TheYeti
BACKER
2021
Rubber Bandits is the anti-Smash Bros in good and bad ways.
The gameplay is not really at all similar to Smash but it’s a good point of comparison for this kind of multiplayer experience. While Smash Bros is high-skill, highly competitive, highly customizable, and not very forgiving of skill gaps between players, Rubber Bandits is designed to be simple and easily-accessible so that players of all skill levels can jump right in and play without getting totally smoked. It makes for a fun experience with friends. I just wish there was maybe a bit more to it - like the ability to do custom games. All you can really do is pick from 8 different game modes that sometimes have fun, random modifiers and then you’re thrown into a random map. Custom modes and settings would do wonders for this game.
+ Great, easily-accessible game for players of all skill levels
+ Decent progression system that has you constantly unlocking more ways to customize your bandit
+ Fun visuals and animations
- No custom game modes or settings
- “Story” mode is pretty bad
- Frequent online MP connection issues
The gameplay is not really at all similar to Smash but it’s a good point of comparison for this kind of multiplayer experience. While Smash Bros is high-skill, highly competitive, highly customizable, and not very forgiving of skill gaps between players, Rubber Bandits is designed to be simple and easily-accessible so that players of all skill levels can jump right in and play without getting totally smoked. It makes for a fun experience with friends. I just wish there was maybe a bit more to it - like the ability to do custom games. All you can really do is pick from 8 different game modes that sometimes have fun, random modifiers and then you’re thrown into a random map. Custom modes and settings would do wonders for this game.
+ Great, easily-accessible game for players of all skill levels
+ Decent progression system that has you constantly unlocking more ways to customize your bandit
+ Fun visuals and animations
- No custom game modes or settings
- “Story” mode is pretty bad
- Frequent online MP connection issues
I don't know how well this DLC would age 10 years later, but for a while this was my favorite DLC of all time of any game I had played. If you're someone who hates Tiny Tina, this 100% will not work for you but I loved her and thought this was a blast.
2022
Dave the Diver has an incredibly fun core gameplay loop that is drowning under the weight of a dozen other minigames, mechanics, collectibles, and side activities that make it occasionally difficult to fully enjoy the truly great bits of the game.
Within my first couple of hours playing Dave the Diver, I had recommended the game to several friends. Diving to catch fish so you could then manage your sushi restaurant in the evening is an incredibly fun loop that had me hooked. I loved exploring, finding new fish, running my sushi restaurant to get money, and then taking that money back to the boat so I could upgrade all my gear. It’s a really tight, satisfying loop. And then comes the feature creep.
It starts off slow - research tasks, an app to manage your restaurant, collectible fish trading cards, weapon crafting, a social media progress tracker, photo-taking quests, a weapon skill tree. And then it eventually escalates to racing, gambling, fish farming, and literal farming with plants. It started to feel like a running gag when the game would interrupt me every few days to introduce a new mechanic or minigame. And when you think it’s done, it introduces water drones or something else. None of the features are necessarily bad, it’s just all incredibly distracting and they don’t really add much value to the game.
The biggest bummer about all of these distractions is that the core game is actually really good! I love it! It’s a hybrid roguelite management sim but instead of fighting you’re diving and catching fish. The upgrade loop is solid and satisfying. The exploration progresses in meaningful ways. The story is silly but fun. The cutscenes and tone are hilarious. The sushi restaurant progression is great. Actually running the restaurant is a fun thing to do every night. I genuinely love the main chunk of what Dave the Diver is, but it reeks of the modern game design problem of “we need to pack this game full of features and fluff so it’s a better value for gamers!” Please, I am begging you - it is OK to make short games. Dave the Diver could’ve been a 5/5 20-hour game that left me wanting more. Instead, it’s a 4/5 40-hour game that had me feeling restless at times. I still loved the game overall, I just wish it had more focus. The main gameplay mechanics that Dave the Diver commits to, it delivers on strongly. But most of the minigames or side activities it halfheartedly dumps on you don’t feel particularly good and end up being more of a distraction or a funny bit than anything worthwhile. Admittedly, I found some of the gameplay gimmicks to be pretty fun, but it only ends up hitting a handful of those wild shots it takes.
