Afil games publishes no-frills puzzle games, like Sokobalien. Honeyland is no exception. In this ,your goal is to get your bear to its Honey. You do this by playing cards with direction arrow and a number. The bear moves in the direction of the arrow, relative to how it is facing. The number corresponds to the number of spaces the bear moves. The goal is to play the cards in the right order to get the honey, and that is it. Later on, special cards, like jumps, are introduced, biut the idea is the same. Play the right cards in the right order to get the honey.

There are thirty increasingly tough levels, and nothing else. Still, Honeyland is not a bad game. It is only five dollars, after all. You could much worse for the money. I give this a Recommended with a seven back end score. I could continue and ramble on to meet word count, but after a recent disaster of a review, I’m going to play its safe for awhile.

Overall: Honeyland is a no-frills puzzler that delivers a decent puzzle game, and nothing else.

Verdict: Recommended

eShop Page

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The Japanese indie developer SAT-BOX is getting lazy in my opinion. I have given them two must plays in the past, one for Extreme Bike X and one for Sushi Shot. However, they increased their pace to two games a month. As a result, their usual decent quality is slipping drastically. How do I know? Enter Sushi Drop, which uses all of the same assets as Sushi Shot, including music, sushi and UI. This is on top of the fact the game is a mediocre stacking game, where you drop sushi into order to build a high tower of sushi.

There are two main modes in Sushi Drop, Score attack, where you just build as high a tower as you can, and Battle, where you take turns dropping sushi until one of you drops a sushi off the board. The problem here is the physics, it sucks and makes no sense. Why does some sushi stick in place and other pieces do not? Don’t know. See the yellow egg sushi about the salmon piece in the pic above? Normally, it should slide off, but it does not. Therefore, The physics inconsistency sinks the game instantly. This is regardless of how good the rest of it, and the rest of it is honestly alright.

SAT-BOX needs to slow it down and take their time. Sushi Drop is mediocre at best, and I know they can do better, they have done better. This gets a Not Recommended with a five back-end score. If they patched the physics to make things consistent, I’d probably give Sushi Drop a much better verdict and score, but as it is, it gets what it gets.

Overall: Sushi Drop could have been a lot better, and should be a lot better. But terrible physics sinks it. SAT-BOX, do better!

Verdict: Not Recommended

eShop Page

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Trinity Fusion has an interesting premise. Three universes were created, the underworld, overworld and hyperworld. They all went wrong. The beasts of the underworld went feral. The machines of the overworld rebelled And the humans in the hyperworld transcended into a new species called the Ewer. You are Maya, a woman who can travel between universes, and needs to save them. You play three versions of yourself, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, Altara, Kera and Naira. You can even, at points, fuse two versions together to get special abilities.

Trinity Fusion is a rogue-lite. The game is divided into runs in procedural generated levels in each of the three universes. Each universe has unique biomes and enemies. Each level has two exits. One to an in-universe biome, or one to a place called the In-Between. In each level, you’ll find amplifiers that you give you in-run buffs. Stack some of the same buff type, you get an even more powerful buff. There are psychic amplifiers you can get that give you permanent buffs, like an extra 10 health.

Combat in Trinity Fusion is your have a melee weapons, and a powerful energy weapon that is powered up by melee attacks. To get around, you’ll slide, jump and dash, plus abilities specific to each character, like wall jumping for Naira.

I have two complaints about Trinity Fusion. First, loading takes forever. Second, the teleport function in the hub, Prime, is broken and doesn’t work(or at least I can’t figure how to use it). Other than that, Trinity Fusion is a stellar game, fun, absorbing and inviting. I will give it a solid Recommended with an eight back-end score. The is solid fun and worth the time invested.

Overall: Trinity Fusion is an interesting rogue-like where you play three separate characters in three different worlds and is overall very good.

Verdict: Recommended

eShop Page

P.S. Why not play what started a genre: Epyx Rogue!

Game received for free from the publisher.

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I’ll be honest, Tomba! Special Edition(Tombi! in the EU) is not for me. It just is not. I tried it, twice, just never clicked with me. Cannot put a finger on exactly why. I should like it, its a 2.5D platformer where you can traverse the foreground and background, but I didn’t care for it. Maybe because it plays more like a point and click adventure. You see, in each area, you get various quests to complete, like find baby chicks or feed a monkey, go do that, the story story progresses. However, if you don’t even find the monkey, the story stops dead as you cannot move forward, so you have to go read a guide. I shouldn’t have to read a walk-through for a port of a 1997 platformer, but you kind of do for Tomba! Special Edition.

Tomba! Special Edition has nothing particularly wrong with it. It is well made, allows you to save anywhere, has lots of behind the scenes stuff. I just don’t like it. And that’s just fine, somebody else might. So playing a pink-haired cave-man fighting pig men sound appealing, by all means, play it. This is why the Your Mileage May Vary verdict exists, for these types of games. I shouldn’t have to suffer through it just for a review, so I’m putting my foot down. Tomba! Special Edition gets a YMMV with a seven back-end score. Again, there’s nothing wrong with it, it just was not for me.

Overall: Tomba! Special Edition is a remaster of a odd platformer from another age that some might enjoy even though I did not.

Verdict: YMMV

eShop Page

PS. Try Glyph!

Game received for free from the publisher.

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The most read review on my site, by a thousand views, is the abysmal Hentai Golf, quite possibly the worst golf game ever created. So in comes Easy Come Easy Golf, which is absolutely delightful, but flew completely under the radar. I had never heard of this 2022 title until I randomly found some guy on X who talked about completing it recently. At his word and recommendation, I bought it, and after putting several hours into it, it is completely worth the money. Its not like a PGA tour game, its more like Hot Shots Golf, which is made by the same developer of that series, Clap Hanz. .

The catch to Easy Come Easy Golf is that each hole requires a different character. You start off with 4, the rest filled with a generic “mini-golfer” and over the course of the long campaign, you will unlock thirty in total. Each character has their own strengths and get more powerful by leveling them up via play. You unlock new characters by winning regular tournaments, which spawn matches against characters. Win those, and characters get unlocked. In additions to tournaments and match play there are distance challenges that unlocks character colors and outfits(which raise character level. New courses are unlocked with tour rank, which is raised once you win enough tournaments, which spawn the boss battles, and you win.

The golf itself is great, not surprising given the pedigree of Easy Come Easy Golf. Its easy to pick up, hard to master. You get a choice of two shot types, either flicking the right stick, or the the three tap system. I used the stick system, but either work. The game is gentle early on, but packs a punch later once you level your team and learn the mechanics.

The meat of Easy Come Easy Golf is the single player campaign. However, there are numerous online modes where you take your leveled team online and face others. But I have to wonder how easy it is to find others, given the game’s age and low visibility. My only other complaint is that the loading takes a long time, longer than it should anyway.

Easy Come Easy Golf gets a must Play with a nine back-end score. It is truly is a delightful golf game and should be as popular as Hentai Golf sadly seems to be. There is a serious golf game here that fans of Hot Shots Golf, or golf in general, will love.

Overall: Easy Come Easy Golf is a Hot Shots Golf spinoff by the same developer. Given that pedigree, its not surprising it is great!

Verdict: Must Play

eShop Page

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Landnama bills itself as a “non-violent, roguelite survival base builder.” In this, you play various Viking clans settling Iceland in expeditions. To win an expedition, you must successfully colonize six areas. In each colony, you start off with a central hub, that needs to get upgraded 4 times to win. It get upgraded each time you reach a level of heart production, five, fifteen, twenty-five and thirty. To produce hearts, you explore the area, unveiling tiles and building various buildings that either produce hearts or modify those that do. You also need to build houses, which raise the total amount of hearts you can store. The survival aspect comes in the winter toll, which will take away a random amount of hearts. Lose all your hearts, you have one do over. Fail again, colony over. Fail colonizing three times and the expedition ends.

The trick in Landnama is to balance exploration and building with heart generation, so that you always have enough hearts to survive the winter. You also need to build strategically, as certain buildings can only be placed next to other building or certain tile types. In addition, there is a reputation system. Every successful colony gets you reputation, which can be used to unlock new clans, and bonuses. The harder the difficulty of expedition, and of the colonizing itself, the more reputation you will earn. And you’ll need a lot of it since everything is pretty pricey. But it does force you to get good real fast.

I liked Landnama, enough to hand it a Must Play with a nine back-end score. It’s a simple game at its heart, and each game takes only a few minutes. However, it is a game that I found engaging and you’ll want to play again. I’ve reviewed a whole lot of crap lately, and the eShop is flooded with it. It is nice to stumble upon a well-made game like Landnama and I whole-heartily recommend it for those look for a good time-waster. This is not a grand-strategy game, but it stands on its own well enough to be worth it.

