDB, mirrored from where it was written, alongside the posts here that are reviews too. The board game reviews came over from an old account in one go, so their dates are approximate.
Cheap slop that copies the form of what it tries to imitate, but not the function. Game moves at a snail's pace, broken up by about 50% Freddy Fish puzzles, and 50% random location-based story triggers. Lots of gory shock art too, which was annoying. And don't come hoping for a mystery, there's no internal consistency to be found here. I appreciate that it was fully voice acted and all, and the art was *technically* …
Good ideas, but horribly dated. Object oriented programming was a mistake.
Severe issue with the book is that while a lot of the advice *sounds* good, and *sounds* like it should be true... There's really no scientific method to it. It's mainly, "here's what I anecdotally have seen and have derived", repackaged in an extremely charismatic and persuasive way. And I mean, the author's a consultant, and their entire …
Good overall, very entertaining that this hit the scene right before ChatGPT and Co. barged into the scene IRL. It got a lot of stuff right, but it completely missed a lot of things as well.
Pacing is a bit slow, and it can get a bit... Well, the game dumbs things down for you too much at times. But still interesting, and a bit emotional at times as well.
Good overall, very entertaining that this hit the scene right before ChatGPT and Co. barged into the scene IRL. It got a lot of stuff right, but it completely missed a lot of things as well.
Pacing is a bit slow, and it can get a bit... Well, the game dumbs things down for you too much at times. But still interesting, and a bit emotional at times as well.
Whacky, zany, super fun and super cute game. I expected a mindless top-down shooter but I got a really nice narrative package and adorable aesthetic on top. It rewards my perfectionism just perfectly enough to reinforce all of my bad habits moving forward, which is super validating.
Rewards exceptional performance with story bits and trinkets more than anything that'd actually help with the game. In this manner, it …
I love Pathologic so, so friggin’ much. I’ve given it a month to sit, after starting the game half a year ago, and it remains firmly my “best video game of all time”, beating out Outer Wilds, Darkwood, and Pacific Drive.
It was crunchy and tense. It tore right to the soft, vulnerable parts of my heart and lay them bare. I was thrown through a profound range of passionate and horrifying emotions, facing one of my lifelong phobias head on. It was spectacularly constructed, refracting inwards on itself in emergent scintillation. I felt and feel driven by its impact in a way media just doesn’t easily get to each other. I have the highest respect for Ice-Pick Lodge, as they seem to have for us.
I heard a lot of complaints that the game was too hard, but I dunno about that. The game succeed at its overwhelming impression of brutality, so much so that it can be utterly overwhelming. Fact of the matter is though, as a game so thoroughly infatuated with dis-empowerment, it makes the hellfire very entertaining. It’s not just practically difficult, either- it’s emotionally intense. It’s beautiful, it’s moody, and it was a downright threat to my way of life simply by virtue of being. Oh, and, uh… The game is finished. Being forced to play the original with minor variations thrice in a row was not exactly an asset, and they’ve done a good job consolidating the themes and ideas under the Haruspex*. Oh, and on top of that! The Haruspex’s life is not only thrice as compelling as before, it’s worth more than the sum of its parts! Rashomon is old news, anyway.
Hell, I’ve even incorporated some steppe language into my speech, making me somehow even more of a pretentious twat than I already am.
Play the remake,Pathologic 2, not the original or remaster. HBomb’s advice to skip the original and play the remake is on point**.
I don't normally like VR video games. I use my headset 99.99% of the time just for VRChat. However, Into the Radius is the single exception. It's very good. It's got nice clicky-clacky items and guns, and it feels good to move treasure around in my backpack and home base. Shooting certain guns releases serotonin in my brain, too.
Mod Recommendations
My first play-through, I used (and would recommend):
Flowers for Algernon was an absolutely extraordinary read which prodded at science fiction in a way I had never seen before. Sure, Daniel Keyes was a little bit a product of his time and could be frustrating occasionally, but for the most part he was very conscientious, doing a better job of writing about a lot of sensitive and confusing topics than you ever see addressed in even abstract ways today. The book was …
Not as good as XSOverlay. Bloated and full of garbage. Software like this is essential for a VRChat hobbyist, but this particular one isn't the one- as I so unfortunately learned after believing that there simply was no better option for so long...
A little birdie told me cultural phenomenon Doki Doki Literature Club! was inspired directly by this story. That wasn't true, of course, but it's an interesting parable- and believable solely on account of the fact that this lil' story is an ancient, archaic reminiscence of the same sort of deconstructive pattern. It's a relic at the end of the day, and one that's valuable to understand in a comprehensive analysis …
Essential support for VRChat, particularly concerning the convincing use of furniture and furniture-related props.
Not worth $8.00 though, it was fine when it was free. Find an alternative to buying this.
What's worse, it plays poorly with newer versions of SteamVR and mangles the chaperone in all sorts of clever (read: dreadful) ways. Find something properly maintained.
Surprised by the exceptional quality. The game has a great feel and atmosphere to it right off the batI'm a bit overwhelmed by the incredible amount of *stuff* to do, but I don't think that's such a bad problem to have, all things considered, for a game that's pretty sandbox-esque. I feel like my main joy came from just walking around pretty randomly generated worlds, and I didn't care much for the RPG or sandbox …
Incredible game. The environment was very compelling and the controls were fun to get into. Unlike other From Software titles, this one feels like it was very polished and fine-tuned as an experience, taking advantage of putting the players in the shoes of a particular character rather than a general-purpose self-insert protagonist to offer an exceptional linear experience.
Fantastic and exciting RPG with lots of creative locations to explore. Reintroduces a lot of the problems with the From Software titles that were fixed by Sekiro, but makes up for it in sheer scope. I have not had any performance issues so far.
Having jumped around the Culture series in a haphazard manner, I had been gradually coming to the conclusion that Iain M. Banks got better as he went on later into his career, generally. As it turns out, Use of Weapons violates that pattern. It's easily the worst book in the series, giving a painfully archaic depiction of trauma and dwelling on it for far too long as the centerpiece of the story. The only redeeming …
A very simple platformer which is well-paced and doesn't overstay its welcome. The game takes a single gimmick and explores it in detail. The difficulty was a bit on the lighter side and the art was very cute.
Easily the best visual novel I've ever played. Consistently a high quality of writing and extremely well organized. If I had to say something negative about it, it'd be that it could be a little heavy handed in one or two areas, but that's only if I had to.
About as good as Iain Banks gets, on par with Matter which remains my personal favorite of the Culture series. The character designs are all especially engaging and the setting is happily extraordinary, as is the usual with this author.
The Culture series is pretty interesting overall, but it starts off weak. The quality of the prose is overall pretty bad and although there are a lot of fantastic and interesting setting elements to the story, the characters are mostly pretty bland. Feel free to jump around throughout the Culture series looking for better stories, particularly as Iain Banks developed as an author later into his career. They're all …
What it says on the tin. The strange movement is oddly satisfying, although the point of the game is more in the excessive difficulty. The comedy mostly falls flat.
Absolutely fantastic. It's Subnautica, but more. Tons of the minor design issues I had with the first game (which are minor) are resolved in Below Zero, taking all of the parts that made it good and just turning it perfect. There's plenty to build, explore, and engage with. Highly recommend, especially to people who enjoyed the first game.
Cute and fun game. Feels like a euro-style board game. Requires an extreme amount of focus and concentration to play well, which makes it both draining and exhilarating.
Quantum League was one of my favorite shooters of all time. It has a really interesting and engaging gimmick that I loved to explore the intricacies of. The time I spent with it during its open beta was some of the most fun time I've ever had playing video games. The aesthetic quality of the game, the detail, and the heart that went into it is all abundantly clear. So while it breaks my heart to see that it didn't …
Caught my attention at times but ultimately disappointed. I was immediately struck by the high quality of prose in the English version. As I viewed the stories as sort of a loosely connected anthology of tragedies, I think that I came somewhere near a vague appreciation. But ultimately, the story is driven heavily by an obtuse and meaningless net of overarching supernatural mish-mash, and every part of the story I …
An interesting and powerful spiritual successor (and competitor!) to Quantum League. What it lacks in polish, aesthetic quality, and fluidity of movement and game-play, it makes up for in core design principles. So while I'll always be a bit sore that the beautiful execution of Quantum League was left in the dust, Lemnis Gate seems to promise much more in terms of strategic depth and simple robustness as a game to …
A fantastic expansion to the base game which delivers exactly on the exceptional level of quality I've come to expect from Mobius Digital. There is a great deal of new content and story to explore and engage with, and the creativity poured into the new environments, characters, and puzzles is overwhelming. My heart was warmed deeply by this opportunity to return to the Outer Wild's universe and I highly recommend it …
An extraordinarily beautiful and pleasant sandbox game. The visual style took me some time to adjust to, but once I got used to it I found it to be perhaps one of my favorite video game aesthetics of all time. It's exhilarating to explore all sorts of different planets and structures, and the creative tools the game gives for building your own are extraordinary. I adore the diversity of prefabricated structures, …
A fairly straightforward space odyssey adhering to all of the relevant genre conventions and providing an interesting glimpse into Alastair Reynolds's early ideas. While his abilities and prose seem to have improved in his later work, he maintains a strong ability to cultivate interesting characters- and of course, perhaps most definitively towards his style, he describes brilliant fantasies. He has a strange idea …
Fantastic and very exciting story. It certainly had a few icky parts, and I wouldn't recommend it without content warnings for grotesque and unnecessary torture scenes, but otherwise the story was excellent. The narrative was coherent, overall, and the story wrapped up nicely. The setting was particularly interesting, especially with its focus of galactic-scale society in the absence of faster than light travel- …
Very fun, satisfying game. A high degree of polish for an early access title, and not lacking its content; I didn't run across any recognizable bugs in the 55 hours I played. There's no real challenge to the game; it is mainly just relaxing. I found that it never really overstayed its welcome, introducing me to all of its primary elements for just as long as was appropriate. I find it quite rare that an early access …
This is the best Total War series entry. I had a lot of fun with it, especially messing around in the single player campaigns. The game is definitely a time-vampire, but not in so bad a sense as I generally find, since I usually found the time I spent playing rewarding. The multiplayer leaves something to be desired, though; I reckon the game is just best played as a singleplayer grand campaign. That being said, …
Precisely what it says on the tin. Extremely small scope, but an interesting concept to explore nevertheless. Highlights key considerations that might need to be taken if simulation games are going to evolve as a genre.
