A Juggler’s Tale
Some comparisons have been made to games like “Little Nightmares”, and at first, that seemed far fetched, but it actually turned out to be kinda true: even though this game isn’t nearly as horror-themed, there are several scenes which are moody and scary and also involve chase sequences.
The story itself is presented as an actual story, with the narrator doing a great job setting the tone and also, sometimes, explaining what to do if the player ever gets stuck. The mechanics and riddles might not be that innovative to players who are familiar with these kinds of games, but for newcomers, there are several tricky parts. I especially struggled with some of the scenarios, but managed to solve them without needing to look anything up online. So, if I can do it, pretty much everyone can do it. There are even some nice conceptual twists thrown in, with drastic turns you might not expect. It has an undeniable meta-quality to it, and the game takes good advantage of that.
– Real player with 8.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Beautiful Atmospheric Games.
A very entertaining and beautiful puzzle adventure game, but solutions are a little obvious and game time could be longer.
A Juggler’s Tale is a charming fairy tale adventure with puzzle and platform elements.
Abby, is being held hostage. Confined in a cage, she is only released to perform circus tricks for scraps of food. The ring master is mean and domineering, and her life is tedious and unfulfilled.
All she wants to do is break free from her prison and see the world.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
Yako
Yako is a 2D story-driven hand-drawn platformer. Using your wind-powered abilities, explore a mystical underground world, solve the mystery plaguing the area surrounding Mount Inari, and earn a place among the deities of the Japanese pantheon.
Read More: Best Beautiful Singleplayer Games.
Highly Likely
This is one of the most tedious, poorly crafted, boring, pointless games I’ve ever played.
The art is phenomenal. The developers' interactions with folks on the internet is disappointing. It’s buggy and slow and repetitive.
There are no puzzles, there’s barely a story, there is no skill involved, it’s poorly translated, it’s a little sexist, and the characters' motivations are all over the map. There’s literally a segment in this game where you need to cross a river, so you hold the joystick to the left for over a minute while he slowly turns a crank. This happens multiple times. The most engaging moment of the whole thing is a long and laborious multi-part fetch quest.
– Real player with 4.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Beautiful Indie Games.
Highly Likely is a short and light-hearted point-and-click game that is set in a rural Ukraine and follows a man named Mikola as he tries to get himself out of an enormous debt that he owes to the bank. He finds himself a new business opportunity, one that is risky and could land him in trouble with the law, but he knows that he’s got no other choice. This is the basic story premise that is very relatable and could happen to just about anyone.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
Midnight Scenes: The Highway (Special Edition)
This game is rather a short game, which is fitting for the price. The games horror elements are rather mild when compared to other horror games I’ve seen which is good if this is your first time or if you’re just getting used to playing horror games.
This game is also good to play for cheap in a short amount of time.
Also, if you are not used to playing point & click games, keep in mind while playing to be very observant of clickables and drag items in your inventory over each other to combine them.
– Real player with 1.0 hrs in game
The game is put together really well when it comes to art and atmosphere, that being said, it’s $3 for a 15-minute inconclusive story, so it’s more of a donation than anything else. I had a little ‘deja vu’ playing it, the pixel art in the game is really good, and there are only so many people that are that good, turns out it’s the “artist on games like Thimbleweed Park and Photographs” - I thought the godly skills looked familiar. The ‘Special Edition’ comes with the artbook and soundtrack which is located in the game’s folder. I have to say that the ending didn’t impact me in any way, probably because the story just didn’t have enough time and build up. I wish the developer would have expanded upon the original game, maybe a few secrets or an alternate ending if the game was replayed. Obviously, the developer is very skilled in multiple ways, but as far as this little game goes, not a lot for me to evaluate beyond seeing that it had the potential to be an interesting story.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
LOST EMBER
8/1/2020 EDIT: After the recent Minimalist mode, I’ve decided to revisit this review.
This is the most engagement I’ve ever gotten from a Steam Review. And it was me dunking on an incredibly talented team of creators. It sucks knowing that my highest creative achievement has actively held back purchases, and thus just compensation, to actual artists. With all that said, I want to see future games from Mooneye Studios. I want to respect their creative achievement with a fair review, rather than with apathy.
– Real player with 35.5 hrs in game
Recommended- with caveats.
The game has fantastic visuals. The environments are stunning.
However, at the time of this review, there are some significant bugs, such as clipping into terrain, possibly getting stuck in/on geometry if you morph back into the wolf at the wrong time or place, animals, plants, rocks, and other things floating above the surface (levitating when they should not be). Some random UE4 engine crashes, unknown what is causing them, no way to predict them.
An earlier bug that left the game running after you exited has been patched by the devs, but it means my total hours played is not accurate. (I bought the game on Launch Day, while the bug was still occurring). I estimate my actual playtime to be about 5-8 hours less than what is shown on this review.
– Real player with 29.3 hrs in game
The Beggar’s Ride
Begging (also panhandling or mendicancy) is the practice of imploring
others to grant a favor, often a gift of money, with little or no expectation of reciprocation.
This is what Wikipedia says about Beggingg and is absolutely not what this great game is about.
