While I have never written an in-depth review of the game, I will at some point, Lisa the Painful and its subsequent follow-up-, Lisa the Joyful are simply my favorite games of all time. I have been hooked on the franchise for nearly a decade at this point which has led to me scouring the internet for additional content related to Lisa. This has led me to the slew of fangames made over the series that each individually addresses or adapts specific aspects of the original games and for the most part, are pretty good at capturing that magic. However, these fangames have generated a stigma of being abandoned or having an extremely long turn around so it was such a surprise to see Lisa the Undone release after a little over a year since its original reveal trailer.

This fangame stands out from other titles as it attempts to remake the Lisa the Joyful. As much as I love it, the original Joyful is marred with problems that exist on both a narrative and gameplay level which this fangame initially plans to address. I quickly realized that the structure and story of this game are significantly different from the original making this fangame a complete reimagining rather than a simple remake. This revelation made me especially excited as now I did not know what to expect.

I embraced many of its writing changes with open arms, and I felt I was generously rewarded for doing so. It is clear that the developers are deeply passionate about the world and lore of Lisa with large parts of this game serving to just expand on these elements. There are several moments where your crew takes a breather and you all discuss the current state of things in both the game world as well as how your characters are feeling. This is the sort of downtime time, while existed in Joyful, did not flesh out the characters to the same degree this fangame does. Buddy is no longer a raving maniac right away and Rando is not just a pushover. Elements of these personalities do exist but they are no longer the defining feature of these characters. One of my favorite changes to the writing is where you are given chances to see Buddy act like an actual child with her interacting with other kids being some of my favorite parts of the game.

The expansion of the world in Undone, is another greatly enhanced addition. The world in Joyful felt very cramped and lonely which felt accurate to the game's narrative but I much prefer Undone’s expansive setting that covers many different parts of Olathe. The world feels freeing but also extra dangerous due to your decreased fighting abilities. The expanded setting is also backed up by a slew of different unique areas to explore, really funny encounters, great sprite work, and reworked very interesting encounters. This world expansion also fleshes out each Warlord more giving them more of a build-up as well as explaining how they got into the position that they are in now. A simple cutscene that depicts all of the Warlords gives them so much more characterization that I am extremely excited to see pan out.

Finally, a lot of the writing reflects on the different worldviews one would have within the setting of Lisa. Many times, you are given the chance to talk to a character who will spout off on the current state of things and how one should react to it. While not all super interesting, certain encounters reign as some of my favorite writing in all of the Lisa games. These encounters also deliver solid answers to a lot of questions about the franchise that I have had stewing in my head for nearly a decade now. Some might be turned away from the vast amount of writing the game presents, a stark contrast to previous entries, but I think for any game to have this amount of dialogue it should be for a reimagining of Joyful.

Alongside these writing changes, new gameplay mechanics have been introduced that add extra depth to Lisa’s general gameplay. No longer does Buddy wield mastery over a Katana, instead she is given several weapons that she gains mastery over time through repeated use. This is combined with a new mask system that allows Buddy access to specific skills that relate to the mask that she is wearing. This adds a new consideration as one can plan and set up a specific loadout that would fare better for certain fights. There also exist companion combo moves that allow you to team a party member for some sort of attack or buff. These new mechanics make up for the fact that throughout the whole game, you are much weaker than you ever were in Joyful.

Some interesting new additions include a dice rolling and internal monologue mechanic. Disco Elysium directly inspired these with there being not much difference in how these mechanics are presented. The dice-rolling mechanic is my favorite of the two as it can completely how an encounter plays out and adds another consideration for your loadout as gear can change outcomes. The internal monologue is developed through specific decisions made in the game which will have Buddy’s mind start to splinter off into different ways of thinking. In the game's current state, this mechanic does little to change the narrative in any way and acts more nice flavor text.

If it is not obvious, I was utterly blown away by the quality of this fan project. As it stands this may reign as my favorite fangame for the moment. The amount of care and love put into the game's writing and world-building is palpable leaving me excited as to how the second part of the story will pan out. This is not a perfect experience however as I do think some mechanics are not as quite fleshed out as they should be leaving some parts a little underwhelming, such as being a little deceiving to your contribution towards certain outcomes. Some narrative points are not given a conclusion or a very satisfying one. I also think the balance between actual fights and reading dialogue is a little uneven at the moment. While I do like the game writing I did find myself at points wishing I could get into another encounter soon. All of these problems match the current state of the game as it has just been released and a second part is on the way. I have faith that these issues will be addressed but at the end of the day this is still a very solid video game.