Fantastic game with an astounding scope. Despite how kitchen sink the experience feels in terms of arbitrary features and complexity added in, it is somehow still well-tuned. One of the most notable differences between this and other similar base/factory building games is that I wouldn't consider it a sandbox *nor* a puzzle game; rather, I think of Mindustry as a real time strategy.
Plain and simple surreal turn-based RPG. Exactly what it says on the tin; if you enjoyed other entries in the genre (notable examples being Undertale and Earthbound, the titles from which avoiding comparison is impossible), this game will also probably suit your fancy. I personally detest the tedious, grindy, and slow gameplay, but I was nevertheless quite interested by the story, which I believe is the main appeal …
I have no doubts that this is the best entry in the Civilization series (6 has been released at the time of writing). That being said, this game is heavily contingent on key expansions in order to be a complete experience, and even then the balance and pacing of the game is completely off.
Now, in 2021, the game has been heavily visited and re-visited by a highly proactive modding community who have attempted time …
Cute and interesting. This game sparked my interest in pretty hyperbolic patterns. While the game does great for its innovation, the core "fun" aspect of it is a little bit drowned out by how frustrating and punishing it can be, with an overall very low difficulty level but with extreme, run-ending punishments of tiny mistakes.
Cute and comfy RPG sandbox. A little bare-bones in terms of cosmetic content on release, which was important to the creative aspect, but otherwise excellent. This game was extraordinarily, stunningly beautiful, with a fantastic visual style and highly engaging environments. I don't even like Norse mythology as a theme in the media I consume, but Valheim was good enough for me to make an exception.
Precisely what it says on the tin. I've played a variety of slight chess variants in my life, and read about more; 5D chess is just another entry in the long line of remixes from strange packaged one's like Steve Jackson's Tile Chess to the plethora of minor variants on chess.com. If you like those, you might like this, and vice versa. At the end of the day though, it's just chess, so if you don't like chess at a …
Endless Space 2 is the best 4X game I've ever played, with exceptional design and quality within the genre. That being said, it is not a very good game overall. It's a kitchen sink of random, arbitrary features and mechanics that are only vaguely tied together under a loose guise of balance. The AI is trivial to steamroll once you have a basic grasp on the game's mechanics and the pacing of the game is agonizingly …
Probably one of the best, if not *the* best, visual novels of all time. The prose is quite bad and the pacing is off at times, but the story, characters, setting, themes, and core mystery are all highly engaging. Even though this game is ancient (as far as VNs are concerned), it still holds up alright under a modern lens. It is the best of all of the works by the author, and the only one I would recommend …
Sequel to the first title in the series. More of the same; if you liked it, you'll like this, and vice versa if you didn't. It's very strange to me that they're sold separately.
Age of Empires 2 is a very fun game to watch, okay to play. Good real time strategies are a dying genre, so far as my experience goes, but the AoEII scene serves as a sort of last bastion for the genre, still receiving balance patches and occasional modernization (despite the protests of some stubborn veterans) that make it stand up as a good game in 2021. I have not played the singleplayer campaigns, although from …
Cute and sweet. It can feel a little arbitrary at times, but nothing major. Does a good job of tugging on the heartstrings, but it's nothing traumatic, just melancholic. Solid experience that didn't leave a huge impression on me, but entertained me while it lasted and probably softened my heart a little.
Apex Legends is fun in many ways; unlike most first person shooters, the time-to-kill is very high, which makes it much more accessible to newcomers to the genre and less frustrating to play in general. I feel like this is a key innovation that should persist into other games as well, as this has worked out extremely well. I also adore the character designs and environments, which are very pretty. I only play the …
The game is extremely simple, and plays pretty much exactly as advertised. It has a few nice gimmicks in the single-player campaign which were mildly interesting, but its core value is in the multiplayer experience. There, it properly excels as perhaps the most fun first person shooter I've ever played. It's aged very well since its release and even outperforms subsequent titles published by the same developer. I …
Solid, short, and simple puzzle game. It was very uniquely presented and had a fun key gimmick. I don't think this game would have been interesting if it went on for any longer than it did; nor do I think I would be interested in any similar games or experiences in the future. It was, at its core, an excellent short story, which amazed me with what it did and also made me feel that I had completely appreciated and …
Interesting game. Music, aesthetics, and gameplay all failed to impress me tremendously. Everything was largely incoherent and inconsistent, and while that might be the cup of tea of some folks, it's certainly not mine.
But what stuck out to me was a storyline and set of themes that frustrated me to no end. The game presents an interesting moral question at its heart, and proceeds to painfully neglect it. A variety …
Overland was so good that I bought it twice; once on itch.io as a part of the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, and then once later so that I could have it in my Steam library to show off to my friends. I strongly believe that this was the most slept-on traditional roguelike of the last several years, holding a special place in my heart alongside TGGW.
The game is somewhat shallow compared to other entries in …
My original experience with Twilight Town was underwhelming. Prefacing it, I mentioned that I really enjoyed short stories; I find that they are often written with extra efficiency and care for detail that you just can't get out of a larger narrative. That being said, at the time, Twilight Town wasn't a complete short-story, per say. It feels like an introduction, or demo, to a longer visual novel that got abruptly …
Rift wizard has a bit of a steep learning curve and a reasonable degree of difficulty even for veterans. But if you can look past that- or even better, if you enjoy that- this is one of the most interesting traditional roguelikes on the current market. It's extremely innovative with the way it handles the character's progression, allowing a variety of strategic upgrade options all at once rather than gated behind …
I picked this book in an attempt to get into romance, a genre I had generally been disappointing by. So I was surprised when I really liked this book! But upon reflection, this makes a lot of sense; this is more of an urban fantasy with a romantic subplot than it is a pure romance novel. Perhaps that's why I could tolerate it. The pacing was excellent, and the command of language was exquisite. While I may not …
I have had an insane amount of fun with this game. It feels extraordinarily satisfying to play and is very rewarding to explore and experiment with. I feel like I'm given plenty of opportunities to be creative with each level, which I appreciate a lot. Can't recommend this enough if you have a PC capable of running it.
Outer Wilds is one of the most fantastic atmospheric adventure games I've ever played. The closest possible comparison I could make is to Myst, but that doesn't do Outer Wilds justice at all. Easily a 10/10.
It's a difficult game to discuss in detail without spoiling it, and I would recommend you go into it blind. But I certainly hope you can trust me. <3
Fantastic and unique idea that presents very interesting challenges. Getting into the game feels like getting into a pleasant rythm. The graphics are stunning, and the scale of the spectacle of a physically-simulated ship being torn apart in real time is extraordinary.
While Crying Suns does not deviate very much from the classic Space Odyssey formula, it is highly polished and executed well. The tactical layer is moderately interesting, with some decision making taking place but mostly testing the player's ability to adhere to a rigid formula defined by the parameters the battles are taking place in. At the campaign level, the player has a reasonable degree of ability to build an …
I've only played this game in multiplayer with people I know. For this, it's a pretty good game. It was fully engaging for the length of a match and allowed for a decent amount of strategic variety. The micromanagement was also pretty satisfying, with very simple unit abilities and positioning commands. The learning curve is modest, but not insurmountable, given extensive previous knowledge from other real-time …
Short, sweet, and cute. Bad North is very pleasant to look at, although the gaudy "hiyas" and excessive bloodsplatter gets a little tiring. I was very happy with the way the islands were generated to look so pretty and dynamic.
The tactical level of the game was done pretty well. The pacing is a little bit off, with lots of idle time and low-consequence interactions, but it was overall fairly satisfying and could …
Extraordinarily high quality and stunningly beautiful. The gameplay is satisfying, sure, and there is a moderate degree of variety between escape attempts, but the game shines the most in its vibrant worlds, stunning artwork, fantastic voice acting and audio design, and even pleasant cinematography on occasion.
First of all, this isn't a highly strategic or intensely tactical game. There is a fleshed-out presence of real-time strategy combat, and a rudimentary overarching campaign, sure, but they are not exactly nail-biting (or at least, they aren't against the AI). The most interesting part of this game is the ship builder, and this is also not particularly engaging from the critical-thinking point of view. The power of a …
This is an excessively gaudy, flashy tool with lots of built in comedic physical interactions which aren't necessary to render the vast majority of board games. Because of this, it takes a high-performance computer to play board games seriously on it. For a highly social environment like this, such a barrier is a considerable detriment. Nevertheless, what this software lacks in polish it makes up for in ubiquity. …
I had a lot of fun with this visual novel. The quality of delivery was very high, and I never felt frustrated by a lack of control fidelity or anxious about missing out on key parts of the story by not acknowledging all of the points it branches at. Overall, the story was pretty engaging and had some fairly lively characters. I don't feel like it did anything particularly revolutionary or that hasn't been done …
The core gameplay loop is satisfying, the environments are pretty, and I was surprisingly engaged by the text lore entries and exploration elements. Lots of the games appeal relies on gambling-dopamine, which may be a reason to avoid it for certain audiences. The long-term overarching progression can get a little bit too drawn out for my tastes but overall isn't necessary for a regular, enjoyable experience. Because …
Short, cute, and very satisfying. The game was a joy to pick up and learn over the course of a few hours, teaching its core optimization puzzle in a pleasant and exciting exploratory manner.
