Its a very good platformer. No more, no less.

Super Meat Boy is part of the Newgrounds "flash game that became a massive commercial hit" collection. So it's essentially a browser game with extra development and polish. The story is a complete nothingburger, the music is meh, and annoyingly repetitive in later stages where you are doing attempt after attempt. But the fundamental gameplay mechanics and level design are both very good, going for a very hard, but very short level, with great controls, intentionally difficult but fair level design, and very fast resets. I'm happy for it to sit among my 2D platformers in company of games such as nSMB(s), Rayman Legends and DK Tropical Freeze, a testament to just how good this game is, for what it is.

I bought it for $2.15aud, it goes down to this price on steam pretty much ever major sale, so buy it then. Well worth at that price. Otherwise, it is not worth the full $21.5.

This happened to my buddy Karl once.

Pretty bare bones at the moment, but a VERY solid foundation for what should be a great game. DRG Survivors adds onto the new "Survivor" genre through the addition of base DRG's core mechanics, most prominently digging, which adds a new level of setpiece based mechanics and strategy that works great.

I'm not sure if this was worth the $13.50 I paid for it, as I will keep playing it as it gets developed, enjoying new content and mechanics as they get added. I expect I will get my money's worth. This early version already got me more than halfway there with over 8 hours of enjoyment before it started to feel same-y.

I'll be blunt. If I wanted the Unpacking (2021) experience I would clean and organize my house. Because that way I would at least be making good use of my time.

Beautiful pixel art though, and I loved how they told a little story about a woman's life using nothing but props. It plays well, the objects click into place nicely, and you have a lot of creative freedom for decorating, you can really beautify the rooms if you try. I guess it isnt for me because this is a well made and polished game, which I found to be boring to play.

Hey hey people, Sshien here. Time to review another game Sseth reviewed.

DICK COCK LACTIC, Is a damn near perfect game right now. I haven’t encountered a single major issue that has stopped me from enjoying this game to the fullest in my 30+ hours and growing so far.

I have identified three main reasons as to why STEEP COCK HAPTIC is such a fun game to play right now. The TLDR is that the gameplay mechanics and loop are very well designed and paced. The atmosphere is highly engaging with interesting and unique graphics, design, story, and sound. And the community this game currently is welcoming, cooperative, polite, and generally friendly, to the point of astonishment at its mere existence.

GAMEPLAY; Each mission involves you and your party members exploring a confined cave, completing small tasks, such as mining, building infrastructure, fighting minibosses, repairing equipment, and fending of waves of various enemy bugs of varying threats. Missions take between 20 minutes and a little under an hour, and you can see an estimated length on the mission board before you start. After you complete every mission, you progress in some way at the hub, by unlocking new upgrades, weapons, skins, missions, gamemodes, etc. You can also choose in many cases what you want to pursue unlocking as well. Due to the pace of gameplay, and the well-designed progression, you always feel you are making swift progress as you do more and more missions. Tasks within missions are exceptionally designed, and presented in ways which feel natural in the cave. Side tasks which grant rewards are joyous to find, and dwarves are mostly always eager to do them due to the rewards offered, which make doing them worth it. Other times, negative side tasks such as minibosses spice up the mission by adding extra challenge, turning a likely cakewalk into a frantic fight for survival. One negative I have is that you can only play one unique deep dive and elite deep dive mission per week, meaning you can only claim deep dive rewards once per week, as that is the length of the mission rotation. The rewards for deep dives are major weapon unlocks, which are part of the late-game core gameplay mechanics. They are also randomized, so you probably won’t get to play with what you want to anytime soon.

Each member of the team is intrinsically highly valued by design. All four dwarves have tools which synergise extremely tightly with each other, with roles which when done, make everyone’s lives easier. Not having a class represented is an inconvenience, as certain tasks become significantly harder without that class’ ability, although it is not overly annoying or detrimental. This directly incentivises team play and cooperation, which typically either causes players to antagonise each other, or forge an immediate comradery. Somehow, DEEP COCK CHIROPRACTIC has managed to create conditions in which randoms overwhelmingly find themselves in the latter category.