+ Extremely solid core loop of diving and managing restaurant
+ Both the diving and restaurant management gameplay are fun
+ Satisfying progression loop
+ Fun, lighthearted tone
+ Incredible cutscenes
+ Good music and chill vibes
+ Some of the gameplay gimmicks are fun, silly breaks from the main game
- Drowns under the weight of random side content
- Feature creep
- Lacks focus resulting in the game feeling too long
- 95% of the characters in the game are men for some reason
- Finding the last couple fish to complete your collection is tedious
- Frequent crashes on Switch
Within my first couple of hours playing Dave the Diver, I had recommended the game to several friends. Diving to catch fish so you could then manage your sushi restaurant in the evening is an incredibly fun loop that had me hooked. I loved exploring, finding new fish, running my sushi restaurant to get money, and then taking that money back to the boat so I could upgrade all my gear. It’s a really tight, satisfying loop. And then comes the feature creep.
It starts off slow - research tasks, an app to manage your restaurant, collectible fish trading cards, weapon crafting, a social media progress tracker, photo-taking quests, a weapon skill tree. And then it eventually escalates to racing, gambling, fish farming, and literal farming with plants. It started to feel like a running gag when the game would interrupt me every few days to introduce a new mechanic or minigame. And when you think it’s done, it introduces water drones or something else. None of the features are necessarily bad, it’s just all incredibly distracting and they don’t really add much value to the game.
The biggest bummer about all of these distractions is that the core game is actually really good! I love it! It’s a hybrid roguelite management sim but instead of fighting you’re diving and catching fish. The upgrade loop is solid and satisfying. The exploration progresses in meaningful ways. The story is silly but fun. The cutscenes and tone are hilarious. The sushi restaurant progression is great. Actually running the restaurant is a fun thing to do every night. I genuinely love the main chunk of what Dave the Diver is, but it reeks of the modern game design problem of “we need to pack this game full of features and fluff so it’s a better value for gamers!” Please, I am begging you - it is OK to make short games. Dave the Diver could’ve been a 5/5 20-hour game that left me wanting more. Instead, it’s a 4/5 40-hour game that had me feeling restless at times. I still loved the game overall, I just wish it had more focus. The main gameplay mechanics that Dave the Diver commits to, it delivers on strongly. But most of the minigames or side activities it halfheartedly dumps on you don’t feel particularly good and end up being more of a distraction or a funny bit than anything worthwhile. Admittedly, I found some of the gameplay gimmicks to be pretty fun, but it only ends up hitting a handful of those wild shots it takes.
+ Extremely solid core loop of diving and managing restaurant
+ Both the diving and restaurant management gameplay are fun
+ Satisfying progression loop
+ Fun, lighthearted tone
+ Incredible cutscenes
+ Good music and chill vibes
+ Some of the gameplay gimmicks are fun, silly breaks from the main game
- Drowns under the weight of random side content
- Feature creep
- Lacks focus resulting in the game feeling too long
- 95% of the characters in the game are men for some reason
- Finding the last couple fish to complete your collection is tedious
- Frequent crashes on Switch
2014
Only played this for a few hours local multiplayer with friends but had a blast. Wish this has dropped when i was in college. This would've been a dang hit with my group.
2024
After the 500th ad for this damn game I finally gave in and downloaded it. The art is pretty but the text is microscopic and the gameplay is predictably shallow. I've played much better AFK/clickers.
2023
Every once in a while I download one of these clicker games because my little rat brain likes to see numbers go up and get big. This is one of the least satisfying ones I've tried. Doesn't scratch that same itch that so many other idle games have. The art''s fun, though.
2024
A choose-your-own-adventure-like about running border patrol for a fantasy city where the joy is in the journey and the choices you make along the way.
In Lil Guardsman, you play as a 12-year-old girl working your dad’s shift at the city’s guard shack. You’re basically ye olde immigration officer and you need to decide who to let in, deny, or throw in jail using a bunch of tools to interrogate people. Depending on which tools and interactions you use, and what you decide to do with the people, your outcome will be completely different. Some levels I replayed 4-5 times and was able to see new dialogue every time. My only gripe with the game is that it grades you based on how “well” you performed during these interactions. It’s tricky because the game is built in such a way that encourages experimenting and trying weird stuff to see multiple results, but then it penalizes you if you make the wrong choices which sometimes works against my desire to tell my own wacky tale. The story framing for this is that you are an employee of the city and they’re grading you based on your performance before paying you accordingly. It all makes sense in the scope of the story; I just sometimes wish I had a little more freedom to mess around. Thankfully, there’s always more than one way to get good marks from your employer so it doesn’t ever shove you into a box.