Overall: Landnama is a simple but engaging strategy game of Vikings colonizing Iceland that is worth a play to anyone looking a great time-waster.

Verdict: Must Play

eShop Page

P.S. Try Dolmenjord for good Viking-puzzling action!

Game received for free from the publisher!

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And there it goes, any good will Big Way earned with the surprisingly good Love Island. Lovely Crush is their follow up and while it isn’t bad, it isn’t particularly worth a purchase either. This is a pop blocks-style game where you pop connecting blocks. I’ve reviewed a bunch of these, including Eroblast. Lovely Crush simply fails to distinguish itself game-play wise from similar cohorts, and honestly, I found it rather boring. Just board after board, with similar power-ups and obstacles. There is no tutorial, but you do not need one. You know exactly what to do here, as you’ve done it before.

The real draw, if you want to call it that, is to unlock pictures of anime cat-girls. Except they are AI-generated. Not only that, there are nude anime cat-girls on the Switch in the form of Neko Secret Room and its sequel Neko Secret Homecoming. Both those games are trash, but the images aren’t ai-generated and they’re nude. No such luck with Lovely Crush, which gets a T rating. In there end, this game has been done elsewhere and done better, both in terms of the puzzle game play and the anime cat girls.No reason to buy it. No reason to play. Lovely Crush gets a Not Recommended with a four back-end score.

Overall: Lovely Crush is routine block-popping puzzler with AI-generated cat-girls. Both halves of this game have been done elsewhere, and done better.

Verdict: Not Recommended

eShop Page

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In 444 Switch reviews over the last 2 years, I have never cursed once. That will end with number 445(this one). WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?! Basketball Anime Girls is so bad, It would get #1 on my upcoming Year 2 Best/Worst list, if it weren’t for The Love not working, so this game will get #2. There are no redeeming qualities, and I wasn’t laughing, so it’s not getting a Hilariously Awful verdict either. I guess the best way to explain this piece of shit is to post this minute long video, which also debuts a logo video made by the very talented Laura Stevia(which was for a Patreon that never materialized).

So, Basketball Anime Girls is a basketball game where you run around with the ball trying to get near the basket and dunk(but somehow miss the net). The opponent is trying to do the same. The only problem is the AI is garbage. The opposing girls run straight at you, but once they get the ball by touching you, they either run for their basket, or run around at random. The girls on your side will do the same, either run around at random or straight for the basket, its a coin toss which one they’ll do. Each basket you score is one point. Each one the opponent does subtracts one. You need five points to win.

Basketball Anime Girls does have unlockable girls, balls, and courts. But why suffer through it? This game is shit, pure unadulterated shit. Even the marketing blurb is shit:

Step into the world of “Basketball Anime Girls” a captivating 3D basketball simulator that combines the excitement of real-life basketball with the vibrant charm of anime style. Choose your favorite anime girl skin and hit the courts for an immersive and thrilling experience.

Its all lies, all of it. It is not captivating, thrilling, charming or exciting. It is Garbage and will get a one back-end score. Heck it’d give it a 0.5 if I could. Do not buy this game. Do not go near Basketball Anime Girls. Let me suffer so you don’t have to!

Overall: Basketball Anime Girls is an awful, awful game that is neither fun nor charming. Stay far away!

Verdict: Garbage

eShop Page

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Somequest, makers of the Beauties Unveiled games, has come out with Fantasy Beauties, a jigsaw game with a twist. You get a jigsaw board and an empty space will light up. At the top are six pieces. You have several seconds to put in the correct piece. What’s nice is, you can actually place any piece, not just the one being lit up and it’ll count. As you put in pieces, your powerup meter will fill. First it will fill to auto-put one piece, then three pieces, then five. Fail to put a piece in time, the meter will reset and the pieces at the top will change. When you complete the picture in Fantasy Beauties, you get stars based on if you completed it and how fast you did it. You can always look at the completed picture by pressing Y.

Fantasy Beauties is a fine little game, except there is a little problem. The DLC. Yes, there are already six DLC beauties to download(with three boards each). Three are free, three are two dollars each. They all should be free and in the game to start with it. There is no real excuse for this and I see it as slimy. I’m imagining somequest is going to do the RedDeer Model and release bundle after bundle. Let’s hope not, as they didn’t do it for previous games, but I put nothing past them or any developer anymore. Therefore, I will dock a point from the score, giving Fantasy Beauties a Recommended with a seven back-end score. The game is good and even addicting to a certain extent, but the developers sinking to scummy levels just does not sit right with me, especially when the game is priced at twenty dollars base.

Overall: Fantasy Beauties is a fine little jigsaw puzzle game, but the pricing and DLC doesn’t sit well with me.

Verdict: Recommended

eShop Page

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Rogue-like is a genre comprised of games characterized with randomized levels, and permadeath. But how many people have played Rogue itself, the game that spawned an entire genre? I’d wager not that many in recent times. So along comes Epyx Rogue, a version of the original game, well the graphical version by Epyx anyway(the original was ASCII graphics). In it, you play a rogue who travels through the Dungeons of Doom looking for an amulet. There are two modes, a standard which allows saving, and Iron Rogue mode that doesn’t. Either way, the game is merciless, and obtuse, it is an eighties game after all. Still, I prefer Iron Rogue as that’s really how the game is meant to be played.

Most of what you’ll be doing in Epyx Rogue is walking around levels, picking up items, and fighting monsters by walking into them. The rest of actions are all listed on the screen, or via the action wheel. Still, things can get overly complicated. Take drinking a potion. Press R, Press Y, then press A on the potion screen. Then when it asks you to selection a potion, you use the letter wheel to select the appropriate letter corresponding to an item. If you’re lucky, it’ll be a good effect. If not, you’ll die. Everything is done manually, including equipping weapons and armor. Like I said, Epyx Rogue is an eighties DOS game transplanted to modern controllers. Fortunately, there is an extensive instruction manual in-game to help you understand things.

New to Epyx Rogue is one of three soundtracks: Dungeon Ambience, Dark Music and Epic Music. I choose the ambience, but any of three are fine(or none). There is also a few visual options(like CRT or Soft). As for longevity, Epyx Rogue is Rogue, you’ll be at this for awhile, especially when you die on Iron Rogue mode. Now the score: Epyx Rogue gets a Must Play verdict with a nine back-end score. Why? It’s Rogue, its a classic that spawned a genre. Yes, its extremely difficult, unfair even at times, but that’s kind of the point. You play this because you are glutton for punishment and will continually come back asking for more. And if you’re a fan of rogue-likes and don’t like Rogue, are you really a fan?

Overall: Epyx Rogue is a faithful translation of the classic eighties DOS game that spawned an entire genre, warts and all. A must for Rogue-like fans.

Verdict: Must Play

eShop Page

P.S. Try Dungeon Arsenal for a rogue-like card-based dungeon crawler.

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Love Island is by Big Way, makers of such trash as Hentai RPG Isekai Journey and Hentai Uni. Its a match 3 dating sim in the vein of the classic Hunie Pop on steam. And you know what? After playing it a bit, its good! Yes, Big Way made a game that’ll get a Recommended verdict! I was shocked at the quality of this. Let’s dig in:

In Love Island you play a horny guy traveling on vacation to an island resort where you get to screw 5 lovely ladies: The receptionist at the resort, a lifeguard, a maid, and a drunk tourist, Beat them, and you’ll unlock the fifth lady, a DJ named Cumchita. They each have three progressively harder levels that act as the framework for a very basic story. Like the receptionist plays out in the lobby, her office, then a secluded beach spot. Screwing is represented by lots of hearts on a black screen, and a jingles. Now for the game play itself:

Love Island’s game play is very similar to Hunie Pop, crossed with Isekai Journey. The red, yellow, blue and orange tiles fill the seduction meter on the right. The green martini’s fill your health. Above the challenge meter is a counter that counts down to when the girls challenges you(“You have a small dick” ect.). This takes away a certain amount of your health. Matching four a kind gets you a heart box that fills your energy meter. The energy meter is used for the lips(Health), gag(seduction points) and the Champaign(shuffle). On the left are three items: The strawberry gives health. The flowers are seduction points. The rings act as extra lives(and will be needed later on). Beating a level gives a choice of one three stat boosts that you’ll need to beat later levels. Lose health its game over and back to the start, like it was in Isekai Journey. Overall, Love Island is good!

