Clandestine
Clandestine is one of the most underrated stealth games I’ve ever played.
I’ll start with what I don’t like: out of all the things to randomly place they chose collectables you’ll need to upgrade your armory.
The game is coded in Unity, so the facial animations are questionable, and the animations overall are very stiff and the collision detection on the environment isn’t great.
The AI is competent, but not particularly complex since guards won’t notice doors opened or trace left by the player.
– Real player with 61.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hacking Co-op Games.
The quick recap
because who has the time to read my soliloquy
Clandestine is a genius and unforgiving stealth game in which mistakes are lethal. The only way to avoid the mistakes is to have a good friend in the van monitoring you and planning ahead of time. This is a stealth game where non-lethal playthrough is rewarding because the non-lethal options are numerous and cool, whereas the guns are pretty much all the same and do the same thing without much skill needed. No advanced objective requires a kill. You will succeed or fail based on your preparation, co-ordination and skill alone. Exploration is rewarded but not capital.
– Real player with 31.1 hrs in game
Quadrilateral Cowboy
Quadrilateral Cowboy is a story about having those youthful, exciting, and often dangerous experiences with a really tight-knit group of friends as you journey through life together, and then growing old to reflect fondly on those memories.
It is all very beautiful to experience.
Half the game is a story that unfolds, and the other half is puzzle solving. The tale is quite moving, and the puzzles are very reasonably difficult, and quite rewarding. If you know Chung’s work, you know what to expect as far as the ‘experience’ or flavor. Otherwise, here is a test to gauge if you will like this game. If two of the three apply to you, then I highly recommend you buy it:
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hacking Singleplayer Games.
The game has some great ideas and nice attention to detail, but I felt like it never came together.
A lot of mechanics get introduced and then forgotten. New mechanics replace the old ones instead of building on them. There’s hardly any increase in complexity as you go along.
All the levels are simple and focused on 1 to 2 of the avialable mechanics. The rest is either not used at all or simply taken away from the player, sometimes for 1 mission and other times forever.
Because of all this, the game became way too easy later on. Instead of having puzzles to solve, you just go through the motions. Click this, click that, go here, go there. Some timer here and there. No challenge whatsoever. Not to mention you can ‘cheat’ your way though a lot of the levels.
– Real player with 6.8 hrs in game
Invisible Apartment Zero
Like I said on my review of the first chapter, the interface of this VN doesn’t match its atmosphere. It’s too simple, and to be really honest, kinda annoying (the text box is basically transparent, and the letters are plain white. It’s hard to read stuff sometimes)… But anyway, leaving that technical detail aside.
The writing doesn’t make much sense in a few scenes; like on the beginning, with Joel
! being taken away. It felt too rushed, I barely had time to fully understand what was happening. It’s a short VN, and like other people said here, the choices are basically just “right” and “wrong”. The ending was pretty dull too. The art style was ok, BG was good, and BGM was pretty nice. Characters are quite plain tho, I couldn’t feel sympathy for any of them (not even Kacey).
– Real player with 2.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hacking 2D Games.
This is an okay visual novel. The story and artstyle are rather unique, wasn’t too fond of the music though, and nothing about it was really outstanding to me, it also didn’t feel like choices really mattered other than immediately leading to a death end at times, there’s no arcs/butterfly effect, just right or wrong (game over) choice basically. Eventhough this isn’t really a bad visual novel, for the price it’s being sold for, I can’t really recommend it.
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
Operation: Tango
Operation: Tango is an asymmetrical co-op game (similar to a game like We Were Here) where one player plays as an agent and the other as a hacker, and you must communicate with each other to progress through the game. I generally found the missions to be interesting and challenging, with parts of one or two missions being a bit unclear what you were supposed to do (even after having completed it as both the agent and hacker!). There are 6 missions and 10 challenges, with the missions taking about 6-7 hours to complete, and the challenges taking 3-4 hours to complete at the highest level. The game’s overall aesthetic and UI is nice, and I enjoyed the music.
– Real player with 10.1 hrs in game
Goods about the game:
Hella fun if you like cooperative play
Big teamwork, make sure you get a good gaming buddy
Bads about the game:
Not really a lot to play
– Real player with 8.6 hrs in game
Hack ‘n’ Slash
I am going to cautiously recommend this game for programmers only.
While Hack ‘n’ Slash may appear to play like the old overhead Zelda games, it is a pure puzzle game. Direct attacks are impossible, there is no penalty for dieing, and you don’t need fast reflexes.