Here are some examples; I c4’d our gunner, not realising he was there, causing us to lose the mission, and apologised. They said “it’s cool dude dw abt it.” Another time, I went down during evac, and the guys left the drop pod to come get me, we ran out the clock with 13 seconds remaining, failing the mission. I apologised, they said “Its cool, we leave no dwarf behind”. Another time, when I beat the “Conquer Hoaxes” mission I decided to buy the high lvl remaining in the lobby a craft beer to celebrate. The guy ended up buying me round after round, and we spent ages getting shitfaced and dancing. When he had to go, he bought us a round of blackout stouts, we passed out, and he dc’d. Lastly, I told some high lvls to prio me for revive last cos I wasn’t being very efficient in my tasks due to the high difficulty and my lower skill. They said “Everyones first prio.” In 37 hours, I’ve only ever had 1 person rage at us because of a fail, and encountered only 1 sabotaging troll. Everyone else has been lovely. It’s a community that shouldn’t exist in gaming, randoms are never this pleasant, yet they just are here.

I think CHEAP LOCK ANTICLIMATIC (because no dick joke this time) achieves this through a combination of the teamwork promoting core gameplay design, and it’s incredibly carefully managed and rich atmosphere. The story is very simple; you play as a contracted miner working for DEEP DARK FANTASIES, sent via orbital insertion with your 4 comrades on mining raids of the mineral rich planet Hoaxes IV. A planet so deadly due to the native wildlife, static operations are completely unfeasible due to the ceaseless and lazer focused swarming of the apex predators. Your missions is to drop in, extract as much valuable shit as possible before your guns run out of munitions, and get the fuck out. The four dwarves are a band of brothers, who seem to share an unbreakable comradery forged in facing down death on the daily as part of their work. Players can have the dwarves banter with each other, dance, goof around, and drink round after round of a massive menu of beers, ales, and lagers at the space station’s bar, many with fun effects. There is even a dedicated hotkey to salute the dwarves’ motto in a resounding cheer, which is used liberally by players as a greeting or cheer. In doing so, the devs added a button solely for boosting team spirits.

The devs for SHIT ROCK PROPHYLACTIC (the planet in question) are also extremely praiseworthy and are a model studio for consumer satisfaction. Here are a few examples; All microtransactions are purely cosmetic and offer no gameplay changes whatsoever, while offering more than enough cosmetics for people who don’t pay extra. Within a few months of releasing the escort duty mission, players grew attached to the robot drill, so the devs swiftly added an option to retrieve and recover the drill’s computer core due to public request. They add new voicelines referencing the community’s habits and memes, such as pinging mushrooms and a few other things. They are also apparently super expedient with patching reported bugs, and all seasonal content in their (100% free) battlepass is added into the regular loot pool at season’s end so nobody misses out.

The game looks and sounds great; the “pseudo low poly” graphics look great and are exceptionally presented. They are perfect for a procedural game build around fully destructible terrain and fighting hordes of simple NPCs at its core. The music is very atmospheric, and several songs either exaggerate the lonely ethereal feeling of being in pristine cave on a planet hardly anyone has ever been to, and absolute slammers that get the blood pumping during hectic fights. The other day I was juking a dreadnought (boss bug) on a narrow bridge narrowly dodging flamethrower breath and cannonballs jumping sideways while the guitar and drum chorus of “dance of the dreadnought” was going off, Its mad exhilarating in those moments. The soundtrack is def worthy of being played outside of the game in playlist.

DEEP ROCK GALACTIC is a top 5 for 2023. I paid $14.85 AUD for it, and I would absolutely have paid up to $50 given its high quality, amazing community, and stand-up model dev team. ROCK AND STONE! boyos, It’s always time to rise and grind, kill bugs, and stack mad racks.

Slay the spire mixes Roguelikes and Card Games, two RNG heavy genres while maintaining some expectation on the gamer's problem solving and planning skills. It's a good combination of genres that synergies well, but runs often feel unfairly dictated by the luck of the draw.

I started playing this game in late 2022 and very early 2023, but I I stopped playing it until the 25th of September, when I just picked it up on a whim and beat it on my first attempt. So in the spirit of procrastination, I'm writing this review 3 weeks late.

Now, keep in mind that I consider a game completed when I see the credits and/or get an achievement that I beat the game. I haven't actually seen or even unlocked most of the game.

The game looks visually quite nice, I like the art style. However there isn't very much to see. There is a very small pool of enemies across 3 floors, so you will see everything in only a few runs. The music is good, but isn't a soundtrack worth seeking out. There aren't any real attack animations, but the UI and the way the cards are handled is solid. The cards are very well balanced, and there are multiple ways to build your deck, but the deck you end up with is entirely at the mercy of loot RNG. Slay the Spire is more dependent on getting good drops at the end of your encounters than the other roguelikes I've played this year. That is frustrating, and makes the game feel less fair.