I have to commend Big on improving. Love Island is a good game. It won’t last particularly long, but that’s alright, its fun while it lasts. Now what keeps this from a Must Play is that the girls are stereotypes and not endearing, like the Hunie Pop crew was. Still this gets a Recommended Verdict with an eight back-end score. Its not a classic, but it sticks the land quite nicely. Now if Big Way can keep the momentum going, that’d be great!

Overall; Love Island is a match 3 Dating Sim that is Big Way’s best game, and is actually solid.

Verdict: Recommended

eShop Page

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I wanted to like Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic. A story-based pinball game sounds kind of cool. The issue is, other, better, Pinball games exist; Pinball FX3 and Zaccaria Pinball, to be exact. The tables you have to play on are simple and not very interesting, and I played on more than one. They lack the bell and whistles of those other tables, and lack complexity. Let me show you:

This table is what you see is what you get. The table is spartan and fairly straightforward. Granted, it bares a resemblance to the older Zaccaria tables, but that’s the point, the genre has moved on, Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic has not. Sure there’s a story about a witch trying to destroy the world and the raccoon standing up to her, but its just window dressing for severe boredom. To be fair, there are a lot of tables and modes, including a side mode with special tables like skeeball or “Pinchinko”, but its simply not enough to hold my attention.

But what really sinks Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic is the slightly delay in pressing the flipper buttons and the flipper flipping. I lost a lot of balls because the flipper didn’t flip fast enough. But even without it, the tables aren’t interesting and the whole thing lacks a coat of polish that is necessary in today’s ePinball. I just can’t recommend this. It was a valiant effort, but required a few more months in the oven. Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic gets a Not Recommended verdict with a four back-end score.

Overall: Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic is an ambitious story-based pinball game, except the pinball is stuck in the past and the whole thing lacks polish.

Verdict: Not Recommended

eShop Page

Game received for free from the publisher.

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Longtime readers of this site will be aware of my verdicts; Garbage, Not Recommended, Your Mileage May Vary, Recommended and Must Play. But there is a sixth verdict, that in roughly 400 reviews, I have given a grand total of three times: Hilariously Awful. These are for games so inept I can’t hate them. The honorees are: Mini Kart Racing, Martial Knight and Flannel Amethyst. Now a fourth has entered the area, Counter Force Tactical Warfare. It is a shooter so inept, I played it for over an hour! Buckle up, because this will be a longer one!

I’ll start off with a video of Counter Force Tactical Warfare, to give you an idea of what you are dealing with. It’s level twenty-three, nine enemies, and auto-shoot on. Yes, the game plays itself. Once you get your enemy in the cross-hairs, it will fire. You can turn it off, but it doesn’t make the game any easier than it already is. And yes, they all stand in a line and shoot at you(more on that later).

Now, you’ll notice you have two health bars armor and HP. Armor does not work in Counter Force Tactical Warfare, as getting hit only drains HP. You do have limited ammo, but you’ll never run out as the levels are incredibly short, literally taking around twenty seconds each. The first took five seconds. I was shocked it was over so fast. Up at the top, you have your money which are used to buy guns, These guns:

There are several lovely weapons in Counter Force Tactical Warfare, but none of them matter, the starting Ak-47 gets the job done. This because the enemies are all one hit kills. They also don’t put much of a threat as they all run directly at all you and shoot. They’ll even nicely clump together for easy killing. If you’re missing one, just look at the radar, you’ll find them.

Counter Force Tactical Warfare takes itself so seriously, with its grand menu music, to the announcers, to the jingle when you win. But its completely inept. The in-level “music” is just gun fire in the background. In one level, you can see the seams in the sky box. Or you can take the barrel that clips through everything:

Or the health pack dangling in the air:

Demenci tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end, they fell flat on their faces. They wanted to create something special, they just lacked the collective talent to see it pulled off. I mean this game could have been far worse than it is. Imagine no jingle at all. Imagine no auto-shoot. There could have improved ever so slightly that it was no longer a Hilariously Awful, but just plain Garbage. That’s how much of a fine line it is. So step up , Counter Force Tactical Warfare, and take your prize! You’re still getting a one back-end score, because you are still awful, but at least you have something shiny to show off. Well done!

Overall: Counter Force Tactical Warfare is so bad, it became only my fourth Hilariously Awful verdict. Still crap though.

Verdict: Hilariously Awful

eShop Page

P.S. I know the name is a takeoff on Counter Strike! Hopefully this gets as many views as Call of Honor.

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Gran Turismo is an immortal series car racing games on the Sony Playstation series of consoles. I’ve only played the PSP version of it, but it was very good! Gran Carismo is attempting to fool people with a similar name(Like the horrible Call of Honor), but fails miserably. This is because it is trash. The graphics are trash. The sound is trash. The game play is trash. It all starts with the help menu:

This is engrish, written by people for English is not their first language. All that boils down to, win the races in Gran Carismo to win money to buy cars and tracks. But there is a little problem, winning a race is extremely hard. Winning is extremely hard not because the game is so good and requires great driving. It is because the AI is shit. On my first race, cars crashed and I crashed into crash.

One race I was in first place,and a car came the opposite direction and slammed into me. I’m sort of joking, the second place just ran into me. Gran Carismo is that bad. It is entirely devoid of worth and reason to play. I could go on into great detail about how bad it is, but I just don’t feel like it. But please trust me when I say there are no redeeming qualities. If you want a good racing sim on the switch, this is not one of them. Try Grid Autosport instead. That is a very, very good auto simulation, everything Gran Carismo is not.

Overall: Gran Carismo is not Gran Turismo, missing absolutely everything that made that series great! Avoid at all costs.

Verdict: Garbage

eShop Page

P.S. Try Extreme Bike X for good, cheap racing action!

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The invention of AI imagery has done a serious disservice to gaming, as it allows unbridled laziness to take over. Case in point: Pakotime and their games. Another case in point: Cyberpunk Paradise Elysium: The Visual Novel. It is a visual novel made up largely of AI generated cities and buildings. The character cutouts are probably also AI generated as well, if the lack of hands in the generic cutouts are anything to go by. I can also tell by the lack of specific imagery within the game. For example, take this:

In a normal visual novel, you would see an image of them escaping through the secret exit. But not in Cyberpunk Paradise Elysium. But everything is told, not shown. Oh they’ll tell you what happens, amazing things, but never show in any images of the action, because its all generic AI generated garbage. But the rot goes far deeper than just the AI generated imagery. It extends to the story itself.

The writing in Cyberpunk Paradise Elysium is bad, really, really bad. The visual novel tells the story of a protagonist and her allies taking on a giant corporation that is kidnapping people, for reasons. It’ll tell you the corporation does bad things, but never spell it out:

After awhile, Cyberpunk Paradise Elysium turns into some thinly veiled leftist anti-corporate manifesto about resistance or something and I checked out. I didn’t care about any of the characters, it gave me no reason to. And because I didn’t care about any of the characters, I didn’t care about what they were doing. Since I didn’t care what they were doing, I didn’t care about people rising up against the evil corporation. And because I did not care, I just quit and never went back. When a porn game handles this stuff better, you know you’ve done messed up.

Cyberpunk Paradise Elysium is a visual novel that fails at all levels. Its fails in the visual part, as its all generic AI images. It fails as novel, with piss-poor writing. There is no reason to play this. The story is nothing you haven’t read before, and done much better. The visuals are all generic and frankly could have been left out, and little would have changed. This gets a garbage with a two back-end score.

Overall: Cyberpunk Paradise Elysium is a visual novel that fails at the visuals, and as a novel.

Verdict: Garbage

eShop Page

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Musashi vs Cthulhu is a glorified rhythm game where you must tap the correct buttons at the right time or you will die. You are Musashi, a famous warrior in feudal Japan, and you must do battle with the forces of Cthulhu, who come from the left and the right. Each enemy requires the right button press to die. There left upper, middle and lower attacks, and right upper middle and lower attacks. Each attack fills your spirit lantern. When full, I believe it slows enemies down. A hit will drain it, even if its just charging. You get hit when you miss, and three hits and you are dead.

If you read my Conarium review, you’ll know HP Lovecraft is one my favorites. Musashi vs Cthulhu certainly has the right idea. Cthulhu in Feudal Japan is awesome. It looks good. It sounds good. There’s a very good tutorial. There’s an online leader board. The issue I have is the game play is disappointing. I didn’t find it fun at all. Rhythm games are great, I used to have an expensive DDR mat(still do for Xbox 360). Musashi vs Cthulhu misses the point I think by having completely one note game play. There’s no real progression. No unlockables. No other playable characters. Only five different enemies. The Steam reviews are positive though, so people do like this.