One of the most engaging co-op shooters of all time set in a stunningly beautiful environment. The sense of humor is somewhat grating but the graphical direction is otherwise seamless. The solidly paced, flexible gameplay loop holds attention. The overall progression system feels like a chore, but is not necessary for enjoyable core gameplay.
A substantial improvement on the classic XCOM formula, both at the strategic and tactical level. Encounters are much more engaging, with smaller maps more conducive to unique and fun situations. Lots of clutter was removed from the strategic campaign, limiting the roster to a comely set of distinct characters instead of tens- or even hundreds- of flat, personality-less characters that could be broadly broken down …
Simple, easy to get into, lots of fun. Feels like one of those Unity3D web-app games I played on the high school computers with my friends, but actually a good game.
Lots of fun and very creative! The pacing is fast enough to keep me interested and I feel pretty smug with myself when I think of a unique way to proceed through the stages. Difficulty is a bit swingy, but I'm having enough fun with it that it doesn't bother me too much. The graphics of the game are stunning, too- there can be a lot of pretty things going on with the screen at the same time.
One of the most excellently polished games of all time. Fully engaging, aptly paced, and well thought out, this is one of the few games on Steam which led me to explore all of its content and all of its achievements. This is one of my very few 10/10s and I would highly recommend it to virtually everyone.
Solid, cute, and relaxing- but it requires a hefty time commitment and moves along at a snail pace. If you can get past that, I found this deeply rewarding as an experience to share with a friend. It's also extraordinarily beautiful, with excellent and consistent graphics and audio.
Factorio couples a simple, rewarding core gameplay loop with enough activity variety, minimal downtime, and highly customizable difficulty to keep it a consistently high-quality experience. That's more than I can say for so many other titles which require a heavy time commitment for minimal "fun". Since its original beta release, it has transformed massively and now feels to be at the pinnacle of all possible …
Age of Empires II (2013/HD) has been made entirely obsolete by Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. There is now no reason to buy this unless funds are extraordinarily tight and you are looking for a nostalgic single-player experience. The vast majority of the player-base has migrated to the new "Definitive Edition", and the few purists who remain are likely more interested in Age of Conquerers than this Steam …
XCOM 2 is not only a brilliant game in its own right, but also improves over XCOM 1 in every form- graphically, mechanically, and thematically. Sweeping quality of life changes, such as the ability to press the tab key to move to the next unit while the previous's animation is completing, make up for the games occasional trivial turn cycles. XCOM 2 is unique in that the campaign can be "lost"- and it is a very real …
I was very engaged with this visual novel! The title should have warned me somewhat better about how horrific it was; and reading from the developers about the Joseon dynasty afterwards was super cool (the historical context answered a lot of the questions I had about the games theme, especially some of the burning ones that were at the core of the plot that I would have completely failed to have answered otherwise; …
This is probably my favorite book, ever. It brought a whole lot of my different values in literature together and entirely circumvented the nightmarish landmines which generally make me adverse to reading fantasy novels. It was written very tactfully, masterfully blending together a relaxed sense of humor, vibrant characters, and a fun setting all on top of some especially meaningful undertones to create an …
Fun, pretty, and full of a plethora of tools, the main thing holding Tiltbrush back is its lack of applications other than for visual artistic display- this makes it feel like a useless skill to learn in the long run thanks to the inevitable development of artistic tools for VR which are more transferrable to graphical industries and other such projects.
Six of Crows was well written, but dull at times and had a little bit too much fantasy-nazi sympathy for my tastes. Could have been shortened maybe 40% without losing any of its value, I think- around the middle I ended up setting it down for a month or two due to this particular problem. Aside from the sympathetic portrayal of bigots, I suppose the representation in the story was pretty above-average for fantasy, …
Well put together overall, but not particularly competitive between players of different knowledge levels about the deck composition. Not an interesting enough game to learn the whole deck to bring this competitiveness back.
High engagement-to-difficulty-curve ratio. Simple, non-offensive theme pairs well with a decent pace. Somewhat lower on the player interaction side, but plays quick enough that it doesn't matter too much.
It's a nice way to sit down across from somebody and have a solid, engaging experience without extremely complex strategy. Each individual "deck" has an easy learning curve and low-moderate skill cap (from my experience), so it's a fun pick up game.
Dull, uninteresting, and is based around an iterated introduction of mechanics; these are all death sentences for what is essential a party game. Mix that together with a clunky, slow turn-based team game where one person plays at a time and you have an absolutely miserable dexterity game experience.
I never thought I would be so deeply invested in a "take that" game but this has done it. it has sold the flesh to me, the prophet of flesh. The game's scoring system is logarithmic which is... An issue. But it is otherwise mechanically elegant and promotes very engaging and creative player interactions.
Fairly simple and a lot of fun. Although there is some downtime, it is not too noticeable. From an aesthetic point of view the game is beautiful and hilarious. The game is also reasonably low stress. The main shortcoming of the game in my opinion is the sort of menial end game scoring.
Terrifyingly boring and uninteresting. All of the player actions at every point of the game, before or after the supposed "haunt", are scripted and meaningless. All of the games stats and movement options have no real strategic meaning whatsoever, things just sort of happen and you accept it without ever once making a plan more than one turn out. The aesthetics and flavor text are pitifully poorly executed. To top it all off, the game's downtime is beyond excessive, and one might spend more time bickering about the rules than anything else not out of a lack of clarity, necessarily, but out of sheer boredom. It is also worth pointing out that the health/stat trackers are horrifically designed and nearly impossible to use effectively; I found myself using a pen and paper to keep track of each of the four numbers for fear of completely throwing out a session due to accidentally ever-so-slightly jostling the table, which would throw the stat tracker into a state of disarray.
A fun and beautiful game with a lot of nods to traditional design principles with modern tuning sense. The game definitely suffers quite a bit from its boring victory conditions and very high amount of per-player downtime, but it makes up for it with a very satisfying core game-play loop and being very strategically accessible.
While this game is very complicated and is centered around a very rigid numerical scoring system, it leads to some fantastic player interaction and luck pushing. It is one of the most detailed competitive worker placement games I have ever played, especially considering that player hostility takes a very mechanically engaging form. The main issue with the game is a frustrating and boring scoring system; there is no engaging sort of win condition.
Highly mechanical and aggressive, One Night Ultimate Werewolf incorporates a ton of different and disparate rules and player roles practically at random in an attempt to occasionally generate interesting interactions or combinations. While this might be okay for some groups, it is a very niche interest. At the very least, I am a big fan of the game's visuals, even though the theme is slightly annoying.
While I suppose there is some sort of deeper, more interesting strategy to Evolution, I can't picture it as anything other than a cheap "take that" game disguised by a sort of cute aethetic. Not that there's anything wrong with "take that" games! Evolution just isn't a very good one. It's a real trudge and suffers from bad game pacing and effective eliminations (i.e. winners are decided relatively early on in the game, while everybody else at the table just sort of sits around and watches).
Azul is one of the most cutthroat and aggressive games I've ever played, but it is also very satisfying to execute some of its basic prescribed strategies. The skill cap initially seemed to be a lot higher than I think it actually is, which I guess must be due to the learning curve. Similarly, while I had initially assumed that the game would be very much akin to several concurrent rounds of solitaire, I was stunned by how very exciting of an experience it was, moves being just as much inspired by opponents' boards as my own.
Potion Explosion is a crazy, wild, and fun experienced, packaged in a zany whimsical setting with super cool physical components. What's more, from a very raw mechanical and strategic level, the game actually holds up extremely well; the game produced some of the most fun and exciting player interactions I'd had in a long while. This was something I was very surprised by, since I was expecting it to be a sort of cheap piece of garbage just based on the general premise. I definitely underestimate this, and I am so happy to have discovered a game which I would be able to enjoy with such a wide range of audiences so easily.
Mystic Veil is extremely interesting and satisfying to execute, but suffers from a nearly total absence of any player interaction whatsoever. It baffles me how such a massive oversight could plague a game produced at such an outstanding quality, and it frustrates me to no end because I really want to like this. As it stands, while I would probably be willing to play this pretty often, I just would rather do so many other things with my time. It's pretty at least, and feels extremely rewarding. I can't deny that it's very straightforward though.
While there is a certain sort of appeal to the IDEA of this game, the execution is extremely flawed, both in terms of mechanics and the ergonomics of the game. The learning curve is very steep and then plateues a little bit too far in to be comfortable for a social deduction game. It is also very boring, with single games going on for ages despite the fact that decisive advantages can be claimed early on. The balance of the game is rather arbitrary and burdened by needlessly complex mechanics. Lastly, from an aesthetic point of view, the game is just really dull and frustrating, even considering the good quality of the minis.
Despite the attempt at a cute aesthetic, this is a very brainless and annoying counting game with hardly any player interaction and a frustrating turn cycle. This is one of the most boring games I've ever played.
A really mediocre game with a very basic sort of "take-that" player interaction which never feels terribly significant. The aesthetic is not especially distinct nor memorable and the strategy can be a bit tedious and frustrating, but all things together Splendor is a cohesive experience.
