Starstruck: Hands of Time

Starstruck: Hands of Time

Play guitar in an interactive rock opera

Play guitar in musical story segments, with a catchy soundtrack featuring live instruments and singing by Elsie Lovelock (Hazbin Hotel). If you still have your Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitar controller, dust it off, because this game supports it!

Destroy the world as a giant human hand

Demolish houses, solve puzzles, and open new paths for other characters as a giant hand. Unleash your destructive potential using hammers, screwdrivers, and more.

A strange game set in a miniature world

Save the future by exploring the strange diorama world of 20XX. Meet weirdly cute characters and unravel the mystery of how their little lives are connected to the end of mankind.

No rhythm? No problem

If you want to experience the music and story without the stresses of rhythm gameplay, you can enable “Autoplay” in the options menu. When Autoplay is enabled, the rhythm gameplay sections will play themselves.

Features

  • Explore three intertwined adventures set in a charming diorama world, switching characters to solve puzzles and change the future.

  • Play guitar and dodge attacks to an original soundtrack in catchy musical story segments.

  • Destroy the world as a giant human hand in hectic action-puzzle gameplay. (By the way, you can also customize the hand’s size and skin color.)

  • Extensive controller support allows you to play with your keyboard, Xbox controller, PS4 controller, Switch Pro Controller, or even guitar controller! You can also remap controls as you wish for the rhythm gameplay.

  • Adjust the difficulty level between “Normal” and “Master” mode for the rhythm gameplay to suit your style, or just sit back and watch with “Autoplay” mode.

  • Original soundtrack by acclaimed composer Andrew Allanson features live instruments and vocals spanning many genres.


Read More: Best Music Time Travel Games.


Starstruck: Hands of Time on Steam

The Flood

The Flood

Expected a 5 minute journey on a motor boat through a flooded river landscape, flowing downway to arrive to a wise conclussion (or an open lake or whatever).

Got a 3 minute journey on a rowing boat, down a dry, still “river” that gets you literally nowhere

! a wall, meanwhile reading pure nonsense.

There is no “flow” feeling at all. You literally have to move the boat forward all the way or it remains still. The “flood” is nowhere to be seen; it feels more like pushing a cart around the poodles of an abandoned construction site.

Real player with 0.3 hrs in game


Read More: Best Music Colorful Games.


For what it wants to be, a peaceful, short and linear narrative experience, The Flood delivers on that promise more with its ambiance and less with its actual story. The gameplay is slow and cautious, the background story is only vaguely told by the placid scenery and the textual narrative is more of an accumulation of superficial quotes that only just connect to the rest of the game. It’s instantaneously cheesy but still quite enjoyable as long as the messages and implications are not taken at face value.

Real player with 0.3 hrs in game

The Flood on Steam

I Am Dead

I Am Dead

I am on the fence about this game. One the one hand, it is a lovely story. You play a guy who is dead and returns to his home town. He reunites with his dead dog and the two go on a quest to locate six ghosts of former residents in order to save the town. Each ghost is summoned by retrieving memories about them from the living and then finding an associated memento. The community is presented in six parts, each richly detailed with a host of objects and characters to explore. It is quite a complex narrative that a diligent gamer can piece together by following the residents through the scenes and learning about their relationships.

Real player with 14.4 hrs in game


Read More: Best Music Colorful Games.


I Am Dead is a casual hidden object game, crammed full of sentiment and whimsy. Its core gameplay gimmick is that you can zoom in on objects, clipping right through their layers to see inside of them. Sometimes the contents are surprising (in funny and/or bizarre ways), but most of the time you are simply treated to a unique level of care that has been put into modelling parts of objects that would never need to be visible in any other game or circumstance.

I absolutely adore the art style. The world is jaunty but peaceful, vibrant but subdued, strongly characterised but cozy. This game is, in a word, gentle. It needs to be, in order to present its nuanced stories about a handful of deceased characters.

