A great, but short, first person puzzler that introduces some amazing mechanics that I haven't seen used in a game before! If it only had a good story to go along with them.

Admittedly, I'm a sucker for these first person puzzle games. Portal, QUBE and others are just games that I love jumping into and solving. While Superliminal is one of these games, it's also one of the more difficult one.

If you're not into puzzle games, this one will not change your mind and in fact, it will probably make you dislike them even more because some of these puzzles are very challenging. There were maybe 3 of them that I actually had to look up.

The main gimmick is the ability to change the size and perspective of the things you grab. Is there a button on the other side of a tall wall? Pick up a block, move backwards and drop it over on to the button. Have a door you can't reach? Can't reach a platform? Grab a cheese wedge to make a ramp up to it. Have a doorway that is too small? Resize it bigger. There are a lot of other interesting things they do with it too, but you'll have to play to see them. And this gimmick kept me glued to see what I would do next.

The game is very short though, it only took me a few hours to finish and that was mostly because I was stuck on certain puzzles. The game contains an achievement to finish it in 35 minutes, so that tells you everything you really need to know.

Also, there isn't much story here. You're in a testing facility listening to audio logs from some doctor talking about the research they're doing. I found these really uninteresting from the get go though because they feel very tacked in. The game feels like it was built first and they added in the logs later so there was some substance. Honestly, they probably could've just let it be ambiguous and it might've been more effective? I'm not sure.

On a separate note, the extra collectibles you can get through the journey will have you scratching your head even more than the puzzles themselves, as some of them are so well hidden, I wonder how even the guide writers found them in the first place! This adds a bit of replay value to the game, which is nice, but ultimately this is just padding for achievements as the collectibles don't really offer much else.

A fun but short game with interesting gimmicks and cool perspective tricks! I really enjoyed it, despite the lack of any kind of real story.

Gris has an amazing art style with some truly stunning visuals fun platforming gameplay for the most part, but the ambiguous story left me wondering where I am and why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Gris is beautiful. If you want a gorgeous game, you'll want to play this one.

The game is built to be more of a journey than a challenging adventure. The platforming is a bit floaty and fun to traverse around as you gain new abilities. However, the navigation can be tough at times as you're platforming around large areas trying to find little white glowing balls without any kind of map and you may find yourself wondering where to go next or how to get up to to the glowy collectibles.

That's part of the challenge of the game obviously, trying to figure out how to reach your destination, but a few times I did found myself trying to figure out a certain area for much longer than it felt I should really be there.

However, the true issue for me is the story. While I've read that others were moved by it, even some to tears, I really didn't feel anything in this game. I have cried playing other games but this one just didn't hit me. I got to the end, said "Wow, that was an awesome cutscene, what amazing art!" and then finished it and that was all. I think it's just too abstract for me to understand or care maybe? I'm not sure.

Decent game for sure, just expect to lost or confused a bit and maybe don't expect much of a story in this one.

This game ran hot and cold for me. While the art style is really cool, certain gameplay elements are fun and some of the story beats are relatable, the overall the game has some janky pieces and the story is confusing and I'm not quite sure what the game was trying to say at the end.

I guess, as an indie game, you can interpret it however you'd like, but I would've liked it to be a bit more clear about what exactly it was getting at or trying to leave you with. Also, for every fun or inventive little gameplay piece in the game, there is another that feels strange and janky.

However, if you're just trying to find a little experience for an afternoon, a kind of palette cleanser, you could do much worse than this.

The game that teaches you that smiling at someone in public is an anomaly. This is a really fun (and cheap at $4) experience where you walk through the same hallway scene over and over and look for differences to help you escape.

I'm seeing from other reviews that this is a genre of games, but this is my first of these "spot the difference" type games and I had a lot of fun with it. Some differences are super obvious and others are very subtle. The very subtle ones will have you 2nd guessing whether you actually missed the anomaly or not in each pass-through. This makes a fun but tense playthrough, hoping you can get that number to keep climbing to 8 and escape.

I would love to see a sequel to this with multiple environments!