Throughout the story, you’ll make a number of choices that often feel monumental in how you are shaping the lives of the people in the city, only to realize that every ending is, more or less, the same based on a couple of critical choices. Much like almost any “your decision matters” choice-based games like Mass Effect, Life is Strange, the Telltale games, or a number of other titles, you really need to embrace the logic of “it’s about the journey not the destination”. I played this with a group for Book Club For Games and, yes, most of our endings were extremely similar, but every single one of us had totally different choices and experiences along the way, so all of our stories felt different despite our similar endings.
The real star of Lil Guardsman is the writing - ranging from heartfelt to hilarious, while throwing in the occasional commentary and 4th-wall-breaking joke. At its most basic, reduced form, Lil Guardsman is just a choose-your-own-adventure game, but it excels at what it does because of the writing. I cared about the characters and their silly little politics, and often found myself laughing out loud at the jokes. If you’re able to sit back and enjoy the chaotic ride of playing a 12-year-old girl who has way more responsibility than she should, I think you’ll really enjoy Lil Guardsman.
+ Writing is consistently fun, witty, and often quite funny with great characters
+ Fun variety in dialogue that encourages replaying some sections here and there
+ Impressive amount of consideration had to go into every possible choice and bit of dialogue that results from those choices
+ Great voice acting
- Getting judged on your choices sometimes feels antithetical to the spirit of making your own choices
- No mid-level saves means restarting the whole chapter if your game crashes
- Having to replay the second half of the game 4 times to get all the trophies when there’s not that much variety in said endings sucks
In Lil Guardsman, you play as a 12-year-old girl working your dad’s shift at the city’s guard shack. You’re basically ye olde immigration officer and you need to decide who to let in, deny, or throw in jail using a bunch of tools to interrogate people. Depending on which tools and interactions you use, and what you decide to do with the people, your outcome will be completely different. Some levels I replayed 4-5 times and was able to see new dialogue every time. My only gripe with the game is that it grades you based on how “well” you performed during these interactions. It’s tricky because the game is built in such a way that encourages experimenting and trying weird stuff to see multiple results, but then it penalizes you if you make the wrong choices which sometimes works against my desire to tell my own wacky tale. The story framing for this is that you are an employee of the city and they’re grading you based on your performance before paying you accordingly. It all makes sense in the scope of the story; I just sometimes wish I had a little more freedom to mess around. Thankfully, there’s always more than one way to get good marks from your employer so it doesn’t ever shove you into a box.
Throughout the story, you’ll make a number of choices that often feel monumental in how you are shaping the lives of the people in the city, only to realize that every ending is, more or less, the same based on a couple of critical choices. Much like almost any “your decision matters” choice-based games like Mass Effect, Life is Strange, the Telltale games, or a number of other titles, you really need to embrace the logic of “it’s about the journey not the destination”. I played this with a group for Book Club For Games and, yes, most of our endings were extremely similar, but every single one of us had totally different choices and experiences along the way, so all of our stories felt different despite our similar endings.
The real star of Lil Guardsman is the writing - ranging from heartfelt to hilarious, while throwing in the occasional commentary and 4th-wall-breaking joke. At its most basic, reduced form, Lil Guardsman is just a choose-your-own-adventure game, but it excels at what it does because of the writing. I cared about the characters and their silly little politics, and often found myself laughing out loud at the jokes. If you’re able to sit back and enjoy the chaotic ride of playing a 12-year-old girl who has way more responsibility than she should, I think you’ll really enjoy Lil Guardsman.
+ Writing is consistently fun, witty, and often quite funny with great characters
+ Fun variety in dialogue that encourages replaying some sections here and there
+ Impressive amount of consideration had to go into every possible choice and bit of dialogue that results from those choices
+ Great voice acting
- Getting judged on your choices sometimes feels antithetical to the spirit of making your own choices
- No mid-level saves means restarting the whole chapter if your game crashes
- Having to replay the second half of the game 4 times to get all the trophies when there’s not that much variety in said endings sucks
2021
A 3D coloring book with the least functional multiplayer I’ve ever experienced in a video game.
The basic gameplay loop of Powerwash Sim is more fun and relaxing than I thought it would be. It’s a pretty zen and satisfying experience to clean a bunch of dirt off stuff. This experience would be made even better by doing it with friends, yet I cannot think of a better multiplayer game that is so uninterested in being a multiplayer game.
I have never, in my life, played a video game with such poorly made or optimized multiplayer as the multiplayer in Powerwash Simulator. I was floored with how bad it is. Firstly, progress is only tracked for the host. So if you’re hoping to play through the campaign with a friend, you’ll have to accept that you won’t unlock anything or progress your own game. The game is built as a single player experience first.