A short and sweet game with a really fun queue system that is satisfying the execute. The pacing and scoring are both very poor, unfortunately, and the game has a very weird learning curve and somewhat lacks critical decision making enticement.
A completely unremarkable bluffing/party game which is most notable for being very accessible from a complexity point of view; however, the high level of aggression which it instills doesn't make it appropriate for all occasions.
A pretty straightforward worker placement game that hinges on very high aggression and tight racing to fulfill scoring brackets. The game's complexity seems to be just an excuse for it's frustrating scoring system, but it's still fun to play nevertheless. From an aesthetic point of view, the game is extremely ugly to the point of me being considerably less prone to play it.
A super fun theme of pandemic with a lot of interesting decision making opportunities. Pandemic Rising Tide requires a lot of comfort with some very high focus on the player-drawn cards within the game, but there are usually plenty of interesting options for turn nevertheless. I especially like the sort of area control / compartmentalization type of strategy, and although I'm sure it would get bothersome eventually I have been very entertained by the novelty of it.
A decent and cute time killer which is easy to learn and allows for a bit of creativity. Unfortunately, the skill cap is very high and small disparities in skill can result in massive win prospects, but since the game is very satisfying from a tactile perspective and the majority of the game consists of interesting puzzles, it remains enjoyable nevertheless.
Absolutely atrocious, miserable, slow paced train-wreck which barely contributes any elements of the social deduction genre to a very clunky, confusing strategy overlay. This game was a massive and uncomfortable chore to deal with.
A very weird mix of a party game and a strategic board control game. This mix does more harm than good mechanically, making it very easy for tensions to inflame as a lot of the players butt heads with each other over the distinction between arbitrary jokes and strategic bullying, leading to an aggressive play experience for certain sorts of people. Nevertheless, played in the right setting with the right mindset, Catan is a ton of fun. The cross table banter, fast pace, and easy to learn rules make come together for a hilarious and fun time.
The new systems feel like they make the game more frustrating, but they do add a couple of interesting bits for people who really liked the base "Dwar7s Fall"
A very high interaction game with a very steep learning curve and moderate skill cap. There's always a lot to think about and a wide variety of options, and the player interaction is very fluid and dynamic. The aesthetic of the game is mediocre, it tries to pull off a very whimsical silly setting but ended up looking pretty bloated.
If you remove the innate emotional connection people often feel for dogs, this book has no substance and weak subtext. Hunting culture also makes me feel a little uncomfy.
I have a very scarce memory of this book, but I think it helped me to develop positive ideas about variations in body images and beauty values between individuals, and I think there's a not to be said for that in the vast field of children's literature which reinforces uncomfortable roles.
Objects in Space is definitely a slow burner, but it generates one of the most masterfully crafted video game environments I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. I get excited just thinking about this game and the careful, detailed work that went into capitalizing on the full potential of the "modem-punk" theme. A combination of careful audio design, creative gameplay-story interaction, emotional pacing, and …
NieR: Automata is a clunky and miserable experience. While I was barely captured by its graphical quality, everything else about the game is stitched together horrifically. Random, nonsensical game and RPG mechanics are strewn about wildly in the most frustrating and obtrusive way possible, never adding anything to the already braincell-killing core mechanical gameplay loop. Furthermore, once you get past the game's …
A brilliantly engaging puzzle game with a very neat mechanism for preventing frustration. Because the puzzles in of themselves were very simple and easy to solve, I never found myself getting stuck. However, because solutions were "scored" by a variety of metrics, I always felt very motivated and rewarded to try to solve them in ways which minimized time, cost, and space. The game pretty fairly explores the general …
Really cute and expertly written. I was skeptical for a long time of George Orwell, especially under the notion that he witnessed in his time some of the roots of the Cold War. Yet his ability to write a fairly reasonable and entertaining story remained in tact and I would consider him one of the most effective authors of the 20th century. I fear that to a certain extent, Orwell's projection of political ideas is …
The Lord of the Flies is a valuable work of 20th century literature for none of the reasons that William Golding intended. First of all, the English is of a terrible quality. The prose is dull, pointlessly flamboyant, and ineffective. It fails to communicate anything in earnest to the reader, but it tries really hard to. I think that this is a product of the study of English during the time being deeply rooted in …
I don't like Tetris, but Puyo Puyo is a classic. This game scratched an itch for me and did a nice and polished job of it at that. I don't expect to play this a ton, but it is nice to know that I can relax with a sort of puzzler that nicely adapts to however intense I am feeling; puyo puyo can stretch to encompass a ton of different skill and energy levels. There is not much to expect out of this game, but it is …
This game is a ton of fun, providing a lot of creative freedom for something that advertises itself as a puzzle game. I felt a ton of autonomy in the design of my factories, so each puzzle felt like a unique individual experience as I learned the mechanisms by which to best optimize my own solutions. That being said, the game suffers pretty severely from being a three-dimensional game; I feel as if the extent to …
A long series of disappointments. The book did a fair job of evoking some viscerally emotional scenes, but beyond that, there was not a lot of substance to the story nor the quality of English. I think that the enjoyment value of these isolated scenes are overshadowed by many of the larger concerns I had about the book. Firstly, the portrayal of mental health and obsessive compulsive disorder was grossly unrealistic …
Although Dawkins presents a perspective critical to understand in the 20th century, he is not only ineffective at advocating for it but actually circulating destructive misconceptions. Dawkins himself admitted to his lack of expertise in rhetoric, which is painfully evident in the work for which his conviction and shaky sources are no substitute. At the end of the day, Dawkins was annoying and abrasive throughout …
A very slow burning but altogether satisfying high fantasy. This was extremely grueling to get into, with long drawn out scenes and passages which were both poorly written and difficult to care for, but the parts of the book which were good were absolutely excellent. It's definitely not something I would recommend to somebody picky, due to all of the sloppiness; in fact, I think it would be pretty embarrassing to …
I read this a long time ago when I was younger and my most distinct feelings from this book tended to relate to visceral discomfort related to subjects such as blindness, starvation, and etcetera which I really just don't think I was prepared for. Nevertheless, I'm sure that this book did me a lot of good as well in terms of teaching me about some basic principles about social interaction, which was a good thing. I …
Sonic Mania was extremely fun, well paced, and cohesive. It relied very heavily on nostalgia to deliver a rewarding experience, yet at the same time it did not neglect the core gameplay appeal. It's a very mindless, fast-paced sort of entertainment which left me with very satisfied. Beyond that, the game didn't deliver anything groundbreaking or extraordinary, instead working on polishing a very old model of game …
Transistor was a super pretty game with a very distinct and fancy visual style, which for me was the main appeal of the game. The storyline, while very deep and complex, failed to grasp my attention. There was also hardly any integration of story and gameplay mechanics, to the point where it felt like I was jumping back and forth between playing a video game and reading a book/watching a movie. For a game which …
Dead Cells is a fun and fast paced fighter/platformer which, while very satisfying to play, quickly grows repetitive and tiresome. The game recycles the same content repeatedly, and due to the very straightforward nature of the game, this repetition detracts from the value instead of adding to it. One of the ways Dead Cells tries to cover this up is through the incorporation of a sprawling unlock system; …
A really cute and wholesome adventure game with a pretty funny and pleasant style. The game mainly suffers from an incredibly high amount of down-time, walking, and etcetera, making playing through it an immense chore, but the parts of the game which are well fleshed out can make up for it in several respects. The sense of humor is fairly inaccessible, and although there's a lot of silly and fun bits it quickly …
The Giver tries to paint a very unique setting but fails to be interesting. A lot of the subjects which the story tries to be critical of just aren't really engaging or relevant in modern society; at the very least, these are subjects best addressed through other books or mediums. This story also reminds me of a lot of the shortcomings of Ray Bradbury's writing, where we are supposed to take for granted that the …
The Hunger Games managed to take off in my cultural domain's collective consciousness a while ago which got me very excited about the idea of a battle royal for all of the wrong reasons. When I was fascinated with the hunger games, I wasn't considering it in terms of a dystopia (view spoiler), but as a really cool and fun violence-fueled arena. (view spoiler) Overall, the Hunger Games is written ineffectively and …
Cut and dried from the same formula from the first entry of the series, this elaborates and expands on a lot of the characters and setting from the first book with a relatively self-contained threat-of-the-week plot. This book is still fun and entertaining, but it is worth keeping in mind that you can only recycle the same core appeal for so long before it starts to grow dull. I would recommend reading this and …
A crazy cool and zany young adult novel. The setting is fantastic and engaging, and the characters are all especially appealing. This book was clearly written with a younger audience in mind and succeeds in providing a wonderful experience for children. There are a lot of interesting ideas presented, but it's especially valuable because it presents a lot of character traits which are encouraged for evaluation from a …
I owe this book a lot of credit for getting me engaged in reading as a young kid. I've never been able to recreate the passion I had for spending time reading ever since that time, which I really have Rick Riordan to thank for. Something about the very high-fantasy setting juxtaposed upon a childhood environment was especially appealing, and the series of little mysteries provided a lot of suspense for my developing …
There are a lot of wonderful, enjoyable, and whimsical things about the setting of Xanth. Unfortunately, the book is held back by a wide variety of factors which range from mild annoyances to severe sources of discomfort, which seriously get in the way of me enjoying the book as much as I otherwise might have. First of all, the plotline is very bland and arbitrarily contrived, in addition to being fueled by a very …
The Shadow of Sorcery has a lot of things which I generally don't like in my high fantasy, from a very stereotypical male hero to some uncomfortable adult scenes, yet somehow this book is able to make up for all of this with excellent writing quality and an extremely vibrant, engaging setting. The book also has a lot of very creative plot devices and puzzles, which kept me engaged quite a bit. This is probably one …
It baffles me how this story has embedded its way so deeply into our collective cultural consciousness. At this point, I almost feel that the only thing keeping it alive is a constant supply of animated and film adaptations supplied gradually by a horrific IV drip. Not only is this one of the most mindless and arbitrary stories of all time, but it is inaccessible to children due do its slow pace and to adults due to …
Firedrake is written in an extremely boring style with no substance to its story, world, or characters. What's worse, the most memorable thing about the book was some incredibly awkward and uncomfortable scenes straying into inappropriate adult territory. If you're looking for mindless hack and slash fantasy, you're better off going elsewhere.