Judging from the first couple of levels, you'd swear this game was another fun 2D sonic experience, but as you keep progressing, at least in solo mode, the fun quickly turns into frustration. This is not a fun solo experience or one I can recommend.

I am a 2D sonic fan, but I'm also a purest. The Genesis games are really the only ones I care about. Sonic Mania came out a few years ago and quite honestly, I think it might beat the Genesis games, because it's just such a great amalgam of 2D sonic on the Genesis. I saw Sonic Superstars coming out this year and thought, okay, if it goes on sale, I'll grab it. So at Black Friday, it went on sale and here we are... and I want my money back.

I had really only had 1 night of fun with Sonic Superstars. The first night I booted it up, I played through the first zone and I had a ball. This first level is what Sonic is, it's great!

The next night, I played a bit more and noticed that the quality of the level design drops off suddenly but it wasn't terrible or anything. Surely it would have a couple more banger levels, right?

As I came back to it and played through the rest of the zones, all the way to Cyber Station, something was apparent. This is not a game designed around Sonic and going fast. This is a game designed for another main character entirely, I'm not sure who?

I lost count of the amount of times I was running fast and something just came out of nowhere to hit me or kill me. That is not how Sonic design works! The whole idea is you're going fast and you want to stay going fast! WHY DO YOU KEEP PUTTING AN ENEMY RIGHT WHERE I AM RUNNING THAT I COULDN"T HAVE AVOIDED!?

And the main reason I can't avoid it is because the camera is zoomed in so damn close to Sonic! Why is it that in coop, the camera pans out and you can see a lot more of the level and actually prepare for upcoming situations, but in solo, you can only see like 10 feet in front of you? What is this, a game gear game?

And if I wasn't running into an enemy, it was a hole. Something would suddenly open up and you can't react quick enough and you fall in (more on that later). There are certain sections in the game that I died at repeatedly and didn't understand what I was doing wrong. Turns out I was just jumping incorrectly or in the wrong place at the wrong time, according to the game.

The difficulty is all over the place. One level will be short and laughably easy and the next will throw you a curve ball into a level with an absolutely unfun mechanic. There is a level that gives you a countdown and you have to progress and hit a switch before it gets too high or you'll die. You'd think this mechanic would be based on speed and maybe between checkpoints, they give so much time to hit a switch at the next checkpoint, almost like a time trial? But no. You have to mostly use Sonic's awkward platforming to reach the switches and some times look for them as they're out of view and some times you feel lucky you even found one. That level is terrible!

Speaking of platforming, there is entirely too much in this game. For every fun running part with sonic, there will be 2 awkward feeling platforming sections you have to deal with... also not fun!

But the worst part of the game are the bosses. You've probably read it several times from other reviews, but it's true. The bosses in this game are tedious and unfun. I'm not going to talk about the problems with them all, but ANY boss in this game that has dropping floors where you could potentially fall and die, these were the bane of my time with this game.

The boss of Cyber Station almost broke me. I spent one night playing this boss specifically and could not get him. What was I do wrong? The physics for sonic change on this boss. You're basically in a forced to run scenario and Sonic feels super heavy to control. Moving left or right or jump, Sonic might as well weigh 500 lbs. Despite all this, I kept getting to the 2nd phase and he would somehow keep opening the floor with the laser and I'd fall in from getting hit or unsure where he was opening it. I tried again the next night, I died several times and called it a night. Then the night I am writing this, after SO MANY tries, I finally downed him. FINALLY! Surely there would not be another boss like that?

The next couple levels, LAUGHABLY easy and then you get to eggman's level. This level is so terribly designed. It's more interested in you getting hit than you getting any kind of momentum or rhythm going. Who designs a platformer where you drop from ledges and there is always something down there that will hit you? Terrible.

I reached the final boss and just couldn't do it anymore. I got him to his 2nd phase after many tries and I hit him 3 times during this phase only to find out that I guess 3 isn't the magic number anymore and he kept going and killed me shortly there after. I honestly rage quit and uninstalled the game and will not be returning. And it is RARE that I rage quit games, so you know this was on my last nerve.