If you are a fan of the original Lisa games like I am, this is a must-play. The amount of added depth to the world and interesting recontextualizations make it worth a try at the very least.

(Fun Fact: I was so excited in the first 40 minutes of this game that I quickly added it to the Backloggd database. I know it doesn’t matter but this is the first time I’ve done this and I just wanted to mention it.)

I'll confess that I've only played about 20 minutes of this game, so I'm not really reviewing it for myself, but for my best friend who passed away in March. We lived together so we would hang out and talk about video games almost everyday and before he passed away THIS was his favorite game, full-stop.

It's hard to describe how much I miss chatting with him about Rain World, it made him passionate about game ideas he was programming and passionate about games in general, it was exciting to see him have that spark for making art again. It's cringey, but I wish I could message the developers and let them know how much it meant to my friend that this game even EXISTED, let alone that it was this amazing to him.

The last conversation I ever had with him he was telling me about the lore for Rain World, how he beat every piece of content in it just to learn more about the story, and to my surprise, I found in one of his journals pages of him deciphering the lore and studying it on his own for fun.

It'll be a long while before I'm able to play any of his favorite games again, but I'm going to rate this a 5 on his behalf anyway, as I have no doubt in my mind it's what he would have given it. I'll never know why he chose to leave, but I at least have this game that spoke to him in a way you wish all art could, and as much as I wish he was here to tell you why it's a 5-star game, you'll just have to take my word for it. This was a perfect game to him, and he had way better taste than me!

I’m putting on my shades.
To cover up my eyes.
I’m jumpin’ in my ride.
I’m heading out tonight.

I’m Solo, I’m Han Solo.
I’m Han Solo.
I’m Han Solo. Solo.

A bluntly referential homage to the survival horror canon. The moment-to-moment map navigation is a joy but is undercut by a second act pivot to geometrically perverted, cosmic horror meat mazes. An over adherence to genre tropes makes for a fussy conclusion that struggles to escape Silent Hill's Event Horizon, and a litany of small frustrations (why can't I drop items?) compile into a game I was ready to be over.

The backdrop of a vaguely Soviet Union totalitarian regime and the nature of personhood in artificial intelligence go unexplored despite being the only source of narration for 2/3 of the game, before switching gears to an even more thinly articulated trauma allegory. There's a strong mechanical foundation here but without a coherent thematic or narrative direction it ends up little more than a competent imitation.

This deserves credit for ambition - I wouldn't necessarily have expected the first Berserk game to have a new story written by Miura, music composed by Hirasawa, etc. Befitting that, there's a strong focus on the characters and cinematics and it actually does a solid job of bringing the vibe of the manga to the somewhat limited medium of a Dreamcast game, with a good localization and all. (They even did Puck pretty well!)

Unfortunately, the game side of things is a bit of a letdown, with simplistic combat, a very short length, one absurd difficulty spike, and a deeply annoying camera. Oh, and worst of all, this game inexplicably goes way, way out of its way to depict the realism of Guts not being able to effectively swing his famous massive sword in tight quarters, deliberately putting you in confined spaces where it'll bounce off walls every time you try to combo, and keeping the ability to swing through them behind your powered-up state. This is authentic to the source material, I guess, but good Lord above is it annoying, and a baffling design choice that seems to exist just keep the fun levels tamped down.

Because it IS fun, obviously, to go full sicko Gattsu mode with the sword and start chopping people to into big bloody pieces five at a time. In its best moments, this lets you do that, and occasionally you'll be hacking away and accidentally realize that you can do something sick like slide dodge into a small enemy to pop them up and then follow with a jumping combo at which point HAIIIIIIII YAI FORRRCES will start blaring in your head like the Kill Bill siren,,,, but then that brief combat encounter will be over and you'll be doing a QTE or watching a lengthy cutscene or be in an idiotic CRASH BANDICOOT run-towards-the-camera stage for no good reason.

Again, I appreciate the ambition here, and it does look and sound and, in brief flashes, feel pretty great, but focusing a bit more on the fundamentals and expanding, you know, the actual gameplay might have been wise.

P.S.: On a personal note, this was in my physical backlog the longest of any game ever - I bought it twelve years and four months ago. The time was finally right!

