Bret Airborne
I’ve only played the game for a short time, but here’s what I can summarise from the story so far… (NO SPOILERS):
Here I am, the one and only Bing, the king and here we are to sing.
Let me recite the killing of my entire race with brisk pace so please brace and tell, how I proved how I removed Seth’s pursuit of me like a conquering chess move. At first it was Arnold, oh how he marvelled at the sight of Thor’s nipple arsenal; he created blueprints and was convinced it would work. The perk was his Dad invented farms that were tested, and prevented the endless crops from blocking Arnold’s white socks.
– Real player with 21.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Family Friendly Puzzle Games.
If you like match-3 games, but want a twist to add a game mechanic, and a casual game, then this is pretty good. It isn’t as refined as a game like Puzzle Quest, and looks like a single person project, but well done for that, and enjoyable. I really liked the middle-line barrier that resets to the middle each turn to give your half to work with, match 4 or more to blow it a row to the right and get another turn, and reasons to match items across the line. Buying powers also added to the strategy.
– Real player with 10.2 hrs in game
Cogs
Anyone remember those old sliding-tile puzzles? If you enjoyed them, then I think you’d really get a kick out of this lovely little game
Bear in mind, they’re ALL sliding-tile puzzles. The variety among them is delightfully done though. It’s not just a case of constructing bigger pictures… Instead you’re there working with an assortment of different pipes and gears… Sometimes on a single 2D face, other times working around a whole 3D block. It’s an elegantly crafted Zen game and the animations and music are spot on. It’s a casual, yet challenging, piece to wind down with
– Real player with 15.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Family Friendly Puzzle Games.
Make no mistake: Cogs is entirely made up of sliding puzzles. You know the kind where you slide around tiles numbered 1-15 and try to get them in order. The puzzles in Cogs are more interesting than that, but the principle is the same all the way through. If you like that sort of activity, then you will love this. If not, it might change your mind, but don’t expect anything too “exciting” here.
Cogs does have an unhealthy obsession with time-based objectives. Half of Challenge Mode involves solving puzzles in under 30 seconds, and half of the extra stars earnable in the main mode are granted based on solving speed. I find this is less a test of skill than a test of your memory or your patience to write down all your algorithms and then execute them from a list. Some of the puzzles require 100+ moves after all. Granted, this can all be ignored––all the puzzles can be unlocked and completed without caring a whit about time.
– Real player with 14.8 hrs in game
Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink
Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink is a point-and-click puzzle game which pays homage to deceased Polish author Jan Brzechwa’s series of stories surrounding Pan Kleks/Mr. Inkblot. Developed by Artifex Mundi, it was originally released in August of 2013, and put onto Steam in April of 2014, with achievements and trading cards. The game itself follows Evangeline Glass as she tries to help her mentor and friend, Dr. Ambrose Ink, investigate a series of increasingly violent tremors rocking the planet and seemingly originating in the nestled burg of Hochwald. After his abduction early on, it falls entirely to Evangeline to not only solve the mystery surrounding the quakes and save Hochwald, but rescue Ink from his captors.
– Real player with 11.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Family Friendly Puzzle Games.
Game Information
“Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink” Collector’s Edition is a Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure game. The game was developed and published by Artifex Mundi.
Since this is a collector’s edition game, it comes with extra features that are not available in its' counterpart; the standard edition.
The Game Review
Game Visuals
I want to mention that the visuals in the game are nicely done with a painted feel to them. The visuals can be adjusted in the game’s option menu.
– Real player with 9.7 hrs in game
Machinarium
I, a robot?
Adventure is only a point-and-click away as Irreverend Opinions reviews Machinarium!
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The Blurb
A puzzle adventure in a stylised world of robots and amazing music. A robot that has been abandoned by his city in pieces must pull himself together and return to not only confront some rather bad robots, but save his robot girlfriend in the process.
The Good
The first thing I noticed about Machinarium, as a first impression, is the music. The soundtrack by Czech composer Tomáš Dvořák really stands out in the task of impressing a strange new world without alienating the player from what they are engaged in.
– Real player with 14.3 hrs in game
A little robot man living in a mechanical world must save his friends and neighbors from a group of nefarious local thugs. It has a simplistic yet beautiful art style with a lot of attention to detail. Despite being comprised entirely of robots, the game is quite expressive and has a lot of charm and heart. It’s decently varied and somewhat challenging, and would likely appeal to seasoned point and clickers or casual gamers. It’s now an old classic of the genre.
I would describe Machinarium’s art style as a mix of sketchbook outlines with water color details. Most backgrounds are static paintings with a handful of moving components. It also has a surprising amount of character animation, mainly in the form of simple tweens and hand-drawn animatics. There’s not a lot to say here, at least not much more than you could see in the videos and promotional material.
– Real player with 13.8 hrs in game
The Tiny Bang Story
Short Version:
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Recommended, but only if on sale, and mainly for the great art.
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Seasoned P&C/HOG players will not be impressed by gameplay.
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If you’re colorblind, skip this altogether - the minigames rely too much on color-matching.
PROS:
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Beautiful art
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Nice soundtrack
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Smooth mechanics
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Some unique puzzles
CONS:
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No real story
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Repetitive tasks
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No instructions for puzzles/minigames
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No choice to skip puzzles/minigames
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Includes 2 short but stressful 8-bit ‘obstacle-avoidance’ action minigames (not what P&Cers are looking to play)
– Real player with 6.5 hrs in game
Plenty of bang, not much story!
