Hydroponics Deck 最近的评测

This beautiful game was released in November 1991, the same month and year I was released. While I've changed over the past three decades, this game stays the same. Sometimes it seems like a thing can change just because its surroundings change. Someday I'll be gone, and it will still be here. It's a really lovely little thing. It's difficult and funny. It reminds me to not be stuck in my ways, and to not stick too closely to the formula, because you never know what the formula will be 30 years from now. It reminds me to make art and tell stories, because you never know who might just happen to be born the same time that your art is released, and they imprint on it forever. Thanks for being there with me, Another World. Here's to another 30 years!

This was a cute little visual novel and I am glad I got the opportunity to play through it. I was given this copy as a review copy for my group Strange & Beautiful, and while this game doesn't quite fit the group's aesthetic, it is a lovely little story that deserves a recommendation.

Dear Devere (already cute just by the title) is a little love story in letters. It's simple and sweet, a nice little hour-long experience for a rainy afternoon or late evening. The decorated envelopes and the voice acting of the two leads complement each other to create a lovely amuse-bouche of a visual novel. I definitely wished it was longer, and there are a few portions without voice acting (the bits with the telephone in particular) that felt a little lacking. But as a little feel-good appetizer of a game, Dear Devere is just fine for what it is. If you're into epistolary storytelling, you like a simple & clean romance with a hint of the supernatural, or just want to click through some nice art and voice acting for an hour, Dear Devere is worth a try. It won't shock, titilate or thrill you, but thanks to the narration it's a pleasant distraction from the world, even if only for a little bit. The story is simple and predictable, but well-played. It has the vibe of a classic English or Scottish romance novel, which is a unique vibe for any video game, even visual novels, and that makes Dear Devere stand out. Props to Jasmine Osler for putting together such a quaint specimen.

I was getting impatient to finish after a certain point, because I expected the puzzles to be a little deeper and I was getting a little frustrated with the camera moving itself around when I didn't want it to. But maybe with the pandemic and all of the scary IRL news, this game is what I needed anyway, because it actually made me cry two or three times. I can't recommend to anyone looking for a meaty puzzle game to sink their teeth into, but if for anyreason you're looking for an eject button to launch yourself out of your worries for a little bit, play this game. Got a rainy afternoon to yourself? Want to keep the kids occupied for a few hours? Want to purge your brain after reading news headlines before you get into bed? Play Assemble With Care.

A truly beautiful game. I really admire the developer's outlook on all of their games so far, their interest in nature, simulating natural beings and processes, and creating beauty, and Tree Bonsai is the best PanGuoJun game to date.

It's a small little gem that is rough around the edges in several ways, but has the charm and personality of an artwork made by a single dedicated artist. The dev says it is an artwork more than a game:

" this game can be said to be a 4d sculpture, 3d plus time".

This is a beautiful description and you should go into the game not thinking this is a true to life bonsai simulator, but an artwork generator where you are the artist and you can create your own living bonsai sculpture. In each moment as the tree grows and time passes, you get to make many decisions: to let nature take its own course and grow freely, or interfere and cut branches to mold it to your will? Give the plant nutrients in spring and summer, or perhaps just encourage a few branches to grow? Leave it to its own designs and idle it in the background? Trim or water the diseased parts of the tree? Change the plant's pot, petal colors, leaves, or posture?

If you're the type of person looking for something either very meditative, or you have a mind that will be very interested in making all these decisions, this is the game for you. It's quiet, peaceful, surprisingly addictive. You can let it sit in the background or watch as the seasons pass and your tree grows in interesting ways.

It's a very small, personal little project and has some glitchiness to it- and the English is not seamless. If those things are going to bother you, be warned. So far nothing has prevented me from playing fully through this game (except that it is endless if you want it to be), so I imagine anyone who is interested in the content (not just for achievements) will still get a lot from Tree Bonsai despite that it's a little wibbly wobbly sometimes.

I received this game to review for my curator group, Strange and Beautiful. It doesn't quite match the theme of the group but I wanted to give it a review anyway, because I kinda liked it.

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| What is EW/WE?

A very short but fast-paced surreal horror experience. It is compacted into about 1 hour, less if you hurry, more if you're soaking in the atmosphere and taking your time. It's intentionally vague and plays up the concept of insanity to be obfuscating.
Gameplay-wise, mostly a walking sim, though there are things you have to "interact" with to make the game move forward. There is a section I think you have to actually "play" and not get killed, but I'm not entirely sure.

