Ponpu
Graphics: the style of black and white with colored accents is really well done- for the most part there’s a nice clarity to it all (minus some bones that look like they might be able to be walked over) and a lot of restraint is used in what is chosen to be colored. Boss design range from referential to repulsive in the same comedic way like Castle Crasher’s Catfish boss, but feel unique from one another and from the normal baddies.
Gameplay: Bomberman but strange duckbomberman creature instead. Rapidly launching bombs feels really nice, hitting things and destroying the environment feels impactful, Dashing through stages especially feels rewarding and frenetic. Some small issues with the cooldown with dashing feeling a bit random, and limitations to launching bombs where after 8-9 the next will suddenly not be launched and lead to a lot of accidental self-explosion during bosses. Stages in Story Mode scale up nicely, though it does treat you to a lot of dead ends and force you to explore around for the exit and the key, so if you like more linear experiences this might frustrate you especially near the end.
– Real player with 127.1 hrs in game
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After some time with the game and almost being done with the story mode, I’m pretty mixed, but more on the negative side.
Ponpu is clearly inspired by that of Super Bomberman for the SNES, and it does a good job of making the idea unique: A game with different kinds of characters with different bomb abilities, a beautiful, yet wacky art style that ties in well with the goofy music backing the game, and overall a fresh take on the Bomberman games.
However, at times I found the redundancy of the story mode really sank in and made the game pretty boring: Walk around, blow things up to get rainbow feathers, kill enemies, get the gold key, move on- three normal levels and one boss, each stage. After the first three bosses, I was expecting some sort of change to how to advance on the levels/the challenge of beating the story. Yet all it did was change the look of the level, the look/difficulty of some enemies, and that’s about it. I do really enjoy the bosses, though, and I think Purple Tree did a very good job of making some nice boss fights in the story.
– Real player with 5.2 hrs in game
12 orbits
Wow. Wow, wow, wow. For this price, I have never played a game with this much quality. The 3D graphics are stunning and are sometimes not seen in games worth $5 or more. Again, the game is worth buying just for its quality. Not to mention the control screen is as easy as pressing a button. The game is as simple as that, too! However, we haven’t even gotten to the actual game yet.
So, what is the game, you ask?
This game has 4 different modes with 7 total variations total. Arena and Trails are free-for-all modes, Blizzard and Multiball are team modes, and Arena, Trails, and Blizzard have practice variations. For every mode, there are 7-8 maps you can play on. On these map, there are circles of various sizes and location through it. After you select your button, you can press the button when in the circles to go around them in an orbit (hence “orbits” in the title). When you press your button outside the circle, you dash forward, which can be beneficial or hurtful, depending on the mode. You can always tell the direction of your character by looking at where the arow points. It never breaks physics, but it is helpful for when you have a lot of characters on the screen, and a small bit of color isn’t enough to keep your eye focused. In addition, there are modifications for the four multiplayer modes, giving you flexibility and countless arangements of fun! Lastly, if you are in a circle and an opponent or sphere hits you, your orbit will break unless you hit your button immediately afterwards. Alright, let’s go on to the modes!
– Real player with 25.6 hrs in game
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TL;DR - A simple look with a simple mechanic. Good amounts of options, yet feels pretty samey after a while. It’s a party game that really tries, but never reaches it’s true potential. 7/10
12 orbits seemed interesting. The ability to play with 12 players with the usage of just a button each is incredible. With simple taps, everyone would take control their character without losing focus on what lies ahead. The concept comes together in four different modes that anyone can get into easily. The major question is, obviously, are these modes even entertaining to play. Personally I had a hard time figuring this out.
– Real player with 5.8 hrs in game
Disobedient Sheep
This game is completely mad and great fun in local multiplayer, especially with my young kids - it’s simple enough for them to enjoy and doesn’t really matter if you play it well or not. It becomes complete mayhem with several dangerous items appearing or about to appear as you try to guide or bark the sheep away from danger! The different play modes are fun, the visuals are bright and appealing, the music suitably frenetic and some cheesy voice acting is a nice addition.
Since the last update controller support has greatly improved, and having 3 or 4 players madly scrambling around trying to keep the sheep safe is a blast. I thoroughly recommend Disobedient Sheep to anyone who has a few people in the house who want to play a game together, especially if some of them are young children.
– Real player with 14.7 hrs in game
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Disobedient Sheep is a couch-multiplayer party game with a heavy survival emphasis.
That it, the survival of some super-cute balls of wool that cannot, without your help, avoid the many genuine and lifelike hazards that come with being a sheep in today’s modern times. Ominously slow rolling boulders, falling anvils and anchors, bombs and of course the shepherd staple dynamite all await your precarious flock.
You play as a sheepdog, of which there are several cuddly variants, darting around the map for a time period dying to bark and generally hustle your sheep out of the way of these deadly obstacles. Your sheep act realistically, and group together in small flocks, but occasionally freak out at their impending existential nightmare and scurry off, making this challenge much harder than it sounds. As time goes on more and more dangers are thrown your way, making the final few seconds quite chaotic.
– Real player with 5.9 hrs in game
Drive Buy
I’ve had a lot of fun playing this! Very fun competitive party game if you get a couple of friends together in a voice call :3
– Real player with 22.2 hrs in game
Amazing game, old school nostalgia hits big time. Great to compete against other players and I hope that it will be supported for long time to come. Still have to test Switch Cross-Play, to see how it goes against other players
– Real player with 17.5 hrs in game
Bamerang
Very fun Game for an evening with friends. The game is multiplayer only though but at that it succeeds quite well I think.