Honestly, Musashi vs Cthulhu is too an awesome an idea to waste on such one note game play.But buy it if you want to. This gets a Your Mileage May Vary with a six back-end score.

Overall: Musashi Vs Cthulhu is too awesome an idea to waste on the uninteresting rhythm-game like game play.

Verdict: YMMV

eShop Page

Game received for free from the publisher!

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Dungeon Arsenal is a roguelike card game. You pick a character and climb a tower of five sections made up of 10 floors each. Each section contains a treasure room with contains items, relics and gold. The treasure room is almost always directly followed by a shop, which sells weaponry, health restoration, and a relic(more on those later). Floor 10 is always boss room. The rest of the floors contains an assortment of cards. There are weapons cards, items cards, stairs up, and gold(for the shop). Also contained are enemy cards. They will attack your hero for a defined amount shown on the card. You attack them with weapons for a defined amount, that last also for a defined amount. If your hero runs out of HP, its game over. And back to the start you go for another run.

After each boss in dungeon Arsenal, you get a choice of a relic, which has a defined effect(like pointing out an enemy card), a permanent health increase, or gold. I find that the permanent health increase is the most beneficial to get. Aside from relics, you can unlock more characters, card backing(which have effects) and special weaponry. There are also four different difficulty levels.

My only complain about Dungeon Arsenal, which keeps it from a Must Play, is that it really was not optimized for the Switch. As you can see, there’s a cursor, and the layout looks like its for a PC(steam version is here). The nice thing is though, there is a touch controls, which help immensely Other than that, this is a fine roguelike card-based dungeon crawler that I found enjoyable. This gets a Recommended with an eight back-end score.

Overall: Dungeon Arsenal is a rougelike card based dungeon crawler that I found enjoyable. Is more at home on the PC though.

Verdict: Recommended

eShop Page

Game received for free from the publisher!

A card game that got a Must Play from me is the awesome Balatro.

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Playing Puzzle World Neko Girls gives me new appreciation for Neko Secret Room and Neko Secret Homecoming, as bad those games were, and they were both awful, at least the anime cat girls were nude. No such luck here, with the game being rated E. You just get cutesy, fully clothed (though busty) anime cat girls. Its certainly creepy to an extent, but not as much as say, Princess Maker was. As for the game play, the market blurb describes the game as:

Try yourself in Puzzle World – a unique puzzle game that stands out from ordinary puzzles with its unconventional mechanics.

Puzzle World Neko Girls is different from similar games in that you simply rotate the pieces, and later on, mirror them. The game is harder than its siblings. It will even provide hints after solving a percentage of the puzzle(three in total). You might even need the hints if you get stuck, However, the difficulty doesn’t make it a good game. Just a little bit more tolerable, even though the art is AI generated like its siblings.

In the end, what is there more to say about Puzzle World Neko Girls? I guess, I wonder who this is for? It is not necessarily for horny thirteen year old boys, they’ll got for the harder games(like Neko Secret Homecoming), or go look at Hentai. Still, you could look at this as “baby’s first lewd game, getting you hooked to level up to the Hentai titles. In the end, begin slightly more tolerable isn’t a reason to get this. Pass on this anyway.

Puzzle World Neko Girls gets a Garbage verdict with a three back-end score. Note that threes usually get Not Recommended verdicts, but going forward, I will decouple the verdict and scores as need be.

Overall: Puzzle World Neko Girls is more tolerable than other games of this type, that does not mean you should plop down your money!

Verdict: Garbage

eShop Page

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The key to enjoying Hand In Hand is not to play solo under any circumstance. I mean, you can play solo, it’s just completely unintuitive, and so my brain broke while playing it. No seriously, I have now have a headache trying to play the game. You play as as a guy and a girl soulmates who are separated by an evil entity and must reunite. The guy on the top screen is controlled by the L stick and jumps with L and attacks with ZL. The girl on the bottom screen is controlled by the R stick, jumps with R and phases with ZR. Phasing allows you to pass by hazards or make certain objects appear and disappear. Playing solo in Hand in Hand, you will be controlling both at once, and good luck to you!

As I said, you will need to control both characters and solve puzzles that will effect each other’s screens. Usually, you can get away with one at time, except in cases like above, where I got the headache from. I’m sure Hand in Hand is a long and lovely puzzle game, I just don’t have anyone to play with to control one of the characters, so I’m stuck. Therefore, I’m going to score this Recommended* which I haven’t done in awhile. The * stands for “Assuming ou are playing with another person.” Alone, I’d give this a Not recommended with a three, but I’m not going to be cruel here. This is a well made game, its just best played with a friend.

Hand in Hand gets a Recommended* with an eight back-end score.

Overall: Hand in Hand is a decent game that should be, under no circumstances, played solo.

Verdict: Recommended*

Eshop Page

*Assuming you are playing with a friend!

Game received for free from the publisher!

P.S. Glyph is the one platformer I think received a Must Play verdict, and it can be played solo!

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3 minutes Mystery 2 is the sequel to a game a called 3 minutes Mystery. You may notice some bad grammar with the title, that’s because 3 minute mysteries was already a thing. The game is a localization of a Japanese game released by developer Tokoyo-Tsushin(TT), who is prolific in Japan, not so much here, and impossible to track down for a review code. anywhere. So I bought it and played it. The game is sixty short mysteries. You have a set up and four questions about the mystery, all solvable somewhere in the image.

It doesn’t matter if you get the answer wrong in 3 minutes Mystery 2, you just try again. Also there’s a hint which clues you in to where to look. That doesn’t mean the answers are necessarily straight forward. Sometimes the game will ask you infer something that isn’t necessarily seen in the image exactly. Like in one puzzle, you are asked to find something that identifies the victim. The answer is the ring on her finger, because there was an engraving of her name on the ring on her finger. Or then there’s the one where they ask what gives you the clue to the the time of day. The answer is this:

I don’t even know what morning glories are, so I just got the answer by chance. 3 minutes Mystery 2 reminded me sometimes of Encyclopedia Brown, where the key to solving the mystery is some roundabout thing like: “I know the guy committed the robbery because he asked for more items to get so that the victim would spend more time checking out at the grocery store because he couldn’t use the fast lane!” 100% true example! Granted, the answer may not hard to find, but the logic involved stretches credulity.

3 minutes Mystery 2 is a casual game, it is for people like your grandma, and that’s perfectly fine. There are sixty mysteries in total, so she’ll get a good 2-3 hours out of it. Despite the logic issues, the game is fine for what it is. I give 3 minutes mystery 2 a Recommended with seven back-end score.

Overall: 3 minutes Mystery 2 is a casual find-the-object game for your grandma, and that’s perfectly fine. She’ll enjoy it.

Verdict: Recommended

P.S. For a similar casual game not involving murder, try Big Adventure: Trip To Europe 31

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I tried with Tales from Candleforth. I really did try to get past Chapter 1. I tried playing three different times, and lost interest each time. But since I got the game free from the publisher Feardemic, I sort of have to cover the game. The game is a point and click with escape room mechanics. There are puzzles, there are inventory items, and your goal is to solve the room and move on to the next chapter. The story is centered around this book of dark tales, and the first tale is a tale of Sarah, a 16 year old girl with powers, or something, I really didn’t pay much attention.

Don’t get me wrong, Tales from Candleforth is a perfectly fine game that does all that you’d expect from the escape room genre. The puzzles are often macabre and wrapped in a horror theme. People who enjoy this sort of game with have a lot to like here. The game just didn’t click for me, and I honestly can’t say why. It just did not, that is fine. But you might enjoy it more than I did, so if this sounds the least bit interesting, check it out. I give Tales From Candleforth a Your Mileage May Vary verdict with a seven back-end score.

Overall: Tales from Candleforth is a decent escape room style game that I didn’t click with, but someone else might.

Verdict: YMMV

eShop Page

Received the game for free form the publisher!

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The succubus, a mythical female demon that seduces men and drains their life force. She is a lot like Succubus with Guns, a 2022 game published by Sometimes You that is so shitty, it drains your will to live. We’re talking Soulsland bad here. I’m only reviewing this so it can get a proper ranking on SwitchScores. no other reason. It is not sexy. It is not fun. It is crap. Let’s begin.