Let’s say you do decide to do one of the bonus missions with a group of friends. Good luck getting the gang together. It took us 30 minutes just to get all 4 of us into one game thanks to frequent connection issues coupled with offensively long loading screens. Once you do get in the game together, prepare to deal with obscene lag and sync issues. Throughout the game, you and your friends’ games will slowly get more and more out-of-sync. In their game, they’d see us cleaning a spot that we cleaned 15-20 minutes prior. By the end of our mission, my friends were over 25 minutes behind my game. I got the “Mission Complete” screen and we sat there for 20 minutes waiting for their games to catch up before getting bored and quitting.
This feels maybe nitpicky, but it would be cool if the game actually had some physics to it other than the water and dirt physics. I was a bit disappointed to find that the entire environment is basically a rendered static space. Anything you might expect would move like flowers, grass, windmills, etc, doesn’t. It’s a 3D coloring book and nothing more.
To add insult to injury, they keep dropping new content for the game while ignoring the issues that have been plaguing the game since launch. There are Reddit posts that are 2 years old complaining about the same issues we’re experiencing now. Fix your broken-ass game before adding Spongebob Squarepants to it.
If you want a game to play alone while you listen to a podcast or zone out, I’m sure Powerwash Simulator will do just fine, but I was pretty disappointed with how poorly-made the game was overall. It would be such a cool multiplayer experience to hang and clean with friends. Sadly, the multiplayer is genuinely the worst-made multiplayer I’ve ever experienced in a video game both in functionality and in optimization.
+ Cleaning can feel satisfying I guess
+ Probably a good podcast game or something
- Environments are static and lack any physics. It’s basically a 3D coloring book
- The most poorly-made, poorly-optimized multiplayer of all time. Don’t even bother
- UI controls on console are quite bad
- Can get tedious
- Finding the last 1% to finish a level or trying to find the tiniest dirt spec on a small part sucks
- Devs keep dropping new content while ignoring the bugs plaguing the game
The basic gameplay loop of Powerwash Sim is more fun and relaxing than I thought it would be. It’s a pretty zen and satisfying experience to clean a bunch of dirt off stuff. This experience would be made even better by doing it with friends, yet I cannot think of a better multiplayer game that is so uninterested in being a multiplayer game.
I have never, in my life, played a video game with such poorly made or optimized multiplayer as the multiplayer in Powerwash Simulator. I was floored with how bad it is. Firstly, progress is only tracked for the host. So if you’re hoping to play through the campaign with a friend, you’ll have to accept that you won’t unlock anything or progress your own game. The game is built as a single player experience first.
Let’s say you do decide to do one of the bonus missions with a group of friends. Good luck getting the gang together. It took us 30 minutes just to get all 4 of us into one game thanks to frequent connection issues coupled with offensively long loading screens. Once you do get in the game together, prepare to deal with obscene lag and sync issues. Throughout the game, you and your friends’ games will slowly get more and more out-of-sync. In their game, they’d see us cleaning a spot that we cleaned 15-20 minutes prior. By the end of our mission, my friends were over 25 minutes behind my game. I got the “Mission Complete” screen and we sat there for 20 minutes waiting for their games to catch up before getting bored and quitting.
This feels maybe nitpicky, but it would be cool if the game actually had some physics to it other than the water and dirt physics. I was a bit disappointed to find that the entire environment is basically a rendered static space. Anything you might expect would move like flowers, grass, windmills, etc, doesn’t. It’s a 3D coloring book and nothing more.
To add insult to injury, they keep dropping new content for the game while ignoring the issues that have been plaguing the game since launch. There are Reddit posts that are 2 years old complaining about the same issues we’re experiencing now. Fix your broken-ass game before adding Spongebob Squarepants to it.
If you want a game to play alone while you listen to a podcast or zone out, I’m sure Powerwash Simulator will do just fine, but I was pretty disappointed with how poorly-made the game was overall. It would be such a cool multiplayer experience to hang and clean with friends. Sadly, the multiplayer is genuinely the worst-made multiplayer I’ve ever experienced in a video game both in functionality and in optimization.
+ Cleaning can feel satisfying I guess
+ Probably a good podcast game or something
- Environments are static and lack any physics. It’s basically a 3D coloring book
- The most poorly-made, poorly-optimized multiplayer of all time. Don’t even bother
- UI controls on console are quite bad
- Can get tedious
- Finding the last 1% to finish a level or trying to find the tiniest dirt spec on a small part sucks
- Devs keep dropping new content while ignoring the bugs plaguing the game