The artstyle and music are both very refreshing and fun.
Through steam remote play even online play is possible and functional.
– Real player with 8.9 hrs in game
I love this game!
Already played the Warm-Up before.
Pros:
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Great Music
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Great Artstyle
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Fast paste game
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Lost me a lot of my nerves playing against friends
Cons:
-“only” Local Multiplayer (Steam remote play can be used to combat that)
- no Computer Enemy / Shooting Range to practice
Great to play in between to have some fun.
Perfect as a Party game.
I would recommend this game!
Happy Boomerang throwing!
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Made to be Crushed
Made to be Crushed is a strategic and nervous local multiplayer shooter where you must succeed in trapping and destroying others.
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Up to 4 players in local multiplayer !
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Carefully designed maps for great replayability!
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A training mode to play alone or in co-op against bots!
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A strategic game with simple rules and easy to learn!
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Configurable keyboard and joysticks!
Potato Party: Hash It Out
VR needs more games like this!! This has been fun so far – played mostly with online friends, but planning to bring it out at game nights in the near future (seems like it’ll be better in-person actually – there’s a spectator mode if you want to run it on a shared screen).
Hoping for more VR party games like this in the future :)
– Real player with 12.5 hrs in game
Oh this is such a fun game, an awesome party game, particularly ideal in the pandemic because you don’t really need to be in the same room to enjoy it. it’s like charades in VR with a few other added things. It’s got cute characters and ways for people to suggest ideas for the “artist”. I never get over the amazing experience of 3d drawing in VR so naturally I can spend hours on this game. I would love more brushes and colors, I want to draw Mona Lisa in that two minute time :D (there is a Mona Lisa painting hanging on one of the walls too).
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Flat Heroes
Despite my positive recommendation, I have one major complaint about this game: your avatar is a square that rolls to move.
Hrm… a SQUARE that ROLLS… does anyone else see the problem with the physics of this?
So if you want to move your square just a little bit, you are out of luck because the square will roll back to where you started or will roll further forward than you want if you hit a certain threshold. If your square is tilted in air, you could land on your corner and move into danger. If you land on the edge of a ledge, even if you are flat, if your center of mass is not on the ledge, you can roll off. You can wall cling, but only if one of the sides of your square completely touches the wall, so again, if your square is tilted and you hit the wall with a corner, this can mess you up. I can’t tell you how many times I got fracked by this baffling mechanic. In my humble opinion, it doesn’t make the game any more fun or unique, the game is way too hard otherwise to warrant this extra challenge, and it actually goes against the game’s minimalist street cred (if it were me, I would have made it more like Thomas Was Alone and have the little squares just slide along instead).
– Real player with 55.5 hrs in game
I absolutely recommend this game if you like easy-to-get-into platformers, couch co-op, and/or games with subtle depth.
The most recent update as of this review added Survival mode, which is really six modes (each basically an endless mode with the goal being lasting longer than anyone else, but remaining distinct enough to be different modes). This includes a mode called Twitch, which is a Twitch integrated mode that allows the audience to pick the next obstacles the streamer faces. Survival mode(s) in general each have a scoreboard for those who like to get competitive.
– Real player with 25.6 hrs in game
Headsnatchers
Free on HumbleBundle.
Game is like a diamond covered in pig shit. It’s got a fun concept but the execution is terrible. Janky controls. Shoddy online. Some of the games are in other players’ favor (isometric camera makes it difficult to see for bottom left and bottom right players, as we found out in the basketball game), the games have no countdown before they start so if your connection isn’t great you can be fucked, the ways to complete some of the games leave you open for attack (throw head into audience one my enemy had my head and was showing to the fans, but I came from behind and attacked them knocking their head into the audience which resulted in me winning???). There is probably more to complain about but I only played it for about half an hour.
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
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Headsnatchers is a party game, akin to Mario Party but without the board game portion. The big issue with Headsnatchers is that it is close to being good, but never achieves it. The core gameplay mechanic of knocking down your opponent and stealing their head is fun and unique, but the game is executed in such a mediocre way that it never realizes its full potential. The controls are weird and take time to get used to. For the games, there is 25 games total and they are all pretty short. It becomes pretty repetitive in a short amount of time, especially when every game is some variation of “take their head and press the action button”. There was a great opportunity to come up with some unique mini-games based on the head snatching mechanics, but they all feel too similar. Overall, the game is too middle of the road in a genre with plenty of great games.
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Thunder Rally
Thunder Rally Review:
Thunder Rally is an amazingly fun game to play at a party or with a group of friends during an evening game night. The title is an action-packed arcade-style game that pits cars against cars, driver vs driver & spectators get to join in on the fun as well! With a wide variety of wacky powerups to turn the tide of a derby, there are plenty of great in-game interactions to be had & a wild amount of goofy fun to be had against your friends.
The development team are super friendly & fun to work alongside which is always a plus, & the content they produce is always top-notch.
– Real player with 18.1 hrs in game
This game is awesome.
Pros
*Great maps
*Pretty smart AI
*Great fun with friends, can support up to 4 players on the same computer
*Good number of cars
*Rad power-ups, like black holes, mechs, machine guns, etc.
*The very brilliant feature where you can run around and steal other people’s cars
*Just unbelievably fun
There really aren’t any cons, although I do have some suggestions:
*Add a race mode
*More match rules: How many rounds, choosing specific power-ups, a mode where you all start without a car, etc.
– Real player with 12.2 hrs in game