Succubus with Guns starts with a cut scene of a bunch of anime kids trying to summon you, but the summoning goes wrong very wrong, and they all turn into in undead. Then you start the game proper, which is a wave shooter. You go from arena to arena and killing enemies, including undead schoolgirls, shirtless fat guys and skeletons with bows. At your disposal are several guns, including a machine gun, rocket launcher, and pistol. These get taken away after the first arena by a bug(I think), forcing me to face everyone with a sword. I quit after that. And I was not going to trudge through the first arena again to find out if it was a bug.

Succubus with Guns simply is terrible from top to bottom. Aiming your guns sucks, you’ll waste valuable ammo missing. The enemies clip through everything, as do you. The graphics are amateur and ugly. There’s no music and the sound effects are all generic grunts and hisses. At random, your succubus will speak a random line that makes no sense, like, “I love you!” What? Believe me when I say I’d rather be drained by a real succubus than play this again.

Succubus with Guns get a Garbage with a one back-end score. Sometimes You doesn’t always publish winners, but this was a major misfire.

Overall: Succubus with Guns is a lot like the mythical succubus in that it drains your life force and will to live. Avoid at all costs!

Verdict: Garbage

eShop Page

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Dark Fantasy Epic Jigsaw Puzzle is the third iteration of the Dark Fantasy Jigsaw Puzzle franchise. Yes, there are three of these jigsaw games with sexy dark fantasy women. You can find the first and second on Steam and on Switch as well. It is important to note the original release dates on the first two on Steam, 2018 and 2019, pre-AI. That means the artwork is custom in those. The artwork is also custom here, meaning no AI. The artwork is very good. The game itself is more or less a standard Jigsaw game. There are six difficulty levels; twelves pieces, twenty-four pieces, forty-eight, Ninety-six, one ninety-two and for the masochists, three hundred eight four pieces. Unlike the awful Jigsaw Puzzle Fever, the pieces sit on the sides of the board and you drag them in. You can’t lose in Dark Fantasy Epic Jigsaw Puzzle, which is nice!.

Now the buttons at the top left of the screen: The eye drops a little picture of the finished product, which is helpful. The button next to it changes the background to one of several types. On the right side, the right hand button, outlines the pieces in white. The big question mark automatically puts a piece in place, but doesn’t add to your score. There are twenty-four images in all in Dark Fantasy Epic Jigsaw Puzzle. They are played in order. However, playing one unlocks the next for all difficulties.

Dark Fantasy Epic Jigsaw Puzzle is a tough game to give a verdict for because games like this are critic-proof. It has its audience, and they’re playing for the sexy pictures. Still, the jigsaw action itself is one of the better renditions I’ve played. Work went into the and it shows. I’ll give the game a Recommended with a seven back-end score.

Overall: Dark Fantasy Epic Jigsaw Puzzle is a jigsaw puzzle game with sexy dark fantasy woman, and nothing more!

Verdict: Recommended

eShop Page

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There should be a regulation on the books, that if a game is released in the United States with the words “Hentai” in the title, there should be sex and/or nudity in it or it is false advertising. Hentai Dating Stories Brazil is a case a point. No nudity as it is rated T. Probably implied sex at best. Unlike Retro Mystery Club, which was Japanese people writing about Japan, this game is Eastern Europeans writing a story about a Japanese guy going to Brazil to chase a girl. They have probably neither been to Japan nor Brazil. It reads like what a foreigner would know about Brazil off a google search. It name drops the food(see below), Carnival and Samba in the first ten minutes. Whether or not it takes ten minutes depends on how well you get through the sliding tile puzzles. The game shows the mixing up, and you can endlessly press B to reset. This means you just press B until get a favorable mix up, and backtrack.

Hentai Dating Stories Brazil is honestly boring, the Japanese guy is your typical wood plank hentai-hero, and the Tainara is what a foreigner imagines a Brazilian woman to be like. Now, I have never been to Brazil, but I am a writer, this is not how you write an interesting 3D dimensional character you want to get involved in. Also, the world building is inconsistent:

The sign above should read: bem-vindo à nossa casa, or something else in Brazilian Portuguese. In short, Hentai Dating Stories Brazil will get a Garbage Verdict with a two back-end score. I am sure there are more coming and I bet they’ll be equally terrible. For example, I’m sure in the theoretical upcoming Australian edition, it’ll be a woman who talks like Steve Irwin, has a kangaroo as a pet, and eats Vegemite Sandwiches. God help us!

Overall: Hentai Dating Stories Brazil is what you get when you have foreigners writing about a place they’ve never been to. Also it is crap!

Verdict: Garbage

eShop Page

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Awhile ago, I was on a writing Discord, and I had the misfortune of reading some woman’s 300k word gay furry slice-of-life novel thing. There are no plot. There was no character development. It was just a series of scenes strung together, along the occasional butt love. It was horrendous. I asked her, “Who is this for?” She was like, “It is not for you.” And I replied, “But nobody will read this, so why even bother?.” She then she got angry and we stopped talking. What does this have to do with Hentai Tales Vol 3: Hitomi and Silent Space? Everything.

Like Vol 1 and Vol 2 before it, Hentai Tales Vol 3 is about this girl named Hitomi, who this time takes off in a space ship towards a planet.. and takes a bath(above), goes to sleep, dresses for the day, and tries on space outfits. I only lasted seventeen images out of fifty before I banged my head against the desk and went off to write this review. Like that woman’s furry novel, there is no plot here. Just a series of scenes strung together, usually to put Hitomi in skimpy outfits. I’m not sitting through fifty scrambled pictures, and you can’t make me.

Hentai Tales Vol 3: Hitomi and Silent Space gets a Garbage verdict and a one back end score. At least Vol 2 had a plot and was more compact. Vol 3 drags everything out and is the most boring thing I’ve played in awhile. All the games are trash, and Vol 3 is honestly the worst as its the longest. Avoid like the plague.

Overall: Hentai Tales Vol 3 is the largest of the Hentai Tales games, but that’s not saying much, as its garbage.

Verdict: Garbage

Eshop Page

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Risky Chronicles and the curse of destiny is not a very good game. The developer, Consulog, developed a shitty game called Mission 1985. It attempted to be an 80s arcade shooter but failed miserably. This is its followup and is somehow even worse. This attempts to be Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures, a SNES game that took players through the first three Indiana Jones movies. Risky Chronicles has you playing an Indiana Jones like character, who has a gun and bombs at his disposal. You start off in an Egyptian Pyramid fighting dudes that should be in the Aztec levels, and then you die and die again. You will die not because the game takes skill, but because the hit detection is horrible and traversal is a pain.

Risky Chronicles is just sloppy and poorly developed, like I think the Aztec guys in Egypt is a bug, because one time I spawn in and fought an Egyptian looking guy. And you see the saw? You can die not even touching it. Checkpoints are common as are extra lives, but I didn’t even want to get through the first level, of like ten. I mean I could have gotten farther since I’m reviewing this, but I’m reminded of something someone told me about books: If the beginning sucks, it doesn’t matter if later is awesome. Consulog could deliver nine banger levels, but the first one is so bad, I’m not sitting through this. I don’t have to. Risky Chronicles sucks. It gets a Garbage rating with a two back end score. The latest Indiana Jones movie is less painful than this.

Overall: Risky Chronicles is more painful to play that watching Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Steer clear of this!

Verdict: Garbage

Eshop Page

Game received from the publisher for free!

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Jigsaw Puzzle Fever makes Jigsaw Ice Princess look like a masterpiece, and that game sucked. I’m not kidding, this is atrocious. I failed the first puzzle, twice, because you can’t put the puzzle pieces back. You see on the bottom of the screen is a line of pieces, you pick up a piece and put it on the board, but it snaps into place. If it is correct, it shines few a second and becomes unmovable. IF its wrong, it just sits there, but you can’t move pieces off the board, nor can you switch them by dropping another piece on them. So towards completion, if the pieces are in the wrong place and there’s no place to move, game over and start again. Awful design choice!

It is especially disappointing because Jigsaw Puzzle Fever has some good ideas, like some difficulties have you rotate the pieces into the correct orientation. However, that just gives you more opportunities to fail miserably here. Unless there’s a time limit, you should not be able to fail in jigsaw puzzle game. It defeats the purpose of being a jigsaw puzzle game, relaxing. There’s a decent amount of puzzles, but its so badly designed you’re not going to want to play it. No wonder the publisher gave out the keys freely on Keymailer, it is the only way people would touch it. Jigsaw Puzzle Fever gets a Not Recommended with a 3 back-end score. It only avoided the Garbage verdict because of the rotation feature.

Overall: JIgsaw Puzzle Fever is the worst designed jigsaw puzzle game I’ve ever played. You can fail the puzzles because the pieces are in the wrong place!

Verdict: Not Recommended

eShop Page

Game received for free from the publisher!