No better than the first entry of the series, Ice Dragon is weighed down by a long series of conflated names, boring political issues that we are supposed to care about, and bland heroics.
Boring, mindless, testosterone fueled hack and slash fantasy. None of the short stories provided in this collection are particularly interesting, but they can stray into uncomfortably stereotypical territory.
The Great Gatsby tries to be satire of many things, but lacking conviction and a clarity of purpose, fails to convey any effective themes or meaningful reading experiences. The book is so structured around trying to portray things sympathetically, non-sympathetically, and so on and so forth makes it hard to keep track of what the nature of the central conflicts within the story even are. Still, the book is very …
A cute and fun way to define logical fallacies. An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments Takes on a kind of overbearing tone at times, though, and fails to provide all of the necessary context and background which is important to understand what these logical flaws can mean for social issues and communities at large. Furthermore, despite its theme, this book is not accessible for young children. Although the book is …
A fairly generic ghost story which fails to be any sort of scary or mysterious, instead presenting a pretty bland depiction of some character struggles which it is impossible to view from any meaningful perspective. If it weren't for the inaccessible English, this book might be able to be considered mediocre, but as it stands it is really straining to read and not rewarding to finish. It would be best to search for …
A horrible, technophobic, and bland story written seemingly by somebody losing their grip on reality. Dandelion wine presents a horrible, conservative view of life in the United States which is grossly unrepresentative of the issues it tries to address. It left me with an awful, sickening feeling in my stomach after reading this traditionalist and regressive book. Avoid at all costs.
While it does a good job of organizing itself in such a way as to be accessible to a younger audience, The Pigman is not a particularly memorable story. It fails to deliver on any sort of fantastic setting, instead creating a story about modern life and supposedly-relatable youth struggles which don't have any special sort of appeal. Still, the characters are not as bland as a lot of other young adult fiction, and …
A very emotionally powerful story which dances over a lot of lines in terms of very pressing and uncomfortable dilemmas. Although the entire story is very short, it is poorly paced and fixates on a lot of irrelevant details; this may be a product of the time it was written, where the themes and subjects it explores were less discussed in media, but it definitely detracts from the value of the book to a modern …
While Thinking in Number tries to present a philosophical take on life through the frameworks of mathematics, it ultimately fails to provide anything other than a novelty concept which doesn’t hold water. Beyond a little shock value related to how math concepts can be applied in a philosophical sense, none of the essays in this collection are able to present anything profound or even remotely interesting. Perhaps …
A failure of a thought experiment. Hailed as one of the leaders of existential thought, Albert Camus simply isn't very capable of writing a coherent story about morality, much less an entertaining one. A lot of the dilemmas, question, and attitudes depicted don't really hold water when analyzed critically, or at the very least, they don't present much depth. A lot of the critical points explored in The Stranger have …
A cumulation of what not to do when writing, Darkhouse evoked a visceral emotional disgust in me for all of the wrong reasons. It was outside of my general reading habits, and I was curious to see how my interests with horror might intersect the world of romance writing. (view spoiler) The book makes perpetual failed attempts at humor, which are uncomfortable to sit through. For fans of the horror genre, there are …
A very fun and informative book about some of the core appeals and functionalities in computer science. This book is an excellent read for those who are either considering pursuing the discipline further on their own or those who have no personal investment in the concepts presented, but would still like to be able to have intelligent discussions about the elements of modern technology which permeate our lives. This …
A lot of fun for a simple sort of Fantasy. Dragonlance sticks out to me for having especially fun and memorable characters, making it a lot easier to get invested in the book than usual. Other than that though, it's a pretty generic Fantasy setting. Definitely a book accessible to young adults which would do better within that target audience.
I really, really want to love We Know the Devil, but as it stands it takes some excellent ideas and executes them poorly. It's worth picking up, especially if you have a personal investment in some of the themes regarding social interaction and group dynamics which it discusses, but it doesn't raise any especially interesting questions that aren't better handled by other fiction. I at least hope that We Know the …
Mediocre and plain. The game suffers from an improperly allocated development time and resources, leading to a disjointed and uninteresting plot. The story still has a lot of cute and entertaining elements to it, but it is hard to get invested in it. Fault - Milestone One could perhaps have been an engaging experience had considerably more attention been paid to writing quality and pacing; I would have enjoyed it …
Tales of Maj'Eyal is tedious, repetitive, clunky, and bloated as a game, feeling as if it is barely held together by sloppy stitches. It is also visually an atrocity with an average plot. However, it makes up for this by presenting an enormous amount of long term strategic content and options to players, allowing for serious sessions of pondering and theorizing about optimization, values, and synergies. Overall, …
A cute and comical party game with an easy learning curve and moderate skill cap. The game is fluent, minimizing downtime as much as is possible for a title where player-elimination is a core mechanic. Overall though, SpeedRunners remains a simple party game which doesn't leave any memorable impression.
Risk of Rain takes a gritty aesthetic and a distinctly creative approach to creating an action game. It was developed according to a cohesive design and balancing philosophy which, while difficult to figure out at first, leads to a very distinct and interesting experience. The way the game is paced is innovative, rewarding the player for increasing their speed, but at the same time this feels somewhat like a brute …
Magicite is a short and sweet RPG with limited repeatability value. It advertises itself as much more of a detailed and enthralling experience than it actually is, but overall it is mechanically sound and controls like a breeze. The way the RPG elements are integrated into the game is innovative and exciting, and it is somewhat of a shame that future titles did not follow Magicite's lead. Magicite has a moderate …
A cute and fun shooter-platformer which is in practically every way an improvement upon the works it is derived upon. The game can start to get a bit tedious as it starts to try to recycle nearly identical content under the pretense that some random elements make it fresh, but nevertheless the quality of the content itself is reasonable. It's not worth playing all the way through or in great detail to become …
Horribly buggy and presenting a low production quality, Tale of the Dragon was made with none of the design sense of the original game from Ensemble Studios. This adds practically nothing functional or even mechanically interesting to the game; it is loaded with oversights, cheap reskinnings, and instability.
Age of Mythology: "Extended Edition" is a shameless, buggy cash-in on the original which brings no merit other than a multiplayer accessible to a slightly broader audience; nevertheless, the game-play experience is roughly the same, and can be described as follows: A cute, fun, and whimsical real time strategy which is one of the best-paced to date. The theme of the game, which is a bland masculine depiction of …
A fun and creative take on a real time strategy game focused on tactical combat exclusively and not resource management or building. The single player "4X" campaign is crude, tacked on, and arbitrarily balanced, but nevertheless remains fun and satisfying. The heart of the game comes from the combat encounters which are very beautifully and expertly rendered from a graphical perspective. The audio quality is not …
Dark Souls is a deliberately clunky and frustrating fighting game. It is mostly linear aside from a few branches and tangents, so the player is usually provided with a clear sense of direction from the game's start to finish. The aesthetic of the game is very dark, gritty, and ugly; while this is sufficient to make an artistic point which is at the core of Dark Souls's appeal, the game's egregious length makes this …
Warframe has a lot of interesting and creative shooter-gameplay mechanics which are spoiled by a vicious business model for long term progression. The fundamental design of the game revolves around abusing addiction and heavy time sinks, which is an especially dangerous combination for vulnerable populations. One of the consequences of this model is that the core appeal of the game switches gradually away from the …
A beautiful and atmospheric platformer. From a graphical and audio point of view, Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is of masterful quality. The gameplay is also satisfying to execute within the carefully crafted environments. The fragments of story scattered throughout the game are thought-provoking, but also disjointed and occasionally obtrusive. The main issues with Momodora come from pacing issues derived …
Freedom Planet is exactly what it is advertised, that is to say, a better action plat former than Sonic the Hedgehog. Visually and in terms of the narrative, it's really cute and easy on the art. It has reasonable voice acting and great music. All coming together to make a comely experience. Freedom Planet delivers exactly what it promises making for a simple game experience of an exceptionally refined quality.