*Does it have jump scares? Kind of! Things don't dive at you so much as they appear and disappear really fast, sometimes quite close to you. No screeching noises at all. Once the game ramps up they don't feel like jump scares at all, because so much is happening at once.

*I'll give a tiny warning if you get headaches from blinking lights, though.

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pros and Cons?

On one hand, for the price and length, it's done well. It is a complete little story, even if it's confusing. The black and white was a good choice to set the tone; has a good atmosphere and tension and since it's short, it stays tense the ENTIRE time, no letting up. The repetition gets you in a desperate mood to try and break free from the cycle.
It also has some classic horror tropes that I liked a lot. THE HOLE. THE CLOSET. THE ROOM. I like those particular tropes so it was interesting to see them play out. My heartrate was up, I jumped a few times and I even yelled once, to my embarrassment.

On the other hand, I'm sure people will be put off by a few things: Very short gameplay time. Sit down and finish it in an hour or less. Vague & abstract so you may not get a lot out of the "narrative," what little there is of it. And it might not be scary or interesting for people who play a lot of horror games. If you know anything of the indie horror genre, you've probably played similar games, and there probably won't be much to see that you haven't seen before. You may have fun with it if it's your thing, but if you're looking for something totally different you'll probably have to keep looking.

But it's cheap! I recommend trying it, even if you're unsure. It's an easy refund if you don't like it.

This game surprised me in a great way. I've been working through bundle games I've had for years and I have some low expectations going in to a lot of them, but Belladonna is worth much more than the fifty cents I bought it for. I wish most games I blindly buy in bundles could give me the same amount of enjoyment.
Functionally it is a pretty standard point and click adventure, and it's quite short. The "puzzles" have no ridiculous or mind boggling solutions, it's all relatively straightforward, which I appreciated. Graphics and art are a strange mishmash of styles that overall is pretty enjoyable, even when oddly clashing. Keep all this in mind when playing, it's not a AAA game in the slightest, but it has a lot of charm.

Where the game comes through is the story. It took a lot of familiar tropes and sculpted them into a lovely 2 hour vignette which was actually interesting to play through. There was a pleasant level of strangeness, small but unexpected narrative elements are planted through the game and turn the classic Frankenstein story into something we haven't seen before, and it made me laugh a couple times too. It's got a lot of quirky personality for only 2 hours, and it would make a pretty good movie now that I think about it. If you enjoy the horror genre, especially gothic horror, it's definitely worth your time, especially on sale.

This game deserves many more positive reviews!

Corinne Cross's Dead & Breakfast is a little point and click adventure where you play Corrine, who is house sitting what used to be a bed and breakfast. She is an insomniac and divides her odd day/night awake time between the locals of this little town and the ghosts who show up after her first night.

Charming graphics make this little story very endearing. It was a slight adjustment to get used to keyboard only controls and figuring out how to deal with the game's resolution (you can change it in-game by looking and Corinne's laptop). But it is a simple set up which does not take any kind of fast reaction time or anything like that. And if you've played other keyboard control/RPGmaker games you will already be used to it.

Story-wise I want to give this game ten gold stars. There's no sarcasm or trying to be edgy, it's just people saying their thoughts and trying to do their best when faced with one of the hardest subjects any of us will have to deal with: death. The NPCs gave a surprisingly heartfelt performance and you'll find smiles and tears here in a way that few if any video games can pull off.

I hope the people behind this game can keep making wonderful things like CCD&B. I definitely recommend this game, it's worth the full price tag.

Fun! Scary! Rich in lore! Beautiful to look at! I enjoyed almost 100% of Year Walk.

Positives:

There is something extremely delicious about a game that encourages you to have a notebook handy to keep track of clues and write down hints. And it's doubly good in a snowy icy world, for the same reasons I love mysteries set in a snowed-in cabin or the remote northern woods in winter. You become the cold but determined detective and the sheer joy of solving clues is enough to pull you forward. Year Walk really delivers on the atmosphere, you can tell it is lovingly crafted with a deep interest in Swedish lore in mind. Maybe because I typically get through games slower than most people, my natural tendency to take my time and enjoy the view helped me become quite immersed in the game.