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This Mojito the Cat is technically for the Steam version, which released this month(April 16th to be specific), but released on Switch too back in 2022 and published by Red.Deer Games. I picked that up on sale and got farther than I did on the Steam version, for a reason I shall explain. Anyways, you are a cubed cat and you roll around a stage to pick a fish bone and yarn balls in a minimum number of moves. At the end of each stage, you get golden blocks. Just getting the fish bone, equals one block. Getting the bone and all the yarn is two blocks. Getting the bone and the yarn in a minimum number of moves equals three blocks, The game is divided into worlds of 10 stages each. In each world, get twenty blocks, and you can unlock the next world.

The main trick to Mojito the Cat are those arrow blocks, which literally the playing field. Early on, you’ll just flipping 180, aka upside down. Later, you may be flipping 90 or 180 in increasingly maze-like levels. There are also switches and breakable blocks to roll over as well. If you look in the screen shot above, you’ll see blocks that move once you roll over them. As I said, things start easy, but the levels get a lot longer and harder, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The reason I got farther in the Switch Mojito the Cat was because I had to use the keyboard on the PC, and honestly, wasn’t nearly as intuitive as the switch D pad. Also the camera was far easier to control. Either way though, Mojito the Cat is a good game and it will get a Recommended and an eight back-end score. If I had to pick, I’d say Switch(any one of the several versions that exist), but either version is really is fine. Finally, there are also downloadable skins for both. All are free on the Switch while some are 99 cents on the Steam page. Not necessary all around, but nice nevertheless.

Overall: Mojito the Cat is a fine puzzle game where you roll a cat cube around. Recommended.

Verdict: Recommended

eShop Page

No table in this review because it’d be to complicated but the developer is GZTAStudio, and they published the Steam version.

Mojito the Cat Steam version received free from the publisher.

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To understand my review of stitch. you must understand Piczle Lines 2, which I argued 3 days after my review was written that it should be game of the year. It ended up not being anywhere on the list but still was amazing nevertheless. Anyways, in PL2, you draw colored lines to make pictures based on the colored number. If there’s a 10, the line is 10 spaces. The trick is fitting all the lines in, which can get really tricky, and really, really time consuming in larger puzzles. We’re talking a game with hundreds of hours of content. It was jaw dropping how big the game was. Stitch. is like a slightly easier, guided PL2. Instead of throwing you into the fire with the entire image at once, you are guided from area to area, to fill in the colored lines.

Also differentiating stitch. is that the lines don’t bend. They are all either straight, or quadrilaterals(when you have even numbers only). This is not to say things don’t get tricky at times, oh they do. For example, The number can also be anywhere on the line, so if its a three space line, the number can be in the center with one space on either side. But having a confined space and predictable lines helps. You also have unlimited hints, but you get a higher score if you don’t use any. Still, there is a rhythm to the game all you its own. You get into a mode and just go. I’ll provide a video to demonstrate:

Stitch. comes with 107 puzzles of various sizes, with DLC puzzles to download later on. There are also special weekly puzzles, and daily hard puzzles. Now the verdict: Piczle Lines 2 got a Must Play and a ten back-end score due to its jaw-dropping amount of content. Stitch. will get a Must Play with a nine back-end score. It really it is delightful to play and the rhythm is addicting. There sadly isn’t 100+ hours of content here, but the daily and weekly puzzles add legs. Therefore, I fully recommend this to those who wants a game like PL2, but was intimidated by the sheer size and scale of the larger puzzles. I also recommend stitch. anyway, because it has a spin all its own.

Overall: Stitch. is a kinder, gentler Piczle Lines 2. It’s still great with its own unique identity!

Verdict: Must Play

eShop Page

Game received for free from the publisher!

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I have encountered the Sokoban puzzle plenty of times before, like Cubicban or Super Glow Puzzle. For those who aren’t aware, Sokoban puzzles are those block pushing puzzles you’ve seen around. Sokobalien is a farm animal pushing puzzle. You are big-headed alien and have to push cows and other farms animals like pigs and chickens into a ufo’s tractor beam. It’s pretty standard stuff you’ve seen a thousand times before, until you get to level 16, and they introduce disappearing floors controlled by buttons you have to leave cows on to materialize. Then the game becomes a lot harder and vastly more interesting. I could only get to level 22 before I was stumped, and the guide was completely wrong it is directions so i got stuck. I was disappointed really.

In the end, I just scratched the surface of Sokobalien though, there are 100 puzzles in total and lots I did not experience, but for what I did experience, this is one of the better Sokoban puzzle experiences I’ve found on the eShop. The reason being, they attempted to move the genre forward a little with the floors mechanic. In addition to the puzzles, there are different hats you can buy with the coins you get winning levels. You can change the background at will to one of five different color schemes. Pointless, but it is nice that it was added. Sokobalien will get a Recommended with an eight back-end score. Must Play? Not really, these games rarely are due to their ubiquity, but if you want a Sokoban puzzle game with a twist, check this out anyway.

Overall: Sokobalien is a Sokoban/block pushing puzzle game that dares move things forward, nice!

Verdict: Recommended

eShop Page

Game received for free from the publisher!

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You will buy Pretty Girls Escape Plus for one reason, and one reason only, so let me spoil it:

Now that we have that out of the way, Pretty Girls Escape Plus is the sequel to Pretty Girls Escape, which I reviewed a long time ago and is pretty much the same game: You have the waifu blocks at the top(from one to three), and must get rid of the blocks below them to lower them down to the exits. You can only remove regular blocks in chains of two or more. You can shift blocks left and right if there is space to do, and everything moves. If there’s no blocks to stop the waifu block, it will go from one edge to the other(and probably require a restart). The main difference between the two games is that here there are 10 lovely waifus instead of 8, for even more puzzling fun!

The puzzles in Pretty Girls Escape Plus get a lot harder a lot faster than the did in its predecessor, which is not a bad thing. Though you’ll still blow through all 60 puzzles quickly. Getting the optional missions on each stage make take some more time. Plus there are also 20 challenge puzzles. Honestly, there’s not much more to say, this is simply more of the same good puzzling action as before. But like all pretty girls games, the real draw are the boobs in the dressing room. The original got a YMMV. This will get a Recommended with a seven back-end score. I’ve come to terms with what these games are, and I’m ok with that now.

Overall: Pretty Girls Escape Plus has good puzzling action, but like always, its about the boobs.

Verdict: Recommended

eShop Page

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A long time ago, a game called Triple Town came out. You built a town by matching pieces, going from bushes to trees to houses, or bears to graves to churches. Village Match is a triple town-like game where you place pieces on an island to form towns. Match 3 huts to form bigger huts. Match churches to make cathedrals. Fields to make windmills, which then get surrounded by fields. It was apparently made by one guy on his computer and it shows. Its not bad game, I kind of like it. Except there’s no tutorials or anything. Just start an island and get going. It would have been nice if they you told you 3 big fields can only make a mill once, and once that’s made, you can only surround it with the same big fields. There’s also a limited number of tiles to place, but I’m not sure what exactly gives you more tiles.

Match Village has the basics down, but simply lacks some serious polish that something like Triple Town had. I mean one man teams have created glory with stuff like Balatro. This seems like a game Jam entry that was picked and put out for a few dollars. It seems to be a thing(like Shivering Stone as well). This would have been better with more polish and documentation. On Keymailer’s website it even says:

Hey, before you buy, know that this is an indie game, developed by a guy in his room. Don’t expect a AAA experience with hours of content in this game, ok?

That’s really not excuse for this lack of polish with Match Village. Calling it minimalist and simplistic doesn’t necessary help. Take Oxytone, which got a Must Play. Minimalist, and simplistic, but it had polish. Here, the game feels rough and needed a few more minutes in the oven. Besides, Triple Town was free, Match Village is not. This gets a YMMV with a seven back-end score. It only gets a seven because there is a game here that is complete and playable. It is everything else that is lacking.

Overall: Match Village is a fine one man game, but lacks polish so its rough around the edges.

Verdict: YMMV

eShop Page

Game received for free from the publisher.

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Enter the crypt and defeat as many monsters as you can before they overwhelm you!

Cryptrio is a retro-inspired Tetris-like game. You have several oddly shaped monster pieces that you cannot rotate dropping from the top. You must match three of them to make them disappear. Every three a levels a boss will drop the will require several adjacent matches to make it disappear. There is one mode, and the goal is a high score. If anything the game is too retro, there is no “next piece view,” which makes it difficult to plan a strategy. As it is, the piece dropping might as well be completely random. Cryptrio is therefore ok, but I wouldn’t call it good or great for that one reason. The lack of rotation, however, does not hurt the game, because otherwise, it would make things way too easy.

