Campfire Tales
*Note that this is a review for version 1.0.2
Playing status: 3x playthroughs, bad endings
Intro
Campfire Tales is a GB Studio game about three people that tell their stories on a camping trip. Three stories will be told by each person to make your camping trip worthwhile.
Pros:
- Different endings on each story
Cons:
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Clues for getting a good ending are too hard to find
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Game over by choosing certain options in dialogues
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Your save will be wiped right before you finished the game
– Real player with 2.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best 1990's Dark Comedy Games.
Small Press Tycoon
I published my friend Greg’s zine. It sold like hotcakes. Then I published his chapbook. It sold way better. I then use the profits to publish a popular author. It flopped. On top of that, readers cancelled him. On the flipside, my friend Greg gave a lecture on the proclivities of blah blah blah… I zoned out. But, it was a smash.
Some time later, people who purported to represent the CIA tried to extort me. When I refused to give in, the game said bye bye.
42/10. Recommended.
– Real player with 1.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best 1990's Choices Matter Games.
It took me a grueling 18 months, but I built a catalog of more than 30 highly-regarded books and raised our average first print revenue to nearly a million dollars.
A completely authentic publishing sim.
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game
DOM RUSALOK
Intriguing and effective at the best of times, Dom Rusalok has the potential to be a very enjoyable experience for the right person - so long as a few bumps in the road can be overlooked regarding the gameplay.
All in all, I can recommend this.
Full video review here;
– Real player with 13.6 hrs in game
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It is unabashedly a nostalgia porn for anyone growing up in Russia in the 90s. The dialogues are believable, the situations - understandable, the otherwise purposeless close ups of items most of us had or at least often saw tickle the nostalgia bone.
The atmosphere of a nice urban legend carries this pretty far.
The gameplay is very much assessible and fun, think The Cat Lady.
At some point things start getting ridiculous, and personally I don’t appreciate the direction it leads the story to. Not even sure I understood the ending, and as such, it didn’t leave any emotional impact on me. Thinking back to it, I can see it explained in two different ways, and would consider neither fitting or good. Maybe it’s on me and the game is deeper than I think, but personally I detest purposeful ambiguity for the sake of it.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
GAME.exe
⚡This game was a really good time spent.⚡
Love the way the production approached the retro theme,
it made me feel nostalgic and I could relive good times.
//the story is very good and I was interested in unraveling the game’s mysteries.
//The game makes us a character and I love that in a game, I like to feel a part of the game and being a character in it myself.
so… several positive points, huh!?
in addition, the game has a very deep
reflection on depression,
anxiety and self-condemnation.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
So, this game is a very basic, simple OS simulator with a “game” that you can play within the PC. The PC does have some decent enough music in the playlist but not really all that much else to read or interact with (there are a couple files that you can read, but it only BARELY creates a story). The bulk of the gameplay will be located in the game that you can find in one of the folders. It’s got the basic “Slenderman” stuff going for it (go and collect 10 candles while a monster chases you). There is a stamina bar and timer to give it a bit more depth in the difficulty department (otherwise the game would be all too easy to beat). There isn’t really a story to the game, which there wasn’t meant to be (as a file shows that Oliver couldn’t think of a story before he died). I didn’t encounter any issues with the game, which is great. The story is pretty simple yet not very fleshed out as much as I’d like in games like this one. I could get the gist but didn’t really understand the why (for instance
! it’s clear that Oliver is being harassed/bullied but we are left with no clear reason for it).
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
KAMIKO
Don’t judge a game by it’s cover: Kamiko is simple in it’s graphic and concept, yet it’s very challenging and entertaining. Four levels with increasing difficulty, three different maidens to beat them and purge the evil from the sacred lands:
Yamato: Blue haired girl from a family of water maidens, with her Blade of Kusanagi at hand, moves really fast. She has a little less power than the other two, but she can restlessly swing her sword, slaying enemies like no others can.
Uzume: A pink haired girl in deep connection with the forest is bestowed the Magatama of Yasakani, a powerful yumi. She can’t move during an attack, but her long ranged arrows make up for that, keeping her safe from any evil.
