It's got enough WarioWare juice that this was gonna be a good time no matter what, but I do think the gimmick of different character playstyles, while impressive in its variety, does hurt the general conceit that you should be able to figure out each microgame immediately as soon as you start it. It's a lot harder to do that when the character you end up with has to complete the game entirely differently from everyone else and/or is completely unsuited for said microgame anyways.

Also, maybe just a personal brain issue but it really bugged me that there were separate achievements for player-selected rosters vs. all characters, would've just preferred the latter personally. The character-specific achievements were a nice touch, though.

Just a riff on COD Zombies with kinda generic shadowy creatures as the endless horde. Felt kinda arbitrary where enemies spawned as you expanded the area but maybe there were some mechanics I missed (or didnt work; I could never get the turret to start for whatever reason). It's only available to buy on GamersGate so it way as well not exist anymore (I played an old copy from a Groupees bundle; that site is apparently on the shit list for stealing Steam keys btw).

This was the dev's first Unity project so no reason to be hard on this. Apparently they worked on Stranded Deep for the next 10 years afterwards.

Ended up playing through all of Siactro's pre-MacBat 64 games this afternoon, though this is the only one available to log for now (I tried adding one of the games to IGDB just to test the process so maybe I'll revisit them individually). I'm guessing not a lot of people have gone back to these games since a lot of them used Unity Web Player; thankfully all the GameJolt games were archived on Flashpoint, but anything before that (including most of the dev's 2D games) are no longer available as they were uploaded to either Desura or XBLIG. Nearly all of them are jam games, but it's a shame the dev feels they're no longer part of the overall oeuvre (aside from Kiwi 64). They cover a variety of genres, most of which hold up pretty well as quick timekillers.

(For some quick recs, Boomadrons Bouncyverse Rebound and Stark Zero fit more of the 90s throwback style albeit more towards Sonic/F-Zero X racing games than 3D platformers. Pyrphoros is a straight horror game that's short but effective. And Hunter is a Blade Runner inspired game that's got an interesting concept.)

Silver Trigger 64 (which was made during MacBat's development, a couple years after all the above games) is another jam game, with the theme being one-button controls. It takes Goldeneye 007 on rails and emphasizes efficient use of bullets, which ultimately comes down to just only shooting alert and armed enemies. Admittedly one of the less interesting games I played of this group, but I presume it's the only one still accessible on itch.io as its direct N64 inspiration fits more in line with the rest of the dev's games.

Siactro's most full formed game in their gameography up to this point, despite still being only 2-3 hours long. It's also a direct follow-up to Kiwi 64, expanding it to about a dozen levels (including the bonus content). In some ways it's a very simple platformer; Macbat's moveset is actually stripped down compared to Kiwi's, there's no combat (other than the final boss), and it's not much trouble to solve the puzzles or find any of the collectibles you need.

Yet I think all of that makes the game a very endearing experience. All the areas are pleasant to explore with lots of cute characters to find, and as the game goes on it really starts to play around with world themes and mechanics, starting with a lovely Kirby 64-inspired zone. The bonus stations especially are all really memorable, and one introduces a mechanic that really shows Siactro understands why people get obsessed over collect-a-thons and the urge to just search for everything inside a game space.

Decided to save Tasty Ramen and EEK3 for whenever I decide to go through the Haunted PS1 library of games. While this game is sort of a trilogy with those, it's a game jam submission so I'll just review this one now.

Really great execution on this idea, and the design of the ducks is perfect. Something I find interesting playing Siactro's games is seeing how the "low-poly" 3D aesthetic becomes more defined over time; this game especially feels perfectly tuned to the era of 3D it's going for compared to something like Salt Meat Factory.

One recurring theme Jeremy Parish talks about in his Game Boy Works series are developers attempting console perfect graphics without adjusting for the resolution of the handheld, and this series is probably the definitive example of that folly. The graphics indeed look as much like DKC as they possibly can at the cost of some very cramped level design. The platforming also feels much more jittery, and the game gets very weird about pits during vertical sections. I ended up stopping at a level requiring jumping on lifts to change their direction, with it being impossible to tell which direction the lifts would go when playing on actual hardware.

That being said, the GB take on Temple Tempest is a bop.

This goes the complete opposite direction of Kiwi/Macbat 64, both with its neon low-poly graphics and its speedy, precise gameplay. This is Siactro's hardest game thus far; I didn't even bother attempting to S-rank any levels (speedrunning's not my thing) and just went for collecting all the stars, which was good enough for me even if it hurt the pacing of levels a little bit. It's definitely worth replaying levels to try speeding through them at least once, though, and other than Hungry Ducks this is probably the game from this dev that I'm most likely to revisit thus far.

That said, I would probably skip over the remix stages; they're pretty bloated and I think the design starts teetering towards aggravating, especially towards the end of that ice stage. (Worth noting, based on the credits, Siactro did not design any of these stages.) And while I'm griping, the camera controls in Macbat were pretty rough, but it's more notable here given the higher stakes platforming, and I think some segments really needed a fixed camera or something. (EDIT: Apparently there is a button to re-center the camera behind Toree that I just never used, whoops. I still stand by my fixed camera comment though.)