The horror of Year Walk is very beautiful, some jump scares but also subtle reveals, eerie atmosphere, and the game likes to mess around with the fourth wall a tiny bit. There are parts that are scary, parts that are sad, and some parts are just lovely to see play out. The sound design helps add to the scariness and is very, very well done. It is all very memorable and you will surely have a favorite moment or two by the end that will stick in your head for a while. The eerie atmosphere never gets old, and I loved that it never relied on gore or violence to frighten me, but well crafted visual cues, dark implications, and building tension. You truly feel you are on the precipice between the real world and some strange spirit world, and there is an increasing sense of dread as you progress that maybe the spirit world really isn't a place for humans, much less one lonely human in the middle of the night on new years eve.

Negatives:

The gosh darn singing puzzle really got my knickers in a twist.I would recommend trying this puzzle for a little while to be properly immersed in the game, because being hopelessly lost in the woods with bizarre singing and your life on the line is part of the story, and hell if this puzzle doesn't perfectly put you in that mindset. But just have a guide ready, scribble the solution out on your notebook ahead of time so you have it, because it relies ENTIRELY on your quality of hearing and you will be one step closer to madness with each failed attempt. You might still have to try it a couple times with the guide, even. It's one of the most frustrating puzzles I've run up against in a game.

Other things I didn't like where very minor. For the most part this was a very smooth experience. Every once in a while I got stumped because the next action you take is to click and drag something, and you can tell in these moments this game was made for an iPad. There is one area near the end of the game I was excited to uncover but there was surprisingly little to discover there and we never had a reason to go back to it, at least in the first playthrough (I only played through once), so that was a smidge disappointing.

In closing:

Year Walk is memorable, well made, and throughly spooky. There are some replayability incentives, though I can imagine it getting a little tedious playing through the game back to back. It will be a game I pick up again once I've forgotten enough of the scares and I'm ready to be frightened alone in the snowy woods again. For anyone who loves horror games it's a must, and even those who typically aren't fond of the genre will find a genuinely interesting narrative and enjoyable game.

Tldr/; Great game. Some minor bumps with one really frustrating puzzle (get a guide for the singing puzzle ahead of time). Take your time, it's beautiful and scary and worth it. Definitely recommended.

Overall, if you're interested in fun, spooky games and think this looks interesting to you, it's definitely worth playing through without knowing anything else about it. Otherwise here's my review.

The first chapter of this game is the best. It's one of the most fun horror experiences I've had in a while. Atmospheric and eerie, I jumped out of my seat, had dawning realizations and at moments I dreaded having to reach out and type even another word. I loved it. The developers knew how to use this medium effectively and it really shines.

The rest of the game, while I enjoyed it, was simply not as scary. The concept of switching settings multiple times and always having some kind of computer interface to interact with was neat, and they did do a good job. It was immersive, sitting at a computer and getting lost in the instructions and atmosphere (it's as if I have a lot of experience doing that in real life :D). The little vignettes unfolding where interesting and I grasped at every little bit of information in those first few chapters. Part of me wishes there had been ten chapters, draw out the stories with subtle hints and give us more vignettes in various horror scenarios, because what they did was fun and interesting. It just felt like a big genre shift away from horror and into (admittedly decent) speculative fiction. Maybe another, scarier vignette would have tipped the balance back to horror? I don't know. I do know that while enjoyable, the rest of the vignettes don't hit the same high. I think #2 and #3 aren't too bad but brought down a little by #4 tearing you out of the immersion completely for the story's sake. I was left craving more of The House Abandon, some kind of escape the room game switching you between finding clues in a house and doing a text adventure on an old computer.

There are other minor complaints and most other reviews cover them pretty well. Frustrating mechanics, instructions not telegraphed clearly, the overall story gives a YMMV vibe. For me that stuff keeps it from being an amazing game, but I'd still recommend it, because it was a really nice experience to play through. It felt kind of like reading a horror short story anthology, and I wish there was more. I don't see this as a game someone regrets playing, even if that first chapter truly is the best. If you are worried about enjoying it all the way through, get it on sale. Chapter 1 is more than worth the sale price.

There isn't much more I can say that others haven't. I'm still amazed at how beautiful Abzu is, and how wonderful it is simply to be in the little ocean world it's created. I'm still moved at how the game progresses and the storytelling and experience that could be crafted without any dialogue and barely any words at all. Mostly I want to write a positive review as a little archive note for myself. Whenever I play a game that really moves me I think back to a quote by Stephen Spielberg in the early 2000's, about how games won't be a real storytelling medium until people "admit they've cried at level 17". Maybe my brain is a sentimental one, but just like Flower and Journey, Abzu brought me to tears. They are collectively some of the most beautiful pieces of art I've experienced and I am so happy I have gotten to enjoy them.