I would give it a, perhaps generous, 7/10. I base this on averaging the 5/10 I would give it for non-programmers since they can only play the first half of the game, and 10/10 for programmers who may find it enjoyable.
Quite a bit of programming knowledge is assumed. Almost nothing is explained. At first, all you can do is alter the value of variables. Soon “if” statements and logical operators are introduced. The game spends quite a while at this level of sophistication, and an intelligent person that can read English can get by for the first half of the game.
– Real player with 11.4 hrs in game
Do not buy this game. This is not the programming game you want to buy. It is not worth the money, and it is not currently, by my standards, a finished puzzle game, much less one that teaches any reasonable amount of programming.
It is a beautiful idea for a game, and a very clever title for the idea. But this game does not live up to the beauty of its idea. If you must buy it, wait for the game that purports to teach programming to at least be itself adequately programmed. That is not the game that is available right now.
– Real player with 9.7 hrs in game
Code 7: A Story-Driven Hacking Adventure
My entire progress got reset.
Now I have to make backups of my saves.
I need to find out where the saves are located.
I have to replay a text adventure… takes a while.
I feel like an idiot because I bought it before
Episode 4 got released because I wanted to support
this kind of game.
I am not happy.
This Review is not objective.
I am only writing this because I’m annoyed…
Bye.
Edit: Guess what, it happend again…
I have backups now but it still sucks…
Edit 2: 3rd reset, seems like you can only
– Real player with 32.1 hrs in game
This is a breathtaking masterpiece with a brilliant story! Highly enjoyable and literally captivating!
I’m a Kickstarter backer who found the project to be a cool idea and backed it, and I was positively shocked by how good it turned out to be! Started up the game to try it out, and couldn’t stop playing.
What gives it its glory is the amazing and captivating story and events, and the great voice acting.
This makes the game an emotional adventure… you’ll feel your heart racing at some points, and the creators of this game did a great job of making me (someone who doesn’t feel much) actually feel what the characters I’m interacting with are feeling. (horror, fear, relief, joy, sadness, remorse, security and danger, anger… and most probably hunger)
– Real player with 18.9 hrs in game
Invisible Apartment
EDIT (PLEASE READ): The developer responded to a thread about my complaints: http://steamcommunity.com/app/351790/discussions/0/617329505862063026/
Indeed, this is just a taste of what is to come, a small piece of a larger arc. He had a little mistake of not specifying this, so hopefully he’ll change the store description and maybe fix it up a bit. Click the thread link for a more in-depth explanation from the Developer. Hope you all enjoy this game, but realize there is more to come! This is merely a demo of sorts to keep you interested. I still highly reccomend this title!
– Real player with 1.8 hrs in game
I was interested to play this game after noticing the newest game to the series just came out. So i thought before i spend money on it, i’ll play the first game so i know what is going on and with all the positive reviews, i thought this was going to be a good series i could fall inlove with. And it just so happens to be free. But even if its a free game to play, it doesn’t make it a good game. As you can see, this is a visual novel which has choices you can make. But the choices in this game are dead end choices where you must pick the right one to continue onward. That was a huge disappointment to me because i kept picking the ones that got me caught. Linear novels with no tweaks for pick your own path really bother me because i felt duped in a way. And for whatever reason the “quicksave” button would not let me save at my current point. So i had to start from the very beginning which was frustrating till i found out if you go into the menu and hit “Save” it will work. When you make a visual novel, you want the reader to fall inlove with the plot, the characters and to pull them in. But i was somewhat lost by this novel. When you first start, the game puts you right in the middle of something that you won’t understand and does not explain very well later on. And right off the bat you can tell this game felt rushed a bit or was mainly just a project to see if someone could actually make a visual novel. However, even if the art style and charming music were a nice touch which are positive things to note, the scene’s did not flow well at all and made you felt like the developers didn’t care if the dialog flew from one end of the town to a apartment or a rooftop without warning. I just couldn’t understand it. The writing isn’t good either but i kept playing it because i really want in my heart to like this so i can try out the 2nd game. So i pushed on, in hopes it would get better. But after reading more of the story, the main character Bunny started to make me mad. It was hard to tell that she was talking to the AI “Mask” and not at the other character she was interacting with in the physical world. But it wasn’t just that, it was her personality as well. She seemed to act like a child, not a skilled hacker. I just resented the character even further than i did in the beginning. And also what i noticed is how this novel lacks any descriptive details about the places bunny travels too. Shes in a park Well what did the park look like? shes in a hospital Well, can we get some more details please instead of bunny constantly talking? I love visual novels so much when the story comes to life, but i cannot recommend this to any of my friends and advise you to look elsewhere. But hey at least this game was free so no one had to waste anything but their time.