Real player with 12.7 hrs in game

I Am Dead on Steam

Florence

Florence

- Act I - Crush

What to do on your sad Valentine’s day, when you’ve canceled your own pity party and felt betrayed by your own feelings? Simple. To play the mobile game you’ve been hearing some good stuff about, which has been given a surprising Steam release. That’s how I was introduced to Florence, anyway. I will skip that part of the game winning every possible award and beating all the best mobile games back when it was originally released. You most likely know that already. Besides, it’s not that important. The feelings and experience are all that matters. As Maya Angelou famously said: I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. The same is fair for video games - you may forget many details about them, but you will always remember how some of them made you feel. And Florence? Quality emotions delivery service at the click of your mouse!

Real player with 6.5 hrs in game

Another truly mesmerizing and enchanting story experience published by Annapurna. Like I said in other reviews before, don’t expect complex gameplay, just enjoy the emotional ride, and oh boy, does this game deliver in that regard. If you’ve ever been in a relationship or else before, this really presses the one or other button. Could even hurt, too, to watch this, so take this as a word of warning. But if you can make yourself free of that, Florence is an exceptional tale through the mindscape of a young woman and her partner, falling in and out of love. There are no real puzzles (the few that are actually there serve as a brilliantly executed metaphor as well), nor are there any difficulties. Really, it’s just pure storytelling in its highest degree. I guess you either love or hate it, but honestly, I just adore those games, true art in my opinion, with all the little attention to the tiniest details. By the way, music is fantastic as well, extremely emotional piano & strings numbers you would even buy extra (but luckily it’s already included for free, so check out the soundtrack), sometimes tragic, yet inspiring, and all original compositions. I just can’t praise this game enough, and if you’re a bit into emotional and artsy titles, and like French movies (though the game is Australian ;)), please, please give it a try. Yeah, I don’t say this often, for me it’s a must-buy (even though it’s very short), but that’s how good it is. That saying, the ending surely is too optimistic (being an artist myself), but what the heck, why not just be positive for a change :).

Real player with 4.0 hrs in game

Florence on Steam

Wattam

Wattam

What an absolute treat of a game showing how every little thing matters and how important the people around you are and you should cherish every moment you can. Wattam starts off with a little mayor being lonely and soon off to making new friends and more on the way. The little sandbox you start out in continues to expand as you progress through the 4 seasons. The music once again never fails to amuse me, and the atmosphere gives the katamari damacy series vibes which gives a lot of childhood memories. Each character you unlock feels very unique and adorable to interact with. The story has a lot of meaning towards life and the world itself. The game roughly takes 3-4 hours long to beat but there is after game content if you haven’t unlocked all the visitors/achievements just to mess around in the sandbox. Can’t believe this adorable but absurd game managed to tear me up in the end truly a fantastic game. Will recommend this game if you are looking for a happy/peaceful time.

Real player with 8.2 hrs in game

All my days used to feel the same, just playing a waiting game, dining at a table set for one, stuck in an endless rerun. Then one day you walked into my life, it was you I needed. I can’t wait to be comin' home to you, can’t wait to be comin' home to you, can’t wait to be comin' home to it all… Walking alone makes the world a lonely shade of blue, walking alone was a bore, until the moment I met you. All that it took was a single glance to change my point of view, with our hands tightly together, let us set off on an adventure. Along the way, things take a turn… not in a way… like we planned it. Now both of us are trav’ling all alone again, but our journey led us on two different paths, before the end. Please, don’t you leave me, without you it won’t be easy… oh no. I cannot go on alone, I’m not brave enough on my own, so… we won’t be comin', no we won’t be comin'. We won’t be comin', no we won’t be comin'. We won’t be comin', no we won’t be comin'…

Real player with 7.2 hrs in game

Wattam on Steam

NOISZ

NOISZ

It was about time I write a proper Review of one of my favorite Video Games in Existence.

‘Kay here I go.

NOISZ is a Masterpiece.

I love 99.99% of it.

But with the upcoming 2.5 Update, it shall be over 9000%, hahahah funny meme.