FTL can be a very gripping experience which teaches players how to best optimize their available resources in the most synergistic way possible. Doing so successfully and efficiently proves to be a fun challenge which is very satisfying to pursue. Unfortunately, the game can quickly turn into a very mechanical process as decision making becomes either negligible or automatic for players who are more familiar with …
A fun, fast paced and casual stealth game which is unique in the wide variety of opportunities provided for the player to take a creative approach to problem solving. The learning curve of the game can take some time, punishing players who remain in easier mission comfort zones and restricting their access to some of the more intricate parts of the game. After getting a feel for what the significance of each …
Walden is something I've heard talked up a lot, but it fails to present any sort of interesting or meaningful worldview. Instead, I got to listen to a sort of insensitive, self absorbed dude go on raving about a system of thinking based on self-sufficiency and detachment from modern struggle which didn't hold water for me under light scrutiny, and completely collapsed when taken with respect to other demographics of …
The Bean Trees provoked a very emotional, negative reaction in me, entirely without intent. The book overall was written very poorly. It's attempts at humor fell flat at best and were uncomfortably tacky at worst. The struggles presented in the book, while of a legitimate nature, are put together in such a way so as not to inspire any meaningful reflection upon the institutions which uphold the circumstances which …
Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy tries to be a refined sort of sarcastic, science fiction branded comedy, and ultimately fails to amuse. There are some funny jokes scattered here and there, but overall it just wasn't something I found especially hilarious. It also doesn't really have much interesting or meaningful to say about the science fiction genre; at times it felt as if the humor without point. This book is …
All and all, the crucible did a better job criticizing puritanism than I would have expected from a play. Still, there are a lot of drawn out details and elements which made it very hard to sit through. The entirety of the play doesn't portray any interesting conflicts and comes out with a sour, "witch hunting and hysteria is bad" motif which doesn't really command attention.
Hawthorne tries and fails to deconstruct puritan culture, missing the forest for the trees. Coupled with the inaccessibility of the older English, there is almost no merit to reading this book in 2018. Avoid if possible.
This was a really bizarre read, nothing made any sense or had a point, so I guess this is one of those books where that was the point? In any case, it was entertaining.
A lot of the more interesting things about this booked were drowned by a somewhat uninteresting main character with rather petty character depth. The central magical mechanics of this book are fun to dive into, and the whole parallel worlds system was laid out a lot better than is typical, and (view spoiler) was kind of cute. Not an excellent use of time to read unless desperate.
There wasn't much interesting to follow up on after the first book, leaving behind nothing but a very generic hack & slash fantasy plot with no more interesting characters or conflicts.
As bothersome as it can be to read through stories about the clash between "science" and "magic", Forging the Darksword is just too cute to pass up. None of the new ideas presented by the story are especially revolutionary way but it reads in a comely way as far as a heroic fantasy story can go. Some of the more "human" themes are a bit more uncomfortable than is necessary.
Wizard's first rule has a lot going on, some good and some bad. The so called "Wizard's First Rule" is pretty cool to think about, and there's some kind of nifty fantastic monsters and a well executed villain. The main issue with the story is that it deals poorly with themes pertaining to gender. An argument can be made that Goodkind is attempting to present very unfortunate scenarios and stereotypes with the aim of …
The book is written in a sort of whiny matter and fails to address some of the best elements of the coming-of-age genre. At the end of the the day, a lot of the negative qualities of the narrator which aren't more obviously addressed left a bad taste in my mouth and didn't fit in to the overall narrative.
A completely unmemorable plot makes this largely a waste of time, especially since it is so hard to get invested in any of the characters. However, this book is still worth reading as the "sixth magic" ((view spoiler)) goes far beyond creative. Nothing comes up interesting regarding it, but it's still super cool to think about.
I read this when I was rather young and impressionable, but even then this story fell a little bit flat for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the whole "high fantasy hidden in the modern world" wasn't executed especially well and the underlying conspiracy presented wasn't particularly engaging. The magical system also felt contrived, arbitrary, and meaningless, even to my young self. But more pressingly, the whole idea …
A lot of the charm of Eragon has been lost on me over the years since I read it, especially as my exposure to more and more fantasy has made me realize a lot of the pretty generic nature of the story. But as a kid, that kind of thing wasn't very important to me, and Paolini was able to excellently cater to the young-adult audience. He recognizes the specific elements that make young people excited, and sometimes …
Flatland is really, really long for what it is, and could probably have just as effectively captured the ideas it was trying to purvey in a fraction of the space it occupies. Nevertheless it is an extremely unique read and was especially appealing to me due to my fascination at the time with (ironically) 4+ dimensional geometry. The book was also considerably impactful to me, likely planting the seeds of my current …
It's very hard for me to keep track of which of Arthur Conan Doyle's volumes correspond to which stories and vice versa, but this compendium was my main exposure to his written works. It is an excellent entry point for those who are unsure how to approach his writings. The quality of mysteries produced are generally of a moderate to high quality and are executed in a fairly cute way. Some of the persistent story …
I'm very passionate about how much I almost love Crime and Punishment. The premise in of itself is a lot of fun to toy with and there are quite a few fun characters. There is something immensely satisfying about watching Raskolnikov's creative brand of struggles. Sadly, Crime and Punishment is heavily bloated with subplots imported from some of Dostoyevsky's other works, and a lot of the more interesting points the …
A cute story written about an unstable guy with a fragile ego blown up to a pretty comic, tongue in cheek satire of some traditional fictional male-hero elements. By no means an especially deep read, Niebla is easy to pick up sporadically over the course of several sittings.
A gripping masterpiece of a visual novel which remains my favorite to-date. The production quality is extremely impressive, with full professional voice acting and otherwise exquisite sound design coupled with excellent visuals. The atmosphere is very masterfully controlled throughout the story, and there is plenty of opportunity for meaningful reader reflection. Stein's;Gate is, ironically, very linear, and does …
There comes a certain point where a board game relies to heavily on a gimmick and consequentially collapses in upon itself which I think Mansions of Madness easily passed. Operating the game using an app was really clunky and confusing, and the repeated attempts to be cute or flavorful left a bad taste in my mouth as we all struggled to read the tiny text on the combat screen displayed upon the phone. The most interesting part of the game for me were the alternate victory conditions distributed by the insanity cards, but even that felt like a weird tacked on mechanic. Overall there are much more interested cooperative board games, and if you are investigating Mansions of Madness in particular I would recommend perhaps looking through video games instead.
Cute and simple bidding game. Has very few restrictive mechanisms to stop new players from making major mistakes and involves a lot of numbers and guessing to play well, but there are also plenty of opportunities to inject fun deceptive elements into the match with the right crowd.
There's nothing technically inherently wrong with Farkle; it is the absence of a game. It's an interesting psychological experiment which tests the definitions of game-play. Mathematically Farkle has been solved in a very simple manner, and it can be a fun math experiment to try for yourself (like learning tic tac toe for the first time), but it is mainly a pass time in groups which aren't particularly concerned with that.
Must have expansion for spirit island. Branch and Claw dramatically improves the quality of the base game by incorporating very detailed and well thought out token-based mechanics. Additional spirits and etcetera improve the variety of the game by a fair bit.
Sort of monotonous, but has a low entry level and high skill cap. The artwork is kind of confusing at times and it is difficult to discern much about individual tiles on the board at a glance.
A fun combination of social deduction and word association. This game challenges players to think extremely critically about communication and patterns in an upbeat, fast paced context. By adding elements of deception to social deduction, Murder in Hong explores what happens when people try to deliberately find patterns which do not exist, which is a fun and exciting twist.
A cute and funny madlibs for people who don't want to play madlibs. Gets old fast, especially now that most of the pop cultural references are outdated.
Mindless dice rolling with pseudo-decision making. Whatever satisfaction there is to rolling the dice is overwritten by having to painstakingly keep track of combos and bookkeeping scores. The interaction is nonexistent.
Bland, dull, and uninteresting. I have no emotional investment in these tiny disks and all of the decision making in the game is repetitive and procedural. In terms of abstract games, there are simply several better options.
A simple, satisfying two player strategy game. The learning curve is not very steep, but the skill cap is famously high. As a consequence, it is not easy to find a partner of a roughly equivalent skill level without expending considerable effort. Chess is set up the same every time, leading to some similarities between games, but in general chess can tend to present a lot of different puzzles and scenarios. Thematically chess is rather dull, although the pieces can tend to be pretty depending on the set.
Machi Koro is a really cute dice rolling game with an intensely satisfying player progression. There is hardly anything at all to the strategy though; easy learning curve and low skill cap. Machi Koro has more player interaction than I would have expected from a "everybody's building their own thing from a market' game, but it still isn't much.
Valeria is a decent dice-rolling game with a satisfying ramp, but ultimately feels rather bland and boring, especially on subsequent plays. Spending the games "red/attack" resource simply feels like a necessary chore, when I would rather just focus on the gold market. Still, Valeria is a good time killer.
A love letter to the Order of the Stick webcomic. The play is surprisingly slick for what is effectively the board game equivalent of shovelware, but the proper place for aggression is unclear leading to a sort of clunky overall experience. The humor dies past the first play through, but the mechanics are solid enough to warrant coming back nevertheless.
A boring game which tries to tell the players to have fun, rather than presenting interesting mechanics. The art style is atrocious; everything about the game tries to be funny and just isn't. At all. The gendered humor is also uncomfortable. Munchkin operates on selling as many copies and expansions as possible, avoid it if you can.
Clank in Space inherits a lot of the problems from its predecessor. At the very least, the new mechanics make the board a little bit more fun to play on, and the game feels a little bit more fluid. The pace of the game is still uncomfortable though, and the draw bag still feels awful. From a thematic perspective, Clank in Space tries to be funny and kind of falls flat, but it is still less monotonous than the fantasy version by a little.
Dull and frustrating deck builder. While the idea of interconnecting board and market mechanics sound interesting, the physical racing of the game feels sort of mechanical and bland. The game plays too slowly, especially since Clank is pretty prone to dud hands, which isn't normally too much of a problem in deck-builders. Even the draw bag is physically uncomfortable, ruining what otherwise might have been a fun physical drawing process, and the pieces are far too easy to lose track of and knock all over the place. Overall, just boring.