– Real player with 1.0 hrs in game
Scrutinized
If you are a fan of horror, Papers, Please, Welcome to the Game and challenging games then this is right up your alley.
Like other games released from the Developer, this one too features heavy jump scares that work and a real sense of stress.
This game is all about learning. In order to get better at the game, you need to keep playing it and really get multitasking down. Don’t expect to play it once and just breeze through it. I always see a lot of negative reviews toward these types of games without even learning 1/10 of what’s needed to complete it. Just be persistent, patient, and things will get easier.
– Real player with 48.8 hrs in game
Warning! Spoilers and huge paragraphs ahead!
Scrutinized is a game where you play as a criminal analyst named Luna Youngman who files reports in search for the person who killed her cousin. Doesn’t sound too complicated, does it? Wrong. You also have two people named Tanner and Dmitri trying to kidnap you. You have to file a certain amount of cases a day to win the night, if you file too many wrong, you lose. If you get kidnapped or killed by either of the men trying to break into your house, you lose. If you don’t lock your windows before you go to bed, you lose. If you don’t check the cameras every 10-15 seconds, you lose. If you don’t check your entire house every 30 seconds, you lose. IIIIt’s a lot. As interesting as this game’s concept is, I just can’t bring myself to like it. I’ve made a total 3 episodes on Scrutinized at this point, and I understand how the game functions more or less. You lock your windows, you check the cameras, file or shred a report, check the cameras again, check the house, check the cameras, file a report and so on. It’s a constant stress that envelops in this game that is only resolved by beating the night, but not even then, if you don’t check your house the kidnapper will kill you in your sleep. And on occasions on the hardest difficulty you have a chance of just dying instantly. The developer has released multiple patches to try and fix this bug, but nothing seems to work. I have seen many, many, many clips on people just dying at the start of nights. Now I haven’t even touched the hardest difficulty because I honestly have no interest to. The ending is the exact same as the normal ending, and dying randomly doesn’t sound very fun to me.
– Real player with 29.1 hrs in game
Cyber Ops Prologue
I really enjoyed it up to the cyborgs… tried and tried and tried again to beat it.
Its not clear how to disable them and seems totally random, I loose a squad member every time I attack then once they are disabled and hacked they still keep coming. You have to keep glitching them every 20 seconds or so to stop them which is really annoying. Once hacked they also come straight for you every time they wake up which would be ok when theres only 1 but 3 of em… too much. I cant tell if it was meant to be this hard for the demo so you cant finish it. Up to that point it was fairly easy and had a well paced tutorial.
– Real player with 5.8 hrs in game
Huh, neat game.
I think the tutorial is a little confusing. Maybe doing the tutorial in a Special Ops Training Area is a better idea. In this game am trying to learn but I have cyborg soldiers and turrets firing at me. It is a little too much pressure lol.
It took me a while to understand how the tracing worked, but when I got the hang of it (keeping the levels 1 2 an 3 retention windows open and hacking the shit out of everything), I felt pretty cool.
The only “bug” I found was while my team was facing a console, they wouldn’t return fire at a soldier shooting them from the door, even in Aggressive Stance.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
Wirewalk()↳
As an old school (S)NES RPG player I was really pleased to play this game, the gameplay feels like playing Zelda - A Link to the Past, with a Megaman like soundtrack ! The story shows a not so far future where people is even more dependent on technology in a clear criticism to our current society, I won’t do spoilers here but the jokes about this society are clever and made me laugh more than once. I felt like the game was fairly easy (maybe because I’m used to this kind of game) and made me want more, an expansion with more levels/bosses would be great. In a nutshell, entertaining with a nice message to the player.
– Real player with 6.5 hrs in game
Disclaimer, for transparency’s sake: the developer is a friend of mine however I’ll be reviewing this game as unbiased as possible.
Wirewalk is a typical Gameboy dungeon crawler adventure game in the molds of the first Zelda titles with a top-down gameplay and retro graphics.
First, the story: It is rather straightforward - you’re a girl named Rada who lives in a town suddenly plagued by a mysterious computer virus that renders technology inoperable. Fortunately, Rada knows her way around computers and has developed a program nicknamed “Wirewalk” in which she’s able to “go inside the code” to fix people’s various devices.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game