Recent reviews by Ringwraith10

I nominated Planet Zoo for the 2023 labor of love award because, frankly, I am still obsessed with this game and I love the DLC packs they continue to release!

You know how sometimes you read a science fiction book and it seems like the author put more thought into creating weird and unusual names for places and things than into writing an actual plot? That's the feeling I got with this game. In my play through, which lasted only a few minutes, I got no sense of plot or story whatsoever. Instead I kept deciding over and over again whether to go to the mountains, or go to the forest, or go to some town that has a name, but no description or clear purpose. When I finally encountered a person with dialogue, who gave me something resembling a quest (to find his horse), the game abruptly ended.

I had read the other reviews of this game and intentionally waited until there were a few updates, but even after the updates there is almost no substance to this game. I love text based adventures and am always looking for good games in this genre, but good ones are hard to find and Aunewyth is, unfortunately, not one of them,

I cannot recommend spending any money on this game but I do hope the developers keep trying and one day produce a quality text-based adventure.

Full review on Video Games as Literature Blog.[www.videogamesaslit.com]

TLDR: I loved this game. The creators are clearly true Bardolators.

Here's an excerpt from my full review:

"The most notable aspect of This Way Madness Lies that a new player will undoubtedly appreciate is the soundtrack. Immediately upon starting the game and viewing the opening menu, players are hit with a truly rocking symphonic metal banger, which I had to sit and listen to several times before I was willing to move on to playing the actual game. From this menu players can navigate to the credits, which show that the music was composed by Joshua Queen, while the vocalist is Sarah Queen. Note that I still have this song stuck in my head as I'm writing my review, and I haven't even played the game today. The soundtrack throughout the game is just as good, and I felt nostalgic for the Persona series as I was listening to the soundtrack of This Way Madness Lies -- perhaps it was an influence?

After the musical score, my favorite aspect of the game is its referential humor. Not only are there clever little quips about Shakespeare, but in true Zeboyd Games style there are lots of references to older games by the same developers, and to their favorite sleeping god, Cthulhu, and his otherworldly brethren. Every piece of dialogue in This Way Madness Lies is dripping with my kind of humor (mostly cheesy), so I couldn't help but have a big grin on my face throughout the 14 hours I was playing the game."

Editing my review to mention that I nominated this game for the Best Soundtrack category in The Steam Awards. The soundtrack is that good!

I can't tell you why I keep playing this game over and over and over again... but I do. It has some kind of hold on me. First I played it on PS3, and I thought it was a silly game that took itself really seriously. Then a few years later I found myself obsessed with the idea of playing it again, so I got the PS4 remaster. Now I'm playing it again... on Steam. And when I'm done here, I'll be getting it for Switch, I'm certain. This game has some sort of Lovecraftian hold over me, and somehow it has become basically my favorite game of all time. I know two things for certain and they are:

1) IT HATES FIRE!!!
2) They're masterworks all, you can't go wrong!

P.S. I'm about 5 hours into the Steam version now and I haven't encountered any bugs or game issues, so I'm guessing that the reviews talking about bugs/problems might actually be problems with those users' computers? Not sure.

I actually love this kit and I think it's worth the small price if you get it on sale. Of course, you're only going to love it if you love plants, so feel free to skip it if you don't care about plants. I did have a bit of trouble finding places to put some of the larger/hanging plants in my house, though... but that's really my only small gripe.

Full review can be read at www.videogamesaslit.com
The tldr of my review is that the best part of this game is the characters. Prepare to be completely enchanted by these characters, and be prepared to cry if you can't save them. I was also impressed by the accessibility options in the game, including larger font sizes and an invincibility mode.

This game is a lot harder than I remember. Bummer.

It's a creeper simulator!
Make racist comments about girls of color!
Make sexist comments about everybody!
Buy drinks for teens!

The game is fully voiced, but the voice acting is terrible. The dialogue is terrible, too, but sometimes oddly funny. The artwork is mediocre. Regardless, you can dress up the girls and the puzzle game is strangely addicting, so I will probably continue to play this game when I have absolutely nothing better to do. If any of this sounds like your jam, then you do you -- but you probably don't want to pay full price for this game.

I've played this game for three hours and I think I've tortured myself enough to decide that the game just isn't going to get any better. The story is intensely boring. The art is mediocre. I'm not here for sexual content -- I like engaging visual novels, so if that's what you're looking for, too, definitely look elsewhere. You can definitely tell from all of the positive reviews that most people skip through the dialogue to look at the lewd pictures. I don't even know why people want to pay $10 for that when there's free porn all over the internet. And by the way, if you spend three hours actually reading the story, you won't really see anything interesting, sexual content-wise. So this is just a miss all over.

First off, the kids who made this game need to learn how to spell.

But seriously, disregard the positive reviews (or better yet, read them as a warning). I bought it because I want to play real text adventures on Steam, and it was really cheap. So I decided to see what it was all about, warnings aside. It was NOT worth it. Not worth my money, not worth my five minutes. How did this even get onto Steam in the first place?

Anyway, this game doesn't warrant a real review. It was troll trash.