EDIT 17/11/23;
The game heavily punishes mistakes through loss of momentum, mistakes compound badly in this game, and culminate in lost runs. You need to bring your A game, and get lucky with card drops. A lot of the skill involved also comes from choosing cards wisely, and knowing when to skip an oppunity by weighing cost/benefit, and keeping your deck light and efficient.

I got my money's worth (A$12.22 for 11.6 hours), but it is yet to be seen if the game has enough replayability and post-credits content to be worth the full asking price of A$36.99. Its a good, but not great game.

EDIT 17/11/23;
I have now played this game for 65.8 hours. I have completed the true ending with 2 characters and I am aiming to do it with all four. Going from any% to true ending took me 38 freakin' HOURS!! So I can def say I got more than double the fun for their asking price of $36.99. Its a game that makes you think "I could'a had that." and then you spend the next 5 hours doing more runs because you feel like you can do it next time.

Played this at the insistence of my friend Sal.

I rated it 2.5 stars as a free game. If they charged I'd rate it much lower. There are better games to play on coolmathgames.com, much less steam.

Its not terrible though, and I had a bit of fun. There was 1 funny moment, with a bug the game devs self-awarely put an achievement for activating instead of patching it.

A masterpiece in technical innovation and storytelling, ravaged by time.

After nearly 20 years, Half Life 2 feels like a very ordinary game. The great breakthroughs in game-making and design have long since been adopted and standardized into almost every other game that followed it, and none of it is novel anymore. Furthermore, since HL2 was pushing boundries, many of its groundbreaking features are featured in segments designed to teach the player and show them off, the game feels like an extended tech demo for mechanics every game has. Perhaps if I had gone in blind, and without my hundreds of hours in gmod and knowledge of the source engine, plus already knowing the games contents beforehand, it would have been more novel in this regard. That being said, it is still a very good game, nothing is wrong with it, level design is superb, gordon handles his weapons great, the story is highly engaging, and it is fun to play. Only real criticisms are that I found several segments, including most of Ravenholm too scary to play, and so I skipped them. And I consistently felt carsick after playing for more than a few hours at a time, especially during route canal. Story and lorewise, one of the best ever. The setting is so bleak I cannot fathom a worse situation for humanity to find itself in. Half Life 2 is literally the worst it could ever get. Huge props to the writers for achieving that. As mentioned previously, the story itself is great, characters are very well written and keep you engaged during lulls and "cutscenes".

100% worth what I paid for it, which was basically nothing. Get it during any summer/winter sale as part of the Valve Essentials Bundle, you get every single game Valve has ever made up to 2010s, for pocket change.

The hike do be short.

I beat it in only 40 minutes, though there was some stuff I missed. I'm going back for it now.

Amazing map, amazing music, cute characters, lots of inspiration from animal crossing, a nice comfy simple story.

Very comfy game, so im writing a quick comfy review. I got it as part of a humble bundle with Assemble with care for A$7.50, given the very short length of both games, and mid-rankings I gave them both. I'm sad to say that the bundle is not quite worth the money. You get two great games, but they are both extremely short, and that really hurts.

Anyway, I feel like I'll replay this game someday when I need cheering up. Thank u A Short Hike.

Hey Hey people, Sshien here.

Have you, watched Sseth’s video about this game? If you haven’t, go watch it, and then, come back. SYNTHETIK: LEGION RISING is a rougelite that I actually, really like. I’ve played a small number of roguelites and roguelikes this year, including Shotgun King, Necrodancer, Slay the Spire, and Real Life. And I haven’t really enjoyed any of them nearly as much as when I hop into a voice call every week for the last 7 months with my best mate, a modern day Diogenes and CEO of the Olive Oil OPEC Cartel from the great land of Brazil Lite, Rodas. We bought this game last Christmas to play together, and by jingo, we jingo’d our asses right into a deeper bromance by experiencing all of this game’s highs and lows carbon fibre shoulder-plate to hypersteel shoulder plate. And that’s fucking awesome. As Sseth put it, SYNTHETIK is a symphony of firearms, machinery, and adrenaline mixed with fast acting opioids, which your character shoots approximately once every 10 seconds. This game is TIGHT, fast paced, frantic, and demanding of you to be bringing your SSS game for the entire 1 hour run. You need to understand your class, its role, and the items and builds you will likely synergize with through pure trial, error, and intuition. And when you get strategy just right, pick up the luck bonus modules, and get good item drops, you go from “it’s gonna be joever soon” to “WE’RE SO FUCKING CRACKED BRO” (those were actual quotes from the run we beat the game with).

