Recent reviews by MooRicher

To be fair I knew what i was getting when buying but well its bad. Half the buttons crash the game. You need a form a special energy to play levels which depleds rather quick and can be regained by waiting hours or bought with real money. Which is impossible for Steam user since those buttons belong to the 50% crash buttons.
Its a bad mobile port. You cant aim without shooting. The keybinds are wild and I still havent figured which button does what and many option where not bound to the keyboard.
To top it off the game is infested with bugs. Animations glitches, moon walking main charcters and having unlimited ammo in the first level are just a few. There are supposed to me more than just story mode and endless mode but those are locked and I never reached the needed level to unlock. Ah and yeah there is a VIP Service. Atleast its mention in different places.

I bought it as a joke and so did two friends we had 20min of fun trying to get it work and had to wait 20 min earbleedingly suffering under the way to loud one music track that loop in the main menu.

Supporter Editions. For me this is the third writing a review for a supporter DLC and the all have the same start. So I figured I try something else and still i cant think of anything. So here we go with the same statement I made two times earlier at other games.

Supporter Edition rarelly have a player value and are an investment in the future of a studio. A proven thank you combind with take my money and the wish to continue to make good games.

Well and then I figured this supporter editon actually is just the bundled soundtrack and art book thing most game nowadays have. While I have a curtain interest in artbooks I am to lazy to look them up. The soundrack ist what I am here for. Exspecially Proshkas Theme that made way in way work playlist of songs to fight procrastination. The game has a good soundtrack, mainly its not your standard epic compilation of tracks its more of reacreation of the historical influence the have withing the game. I like that even though I could understand a single word in the songs I felt all of them while playing and its nice to own them to occesionly come back listing to them.

So this leaves me with the one thing that spark my original catch phrase for supporter editions. The skins of gratetude that is either ugly or plain boring.

The tradional russian dress from my point of view is not only a colourfull disasters its not fitting for the character of Vasya. While Vasya is this strong independend woman who is stupporn in changing course while heading for the rescue, a tradional dress is not what suits her. Ofcourse personal preference. Maybe you like it, i didnt.

At the supporter Pack is just a fancy buzzword. Call it what ever you want Deluxe Edition, Ultimate Edition, self proclaimed GOTY Edition, its just not mandatory to play the game. My willingness to gift devs a little more money to perhaps see them again one day and my FOMO make those purchases.

Third a game in a series of episodic reddit horror stories retelling. And we are back at keeping an eye on home or in other words home alone again. We play a young boy who gets ask to keep watch for a little money and at some point stuff goes wrong.

Noah is properly your typic 18 year old boy from town. Thinks has the world figured out and still needs much to learn. The game starts with a weird drug induced sequences that never really got explained or put into the greater frame of the narrative. Much of the evening will be quite calm. Outside of Carson house a storm is running over the city and its properly better to stay inside watching TV and eating Pizza. The majority of the first half is rather uneventfull. The job gets a little more complicated when Mr. Carson orders you arround doing some basic necassities like feeding the unfornute dog that is not allowed in house and has to sit all the way in the rain or to grab some groceries. A fair and fine and you got to keep the change. While shopping you met a couple friends and discover some rather unice information about Mr. Carson and his wife but nothing that would worry you. Well accept something has to turn into horror. Not gonna spoil to much, but its this type of horror story that was avoidable all the way by just calling the cops. I had this story setups. I doesnt make the game bad in any way. Just the plain stupidity makes Noah unbearably for me. He is an idiot.

In contrair to the previous game this one agian is longer. The problem that arise for me here is that this type of story in the way told feels like a reddit post with to many uneeded information to make the post longer. The natural state of real life horror storry is less dramatic and less climatic as we now from fictional media. Its not bad and the horror works. But with the third time the formula of experience some of the everyday life before getting the usual scare stales pretty quickly. Exspecially in the case where you play all five games in quick succesion.
Yet again I confirm that I would recommend the game and that this is a great horror experience. I just hope that game number four and five will have moved the gameplay formula and the narrative forward and develop further the possibilty of what could be done with this type of game. But I am really happy to see a small game dev being succesfull and nonetheless i would again buy any sixed or seventh game by Rayll and please do the interior of the garage.

Before we head into the usual praising and criticism of this review there is a word of advice for potential players. Dont get frighten by the german name of the game. Everything excluding the voice over is translated into english. So you can play and experience the game and only have to listen to the wonderfull voice of a metal singer narrating the plot for you.

With that out of the way its time to dive deep and I wanna start with the general first impression I and properly the most of you had when first playing this game.