Tiny Bang Story makes it pretty clear from the start that it is a puzzle game, as the world itself is shattered into a jigsaw puzzle. What we get winds up being a bit of a mixture of all kinds of puzzle games that really aren’t bad, but really aren’t much of a challenge.
The execution of the hidden objects part of this game varies quite a lot between really easy and a bit cheesy. A barely visible outline of a puzzle piece is hidden like a speck in a busy background, feeling cheap and artificially difficult. Most of the rest of what you will find stands out enough that you won’t miss them, but in some cases will want to remember where you’d seen them.
– Real player with 6.0 hrs in game
Lethis - Daring Discoverers
Yet to finish the game. For now, needed to say the following.
Fantastic exploration idea, and the creativity. Sense of humour is witty. And so far, what planets I have encountered are very interesting & varied. I dont need battles, so I am good when the dev took away the reflex battle mechanism and replace it with text based responses. So it became a 2d isometric exploration gem. A rare treat and showing obvious love in its writing so far. I am enjoying the writing. Art matches the tone very well, loads more to explore.
– Real player with 17.9 hrs in game
Lethis - Daring Discoverers is a mobile app that’s been dumped lazily on Steam as a greedy cash grab. It’s a simple screen tapping adventure game with a series on minigames. Explore an alien planet, go through various minigames, explore and adventure on your iPhone.
The premise is okay but the implementation falls flat, hard. The graphics are quite charming, too, so this is a real shame to see some areas are great and others terrible. The worst part is the control scheme, which was lifted from tablet. You can’t move around the ISO map with direction keys, you have to click and drag your character. Same for many of the minigames… this was designed for a touchscreen and the developers have done nothing to alter the game for the PC mouse + keyboard scheme. Which completely ruins the game… it just doesn’t “work”, because most PCs don’t have a touchscreen.
– Real player with 5.0 hrs in game
Guns of Icarus Alliance
With ~700 hours or ~1000 matches on old GOI, and an alpha/beta tester for Alliance, I can recommend Alliance if you desire two of the three below:
+Teamwork-focused play
+Airships
+Stratigic planning and execution.
I’ll go into each in more detail below, but that’s the TL;DR. If you check off two boxes above: get the game!
Teamwork
With the basic ship requiring four crewmembers to run, Guns of Icarus rewards the crew as a whole, not the individuals among them. For example, you can be the best gunner in the world, but if the pilot can’t get the guns to bear on the target, you’ll have a harder time. The same goes with piloting. You may be a great pilot, but if the engineer neglects the engines your ship will quickly be dead in the water. The same goes for engineering, you may keep the components up under pressure, but if the gunner fails to take out the enemy ship’s guns or the pilot puts your ship in a 2v1, well, there is only so much a single engineer can do!
– Real player with 507.2 hrs in game
Updated: Jan 4 @ 1:43pm
I like to call myself a veteran of this masterpiece of a game. It’s a sad story.
Started off so fun, so strong, but lack of true content (A few maps every now and then, but it just felt like it wasn’t going anywhere) made me stop playing (Along side some rather political statements made from the mod of their Discord server).
PROS: * The gameplay is amazing from 3 different roles to play. Each with their own purpose and ability. Gunners get all sorts of ammos and reload faster with better aiming using their ability. Engineers get all sorts of tools to fix and prevent damage (Or increase the use of parts) of the ship, able to sprint across the ship (The only one who can). While the Pilot (my favorite one) gets alot of tools to use on the ship, at the cost of the parts on the ship (Sorry engineers!). They are also able to manipulate their turning and speed using their ability.
– Real player with 168.4 hrs in game
CRONEWORLD RPG ADVENTURE - 1
TL;DR:
There’s seemingly a fairly appealing JRPG (this one is Korean, btw) beneath all the weird presentation peculiarities - like the cumbersome interface design and the unorthodox way the game runs and plays from a tech standpoint. Definitely not for everyone. Suggested for the technically inclined and geekily adventurous gamer, perhaps of the older crowd, who would not be averse to enduring some technical hurdles and the uncoordinated confusion (gameplay-wise) that is at least the initial part of the game as the player is getting up to speed with game mechanics.
– Real player with 1.7 hrs in game
This game is a sin against god.
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
Gizmos: Steampunk Nonograms
Fantastic. The puzzles are well done, the illustrations are entertaining, there are a ton of nonograms (10 hrs played and I’ve only done half of them), and it loads quick. Everyday I do two puzzles when I wake up to start my day. Well done and highly recommended.
– Real player with 73.5 hrs in game
If you like nonograms, I’d imagine you’d like this game. I had never heard of them before, so I was hesitant to consider purchasing this game. However, it looked fun, so I gave it a shot, and I’m very glad I did.
It looks like there are 6 sections, with 20 puzzles per section, for a total of about 120 puzzles.
I have completed the first 2 sections (40 puzzles), and because I’m new to this and make quite a few mistakes, it has taken me about 15 hours. If that speed stays the same, it will take me about 45 hours to finish this game. If you’re good at nonograms, you’ll probably play at twice my speed, so you might finish it in about 20-25 hours. Even if you’re four times as fast as me, it’s still a bargain for the relatively low asking price.
– Real player with 59.3 hrs in game
Outpost Engineer
Its a lot like Evospace..
Mine and cook ore into metal bars then use it to make components for more advanced products after you researched the blueprints. The game is mostly about building structures to place your machines and organize the logistic of your factory.
Sounds are awful
Graphics too
I still had fun playing it
– Real player with 26.5 hrs in game
This is awesome, way better than I thought, the factory of this game is so fun!
– Real player with 26.2 hrs in game