A cute, simple, and casual social deduction game which is extremely satisfying in the tactile sense. The mechanical construction of the "social deduction" elements are sort of weak and sporadic, but the very chaotic nature of the game makes it less noticeable. Thematically, Bang the Dice Game portrays a very uncomfortable, insensitive depiction of demographics which is typical of the "Wild West" genre.
Never before has a game inspired such a visceral terror in me. Pandemic Legacy is the stuff of nightmares, expanding upon the horrifying germ-pocolype theme of the first and reminding you that the very fabric of society is disintegrating beneath you due to your own personal failures. The legacy mechanics have two main effects; firstly, they add elements of suspense and surprise to each session which are generally impossible to attain from board games; secondly, they massively ramp up the stress due to the perpetual fear of permanent consequences. So I suppose the main appeal of Pandemic is the same appeal of scary movies. If you like for your entertainment to cause you perpetual suffering and nightmares, then this is the game for you.
I'd probably enjoy this one a lot more if I wasn't afraid of germs. The game is very consistent in it's theme, which can be a good or a bad thing depending on your personal disposition. The game play is very simple and straightforward, and as such the game is brutally unforgiving. As in any good coop, players interact with each other a fair bit and try to exchange information and strategies in a fun, brainstorming environment.
Solid variety compared to citadels, but doesn't change a whole lot else. Since the base game has such a limited lineup, the Dark City is a solid choice.
Although the interaction dynamic can be somewhat forced and the game plays like a decaffeinated sloth, citadels never fails to produce hilarious and fun scenarios which can easily capture the attention of everybody at the table, even at high player counts.
7 wonders is built around a drafting mechanic, but fails to produce anything more than superficial player interaction mechanics. Effective strategic decision making in the game is very obtuse and requires a very solid knowledge of the deck composition.
A solid, portable, and accessible time killer. There are little bits of strategy which are surprisingly deep for such as simple game, but nothing worth coming back to repeatedly. The game has surprisingly pleasant stylistic execution for the sort of mind-numbing "lol nukes" theme.
Gloomhaven is a very slow and poorly balanced experience. The intense RPG mechanics turn what might otherwise have been a very interesting tactical fighter into a scripted slog. Difficulty is managed in a very boring way, mainly consisting of the inflation of numbers and dropping of meaningless, frustrating, and repetitive minis all over the board. Gloomhaven has yet to present me with a uniquely interesting challenge or turn where my decisions didn't feel vague, nebulous, or pointless. I am personally very dissapointed in the inter-player communication rules; while I am a fan of games which restrict peoples' way to communicate in creative and interesting ways, Gloomhaven's system is just annoying and vague. I also don't feel particularly motivated to engage with the game's long term progression system, since it doesn't seem like it will push the game in any fun or creative ways. Overall, I like the idea of gloomhaven a ton and I want to keep looking for things about it I will enjoy, but I can't get behind the execution.
An exquisite, lighthearted word association game which allows for some very unique brands of interaction between the teams. Can feel a little bit arbitrary at times, but the lighthearted nature of the game makes up for this.
Kemet is a pretty area control game which hinges around competition for limited spots on its tech trees. It has some of the best card-combat which area control has to offer, making each individual engagement extremely fun and rewarding, even if the players enter the encounter at different power levels. The long term strategy of the game is difficult to grasp, but it is a joy to play around with in a shorter-term tactical sense. The competition for spots on the tech tree especially can be somewhat stressful and exceedingly aggressive.
None of the mechanics make any sense. Visually the game is really ugly and almost looks broken, even in a fresh box. The most fun which can be attained from this game is the satisfaction of spinning the board around, when it doesn't cause a catastrophe for the pieces sitting upon it.
An absolutely beautifully executed strategy game which is extremely well paced and rewards a wide variety of strategies. Despite having a steep learning curve, the game is fun to pick up and play for the first time, since experimenting with tactics is so much fun. The game is also aesthetically beautiful and extremely satisfying from a tactile perspective.
A super sugary, pastel, and adorable area control game. The mechanics are very simple and accessible, although they feel arbitrary at times. The game permeates a very warm and friendly atmosphere between players and doesn't command a terrible amount of attention to enjoy fully. The figures are especially pretty, and the main draw is the nice child-friendly setting.
Descent was something I really liked the idea of to begin with but gradually eroded my patience until I had no remaining tolerance for its bland strategy and mockery of a campaign system. Descent presents some of the most inane grid-based combat that I've ever seen. The inter-session persistence is pointless and serves as an inertia-based excuse for stringing together the scenarios as a series of repetitive, bland mechanical processes. At the very least, the miniatures are extremely pretty, and the game is extremely satisfying from a visual and tactile standpoint, especially in its iconography.
Although Zombies has some good ideas, it falls flat and the strategically valuable choices in the game involve entirely circumventing its core mechanics. There is no intuitive sense or interaction between different mechanics and trends. Also involves repeatedly running into the same boring exploration task over and over again. Cards also don't provide much strategic value.
A pretty standard worker placement, where most of the rather disparate paths which players take tend to intersect time and time again in the "hot-spots" on the central board. Plagued by a moderate learning curve for new players and obscenely high skill cap, making it hard to get together a group which will be able to interact with each other in especially meaningful contexts. A lot of the deck and upgrade mechanics associated with Agricola are somewhat convoluted and tedious to evaluate from a strategic point of view.
A fairly simple base construction game involving a lot of keeping track of dice and separate resource pools. Feels a bit too much like several concurrent games of solitaire for comfort, especially since the biggest extent to which player interaction is relevant is in other players acting as timers of various speeds in various mechanical senses.
Mascarade is built around a fairly simple concept, merging together social deduction and memory, but it's very satisfying to try to analyze the board state repeatedly. Player interaction . Mascarade suffers from very frequently placing players into positions where they have to "clean up" the player in the lead in order to prevent them from easily snowballing, something which would only vanish if all players had a very astute awareness of the board state at all times.
Dominant species is insanely stressful and cutthroat, but undeniably a solid game. Players' entire prehistoric engines are sustained by extremely fragile resource supplies which are constantly collapsing and changing hands as players compete in an area-control style for extremely limited board space. Dominant species notably suffers for an excessive play time for an experience which players can be easily eliminated from in the first couple of rounds.
A really intense, complicated strategy game. Gaia project often feels like building up a space empire upon very fragile glass and sand pillars that can easily be knocked out from beneath you by other players, but aren't because they are concurrently trying to keep their own pillars from collapsing under their own weight. This all comes together for a fairly stressful experience, but also cultivates a sort of kinship between the players at the table. Surprisingly, Gaia project isn't especially aggressive, as one might expect.
Significantly improving upon its predecessor, the Palace of Mad King Ludwig features a high degree of player interaction. By having all players work together on the same construction, bizarre elements of blocking and stealing potential make for some interesting interactions. A lot of the mechanics feel somewhat cumbersome and arbitrary, and it's really hard to discern winning strategies from pointless engine-idling.
Rather than being tactility satisfying, building the castle from the market felt sort of mechanical and boring. Player interaction was extremely limited, and it's rare for anybody to actually interact through the market. It's a whole bunch of procedural analytical games of solitaire all being played at once. There are cute parts about the aesthetic but the mediocre art quality and sort of bland sense of humor made it pretty unmemorable.
Vast is extremely asymmetrical and balanced around keeping a close eye on each of your opponents individually, encouraging deep and meaningful player interactions between everyone at the table. As a consequence of this, Vast can get pretty aggressive as well. Each play-style is extremely distinct, allowing for a lot of intersecting player values to come together in the same game for a rewarding experience. Aesthetically, the game is extremely pretty and cute, leaving me with a fuzzy warm feeling after playing.
A cute solitaire game which is very pleasing in a tactile sense. The balance is more flavor than anything else, but that still has its own appeal to it. There is a lot of careful bookkeeping which needs to be done, and the "character sheets" can get pretty messy; it's also kind of easy to lose pieces. Still, this game holds a special place in my heart and childhood and will always be something I am happy to come back to.
A fairly standard worker placement game. It plays a little bit too much like several concurrent games of solitaire for comfort, with a lot of the interaction being forced through the "building" system and direct aggressive cards. The worker placement elements don't carry enough of the burden, which is strange since that level of competition generally tends to inspire direct interaction in other games of its genre. Additionally, the learning curve to start is simple, but viable winning strategies don't make themselves immediately obvious. Thematically, Lords of Waterdeep feels a lot like a love letter to the Dungeons and Dragons universe fandom, and not a lot else. The name-dropping especially I found particularly irksome, so overall the aesthetic of the game tended to wear me down, especially across multiple plays.
Secret Hitler has integrity as a social deduction game. At the end of the day, there is a degree of discourse, debate, and lying which goes on. However, it relies fairly heavily upon keeping track of cards, which is rather boring to pay attention to, and there are a lot of unnecessarily convoluted mechanics which don't go well together. Thematically, Secret Hitler relies a lot upon shock value as a crutch, which is a kind of dull smokescreen to make up for its mediocre mechanics. Simply on account of better social deduction games being available fairly easily, it generally isn't worth it to sit down for a match of Secret Hitler.
Cards Against Humanity is an uncomfortable, miserable train-wreck of a party game. It relies heavily upon shock humor and saying or insinuating things which are wildly disconcerting or outright offensive. That being the "point" of the game does not make this remotely comfortable; it operates on an immature, dull fascination with the idea that "it's okay/funny because it's ironic." Avoid at all costs.