Its a cheaply and slapped together asset flip in which the mediocre and non evolving gameplay is nothing more than the known hunt for generic pieces of papers. All that while being chased by the ad most simple AI version of a supposidly scary monster in which the player find either the unfair death or the punishment for lazyness. A game that players have seen before and that brings nothing new to the table.

At first it seems like this.

Let me introduce you to a big BUT.

(no pun intended)

This game is made with passion. That kind that is needed more than ever nowadays.

BG3 Game Director Swen Vincke gave an incredible speech about good games at this years TGA moments before anouncing the winner. Without copy and pasting to much of his words onto this review here i recommend to listen to it over here really quick.
To boil it down he told that the winning game of future is game made with passion, mutual respect and free wrong ristrictions. A game which is equally enjoyed by devs and players alike and is created without making money first in mind.

Im Bann der dunklen Jagd is such game. Not because its a free to play experience, Id happly paid a few bucks for the game, because its filled with love.

So what is so good about the game you may ask.

It feels complete. Three acts to enjoy the story that is for what is well narrated. There is an additional bonus level for you to discover which contains a time trial challenge. The second Act has a beautifull secret to be discoverd after beating it onces. Each level is unique enough to cover up the simple well known gameplay formula and some of the scare as cheap as they can be are really terrifying.
On top this is coop game which means grab yourself a friend and get scared together. Communication is the key.
Everything has its charme on its own and nothing feels "slapped together" and where ever you go there is something to be discovered like a juicy burger for example.

In addition the dev is activly searching for feedback and is answering questions and recommendation over in the steam forums and needed changes are implemented quickly. Thanks again for the VSync Option dev.

Well some of the more nasty things said in my first impression are still needen to be debunked. The gameplay evolves over the course of the levels. At first find pieces of documents, at second in additon you need to find a way to open up a place where one piece of paper is hidden, at third you need to find a bunch of levers to open locked areas and at last in the bonus level atleast for the Coop part spliting up and communication is key to beat the level. Sure its not much but put aside the playtime this is enough to not become dull to quick.

On thing however I said at the beginning is true. The AI is the weakspot of the game. For what I expierenced the monster is just roaming arround and as long as you stay out of sight you wont die.
Ive played other games with monster like granny for example where the monster has a curtain ability to track the player or have search patterns after losing it. Like listing to noises or check some hiding spots. I am not asking for exactly those feature. I just wanted to state some example of what monster could do in addition. It can be implemented lore wise. On the otherside right now getting hunted is not as spectecular as it may sounds. Once discovered it runs after you. I manged to get rid of it at some points but not always. I even manage to trap atleast one enemy in the final act. Its the only immersion breaker I found within the game once figured out how to deal with the monster.

I had so much fun playing it with a friend and its kinda unbelieveble how little attention this game has for being a free two player coop horror game and I made sure to recommend to other friend of mine.

At last i wanna leave behind the one thing I am looking forward in the future. The game is still in early access and while it seems that more levels are unlikely it sound we are getting more secrets to discover. I gladly return to the game and play parts of it again.

With Norwood Hitchhike we got the second Episode of the rising to fame series Fears to Fathom. This time we play a young woman on her way back from a convention. And with the theme of horror you might imagine right away somethings goes wrong allong the way.

The second episode improves everything the first does great. The length of the game is doubled and the story is a bit more layed out in order to grow on the player. We visit different areas to explore, even get to drive a car thru the dark and lonely night and meet some unsual characters along the way. Everything again narrated in terms of what you would expect in a reddit post. Like the first this games again feels one of those shorts or reel where an AI voice reads said reddits post out loud.

However with doubled in size this time some flaws are start shining through. I had some of those with the first game aswell but kept them to myself because everything was tight packed and free that the problems didnt really matter. This time they do. First and foremost the biggest problem I had was with the unclear linearity of the game. At time I had trouble to find out exactle what the game wanted me to do. Some moments felt dragged and other where a bit confusing. Not that it makes the experience worse but some issues where noticable. Exspecially at the end where I hide myself and the game didnt progress because i didnt do enough triggers before. Which lead to an akward situation of cowering in fear and nothing happening.
The second problem comes with the type of story. Reallife horror story suffer when retold. Obviously a full written book or movie carefully places the bits of horror to create tension, but in reallife many things happen before and after that are not scary. The game helps itself by adding tension breakers every now and then. That alone is not bad but the narrative with the horror you are looking for happens in a fraction of the game and the rest is just eh world building i guess. Its not bad to be part of a real life story, it just feels random at times. It may be so that real life story work better als reddit post or video not read by AI.

Still Fears to Fathom remains a remarkable series of short horror stories that are captevating, thrilling and fun to play. The second episode is not in any an exlcusion to that. I arleady played epsiode 3 and most issues I had do not exist in this game atleast so may be its the only one.

