DON’T GIVE UP: A Cynical Tale
I remember playing the first demo for this wonderful game way back when the Kickstarter campaign first launched. From that first moment I knew this could be something really special!
It’s got incredibly off-the-wall humour, lashings of self-deprecation (which I’m pretty adept at myself), a dollop of meta, wall-breaking moments and a wonderful helping of deep, emotional storytelling. Underneath all of the fantasy-style plot there’s a raw, pulsating bundle of feelings that really comes through in some of our protagonist’s monologues.
– Real player with 14.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time Pixel Graphics Games.
cons:
Don’t give up has an interesting premise, but in my opinion is falls short halfway thorough the story.
the villain seemed interesting but as soon as its intensions are revealed, made me loose al the hopes for the game’s story.
The story in part circles around the depression which affects character’s everyday life, and it can give some nice insight on how people with depression reason or react to situation, for me it seem to fall flat at the end of the story.
the story also has plot holes, especially as you progress towards the end, and in some way it took me out of the story since some of the informations on the characters are just left out. and it was hard to understand what was going on.
– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game
Archeo: Shinar
This game has surprised me. At first, it’s a simple economic strategy with very simple mechanics, or at least I thought so. You go on expeditions, pick good explorers and try to match them to events on the expedition. Easy enough. But the game is focused on the other side of archeology. The player spends more time preparing and planning the next expedition than being on that expedition. There’s a lot of hidden stuff and you can get overwhelmed, but it’s probably the early access thing. The more you play the more you learn. There’s a lot of little gameplay secrets like you can find out the consequences of your choices one hour later or even later. It’s a well-made game with a lot going on in the background. At first, it looks simple but behind those visuals, you may find that it’s actually not that simple. It’s definitely not a game for everyone, but if you are into strategy and management, then you will have a lot of fun. And when in tutorial Cuppy says “you should experiment more with the mechanics for yourself” or something like that, it’s actually true. This game won’t give you everything on a plate, you have to figure out some things, like for example the results on the expeditions aren’t RNG, it works in a more subtle way and you will need some time to get familiar with it.
– Real player with 22.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time Strategy Games.
This game is in early access, this review is based on version 0.75c.
Pros
✓︎ Interesting and complex gameplay, full of unique features.
✓︎ Wonderfully written story, with meaningful random events.
✓︎ Well balanced difficulty levels.
✓︎ Minimalist, playful and clean artstyle.
✓︎ Local multiplayer transforms the game into a fun society game.
Cons
✕︎ A long learning curve.
✕︎ As an early access it requires some polishing, including the addition of the “career” mode, yet to implement in the game.
– Real player with 13.0 hrs in game
Unholy Heights
An apartment management tower-defense game about your resident monsters against humans.
While the idea of being a landlord is enticing the tower-defense part can get incredibly tedious & repetitious since there’s not a whole lot of strategy to use here from beginning to end.
The idea of the tower-defense is just to stop humans from stealing your money and if they get away with it you only lose your highly expendable tenant should they have died defending the money taken so there’s no real fail state. You try and stop the humans by knocking on the room doors of the monsters of your choosing and IF they’re home (which most usually are) they’ll do their tower-defense thing and help kill the intruders.
– Real player with 59.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time Building Games.
Let me tell you about Popan.
Popan was the first baby ever born in my apartments. She was a Cheepy so I didn’t have high expectations. Popan was probably 3 days old when her parents died in an unfortunate ambush on my complex. I had a ton of other tenants, so I didn’t see the harm in waiting for her to grow up. Somehow, she never became in debt. This fucking baby was paying the rent. She grew up to be a total badass. She would single-handedly wipe out entire waves of enemies without breaking a sweat.
– Real player with 34.2 hrs in game
Roller Drama
A SITCOM?!?
In Roller Drama you (Joan) live together with five athletes as their coach and hopefully friend:
Anne, Portia, Pippi, Cordelia, and Juliet. They just formed a Roller Derby top team!
Portia is the property “guardian”, the others (you too) just squatted in the dilapidated building. You have to try to be the balancing factor as these top athletes develop close personal relationships and the group navigates rivalries, love stories, and sexual tension.
REAL-TIME FULL-CONTACT SPORT!
All this while playing Roller Derby-like full-contact matches, where in real time you have to give the right hints, decide strategies, and give orders. You’ll have arcade-like controls and power cards!
SURVEILLANCE
Daily life in the game’s world is not easy; political and environmental problems interfere with complex personal lives. The game’s universe is a slightly altered perspective of today’s world, with the same problems but… more explicit. It’s a dystopia that talks about our present (thank you Terry Gilliam).
KEY FEATURES
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Interactive narrative with meaningful game-changing choices
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Explorable universe
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Replayable narrative and matches: every championship is unique, several different endings
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Real-time match play, fully generative
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Deck-building mechanics determined by player choices and game results
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Beautiful, hand drawn art
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Full controller support
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Localized in nine languages
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Cloud saves
WHO ARE OPEN LAB GAMES?
We are four people making narrative sports games since 2017, based in Florence, Italy.
One Shell Straight to Hell
(Review was updated on Dec 2021) I’ve spent many hours alpha-testing this game and decided to buy it on release day. Here are my thoughts so far, a list of positive and negative elements:
The good stuff:
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Uniquely witty main character.
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Good variety of unlockable skills and lootable guns, be it primaries or secondaries.
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The setting: a terribly haunted mansion property set in the 1910’s - 1920’s.
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The Padre’s voice actor probably smoked 10 cigars and drank too much whiskey. Fantastic.
– Real player with 43.8 hrs in game
One Shell Straight to Hell
There’s a brand-new Roguelike indie title on the streets; One Shell Straight to Hell. One Shell Straight to Hell lets the player experience the best of two worlds with its well-put-together Roguelike dungeon-crawling gameplay with a touch of base defense elements mixed in.
At first glance, the game seems to be simple enough with its Procedural Generation World. But as you cross the first stage after finishing a base defense wave, the game becomes something much more.
*– [Real player with 8.5 hrs in game](http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198329404521)*
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