Recent reviews by | Hibryd |

Honestly, there was a junction in which I considered downvoting Balatro and dropping it based on the extreme inaccessibility of some of the achievements, but I decided to power through. My thought process went like this:

1. The Completionist achievement alone will take hundreds of hours to get, thanks solely to RNG.
   
2. I've sunk hundreds of hours into Slay the Spire, even after going 100% on it.
   
3. I enjoy Balatro almost as much as Slay the Spire.
   
4. Ergo, pursuing 100% achievements isn't as daunting as it sounds.

En route to getting 100%, I feel like I got a really excellent handle on what works about the game and what doesn't. The biggest problem is what a total crapshoot the appearance of jokers is; as of writing this review, only 2.0% of players have even discovered their whole collection. This is compounded by how niche most of those cards' mechanics are, too. On lower stakes the RNG is an acceptable factor, but on higher stakes it literally just becomes about replaying the first 2 antes 20 times over because you were never even given any feasible options, then powering through on a wing and a prayer when the faintest outline of a strategy reveals itself.

Putting long-haul RNG-dependent achievements aside, the core mechanics are really engaging and the library of jokers is pretty finely tuned; there's some interesting choices and combinations to be discovered and toyed around with, and the game is nicely organized and presented. It stands as a testament to the tenets of game design itself that a 60mb card game can sell millions of copies and be nominated for game of the year circa 2024. LocalThunk is fully deserving of his success.

But having gotten 100% achievements, I'll probably waddle back to Slay the Spire. In the halls of rougelike deckbuilders, Balatro is a worthy second, though.

It's challenging to review such a phenomenal game which has had such a muddied history. The original game is a masterpiece. It's every component was crafted with unparalleled talent and care. The story, the music, the design, each masterworks in their own right, unified to create an experience without precedent, and its release heralded a golden age of unbelievable titles from Squaresoft which are still loved and lauded after decades.

However, this is not that game...and even if it was, the times have changed.
This current iteration is...okay. While the additional dungeons, quests, and cutscenes added in the PSX and DS releases are shockingly horrible, the bonus ending is actually quite good. Unnecessary dialogue changes and UI tweaks will further alienate fans of the original. And while it pains me to admit it, the battle/item system is the one thing SE could have updated to match modern sensibilities, but it was left unaltered.

Even if this is not the original game, it contains enough of it's contents to warrant my begrudging approval. This version is akin to listening to Mozart on public transportation as engines whine and some old lady fights a cough in the background. For those of us who were blessed to grow up in the 90's, playing the original game was like hearing him debut on a crisp autumn evening in Vienna, wrapped in silence and starlight. It was ineffably beautiful.

Blind purchase, thought it was a point-and-click like everything else Amanita's done thus far, but turns out its a non-physics based platform puzzler (similar to the Oddworld series). The textured, scratchy, ink-and-watercolor style and the jazzy ambient synth OST are reminiscent of Amanitas breakout masterpiece Machinarium, and are well-suited to this games very strange and unique little world. Story and characters are quaint and engaging, puzzles are neither frustrating nor too simple, and there's a nice smattering of little minigames to help break up the action. Doesn't hold much replayability but it's a really enjoyable 6 or 7 hour long storybook journey; another worthy entry to Amanitas collection.

It's other redeeming qualities aside, it's worth the time just to experience the great OST; while not on par with Dvoraks Machinarium collection, there's still some great entries to discover which can only be discovered in the game itself, as many of the tracks fade and swell dynamically as you progress through the puzzles. Listening to them on YT doesn't give the full experience.

This game just...[i/]almost...BARELY[/i] gets a pass. I try to review games solely on the experience and whether or not I enjoyed myself. Overall, I did. The game has a strange & unique fairy tale atmosphere and a nicely crafted soundtrack.

BUT:

-Many of the puzzle solutions are completely bizarre and unintuitive, and the hint sheets are worthless. A lot of times you find yourself just randomly clicking everything on the screen until something works.
-Even having to resort to this brute-force method, without any help from a guide, the game only took me 1.5 hours to complete.
-Which then leaves the marketing; they have the gall halfway through this very short game to ask you to leave a review, and the price seems way too high for this level of content. It's listed for a fourth of the price on other platforms that it is on Steam and that seems like a much fairer price.

All these things combine to make an otherwise passable game feel like an amateurish cash grab.

HOWEVER...

If you can get the game for a few bucks and you're a big fan of unique point-and-clicks then I think you'll enjoy Beyond the Wall as a quick distraction for an evening or two.

Purchased blind on sale and was very pleasantly surprised. Atmospheric, beautifully crafted little game that hits a good tempo between puzzles and exploration. The world is cozy, colorful, and a little moody without ever being dark, and is fun to explore without ever being overwhelming in scale. Most puzzles are complex enough to give pause for thought and a feeling of accomplishment when completed, but are never vexing. Fantastic little 5-6 hour long journey.

Two very minor critiques, that shouldn't detract anyone from purchasing it:
1) I'm generally not a fan of narration in either games or movies, but their decision to narrate the thoughts and voices of all characters with a single narrator works nicely. However, when the narration was making observations for me as I was making them (i.e., "Ember saw a keyhole in the gate and thought they might open it if they found the key") I found it distracting and it took me out of the experience a little.
2) The dash button does nothing. If the character moved just 20% slower and the dash button took you up to full speed, the pacing would feel more relaxed and the controls would feel a little more natural.
Again, very minor complaints, intended more as input for the dev team than as a warning for consumers. This game was delightful and I'd recommend it to virtually anyone without reservations.

-someone who didn't make Baba Is You.

NOT WHAT IT IS ADVERTISED. If you're drawn to it primarily for the oceanic aesthetic, run away; its tagged as "casual" and "relaxing" and somehow even won a "Sit Back and Relax" Steam award, but its actually Super Motherload Diner Dash with a seaside skin. If I wanted to manage various kinds of timer-based systems and be given a bunch of arbitrary requests to fill, I'd do that irl and get paid actual money to do it, it's called having a job, and its not relaxing. Also, this won a Bafta for Design? For the hour i played it all it did was bark orders and rules at me and gave me a bunch of fetch quests.

Bought it as one of 5 different games during a sale, ironically it was the highest-rated and the only one I'm returning. I'm sure the game has many redeeming qualities but do NOT purchase this if you're looking for "a relaxing end to a long day", as one of it's awards suggested. I literally felt like I had unwittingly signed up for a part time job.

It's like Metal Gear Solid if Hideo Kojima was actually Jim Henson and Italian.

Bought on sale on an impulse because it looked like a good "couch game" and it's just what the doctor ordered. Throws you right into the action without pretense. Extremely simple yet engaging gameplay. Colorful, thoughtfully designed environment and characters, and surprisingly excellent sound design.

A masterfully crafted experience, rests in the upper percentile of all games ever. It's been a long time since I've played a game that compelled me to complete all the extra content, but I spent hours happily farming, backtracking and birdwatching in the beautifully wrought world Santa Monica Studios created.

It's not a perfect game; the item management feels unnecessarily dense, the map is bizarrely abstract, and certain plot elements are a little specious. But if I have any qualms, they're tiny, and they only exist at all because the other 97% of the game is so immaculately crafted in comparison. The action, the pacing, the scale, the depth...if you remotely have a taste for adventure or action games you owe it to yourself to experience God of War.

Very pleased to see this software on Steam, Retroarch is an excellent way to streamline your emu collection and having it on Steam allows me to streamline my entire games collection.