We are in the prime of roguelike games. The recent years offered many great games like Dead Cells, Hades I II, both Risk of Rains games, Slay the Spire and many many more. Who would have thought that, in this crowded mass of games alike, a version of poker would win so many hearts.

For once Poker is old. The game we know today rose to popularity arround 1826 and became the success hit during the gold rush and onboard of mississipi boat trips. The addiction game that ruined many lifes on the quest to become rich. Pokers origin can be traced back to the 16th century in a either a persian or german card game. Nonethless with Balatro we got a new form. A form in which the players tries to beat a highscore. Each time this highscore increases and every third has an ability that tries to make it harder for the player to aquire enough chips. The player is offered an inrcedible range of jokers, tarots, planet cards or many way to upgrade and adjust the scorabilty of your deck. This variaty enables a good amount of deck building that tries to beat the stakes of RNG. The game is equaly tough as satisfying. At times it seems that you have no luck which dooms your run but each time still is a fight on its own. Making this a perfect ressembling of what comes with poker for many players. The thrill of a good money making hand.

With almost 50h I still have only seen a quarter of what the game offers as challenge to be beaten. While I have unlocked most stuff there are so many special challenges and decks of different kind to beat. And yet have to tough higher difficulties. So still after 50h there is still a long road ahead of us.

Aside from this game being a surprise hit. I was kinda suprised to see it getting nominated for i believe 7 Game Awards including game of the year. Like the game awards or not Balatro winning Goty would not be underserved and yet a big f you for the AAA industy. So much I kinda want it to happen.

Success like this comes with a shift in the market. Whenever a specific type of game is new and successfull it gets "copied" or inspires other to try it themself. Ive seem quite some "casinolike" games trying to grasp a portion of the Balatro success. I wouldnt mind other roguelike interpretations of known older games. Maybe other casual board games as Roguelike? How about chess, Uno or Ludo?

For me Balatro is a Game that can be played aside watching videos, playing other games or a little in between brake game. It has no timer and will always wait for your input. So whenever my favorite football club has a bad day. I try my luck in Balatro.

Fears to Fathom is an episodic representation of reddit horror stories. The player takes control of the survivor while being narrated by said survivor. Everything feels like a straight visualization for those simple reddit reels on instagram or youtube shorts where an AI reads those reddit posts. Instead of being crappy AI covers whe actually got a decent horror game that utalizes the abstract look of classic VHS tapes, simple sound and music design to make the vibe and tension almost rurpturing and it delivers more subtle scares before the big climax to top the anticiptation from the player. Surprising for being the first game made Rayll it features way more space to explore as expected and many ways to gather some mean comments from the narrator to wander of the straight past of narration. All and all this game can easialy compare itself to many indi horror games despite its rather short time. The best part is its followed by, at this point in time, 4 more games that have a price tag. But add more content and length to it. So this first episode may be less then the following titles and yet more what we would expect from a demo trying to convince us to buy the actuall game. Overall I am really happy to have found another smaller dev and follow along the past as he grows.

I got this game recommended by an old game dev friend of mine who uses this game often as an example for an artfull approach at storytelling.
The game is about a young girl that lives the live of an average human being. Weak up, go to work and fall in bed tired out of a stressfull day. A live that many of us live right here right now.
Florence is one day drawn in by the music of a young man and eventually they start going out.
The game instead of following standard ways of narrating like text or voice overs follows a more unique way.
Narration is done by shapes, forms and colours. That represant connection or beauty. While the majority of the first half looks more grim in plain grey. The yellow from the fellow musician brightens up every scene. Every conversation with hime is simple puzzle game that gets easier with time as it gets easiert to talk to each other. While you need to connect a handfull of pieces at the end you need just two or three. This choice makes for powerfull yet simple indications of where to go with our emotions. Its universally understandable without every using a spoken or written word. In the later half of the game this becomes more important. In order to portrait problems, arguments or a growing gap between characters shapes and colours even take this a step further by emotionaly making clear that things will never be the same before.
The story is simple, yet the lesson learned at the end more important than ever. While i feel that the first half of the game is stronger storywise and it gets a little to generic towards the end. This generic aspect serves the game just right. It doesnt need to overshadow the rest and can stand inline with everything else.
I highly recommend this game for young adults, artist who look at some inspiration or storytellers who wanna learn a different way of telling emotions without using words.

Dead Drop is this nice simple interpretaion of well know social deduction game. One spy tasked to achieve serveal things and sniper with limited ammo trying to find him. The sniper gets to choose the map and the spy has this special ability he can choose and appearently use once.
The game lacks control informations and some balancing options. It would have been nice to offer some sort of adjusting crowd sizes, ammunitons or adjust task. Some Maps feel harder for the spy since the AI doesnt seem to move to all points bringing the spy in this awfull position of not having some randoms stand besides mulitple objectives forcing you to blow your own cover.