The graphics are retro with a limited palette but it fits the tone. The music tracks are well done chip-tunes. Other than that, there’s not really much to say about Cryptrio because there is not much to this game. It is five dollars and has less modes than something like Sushi Shot, a comparable game via price and scope. So I’ll give this a Your Mileage May Vary verdict with a six back-end score. I guess I just wanted more than what is here. Plus the critical lack of a “next piece” view hurts this as well. I’m going to just end the review here and not pad it out because I can’t think of anything else to say or rant about.

Overall: Cryptrio is a competent retro-puzzler. I wish just wish there was more here and a “next piece” view.

Verdict: YMMV

eShop Page

Game received for free from the publisher.

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Mimi the Cat: Mimi’s Scratcher is a puzzle game where you guide Mimi to her scratching post, usually floating the air and requiring a box or two to get there. There are jumps, specials boxes and box stacking(by pushing one into the other). The issue with the game is it was designed by amateurs. The Puzzles simply are not that difficult, and at points in the thirty puzzles, actually get easier not harder. Let me explain:

In the above puzzle in Mimi the Cat, I’m pushing the box down a narrow hallway. How will I push the box to the right at the end? Via the space at the left end. Mimi can only jump on the box when it cannot be pushed. So push it to the end, jump on, jump to the left space. Then I push the box to the right end and jump on to the end of the level.

Then there are the jumping puzzles in Mimi the Cat, like the above, where you don’t even have to push boxes around in most of them. In that one, just walk and jump. With these puzzles, they had an idea, but couldn’t follow through with them and then discard the idea completely. The puzzles overall do get trickier, yes, but nothing you can’t work out with your eyes. And if you do make a mistake, press the B button to reset.

Mimi the Cat is a disappointing game, much like Afil’s other recent game, Storyblocks: The King though for entirely different reasons. In that game, they didn’t modify the controls for the Switch. Here the controls are fine, just the game was “Baby’s first puzzler,” something like I’d create if I had to create a puzzle game. It reminds me of Shivering Stone, which was made in RPGMaker. If you want an easy puzzle game for a few minutes of fun, get this. Otherwise, there are far better puzzle games on the Switch. This will get a Your Mileage May Vary verdict with a six back-end score.

Overall: Mimi the Cat: Mimi’s Scratcher is a puzzle game made by amateurs. The puzzles just aren’t well thought out.

Verdict: YMMV

eShop Page

Game received for free from the publisher.

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Oxytone invites you to explore the depths of your mind while offering a tranquil escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life for those seeking relaxation.

Oxytone certainly is relaxing, if you want it to be. Or it can be a serious strategic hardcore puzzle game. The choice is yours. To better explain the game, let me show you a screenshot:

In Oxytone, you are the little beam of light off the side(not in the center). Your goal is to places the lined hexagons to form a path(in blue here). You rack up combos by making a path through multiple blocks at once, the longer the path, the higher the combo score. Reach a dead end or run out of tiles, game over. Now, each of the twelves maps has a set win score. Hit it and you unlock the next map in one of four sets. You can discard a tile you don’t like by pressing B, but you lower you tile count. You can refill the meter by filling a tile completely(using all the paths on it).

As I said at the start, Oxytone is what you make of it. It can be relaxing meditative game, or it could be a serious game of strategic tile placement for the hardcore. There are 99 challenges and twelve maps. There are also unlockable path colors, backgrounds and modifiers. Now, is this a Must Play? Honestly, yes, I think it is. It is a simple puzzle game, but because it what you make of it, more people can enjoy that than you’d think. Besides, this isn’t the only Must Play verdict I’ve given to simple games, Smashy Road and Cubic Light are two other examples. Not every game needs to be a flashy AAA to be good, sometimes the simplest games can be the most satisfying.

Overall: Oxytone is a puzzle game that either be relaxing, or hardcore. For that reason it earns a Must Play verdict.

Verdict: Must Play

eShop Page

Game received for free from the publisher(and did not affect the verdict).

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This will be the last time I am reviewing the Erogods series, the series of “dating simulators” with feminized mythological deities, previously Greek and Norse, This time in Erogods Mirage, we’re dealing with Egyptian deities, like Ra and Anubis otherwise the game is identical. You spin to unlock a deity. Play 4 mini-games, then give them the “holy schlong” by furiously tapping the A button. You’d think in the four months since Asgard, the developers would’ve attempted to move things forward. They didn’t. The only differences Between Erogods Mirage and the others are the music, backgrounds and deities, and the game is Rated T. The mini-games are the same four simple exercises, the voice acting is carried over and the UI is the same. The core game therefore is the same.

For my sanity, I’ve been chopping out the outright garbage from what I review. I rarely do Midnight Works titles. I’ve slashed AI-generated crap like the Hentai Girls series. And now the Erogods series will be discarded with Erogods Mirage. There are so many games in the Slush Pile, I need to focus on finding the buried gems, not deal with the obvious sludge. Maybe if the developers bothered to really differentiate the titles, further titles would get reviewed. As it is, I am done. There’s just no reason to other than clicks, the Erogods game reviews have never been big hitters.

As an aside, maybe if they bring the titties next Erogods release, that’d be great. However, the amount of outright naughty stuff released on the Switch has decreased over time to only a trickle. Gamuzumi got censored and EastAsiaSoft has slowed on the naughty, the last being DreamCutter. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it makes dreck like Erogods Mirage seem pathetic considering they probably could have tits if they tried hard enough(and it’d sell more too).

Overall: Erogods Mirage is the same sludge as the other two titles, as hardly anything has changed.

Verdict: Garbage

eShop Page

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I remember in high school over twenty years that in my Math class, there was a computer in the back. On the computer was a game where gorillas threw bananas at each other. You input the angle and the strength of the throw, and hope you hit. Notebook Artillery is the successor to those kinds of games. To be fair, so is the Worms series, but this game is to bring back the idea of the artillery games in math class and it does that well. You have three modes. Target practice, VS. CPU and, Vs. Player Two. Game play in all three modes is the same. Adjust the power and the angle, and then fire with the A button. In target practice you hit a variety of targets. In VS. modes you hit the opposing cannons. And that’s all there is to Notebook Artillery.

Notebook Artillery is simple and has a decent price point of $4.99. The only complaint I have is the modes have no end. There is not limit to how many targets you can hit, or cannons you destroy, but neither did the Artillery games in math class. They just kept going. Question is, should you get this, or a Worms game? Well, that depends on how old you are. If you’re like me and want to relive high school days, this is. If you’re younger and want a full fledged game, a Worms game may do. Notebook Artillery will get a Recommended with an eight back score. This is because it does what it says it set out to do. It even says this in the marketing blurb:

Once upon a time in the late 20th century AD, near the turn of the penultimate decade of the millennia, a magical confluence occurred in Middle School Macintosh computer labs across the globe: Artillery.

Infamously known by teachers as the scourge of attention — countless students spending entire computer lab periods firing cannons at each other instead of writing English assignments. The temptation too great, no child could refuse the siren’s call of the game’s accurate physics model and competitive nature.

Get Notebook Artillery if you want it.

Overall: Notebook Artillery competently recreates a math classroom classic. Get it if you want.

Verdict: Recommended

eShop Page

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PuzzMix bills itself as a “A fresh, exciting music puzzle game featuring The Muse, Lola!: Its a Suika Game clone. Suika now has an online multiplayer DLC. There is also Sushi Shot, which also has an online multiplayer version. My point is there is no particular reason to play PuzzMix, unless you want 19 bad Jpop songs that are unlocked the more you play. The reason being, other than the better versions existing, is they messed up the formula. The balls have weird attachments on them so they don’t roll at all, negating the physics aspect of the puzzle genre. Even Sushi shot made the sushi move as if they balls. What this all adds up to in an extremely boring game with hyper happy music that doesn’t excite me at all

I did not even finish one game of PuzzMix because it is so ungodly boring. I didn’t want to continue. Maybe I’m just bored of the genre, maybe I should redownload Sushi Shot and play that for a few more hours. It’s not like that was just thrown out the the door, there is a sizable staff listing for the game. Work went into this:

But just because a lot of work went into PuzzMix, especially the sound design, doesn’t mean there is a game worth playing here, especially when the physics is all messed up. Suika Game and Sushi Shot both got Must Play verdicts out of me. This will get a Not Recommended with a 5 back-end score. Oh and Suika and Sushi aren’t more expensive plain(though more expensive if you want the multiplayer expansions for both). There is no reason to pick this up all.

