Source: Review Copy
Price: £5.79 (£7.09 for game and soundtrack, £2.09 for soundtrack)
Where To Get It: Steam

Other Reviews: Early Access 2 , Release Review

Adventurers are not the smartest of folks. They run heedlessly into dungeons, and then scratch their heads as they’re faced with… A grid? A small economy system? A… Puzzle? BRUNO SMASH. Bruno dead. Whoops, Bruno should have listened to the tutorial of Krumit’s Tale, a fun little puzzle and deckbuilding roguelite in which you try to efficiently clear out a dungeon, with the only major criteria being survival. Of course, if you survive and leave a lot of item tiles on the board, you get more opportunities to beef up your deck. And that’s so very tempting.

The actual rules of Krumit’s Tale are pretty simple. With an enemy, you attack first, unless they’re ambushing or blitzing you (the lightning symbol.) Killing an enemy nets you 1 gold, and gold is used to buy abilities. I mention this before things like parrying, where if you have more armour the the enemy’s attack? They’re stunned for a turn, which, effectively, counts for either two turns of damage, or the enemy’s death, depending on how much they have left in the (heart) tank, because you don’t start with weapons or armour.

You have to buy them, if you have the option. Once all enemies are dead, you’ve won, and the equipment and ability tiles you have left on the board are counted toward your bonus points. You get a free tile, you pick a special ability out of four, and then you buy tiles and rubbish cards you don’t want anymore until your deck size is the current maximum. Then you do it again. Die? You’ve earned XP, which will, over runs, unlock you new abilities for the character you’ve played.

The devil’s in the details, of course, with each new enemy having something that complicates matters, but the base ideas are tight, simple, and easily understandable. It doesn’t take long to get the hang of. Which is good, I like me some tight design! But what about… Everything else?

Well, it just so happens that I like the aesthetic too. Visually, it’s a cartoonish style, with some interestingly grim elements, and lovely little touches like the M of Krumit’s fluttering above the candle flame of the L, and the animations of each character. Speaking of characters, both of the currently available characters have their own… I won’t quite say “charm” , but character works. Bruno is definitely a barbarian of a man, with a constant, low key gargling of suppressed rage, and similarly, Greybeard the wizard is toothily muttering his incantations. Their designs, and that of the monsters, are pretty cool, and the music? Suitably creepy. Nice!

This, the difficulty curve, the clever little things you can do (If your inventory isn’t used up, it counts toward that tile bonus, friends!), and its sarcastic, sometimes grim humour works well for me. As far as deckbuilder roguelites go, it comes recommended, even in this early stage, showing promise and polish.

The Mad Welshman loves the description of W’aggu. Alas, he didn’t screenshot it. Go play the game.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £23.79
Where To Get It: Steam

Well, I came into The 13^th Doll expecting cheese, evil puzzles, and Stauf being sarcastic, and, beyond some odd design choices, that’s… Exactly what I got. Good job, everybody, let’s pack it up and…

…Oh, wait, I need to talk about it, don’t I? Well, The 13^th Doll, like the 7^th Guest, is a first person puzzle adventure with 3d areas and, occasionally, live action on top. It looks relatively natural for such a thing, which is a somewhat difficult thing to pull off. Now, though, they’re using Unity, and so they’re not limited to awkward, individually raytraced movement frames between locations. You just… Move around, your cursor changes when you can change rooms (A skeletal finger beckons), when you can’t just yet (it wags), when you can do a puzzle (A skull with a pulsating brain), and when you can pick up or otherwise interact with something (Chattering teeth or a comedy mask, depending on what it is.)

The other thing here is that there are, in fact, two protagonists: Tad, the boy from the original game, who escaped the mansion after being stuck there as a time looping ghost. And, since this game is set in the 20s or 30s, starts the game placed in a “hospital for the mentally insane” (If anyone knows what physical insanity is, let me know too, I’m curious.) The other is the new psychiatric doctor, Dr. Richmond, who, as exposure therapy, takes Tad back… To the mansion! Legitimately a nice way to have 26 puzzles (13 apiece) in the game, and their stories both intersect at points… And diverge the rest of the time.

Tad, quite literally haunted by the spectres of his past, seeks to destroy Stauf once and for all by… Well, he’s told the 13^th doll is the key, but, considering it tried to grab his ankles in the intro, I’m not entirely sure this is true. Meanwhile, Dr Richmond’s story… Ohh, it burns my ass to see Stauf engaging in historical revisionism. He’s a brilliant man! A genius! His wife was the serial killer, and she was the one who caused the children to die in the first game through a virus she had! BLECH.