Captain Sonar is a game I was very enthusiastic about, especially regarding the idea of having fast paced, real-time, and communication oriented game-play. As it turned out though, the real-time mode of Captain Sonar fell flat on its face due to chunkiness, obscure, difficult to remember rules, and general provocations of excessive, pointless interpersonal aggression. Even the turn-based mode can provoke some general atmospheric hostility and frustration, on top of being a mediocre "Battleship" expansion by itself.
Dark Ages adds a ton of extremely interesting cards to Dominion, some of which are just plain hilarious (I'm looking at you, rats). The shelters dramatically increase the complexity of the game in its early phases, which is a breath of fresh air after many games with the default starter decks. Ruins are also a far more interesting "junk" card than curses are.
Seaside adds some really interesting cards to Dominion, adding a respectable amount of variety to the standard lineup. Some of these cards can slow down the game-play a little bit, but not considerably.
Dominion is a fast paced deck-builder which provokes thought without ever becoming too overwhelming. Each turn is fun in of itself, and it is rewarding to ponder how to best use each drawn hand and to try to think ahead of your opponents. Unfortunately, it plays a little bit like several concurrent games of solitaire, with player interaction being limited at best and virtually non-existent at worst. The setup and tear-down is also such a high percentage of total game time that it detracts considerably from the experience. Second edition is most notably different from first for me because the treasure and property cards are a lot prettier.
Dominion is a fast paced deck-builder which provokes thought without ever becoming too overwhelming. Each turn is fun in of itself, and it is rewarding to ponder how to best use each drawn hand and to try to think ahead of your opponents. Unfortunately, it plays a little bit like several concurrent games of solitaire, with player interaction being limited at best and virtually non-existent at worst. The setup and tear-down is also such a high percentage of total game time that it detracts considerably from the experience.
A solid and entertaining dexterity game with a very loose ruleset. As long as you don't take it too seriously, the game will be fine. That being said, this sort of "casual spirit" is not an excuse for very lackluster design and callibration. It is especially notable that the asymmetry of the game, while fine at 2 players, deteriorates considerably at 3 players, and falls apart entirely at 4. 5 players is possible but would be inadvisable in my opinion.
This provides a very distinct victory condition to Mage Knight which changes the way the game needs to be approached to a moderate extent. It also provides several quality-of-life balancing changes, which are very pleasant, and a few more mechanics to break up the monotony of the original's limited tile supply.
Mage Knight is an incredibly vast, complex, and difficult game. It runs excellently as a solitaire and seats small player groups well, incorporating a variety of different victory conditions. Mage knight consistently presents players with some of the most fascinating decisions, trade offs, and problem solving opportunities offered by board games to date. It is characterized, however, by its incredibly long play time; I would often times play solitaire games over the course of several games, because trying to go through it all at once was emotionally exhausting. This game will hold a special place in my heart for a long time.
A lot of the mechanics of Mysterium are counterintuitive, which is frustrating for a game with such a simple picture-association premise. Nevertheless, it really stretches the imagination in fun and creative ways and can be a good way to experiment with unconventional methods of communication.
A very over the top violent area control game which heavily relies on drafting into specific play styles. Although the combat is satisfying, the learning curve is extremely steep which makes the game somewhat inaccessible and lopsided for new players. The game often also feels like a very long, cumbersome process as the outcome of each individual actions tend to have marginal and arbitrary benefits which are difficult to assess with a grasp on the general flow of the game and hopeless without it.
A run of the mill team-based social deduction game with some very impactful yet simple mechanics which create a unique problem solving dynamic. Still, there is little variety between games, and the skill cap is very low.
A very lighthearted hex-grid based fighter game. GKR doesn't borrow many strategic elements from other games, making learning it a unique experience. High player counts can lead to an increased level of table aggression. While the game is not inaccessible, it is a considerable investment to play for the first time, and the skill ceiling is low.
Dungeon Lords turns what would otherwise be several fun concurrent games of solitaire into a brilliant, social interaction with an excellent application of worker placement mechanics. The core mechanic of the game revolves around players reducing the difficulty of the "puzzle" that they have to solve (which occurs twice during the game).
Cute, satisfying, clear cut, and accessible, King of Tokyo provides a very solid experience overall which is easy enough to pick up that it can be played in a wide variety of settings. The aesthetic of the game is a little pretty, but not memorably so. In terms of the dice-rolling and re-rolling strategy, there's enough so that it isn't boring but it is never a particularly arduous decision making process.
Rattlebones presents a unique sort of strategy and problem solving, encouraging players to think pretty deeply about dice and probability compared to normal. In a tactile sense, Rattlebones is also very satisfying. Overall though the strategy of the game fails to provide any sort of meaningful or gratifying experience, but the little satisfying bits about it don't make it a complete waste of time. The game is extremely uncanny from an aesthetic point of view, which could be considered a good or a bad thing.
The unique mechanics presented by Realms Unraveled make up for the complexity of the "transformation" mechanic by providing a breath of fresh air compared to typical Ascension strategy. Overall this is a net-neutral game in terms of typical Ascension quality.
Ascension was my introduction to deck building games and as such will always hold a special place in my heart. The game suffers from factional mechanics and synergies not being immediately obvious to new players, and a disproportionate advantage from memorizing specific cards within the deck. Still, compared to other deck-builders, Ascension has phenomenal pacing.
A solid, fast paced, entry level social deduction game which is easy to deploy in a very wide variety of group dynamics. While the rotating card market provides variety, if the game is not played very often it might as well be substituted for the original "Coup" game which gets more interesting mechanics for having a fixed deck. Coup can also become very aggressive, as although there are no teams there are often times a series of choices where multiple harmful actions to other players produce the same benefit.
Forest of Shadows is about the same level of quality of its predecessor. Since it is standalone, either could be bought for roughly the same quality of experience. Buying both provides extra variety, which can be helpful reducing the trudgery of playing the game frequently.
One Deck Dungeon is a fairly straightforward and mechanical dungeon crawler. It's kind of relaxing to go through, but the interesting decisions tend to be few and far between. The game is very portable, and setup/teardown can get pretty fast with practice. I would only play this in lieu of other cooperative games on account of its small box size and low weight, especially because it can play for far longer than 30-45 minutes without lots of practice from all group members. One Deck Dungeon includes a campaign mode which isn't really worth paying any attention to.
Straight up card bulk for a little bit more variety. No especially interesting interactions, but the cards in of themselves are fun to purchase and play.
This is a handy expansion to have if you own a couple of the card packs and would like a quick way to extend the lifespan of Star Realms. It can create some interesting situations and make fun strategies viable.
Star Realms is a pretty, straightforward deck builder most notable for its portability. individual expansion packs can tweak the game slightly in interesting ways, but putting them all together sacrifices the low weight and size which is the core appeal of the game over others. For me personally, Star Realms is an excellent choice to carry around in my bag with me everywhere I go, as depending on the person I am with it can be a very pleasant and satisfying experience to play the game. I would not make any efforts to plan to play Star Realms more than a few hours out, though.
Dinosaur island involves very standard worker placement strategy with a sort of overbearing theme. There are numerous mechanics to keep track of, but doing so in of itself doesn't feel like an especially rewarding experience, and it makes the difficulty of keeping track of all of the other players somewhat intense. Still, it is pleasant to try to generate and follow through on strategies based on the rotating market.
Root is a charming, pretty asymmetrical war game. The strategy of the game as it pertains to each individual player varies quite a bit and sometimes isn't immediately obvious. Overall, Root is a very cute game which breaks down upon extremely close scrutiny but for the most part is a joy to learn.
Tragedy Looper fulfills a very specific appeal, incorporating a unique style of communication and deduction into the core of its gameplay. The core mechanics hinge off of using deductive reasoning to either infer the play of the opposing team or to try to guide the other team into playing a mistake. The game is asymmetrical: One team of 1-3 players plays the game over iterations and only needs to win once, while the other team has access to dramatically more information but must win each iteration. Between iterations, the 1-3 player team will be able to learn more about the board state based on the actions of their opponent. Tragedy Looper is a very high commitment game and requires a lot of active memory, so I added a set of pens and notepads to the base set. Additionally, the game is not extremely well refined, yet nevertheless remains the best execution of its style to date.
Terraforming Mars feels like several concurrent games of solitaire being played concurrently. The player interaction is sparse at best, and when it is incorporated it does not extend very far. A rule variant regarding drafting improves this, but it doesn't really integrate with any of the other gameplay. There are a lot of distinct, unrelated mechanics to keep track of and it is extremely tedious to weigh the specific meaning of all of the various strategic elements. Overall, playing Teraforming mars is more of a chore than anything else.
Spirit Island is a very densely feature-packed cooperative game which fully captures attention throughout the course of play. The aesthetic is very pleasant, as it's really nice to go on a little bit of war against European colonialists for a change! The learning curve is somewhat steep but by no means insurmountable, and in general there is a lot of mechanical support for new players who are learning to develop their own strategies. The replay-ability of Spirit Island is also commendable, simply on account of the fact that the core mechanics of the game can be approached from a wide variety of perspectives and still produce a satisfying decision making process. This will remain one of my favorite games of all time for the foreseeable future.
A very well designed strategy game which is especially fascinating for its creative approach to time-based simultaneous strategy. It is a pioneer in its style of gameplay, with very few similar titles appearing ever since the release of Mode7's first entry in the series. Individual matches present very unique challenges which fully engage player attention and require lots of complex decision making. These matches …
Cogmind is a very finely tuned dungeon crawler constructed with modern design sense on top of traditional elements of the genre. It does an excellent job of maintaining a clear and consistent pace of gameplay throughout each individual run, largely due to its strict adherence to a carefully planned out design philosophy. There are very few extraneous features, keeping all of the mechanics learned by the player …