Most people would expect something that has nothing to do with beggars at all or something
that includes the life of a beggar. However…none of these are the case. A Beggar´s Ride
is a jump´n-run game in my eyes. At the same time it brings you to solve easy or moderate
– Real player with 14.1 hrs in game
Aout 3 hours to complete a “full” playthrough, but double or triple that to get the last two achievements (finish the game in 1h30 and finish the game dying less than 10 times). I liked this game a lot, but the gameplay is frustrating. Jump height isn’t consistent, it felt to me, and I dropped many times from ledges I should, in my mind, have been able to hold onto. Some puzzles are particularly hard to do, you need to have the elements just right or you’ll have to start (but at least there is a handy “reset puzzle” button). I encountered a few bugs (most notably gears in the plant puzzle that wouldn’t turn (I exited to the main menu and loaded the save again, and it worked that time).
– Real player with 12.3 hrs in game
Weakless
Weakless – Finding Strength in Collaboration
Weakless is a short and relaxing puzzle-adventure game set in a beautiful organic environment. The player adopts the role of two carefree, wooden creatures called Weavelings, one of which is deaf, the other blind. However, the characters find strengths in their weaknesses and collaboration is the key to solving unique puzzles and saving their world.
Overall, it is a serene and relaxing experience with a disappointingly vague narrative and fairly minimal mechanics. Its visuals and soundtrack are the game’s best features with the style of gameplay allowing the player to enjoy these at a leisurely pace. The cute characters and simple puzzles give the game a very casual feel, making it easy to play but unfortunately, much harder to get immersed in. Weakless was an enjoyable experience overall but the short playtime of around 3-5 hours and technical issues mean that the price tag is a bit too steep. With that in mind, I’d only recommend it cautiously, and definitely on sale.
– Real player with 6.5 hrs in game
Weakless
First Impressions🤔
The game looks impressive and feels original from the start. Hand drawn graphics play a significant part in telling the story and there is an unusual soundtrack playing throughout which gives the game an earthy and natural feel. Instruments such as the marimba, rav drums and udu are used to create the weird but spiritual acoustics.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
Into A Dream
An interesting and touching psychological story with you playing as John… a man who has entered the mind of Luke Williams in an attempt to save him during a personal crisis.
The art, music, and voice acting are well done. For the most part, the game is a black and white side scroller with strategically placed touches of color. There are several platforming sequences with one at the end that took me quite a few tries to get through. There are some puzzle elements (turning on equipment, advancing time, etc.).
– Real player with 13.4 hrs in game
Into a Dream is a heartbreaking journey into a man’s bleeding soul; the more you know this man named Luke, and try to disentangle the circumstances of his life, the more you get attached to him and the urge to help him escape what he believes to be his fate is inevitable. He needs us and I just could not help feeling empathy for him.
The whole atmosphere builds up as you progress in the game and the relaxed dreamlike and apparent uneventful scenes in the first levels advance to more intense and dramatic moments as the story unfolds and Luke allows us to go deeper into his dreams. As in a dream, timeline is not linear, information is provided in bits and pieces by the characters you encounter along the way and the player has to connect the dots in order to make sense of it all. The story is brilliantly written and left me emotionally shaken.
– Real player with 8.2 hrs in game
The Tideshell Keeper
After listening to her grandma’s mad stories about the coming of a giant wave, Noon takes her submarine fishing. Unfortunately, she gets her submarine stuck underneath a drifting city and finds herself helplessly lost at sea in an attempt to find her way back to home. Noon discovers that there might be more to her grandmother’s rambling tale about destruction and tidal waves and that she might have the only key to stopping the destruction, a mythical Tideshell.
Follow Noon as she travels through a thousand year old thunderstorm, visits a dried out lake in a desert where fish still swim at night and explores a sunken city.
The Tideshell Keeper takes you on a classical point and click adventure, filled with humor in an interesting world with a great ensemble of characters. Learn a language called Drift, by talking and listening to the mysterious drifters, inhabitants of the drifting city and use your tideshell to manipulate water in order to stop the impending doom that is about to hit your family and hometown.
Fully voiced dialogues by talented voice actors.
Language puzzles inspired by how you would learn a language in real life.
3D water set in 2D hand painted backgrounds for optimal viewing pleasure.
An original soundtrack inspired by cultures from all over the world.
Hand drawn frame by frame animation.
Mysterious locations and an important story to explore.
Bottle: Pilgrim Redux
Updated for Redux: 6.5/10 (Original was 4.5/10)
TLDR: The visuals are beautiful, the story is interesting. The pacing is still funky, and the audio needs one more good polish. Still only worth it if you’re willing to wave off a lot of wonkiness, or, like me, you’re hoping for that one last update to pull it all together into the great game it could be.
The good and improved: The scenery and level design has improved on the beauty that was already there. The collectables are relevant and add to the story. The new voice actor is able to carry the ending better than the original (I miss the “posh Australian” accent, but I understand the creators' decision to use an American accent) I actually enjoyed the snow chapter this time. That’s the same level that almost caused me to rage-quit the original, so good improvement there.
– Real player with 6.0 hrs in game
Bottle: Pilgrim is the latest creation from solo developer Tonguc Bodur. Anyone familiar with his previous work knows that they wear the “walking simulator” tag proudly. They are generally brief, averaging a few hours to complete, usually narrated, and with a background soundtrack. I think most gamers are clearly divided on walking sims, either you enjoy them or you don’t. I find them to be a welcome diversion from the mainstream releases, an occasional oasis of contemplation, reflection and tranquility amidst all the shooting and blowing things up.
– Real player with 4.4 hrs in game