NotUlv
2022
A short and sweet, cozy, colony management card game that you can complete using only one hand. Despite its simple appearance, its gameplay is addictive and I found myself playing it for hours on end, day after day until I eventually completed all the quests, to which I immediately purchased the Cursed Worlds DLC and completed as well, obtaining all achievements soon after. Its hard to put down once you pick it up. The few QoL gripes I had while playing were "fixed" using the Workshop content.
Although certain parts of the game can be difficult, its an easy game to master. Despite having to restart completely if you "lose", I can count on my two hands how many runs I had throughout the entirety of my playtime. After my last run that I completed the game on, I haven't come back since. Once you've done everything, you feel like you've done it all and there's little pull to restart willingly. Not to say that that's a bad thing, but I look forward to more content in the future. Overall, a great game and concept!
Although certain parts of the game can be difficult, its an easy game to master. Despite having to restart completely if you "lose", I can count on my two hands how many runs I had throughout the entirety of my playtime. After my last run that I completed the game on, I haven't come back since. Once you've done everything, you feel like you've done it all and there's little pull to restart willingly. Not to say that that's a bad thing, but I look forward to more content in the future. Overall, a great game and concept!
2018
This review contains spoilers
After having this game in my backlog for a long time after briefly playing it, I decided to come back to it and finish it. A sucker for pixel art, the graphics are pretty and I have little to talk about in that regard. TL;DR: Great concept, poor execution. Only play if you know exactly what you're getting.
One of my biggest gripes with this game while playing was its controls and mechanics that obviously favored controller use, so the play experience while strictly using keyboard and mouse takes some serious getting used to, but I 100% blame myself for being too stubborn to invest in a controller to use on PC.
The idea of managing your shop and selling items obtained during your dungeon runs is a great pull, but in this particular practice, it got boring quick. Most items felt like random junk with little cue on how valuable it would be, which was an important factor in making money. After finding myself selling high priced junk for low prices and vice versa, the entire concept of managing the prices of your stock got boiled down to setting the price for an item absurdly high and slowly lowering it until your customers were happy enough to buy it. The most interesting part about actually managing your shop was an uncommon event when a customer came in willing to buy actual weapons/armor, but between how inconsistently they would appear, how rare it is to find weapons/armor in the dungeon, and how much resources it costs to forge them yourself, it felt too much like a waste of time. Instead, I found myself itching to get the shop management portion of the game over with so I could go back into the dungeon.
That being said, the dungeon crawling experience left much to be desired as well. Combat felt wonky and unintuitive, but it may be important to note that I strictly used the Big Swords throughout the entirety of my playthrough. The enemies and bosses you come across can be difficult and it can be fun overcoming that difficulty through learning and upgrading your weapons/armor, but every run felt the same after a while. You go in, kill things to collect a bunch of junk that fills your inventory quickly, leave, sell that junk, maybe upgrade given you can afford it, and repeat until the big boss is defeated. There are very few interesting rooms that aren't purely enemy filled, one being a secret room with a chest that you can fill with your junk to send back to your shop without having to leave, which was an all too rare occurrence. Another secret room involves entering a portal to a special floor that rewards you with a random run-bound unique weapon that... I never used. After realizing how pointless they were to get, I stopped entering the secret floors completely. Between the little variety between runs and boring itemization, I was reluctantly clawing my way through completing this game just so I could scratch it off my backlog.
After beating the final boss which proved easier than expected, I was able to experience the Between Dimensions DLC, which, unfortunately, was the most fun part of playing this game for me. Despite being a lot of the same ol' same ol', the dungeon that was an amalgamation of the four previous dungeons you spent time in proved to spice up the game just a little more. Having a single, longer dungeon that you're able to unlock checkpoints in as you inch closer to the final boss gave me a better sense of progression, but before I knew it, and before I bothered with much of the new content other than upgrading my weapons/armor even further because that's what I was trained to do up to that point, I had reached the final boss and finished the game entirely. Finally, after a grueling 38 hours, I was able to uninstall the game and never look back (until now, I guess). I had initially planned on obtaining all the achievements for the game too, but after seeing the few that involved beating the bosses without getting hit or beating them using only the broom, I decided I'd rather eat chalk. Any other game... not this game.
All in all, it's an okay game and there's reason it has Very Positive reviews on Steam, so I reckon I'm an outlier, but its unfulfilled potential was too great for me to enjoy it as others have. Due to my eagerness to beat the game, I skipped what little dialogue there was regarding the story, so I won't comment on that. As long as you know exactly what you're getting into first, you'll enjoy Moonlighter.
One of my biggest gripes with this game while playing was its controls and mechanics that obviously favored controller use, so the play experience while strictly using keyboard and mouse takes some serious getting used to, but I 100% blame myself for being too stubborn to invest in a controller to use on PC.