The worst part about the boss fights is they take so long! It'd be one thing if these battles I mentioned were just difficult but you could take them out quickly (like in a normal Sonic game) but they're difficult and also take 10-15 minutes! Some times you miss your opportunity to hit the boss and it just lengthens the boss fight where you have to wait and wait and wait. I can't keep doing that.

I can't recommend this game. People who really like it, maybe you had a ton of fun in coop? But in solo, it sucks. Only a couple acts are actually fun. I gave the game multiple chances to win me back but nope.

The team that made this game, I don't think they understand what made the original sonic games fun. Not that this is a new problem for sonic team, but damn, this could've been so much better with just a few differences. Such a shame.

I am surprisingly addicted to this little, casual city builder! The story isn't great, but the gameplay had me playing later than I wanted to just saying, "okay, I'll just do this next thing and head to bed." only to find it had been another hour.

I'm a Steamworld fan, I've liked every game in the series, except maybe the RPG (and that's just because I'm not the biggest fan of turn based RPG's, especially with cards...). So I was already looking forward to checking this one out. However, I wasn't expecting to finish within the week it came out. I figured I would chip away at it every now and then, but I found myself not wanting to stop and see what was next on the build list!

You're building a town of robots trying to unearth "ancient" rocket tech to escape the planet. The story is presented in such a way that it wasn't very exciting. Little characters pop up to talk to each other, or they use still frames to voice overs. The voice overs range from good to kind of awful and while I have always loved the Steamworld art style, being presented several still shots of the robots talking is pretty boring.

However, the gameplay I found I couldn't put down. You start building your town with workers and off you go harvest resources of all types to make them happy. If they're not happy, then they will not work and your towns progress will slow to a crawl, so you need to keep up on it.

Then you also end up finding the local mine where you find more resources and the gameplay becomes more of a light RTS game. Yes, enemies form the depths will attack your miners and you have to keep tabs. I thought it was super cool that they were able to combine these genres together.

I won't spoil it here, but everything keeps evolving and tiering up and you eventually are able to automate certain things but getting to that point is the fun. The ability to say "Wow, I started with nothing and look what I have now. And it only took a few hours!" I love that.

All I can say is after finishing my first town, I immediately started another town in a new environment to build and see how fast I could tier up my new town.

If you're looking for a good city builder game to get your feet wet in the genre, this is the one. I hope this one gets some DLC with some new towns and achievements to grab!

I haven't touched this one in a while and figure I probably won't go back to it. have a hard time finding any of types of life sim style games to even come close to the charm of Animal Crossing but Dreamlight Valley comes close.

Craft stuff, cook stuff, upgrade your house, pick weeds, mine ore, talk to Disney characters... it's what you would expect from this style of game.

The only issue for me is that I feel like I'm spinning my wheels all too often in the game. The progression vs time spent for me just doesn't compute. Cute game though, I could see die hard Disney fans really digging this one, but after around 22 hours and not much to show for it, I'm hanging up my mickey ears.

A fun, short game that takes a pacifist approach to gameplay, where the whole point is to avoid deadly discs bouncing around each room. Some of the progression solutions and secrets can be a bit too mind bendy for the average gamer though.

The gameplay is simple, dodge the discs! Each room is simple and probably won't take you more than 10 or so seconds each round. The game becomes more interesting as you progress as you will encounter crazier discs and start unlocking cool abilities to help you stay alive longer.

Some times to progress though, you need to think a little outside the box as to what the game wants you to do to unlock certain rooms. This can be really fun at first! I played the majority of the game figuring out things on my own and it was satisfying.

However, there are some things you need to do in the game that just seem kind of ridiculous to figure out on your own. As in, after reading a guide after not being able to figure out how to get further I thought "how in the hell would I have figured that out on my own?"

This can be a bit frustrating and it gets even more deep when you're trying to find the secrets, which to me, some of the solutions are just arbitrary.

That said though, the core of the game is a ton of fun and most of the secret finding was a blast. I just wish the final bits weren't so out there.