In any case, aesthetically, it works alright, overall… The music is pretty good, sometimes covers of the first game’s soundtrack, others new tracks, and they’re all pretty fitting. The acting, on the other hand… That’s more variable. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting shakespearean ham from anyone but Robert Hirschboeck (who both reprises his role as Henry Stauf, and brings his style, panache, and ham to the role once more) but the protagonists are sometimes a little flat in their speech. Visually, well… It’s not a bad looking rendition of the Stauf Mansion, and I like the new touches on some of the old spookings. It also has a relatively clear UX, although there is the oddity that, to save, you have to go to the main menu. Don’t quite know why that decision was made, but I’ve let you know now.

Still, a game like this wouldn’t be complete without the puzzles, and… Ohhh boy. There is colourblind assistance, but it’s a text overlay, which, in the case of some puzzles early on, makes it a sod to see the puzzle itself. And the puzzles are, for the most part, bastard hard. Case in point, on Doctor Richmond’s path, there is… The clock puzzle. Can you split a clock into four parts, so that each endpoint of your segments adds up to the same number? I’ve been racking my brain over this one for a while, suffice to say. Some are new takes on old puzzles, such as the artery puzzle (Now a sliding block puzzle with a twist: The blocks can fall off the edges, never to be regained.) Oh, and the return of the fucking first person maze. Oh yes, that was indeed a memorable moment in 7^th Guest. That was the part most of us said “Nope, fuck this!” and missed out on the endings. Get your graph paper out for that one, friends!

Overall, though, it’s by no means a bad game. The story is ham and cheese, but I went in expecting that, and if you do too, you’ll be alright. The puzzles, the mansion… These are the meat of the game, and, while not all the accessibility options work well (if you have problems, let them know.), it’s worth hitting options before you begin to check them. In any case, the puzzles, while fiendish, are mostly well explained (Although the hints mostly seem to be restatements of the puzzle mechanics, sadly), the callbacks are mostly fun, and, overall… Yep, definitely recommended for 7^th Guest fans, moderately recommended for puzzle adventure fans who like hard puzzles. Good Stauf!

The Mad Welshman finds himself… Chilling with this game. That was a graaave mistake… (Ohohoho)

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: $5 (Approximately £4, with the option to donate more if you like it)
Where To Get It: Itch.IO

Content Warning: Monstergirls, analingus.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £12.39
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Early Access 1

It’s been a while since I last looked at Posthuman: Sanctuary, not least because of a moderately long radio silence, but a recent update induced me to look, and I have had the most successful run to date.

…And my god, I wish I hadn’t done that before the update. I killed over 400 clones of Karl Marx (the Doomsayer faction), presumably because, being one of the few nonmutated humans in the post apocalypse, I am the new bourgouisie. Sucks to be me, I guess.

But, close to the end of the run as I am (It’s taken several hours), I’ve realised I have become the bourgoisie. I have more backpacks than I know what to do with. Do I drop any of them, considering I can use just one? NOPE. I’ve thrown away Camo Tents. Already got one, don’t like the colour of this one. I’m passing out mutation vaccine and food as if I’m some great philanthropist, while hoarding the majority to myself. I have good guns, plenty of bullets, and a steel baseball bat that has become a sight of terror among mutant and human alike. And I’ve been a meddlesome fucker too.

But I’m tired. So tired. The goal is actually in sight. Except the last three milestones have been a long way apart, I’ve killed so many… And I just want to give up. I’ve stopped bothering to learn new things, or improve myself. I did that long ago.

What I’m getting at here, is that once you’ve gotten a truly successful run up and running… The challenge sort of fades away, even with levelups stopping at level 25 or 30. And, as noted, the further you get, the farther away the milestones get.

The game is best when you’re not successful, is what I’m trying to say. When you meet the dread bankers of the soul, the dealmakers. When a big brained mutant is cause for alarm, rather than “Yup, target practice.”

The devs have, to be fair, added new creatures. New events. A fair amount of them. And maybe this will improve things in the future. Because god-damn, the game is pretty, with a cool visual aesthetic, a nice combat tune, a contemplative event track, and relaxing music in the overworld. The events are pretty well written, and they vary from enjoying while predicting the outcome, to… Wait, what? Some of them are, fair warning, pretty grim. Like the man who burns his wife. There is no good option in that event. It’s pain and misery. The option to turn off R Rated events is there, by the way, and this is a good option to have.

Accessiblity wise, well, it’s turn based, everything is with the mouse, and everything is pretty clear. The rules, also, are relatively clear: Move, Forage, Scout, and Camp each have their function (Moving blindly, trying to get new stuff at the cost of not moving, seeing ahead two tiles from where you are, and recovering health and stamina), and each turn, you have the option of paying 1 food per character, or taking the hit that results.

It’s an interesting wasteland, and I recommend checking it out… But it could do with more of a late game.

The Mad Welshman is not proud of his wealth of backpacks, but he states for the record that it was earned.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £8.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Content Warning: There’s a fair bit of gore here, and one of the zombies is a small child (pictured in review.) No jumpscares that I noticed in this particular episode, although that may change in the future.

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