Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £15.99
Where To Get It:Steam
Other Reviews: Early Access

It just doesn’t seem to be my month for games coming out of Early Access. It seems it’s… Fated to be a grim one. Because yes, Destiny or Fate is another one which… Hasn’t really done much to correct the issues I talked about last time.

When it goes well, it goes well. When it doesn’t, it’s a bloody mess, and a tedious slog. Because there’s not much return on your 3 energy, a lot of the time, special abilities vary wildly in utility, levelling up and buying cards is a grindy affair when you don’t actually have room to grind… And bosses… Ohhhh, bosses…

As defence stacks, some bosses have absolutely ridiculous defence that, sometimes, can’t even be broken through with every special used, and focusing on attack (A dangerous strategy at best.) Some curse the hell out of you, so you have to win the fight quickly, but… Whoop, this particular guy is showing that he’s going to lay down two counter attacks, sod! Enemies do show you what they’re going to do, and this can definitely help in not-boss fights… But bosses are just bastards, and it’s not often at all I reach the second area… Not least because even normal enemies can, if fights go even halfway badly, result in a total party wipe. Because a surprising amount of things have “Attack all” to some degree or another.

There remains, as far as I know, one JRPGish battle tune, which becomes wearing incredibly quickly, as does going through the first area several times. The first area… Of five.

Honestly, the most trouble I’ve had with this review is that, because nearly everything I’ve said in the last one, a year ago, remains true (That it’s humdrum in presentation, poorly balanced, wears quickly, and seemingly doesn’t seem to want me to explore its systems), and… What can I say to add to that? Not a whole lot.

This is, in short, a game I can’t even really recommend to experience procgen, card battler players. The few things you unlock mid game don’t stay unlocked, except for hero(in)es, and it’s not worth the grind to try and keep them both alive and levelled. I don’t often say a game is outright bad, but… This is definitely one of those times.

The Mad Welshman’s lot in life is mostly set. He thinks it was because he stole Fate’s lunch money in school. Look, sorry Fate, can I get a leg-up?

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: $4 (Approximately £3 at time of writing)
Where To Get It: Itch.IO

Content Warning: There is heterosexual sex between a deerman and a tanuki. That’s literally it, and it was good.

Filed under: Game Reviews, Games Gone By by admin
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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £1.69
Where To Get It: Steam

Content Warning: There is a succubus in the game. This means implied mind control elements and life-draining sex. Otherwise, it’s… MF sex, throughout.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £7.19
Where To Get It: Steam

Agent A is, some Simon puzzles and a couple of brute forcers aside, a fairly good puzzle game where I’ve never felt the need for a walkthrough (the urge, yes. But not the need.) So that’s quite a pleasant start, both to the review and the game itself. But hot-damn, it also has some moments in the game that make this review really hard to write, because I have to avoid spoilers that I really want to talk about.

Still, let’s give this a go. Agent A is, as you might have guessed from the subheader, a Myst style “Explore a place, solving puzzles as you go.” Except it’s not uninhabited, and it is, in fact, the home of the antagonist, enemy spy Ruby LaRouge, who has a reputation for “dismissing” enemy agents, a reputation you witness the truth of just a few hours before you trail her to her hideout.

And ohhh, she’s a good antagonist. Vaudevillainous as a James Bond villain, confident, sadistic… It feels like she’s taunting you a lot more than she actually is, because her presence lingers. So… What about the puzzles?

Well, the good news is that with most of them, the clues are there if you know where to look for them, and the item puzzles only take a little bit of wandering and futzing before you work them out. The colour ones appear to be colour blind friendly (As always, corrections on this from folks with colourblindness appreciated, but it does seem to be holding to the “Difference in both hue and light value” rule that works best), and there are only a few Simon style or brute force puzzles (of which the piano, in Chapter 1, is the worst to my mind. As soon as I saw a pianola roll, I audibly groaned.)

The controls are also pretty simple, although there’s some slowness to the movement that may not be appreciated: Left click does a thing, left drag moves a thing or drags a thing from inventory to be used, right click is “Go back a bit.” And that last one works because the tree of rooms and zones is kept relatively tight. But it should be noted that the perceptive player, who has their screenshot button handy, is rewarded (not just in puzzle clues, but… Other information), whereas the one not looking at everything they humanly can will have a much tougher time. It’s that sort of game. Heck, there are even secret things to do, ones I’ve definitely missed on this review playthrough.

Still… The game looks good. The music is good. The voice acting is solid, especially the antagonist who comprises the majority of the game, and its clarity works for it. It’s also an experience that feels longer than it is (in a good way), and has some replay value if you’re a perfectionist. But mostly, it does what it says on the tin, tightly, and with a little panache, and I can quite easily recommend this one for the puzzlers out there. But remember, Ruby is mean, and that is all the warning I can give you!

The Mad Welshman sometimes chafes under the need to hide spoilers, as many people do. Although… He does like hearing the shocked cries of “The hell?” as people get to certain plot points too… Decisions, decisions…

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £2.89
Where To Get It: Steam

Singers, and indeed musicians of all kinds, get groupies. People who fan over them so much that they want to be inappropriate with their adored musician. But in Kawaii Deathu Desu, the handsy fans have invaded perhaps the last stage they should have… The stage of various supernatural Idol Singers, starting with… Death herself.

Yes, Death is an Idol Singer now. And her fans appear to love being reaped.

More accurately, Kawaii Deathu Desu is an extremely twitchy version of One Finger Death Punch, in which you use the left and right mouse buttons or arrow keys to murderise fans, levelling up idols, unlocking idols and their costumes, using their special ability with either space or both arrow keys at once, a thing you can accidentally do if you’re having to really lash out (and you are. Often.) And, funnily enough, it’s that levelling up and unlocking that’s precisely the problem. But we’ll get back to that in a moment.

Aesthetically, it’s an interesting mix of cutesy pixels… And grim pixels, moving seamlessly between both. The Idols are cute, swaying, headbanging, playing to their hearts’ content… Until they strike, whereupon they become horrific weapons of destruction, their fans vanishing into ash, being sliced in two…

And then their ghosts pop up, and most of them have heart eyes, with hearts flashing down from their ruined bodies as they vanish. The music is good, reminiscent of various styles from kitschy J-Pop, to harder tracks, and everything is pretty clear, even down to showing the keyboard controls for the menu only when you’re using the keyboard. I enjoy that. Oh, and the developer splash screen UwU’s you. Shouldn’t forget that.

But gameplay wise, while the core, basic gameplay is mostly alright, the difficulty ramps up way more quickly than the souls you need to level up and buy things does. I have, through sheer bloody mindedness, managed to unlock the second level of China, and Emmy, the second character (A zombie rocker who summons a handsy graveyard of their own as their special), but it feels, right now, as if I have a longer road ahead of me than is enjoyable. While the earlier stages, themselves, still feel enjoyable.

So, overall, I’m conflicted about Kawaii Deathu Desu. I love its mix of cutesy and not-cute-at-all, and its core mechanic works just fine, but it gets twitchy as hell quickly for too little reward, generally speaking, with farming of the earlier levels a must to progress, and that… That annoys me. Maybe it’ll be changed. But right now, it hasn’t, so… Only get this if you’ve read all this, and still want to give it a go.

OwO, what’s this? The Mad Welshman appreciates cutesy death deities.

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