Its a game quite often in sale and i grab it in one of thoose. In quality it feels like a tutorial replication or game jam game that could have used a proper menu, settings and stuff. It doesnt neccisarly needs more than split screen coop. Just the bear minimum standard of modern day games.

To sumarize it. Fun for an hour with a couple of friends.

I figured I wanted to write reviews for all clans and I didnt really know when it would be a good time to lay down my view. At this point I only wrote a couple of words about the major story expansion but not the rest of the game. So here we go I think i figured a good opportunity.

So for those of you who are knew to the world of Northgard. Northgard is a RTS with a mixture of surving the harsh and could lands of the island northgard and beating other clans in very ways. Each clan represant unique features and playstyle build arround there own lore. While the base game has a few clans Shiro Games provided us the players with many additional clans per paid DLC of the time of like what six years now. Ratatoskr the clan of the Squirrel is one of those. And this clans has never been my first choice.
So in order find a good moment for this line to be written I wanted achieve a couple of things. Obviously I needed to play a few rounds with it. Bear in mind I dont play agianst players. I more off a together against AI type of player. So dont take my words for the choice if you want to play ranked or online matches. So in order to determain the eligibility to write a review by my terms is defined by the following. I needed to beat the PvE Mode Conquest on the highest difficulty with this clan. Well I did after many tries and attempts in coop with a friend.

So lets start first what does this DLC offer beside a clan to play. Well you get to use the clan in any mode like Conquest ore the upcoming bifrost mode. Both PvE Gamemodes that force you to overcome special conditions and offer additional boni to enlighten gameplay beyond the usual boundaries the game has. For example increasing the quality of meals beyond the standard 3 or allowing building to ignore certain restrictions. Its a fun mode that present a good amount of challenges along the way.
Other than this without this clan you cant get a 100% completion in achievements. Each clan has there own achivements with the grindy one being you achieveing 50 victorys in battle.

I think you all wanna know at this point what is it that Ratatorsk offers as a clan. Its the first clan with there own victory condition. The clan is about cooking and preparing various meals. Kitchen replace the tavern and instead of barmans you have cooks offering different meals with different boni. By fame and wisdom the timer and power of those buffs can be increased. Those buffs range from simple production buffs all the way to military buffs. The downside of this is that the clan needs to collect additional ingridients that are passively produced by kitchen on different tiles. On top the clan suffers the most in winter. With representing the squirrle hording food the month before and than going into hibernation the clan has pretty big problems during the winter month and this prove fatal within some conquest missions. Other than that preparing the banquet of valhalla present you with your victory. You only need to gather enoug ingridients, some food and have the amount of cooks and kitchen equaling a franchise and the great victory meal will be prepared. It takes a couple of month time for your enemies to stop you from doing this. Closing up behind the clans borders is what this clan does pretty well. Outside of this the clan is relatively weak.

While in conquest some high military mission felt impossible to achive with this clan and mos of my conquest mission did allowed me to perform my own victroy. Forcing me to play the weakside of the clan For most of the time. The worst to mission I had where to protect a weaker "little brother" from being inialted by three opposing extreme ai that cheat in recource and army power. Even having a friend playing ox clan which can fight this prove a challenge taking more attemps that we could count so save the little one. Its been a torture to do this with squirrel and I am not going to play this clan for awhile in the future now. As long as I am not allowed to my own victory atleast this clan will be a last choice.

A couple of things up for change and oh boy do clans change often in this game. I wouldnt be surprised if this clans get a rework in the future. Other clans did more than once within my two years of playing this game. So a couple of things that could be improved. I figure that the lore is weird. The good ones are hiden late behind and the bad one like one time lores are used early own. The clan suffers when behind and comback is really hard with this one. And villagers are a good reccourse to make food, as small as this is. The clan needs food and with hibernation consuming more food that other clans in winter its hardly bearable to have villager be cooks and produce happyness. Reminder that in order to win with its own condition you need 8 cooks, which is 4 stoves. A loot of villager not creating food.

Other than that the Relic is not that good. Its not bad, but other are far better and the clan could use some good bridge between early and late game.

Squirrel is this fun type of clan that goes along well with good moments together with friends. Its not a perticular strong clan on its own but in a good team you will be able to perform rather well. Conquest provided me with some fun boni like allowing me to spam my warchief after death essentially using him as shark bait in war or to wittle down larger wolf an fox sized till they crumbled to dust.

So for me this clan will be the Gordon Ramsey of Northgard. The meals look tasty and getting buffs from it proves a good hearthy meal can defeat any enemy. Maybe one day I share this with my clan mates.