Alright more details.

Story is very well-written and engaging.

Though when you gather absolutely all the Events of both NOISZ and re:||VERSE and analyse, there can be some oddities in the Continuity.

NOT SPOILING !

The Origin of it are Plot Twists, obviously.

At least, we don’t reach Kingdom Hearts level of Absurdity.

Real player with 1316.8 hrs in game

The description pretty much explains about this game: this is a mix of bullet hell and rhythm game. Now, a similar, much more popular game of “avoid these things that come out in sync with the music” is Just Shapes & Beats, but there’s a fundamental difference between NOISZ and Just Shapes & Beats. Just Shapes & Beats is just a plain bullet hell game that happens to have good music; you don’t need to have a sense of rhythm to excel in it. On the other hand, NOISZ is also a rhythm game. In NOISZ, you can only take an action every beat, which means despite all the bullets coming at you, you must maintain that rhythm in your head.

Real player with 285.6 hrs in game

NOISZ on Steam

Journey

Journey

this game, is absolutely incredible. i cannot explain it. on my first journey my friend showed me where all of the cape things were, all of the pictures on the walls, everything. they saved me from the dragons in more ways than one, even after i flew right into the back of one of them, my friend came back and showed me a safer way to get through. they showed me how to speedrun the 4th or 5th level by spamming bing bongs and flying up, this is the only game ive ever felt compelled to write a review for. i thought we messed up when we froze, heartbreaking stuff. 10/10 will bing-bong with a stranger on the internet again

Real player with 80.9 hrs in game

I met small fren, then I met many small fren, then met some bigger fren, then some not fren. In the end though i met A true friend in struggle. We helped each other. This game made me feel more bonded to anyone then any other game I have ever played. 10/10, 100/100. I cried myself to sleep. I got into this thinking, “Probably just an over-hyped game.” When I first started walking I noticed that the sound quality on the walking wasn’t good. Not of that mattered in the end, because art isn’t perfect, but for goodness sake’s if this game dose not come close to it.

Real player with 12.9 hrs in game

Journey on Steam

The Unfinished Swan

The Unfinished Swan

I jumped at this title when I heard it was by Giant Sparrow. Edith Finch was a brilliant game and I was eager to see what else this team had accomplished.

Initially, I did not know what to make of Unfinished Swan. You start in a white world and start shooting random splotches of black ink. I was not impressed. Then, I realized that an environment was beginning to take shape around me. A bench, a path, a dock, a fish jumping, a garden, a doorway. Soon, I was hooked.

Unfinished Swan is a journey through a storybook with a king, a castle, a dark forest, etc. While each chapter has it’s own feel, all require you to modify the environment as you go. This may be accomplished by shooting paint balls to reveal details, building blocks to create a path, growing vines to bridge gaps, etc. As you move through the chapters, there are balloons to ‘liberate’ and story pages to uncover. There is no inventory and the puzzle element is figuring out how to navigate through one environment to the next.

Real player with 13.7 hrs in game

Hard miss, which is unfortunate given how much I liked their previous game.

The white on black in the first level hurts my eyes. Turn down the brightness?

Now it’s even harder to make out where everything is from lack of contrast.

The mechanics are just spamming paint everywhere which hurts my hand - I was expecting something a bit more relaxing. This would entirely be a non-issue if holding down the mouse just shot paint in bursts rather than forcing you to spam-click.

The first puzzle is just unintuitive guesswork. I have no idea if I’m skipping missable collectables since you’re lacking depth / blind as a bat for aesthetics: form over function. You need to shoot paint to see ceilings, floors, walls, etc, but if there’s too much paint you then have the opposite problem where it blends together and since you need to shoot paint to move objects - but physics is wonky since objects collide with terrain - there’s paint EVERYWHERE and you can’t unpaint something so there’s a definitive threshold of clarity vs time you’ll pass real quick.

Real player with 5.0 hrs in game

The Unfinished Swan on Steam