I'm not entirely sure why I bought Signalis, but I now know I was in error to do so. The most charitable thing I can say for the game is that I am absolutely not its target audience: I scare easily in horror games, have little interest in them, and have never played the early Resident Evil or Silent Hill titles Signalis is clearly looking to ape. Despite that, I gave Signalis the old college try only to find a mechanical mess of a game whose problems can't be waved off as genre convention.

Signalis is a really good example of incentives in game design and how they can undercut an experience. The game design starts off with some good ideas: inventory is limited to add consequence to combat encounters; there are no autosaves to ratchet up the tension; controls are clunky enough to discourage a more action-oriented style of play. All of these decisions seems like they would mesh well with a survival horror game, yet they ultimately are the undoing of anything resembling immersion in the game or its world.

The core of the issues lies in how optional all of the game's encounters are. The vast, vast majority of enemies can be ran around and avoided without fighting them. Given how limited resources are, this becomes the dominant strategy. Why waste ammunition or risk incurring damage when it's easier to hold the run button and weave around? It's also faster. On a base level, there's very little reason to engage in the resource management the game is very clearly pushing as a means of creating tense gameplay.

Without resource management being impactful, the limited inventory space suddenly becomes an inconvenience rather than a conduit for strategy. A good example played itself out many times over my run through the game. I'd have a full inventory, encounter a necessary key item pretty far from a safe house, and suddenly have a decision to make. I could run back to the safe house and rearrange my backpack to have space for the item, or just fire off some rounds to clear ammunition from my inventory to pick up the item. Or use a healing item unnecessarily again in the name of making space. Without the combat encounters putting stress on these resources, the player is free to essentially waste them. The whole exchange breeds contempt for the inventory system. Once I understood how the game worked, I never really needed to plan a load out. I wonder why the inventory was built this way to begin with, other than this system likely being similar to an old survival horror game.

The lack of an autosave feature is another way Signalis calls back to its inspirations, and this is another mechanical misfire. The threat of a death that will meaningfully reset progress only works if developers commit to that notion. There needs to be stakes, usually in the form of the time investment since the last save. Signalis refuses to raise these stakes through the vast majority of the game. Areas are small, with all of the action taking place within 20-40 seconds of a safe room. Players are free to run back to the safe room every time they accomplish something, no matter how small, thereby ensuring any death won't ding them too much. Hell, this constant saving is doubly encouraged by the previously mentioned inventory system; the only place to dump the items picked up on any excursion is the same place the player saves the game. The combination of the level design and the save system works to deflate the tension, which is a bizarre undercutting of the only possible reason to design the save system this way in the first place.

All of Signalis's mechanics seem half-cooked; a "wouldn't it be cool if" whiteboard list that never coalesced into a meaningful experience. Which is a shame, because aesthetically the game works much better. The graphics and sound design both do a good job in creating an unsettling atmosphere. But unfortunately that really doesn't mean anything when the gameplay doesn't work in service of the horror experience.

What players are left with is at times boring, at times frustrating, and thoroughly samey. No matter what is happening in the story you can count the fact that you, as the player, will be bobbing and weaving through enemies to find the square peg in room A, stick it in the square hole in Room B, to unlock access to the circle peg that is needed in Room C. Perhaps this is evocative of old Resident Evil games, which even I know have a reputation for this kind of nonsense, but I'm flabbergasted that someone thought it was engaging gameplay in 2022.

If they were set on making an homage to Resident Evil, they could've also copied the respect that game surely had for its players; I can't imagine there was ever a puzzle room in an RE game that had a note not five feet from the puzzle outlining its solution step-by-step.

I was beside myself when I found this. The puzzle it spoiled wasn't even difficult; none of the game's puzzles are difficult. Do the developers truly think that little of their audience?

I'll end by describing my last experiences with Signalis. I beat the game, found the ending to be lackluster, watched the credits, and looked up what people were saying online. I found some discussion of the final boss, an encounter I never had. Wouldn't you know it, the player is supposed to start up the game again to continue the story. So I did, and I played for another hour or so. What I expected to be a short story sequence opened up into a full 'dungeon' of sorts.

I'd had enough. I closed the game.

Signalis isn't scary. Signalis isn't fun. And for a game with a story that is so clearly open for interpretation, Signalis isn't even interesting, and that's what's most disappointing of all.

That's a lie, the most disappointing part is that it's not fun. God damn.