When you get on a roll towards the end of a run, you feel like the God of the facility, exacting holy revenge on the murderbots out to tear you heart from wire and brain from CPU. Which is all well and good because, STORY. You are here to stop an infinite paperclip scenario playing out, orchestrated by a rogue AI who is self-stylizing as a God of War. And that’s all the story you get and need with a game like this. Its mechanics and euphoric gameplay do ALL the heavy lifting, so you just sit back, and let your natural biological aversion for all things artificial and intelligent from taking your job as a cracked crackhead supersoldier. GRAPHICS AND SOUND compliment this game extremely well. The devs made excellent use of their game’s limitations to decorate their slaughterfest with beautifully simplistic art that doesn’t look realistic, but not cartoony either. I think SYNTHETIK will go down as a game that “still looks good after decades”. The sound design is incredible. It compliments your adrenaline rush with dopamine releasing audio cues and highly satisfying sound effects, from gunfire, to reloading, jamming, and the sweet sound of a new upgrade making you FEEL like you just got something powerful. All set to a banger soundtrack that goes from low bassy stealth tunes to full blown phonk bangers that get the adrenaline pumping and get you in the zone to FUCK. SHIT. UP.

After 13.5 hours, I made it to the final boss for the first time, and the adrenaline hit I took while attempting it for the first time was the biggest I’ve had in YEARS. That was when I knew this game was something else. Over the course of the next 11 hours of gameplay, Rodas and I experienced many runs that could have gone to the end, only to die on floor 4 or the final boss gauntlet. Sometimes to our own stupidity, sometimes to janky bullshit as a result of the robot god sabotaging the undersea cables linking Europe with Australia, and spiking his ms to 300 ping. Every time we worked together, fucked up, laughed, we strategized, learned, and parted for the next run in a few days. When we finally beat the final boss after 24.5 hours of playtime on my end, the sound we made the moment we beat the game can only be described as pure, masculine bro-hype. The kind you hear when an squad of sweats win their first CS:GO regional tournament. It was glorious, a truly well fought dopamine rush of such beauty that all men should seek to earn. AND THEN SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENED. But you’re going to have to see that for yourself. So go ahead, buy SYNTHETIK. It is WELL worth the price. Earn your victory on top of a pile of burning wreckage and silicon guts at the top of ARMAGEDDON.

I'm going to give the black king a shotgun next time I play SBURB given it only took him 51 minutes to kill the white king.

Despite it's short runtime, the game is quite good. The premise is very funny, and the additions to chess are both thematic, funny, and creative. Even though I beat the game in just under an hour, I probably only saw about 10% of the total content, I think that is intentional. I will revisit to play more runs with new content and unlockables. Also, this game has a CRT mode that may or may not be compatible with CRT TVs, which is a really nice touch.

Currently, not worth what I paid for it (got it as part of humble choice). Maybe when I revisit it and experience more of what it has to offer my opinion will change. Other than that, good little game.

Merchant of the skies is a trading game where you travel from outpost to outpost buying and selling trading goods. The gameplay is very simple and has almost no depth, and it is very hard to do poorly. The game also does a poor job communicating some gameplay elements, and I ended up wasting lots of time on very inefficient things thinking they were part of the game. For example, I didn't know I had to hire more crew when I bought a much larger ship, so I ended up travelling very slowly for a long while, and managing my fuel carefully until I figured out I could just hire crew and get back up to speed, making the game trivially easy with my huge hold, massive fuel tanks, and fast travel speed. I also could never figure out how to make caravans work, which automates a compulsory and tedious part of the game, but I did it all manually with about an hour of transferring stuff from one base to another. The game doesn't have enough variety and content to justify it's already short runtime, I saw everything after around 4 hours, and from then I was mostly re-treading ground until the end. Some long animations like pulling into port get a bit annoying after hours, im glad they let you skip them. And finally, after around 5 hours the game for some reason didn't bother using a loading screen anymore, and simply froze until the scene loaded in, breaking the suspension of disbelief quickly, and keep in mind you're using loading screens once every 20-30 seconds.

On the positive side, this game has great pixel art and very memorable, creative and interesting characters and scenes. Its a shame that the story is totally uninteresting and forgettable. The music is alright, but becomes very grating and monotonous after hearing the same 3 songs depending on the 3 common areas you go to play over and over and over.

I finished it in a single 7 hour sitting yesterday. And I got it as part of the July 23 Humble Choice. It is definitely not worth what they're charging on steam, even at it's current sale price. I'd say it is worth a dollar per hour if you enjoy light trading games. So a 70% discount would be reasonable.