The idea of managing your shop and selling items obtained during your dungeon runs is a great pull, but in this particular practice, it got boring quick. Most items felt like random junk with little cue on how valuable it would be, which was an important factor in making money. After finding myself selling high priced junk for low prices and vice versa, the entire concept of managing the prices of your stock got boiled down to setting the price for an item absurdly high and slowly lowering it until your customers were happy enough to buy it. The most interesting part about actually managing your shop was an uncommon event when a customer came in willing to buy actual weapons/armor, but between how inconsistently they would appear, how rare it is to find weapons/armor in the dungeon, and how much resources it costs to forge them yourself, it felt too much like a waste of time. Instead, I found myself itching to get the shop management portion of the game over with so I could go back into the dungeon.
That being said, the dungeon crawling experience left much to be desired as well. Combat felt wonky and unintuitive, but it may be important to note that I strictly used the Big Swords throughout the entirety of my playthrough. The enemies and bosses you come across can be difficult and it can be fun overcoming that difficulty through learning and upgrading your weapons/armor, but every run felt the same after a while. You go in, kill things to collect a bunch of junk that fills your inventory quickly, leave, sell that junk, maybe upgrade given you can afford it, and repeat until the big boss is defeated. There are very few interesting rooms that aren't purely enemy filled, one being a secret room with a chest that you can fill with your junk to send back to your shop without having to leave, which was an all too rare occurrence. Another secret room involves entering a portal to a special floor that rewards you with a random run-bound unique weapon that... I never used. After realizing how pointless they were to get, I stopped entering the secret floors completely. Between the little variety between runs and boring itemization, I was reluctantly clawing my way through completing this game just so I could scratch it off my backlog.
After beating the final boss which proved easier than expected, I was able to experience the Between Dimensions DLC, which, unfortunately, was the most fun part of playing this game for me. Despite being a lot of the same ol' same ol', the dungeon that was an amalgamation of the four previous dungeons you spent time in proved to spice up the game just a little more. Having a single, longer dungeon that you're able to unlock checkpoints in as you inch closer to the final boss gave me a better sense of progression, but before I knew it, and before I bothered with much of the new content other than upgrading my weapons/armor even further because that's what I was trained to do up to that point, I had reached the final boss and finished the game entirely. Finally, after a grueling 38 hours, I was able to uninstall the game and never look back (until now, I guess). I had initially planned on obtaining all the achievements for the game too, but after seeing the few that involved beating the bosses without getting hit or beating them using only the broom, I decided I'd rather eat chalk. Any other game... not this game.
All in all, it's an okay game and there's reason it has Very Positive reviews on Steam, so I reckon I'm an outlier, but its unfulfilled potential was too great for me to enjoy it as others have. Due to my eagerness to beat the game, I skipped what little dialogue there was regarding the story, so I won't comment on that. As long as you know exactly what you're getting into first, you'll enjoy Moonlighter.
2024
After thoroughly playing through and beating Stacklands and its DLC, I was eager to play more games like it. WitchHand itched that scratch for me. It's a solid game and I spent way too many hours playing it in one sitting. I was addicted.
TL;DR: -1 star for lack of replayability, but still a decent game if you're looking for something Stacklands adjacent.
I'd give it an extra star, or half-star at least, given the gameplay felt less linear. Feels like there's not enough RNG content to set individual runs apart. The Culinary and Chaos witches help this by giving you a new way of achieving the same goal, but by the time I got around to trying them (after having beaten the game on my second run with the Celestial witch), I had essentially gotten all of the achievements and wondered to myself "why should I?" Most of the game is mindless grinding, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but some curveballs to spice things up would've made this game all the better.
I look forward to future updates and plan to come back to the game once the new witch is released. Despite the lack of replayability, it's a fun and impressive game for having essentially one developer.
TL;DR: -1 star for lack of replayability, but still a decent game if you're looking for something Stacklands adjacent.
I'd give it an extra star, or half-star at least, given the gameplay felt less linear. Feels like there's not enough RNG content to set individual runs apart. The Culinary and Chaos witches help this by giving you a new way of achieving the same goal, but by the time I got around to trying them (after having beaten the game on my second run with the Celestial witch), I had essentially gotten all of the achievements and wondered to myself "why should I?" Most of the game is mindless grinding, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but some curveballs to spice things up would've made this game all the better.
I look forward to future updates and plan to come back to the game once the new witch is released. Despite the lack of replayability, it's a fun and impressive game for having essentially one developer.
2024
Rusty's Retirement is an interesting take on the idle genre with cozy farming elements. The game isn't very engaging, but that's kind of the point. It's a whole lot of grinding as you progress toward expanding and fleshing out your farm. That's it, that's the game. If I had to complain about anything, it'd be that there's not enough decorations as I believe half the fun of this game is making your farm look pretty, but despite that, the game gives exactly what it presents itself as.