– Real player with 10.4 hrs in game
First of all, you might like this game if you also like The Legend of Zelda or Touhou.
With that out of the way, don’t be fooled by the game’s short length. There are three playable characters, and they play so differently it’s well worth your while to play through the entire game as all three and doing so even once makes the game more than worth its asking price. Here, let me analyze them:
Yamato:
Weapon: Blade of Kusanagi (short-range, sweeping sword)
Difficulty curve: Shallow
Difficulty of stages: Moderate
– Real player with 9.1 hrs in game
DarkHouse
DarkHouse is a survival game in a night psychiatric clinic in the genre of first-person horror. A mysterious creepy doctor is tearing at your heels trying to kill you.
Uncover the mystery of the psychiatric hospital by collecting elements for the ritual to bring the infernal monster back to the underworld.
The main character: A vulnerable girl Sofia lives alone with her grandmother, in order to somehow make ends meet, she moonlights as a nurse at night in a psychiatric clinic.
Mythic Prelude - Concept Demo
Lucky me gets to write the first review for Mythic Prelude - Concept Demo. Despite being flagged and published on Steam as a full game instead of a demo (perhaps an error by the developer when publishing), this is definitely just a demo and not a complete game.
Mythic Prelude is a template flip from the godawful GameMaker Studio game construction kit. The developer took a template for a 2D top down Zelda style retro pixel brawler, filled out the detail, slapped a few asset flipped sprites and low effort retro pixel backgrounds on, and then dumped it on Steam. GameMaker Studio is a terrible quality “game” construction kit, so it’s no surprise that games “made” by copying + pasting templates from it are likewise terrible quality, and there’s no exception here. Game construction kits aren’t meant to make professional products, they’re meant to educate and teach people about some aspects of game making, and to make demos to pass around to friends.
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
The Wednesday
I can’t believe that the game cost me $15. You can enjoy a lot lot better games with way cheaper price. Do not buy it if you cherish your money. I purchase this only because I wanted to find out why many people blame this game so much. I didn’t want to criticize this game before I actually play it to the end. Now I can, so here I start.
Story was fair enough, but not great. Personally I thought the story was ok. It’s probably the only positive part of this game, but there is little to spoil so I don’t understand why they asked for not streaming the later chapters. The puzzles during the game were too easy so it’s not even worth mentioning.
– Real player with 4.1 hrs in game
Warden: Melody of the Undergrowth
Oh boy where to begin, wish I could give stars instead of just “yes” or “no.” Well There are goods and bads to it. But not enough goods to justify $22 (CDN) I’m glad I got it with humble bundle. The game itself is pretty good, there are just a few cons that drag it down to the point that makes it hard to recommend at $22.
Pro’s
-Unique and original story. There is so many tropes and over done stories and copies out there, it’s nice to see something unique for a change. The game doesn’t go too heavily into the story through the playthrough, but if you read all the tablets and lore you figure out easily whats going on.
– Real player with 12.9 hrs in game
See written review below or watch it here: https://youtu.be/cTXARvbmlrU
TL;DR: SKIP TO CONCLUSION!
Warden: Melody of the Undergrowth is an action adventure platformer that gives a good sense of nostalgia to the old school N64 Legend of Zelda.
You play as a young child who is trying to find his father, who visits the spirit realm, and sort of merges with the two other children to try and protect the forest. The world is open, but there are a fair amount of loading screens when going between areas.
– Real player with 11.5 hrs in game
Elta7
In the future world, in order to resist the oppression of Skynet, the underground resistance army sent the intelligent flight aircraft Elta 7 to obtain the energy chip and control the energy source to destroy Skynet and make the world free again.
The game is played by roguelike + demon city. It designs many operations such as weapons, equipment, chip buff, a variety of secondary weapons, weapon protection bonus and upgrade. The main weapons, secondary weapons and long-range weapons are freely combined, with complex and diverse terrain and fierce Skynet enemy.