Overall: Puzzmix is a really boring version of Suika Game, just with 19 Jpop songs and an anime heroine.

Verdict: Not Recommended

eShop Page

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Storyblocks: The King should have been an easy recommend on the Switch. It is a nice and relaxing puzzle game that is not particularly taxing. You have a starting block and multiple end blocks. You make a path to one of the end blocks using all of the provided blocks. The hook is that there is a story about young man leaving his home village for adventure. You can either continue the story by linking to a sign block, or end the story with a book block and start over. I got a few endings and enjoyed the idea immensely. I found other, similar games. like Dolemenjord more brain taxing that Storyblocks: The King is. This is fine. So far, so good.

What knocks Storyblocks: The King down to a Your Mileage May Vary are the controls. Simply put, placing blocks on the Switch is a nightmare. The controls were designed for a mouse(there is a Steam version). You can only use the stick and the blocks do not snap into place. This makes placing blocks far harder than it should be as you cannot connect blocks unless they have a green outline. Getting the green outline is often more trouble than it should be. The developers should have reworked the controls so that you can use the D-pad and the blocks snap into place. As it is, you are spending more time fighting the controls than enjoying the game and story. Also the menu button at the top does not work.

I wanted to like Storyblocks: The King. I wanted to recommend it. However, with the controls being what they are, I simply have no interest in experiencing more of it and getting all the ending. This is disappointing. This game will get a YMMV verdict with a six back-end score.

Overall: If you don’t mind fighting the controls, you might enjoy Storyblocks: The King.

Verdict: YMMV

eShop Page

Game received for free from the publisher!

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DateJournal is a dating sim where you romance 6 lovely ladies in St. Petersburg, Russia. You do this by collect intimacy point ,by collecting stars in a Minesweeper-like dates. There are three three stars type, red(strength), grey(charisma) and blue(intelligence). Each lovely lady has their own preference. You also collect roses to increase passion, which increases the amount of intimacy you gather. There are also enemies on the board, which you attack and defend against with corresponding stats. There are broken stars that decrease intimacy, but they can be transformed into other things via items.Oh and did I mention each click takes energy, and if you run out of energy, you lose? Well yeah there’s that too.

Then there’s the board game section in Datejournal, that you use to move around St. Petersburg and romance the various women. You get cards with the number of moves you can make. You can move once per turn, then either send a gift of use the space for something. Like in the club, you use charisma points you collect to raise various stats. Same with the gym and university for their respective stats. There’s also the mall, where you use money to buy new date spots. The date spots correspond to a specific outfit you can have the lady wear, and not much else.

There’s there the dialog and story of each woman in Datejournal. Which honestly, is quite boring and doesn’t really matter. It often makes no sense. Like one lady is telling me off, while my response gives hearts, showing she likes me or something. There are five dates, and after each date you get a picture. None show nudity. While the game is rated M, it is not because there are titties(though the final pics are very risque). Anyways, like I said, the actual story lines are probably the worst part of the game. I just couldn’t bring myself to care about anyone. You can find out more about the ladies, but doing that doesn’t amount to much, since sending gifts on the board really isn’t important I found.

I’m kinda torn on Datejournal to be honest. One one hand, the game had the decent board game section and dating game section. Problem is the ladies and stories just aren’t interesting to me. Maybe something was lost in translation, not sure. I’ll give DateJournal a Your Mileage May Vary(YMMV) with a seven back-end score. In the end, play for the minesweeper-like dating game, ignore the story.

Overall: Datejournal is an alright dating sim where the ladies are boring, but the actual dates are not.

Verdict: YMMV

eShop Page

P.S. For a dating sim to avoid, try Summer Sweetheart!

Game received for free from the publisher

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Matsukeke Burst deserves some credit, it does have a fairly original take one the falling object puzzle. It was originally a submission for smilebasic4, a switch programming programing. But it has been expanded and turned into its own thing. The goal here is to create big twisty loops using blocks with lines on them. However, the game does take cues from Puyo Puyo, with similar character design and the nonsensical campaign mode found in many Puyo games. I’ll be honest, I didn’t find this particularly appealing for some reason. It should work. The loop building is original, sure. But not all that engaging. Maybe its because Balatro still has its grip on me, It wasn’t entirely impressed with Matsukeke Burst

The core of Matsukeke Burst is to create loops with lines. The bigger and more loops you create, the better. like Puyo, the game is mostly played versus an opponent, with a surprisingly competent AI. However, there is a score attack more. That mode is tricky because the high score is not calculated based on how many tiny individual loops, but one single combo. So you have to make many big loops at once. There is also a coloring book if you’re interested, I wasn’t.

So what to make of Matsukeke Burst. Will this be the next Puyo? Doubtful, mostly because its a tiny indie project and doesn’t have marketing muscle behind it. Still, if you looking for a something original with falling object puzzles, this might make your day. It did not for me, but that’s me. It’s really a decent game, I just did not particular like it, but I recognize something it’s had its positives. Matsukeke Burst will get a YMMV with a seven back end score.

Overall: Matsukeke Burst is a fairly original falling object puzzle game. That’s all I can really say about it.

Verdict: YMMV(your mileage may vary).

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I’m in a bit of a conundrum. Earlier today, I smacked Hentai Girls Sweet Doctor for being shovelware garbage, and the exact same game as its predecessors. It was more of the same crap. Now we come to Beauties Unveiled 2, which is more or less the same exact Qix clone as its predecessor, Beauties Unveiled 1. The sequel has the exact same style game play, and a cadre of beauties to, ahem, unveil. Plus, these were released about 5 weeks apart. But the difference is here with this series, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The Hentai Girls series is fundamentally broken to the core, the Beauties Unveiled series is not. I have nothing wrong with game giving us the same stuff over and over if its good, as in the case of the Clutter Series.

Well Beauties Unveiled 2 isn’t the exact same game as its predecessor. The artwork is manga-style while in the predecessor they looked more western-style. If I had to guess, the game did gangbusters in Japan. Also noteworthy is that the art does not appear to be AI generated. This is a plus, given how much AI generated art games are all over the Nintendo Switch eShop. Plus, I didn’t notice it before, but the images form a little story. Like you’re peeping at a girl through an air vent. Second image. she notices you. Third image, she finds you.

In the end, if you liked Beauties Unveiled 1, you’ll enjoy Beauties Unveiled 2. The game play itself is unchanged, but there was no real reason to change it. Finally, the rating notes in game purchases, but the DLC girls are all free.

Overall: Beauties Unveiled 2 is mostly the same game as its predecessor, but not a bad thing here.

Verdict: Recommended

eShop Page

P.S. Where is my Mokoko X sequel?

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Dear Pakotime: I did a cursory search and found nothing on you. But judging the AI artwork in Hentai Girls Sweets Doctor, and the other three Hentai Girls titles, I assume its one guy publishing under a pseudonym. We need to talk. We need to have a frank conversation about you are doing with your life. You are publishing trash “hentai” games that don’t actually have any nudity, every two weeks. The women are all AI generated, and I’m beginning to think the images are the same game to game, just with the clothes swapped. I could download the previous titles and check, but I really don’t care to do so. I’d rather talk about you, than talk about Hentai Girls Sweet Doctor. There just isn’t anything to talk about, they’re all the same game, what are you doing?

I know what you’re doing, you’re releasing low effort trash to make some cash from gullible horny dudes. But how much money are you really making? Is releasing the same game every two weeks really paying dividends? Is this what you want to be known for, Hentai Girls Sweet Doctor? Do you brag about this to your friends? Does your family know? Decades from now, on your death bed, when asked what your life accomplishment was, are you going to say this series? I think I know how you’d respond, but considering the silence, I don’t think you care. I’ll stop addressing you now.

I’m done with the Hentai Girls series. Hentai Girls Sweet Doctor will be my last. It isn’t because I don’t like clicks, its because I’ve run out of things to say. They’re the same game every time and eventually every topic gets discussed. So I’ll be ignoring them going forward.

Overall: Hentai Girls Sweet Doctor is the same game as all the others, not worth your time.

Verdict: Garbage

eShop Page

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With a name like Call of Honor Duty of Warfare, I am bound to get hits, so I’ll review the game. But I’m going to do something different for this Midnight Works-connected title. I’ve pretty much given up on Midnight Works, I’m not playing through mountains to trash to find a Midnight Runner. So I’m switching things up a bit. I’m going to write most of the review first, then actually go play the game and see how right I was in my predictions. How will I do this? But breaking down the completely lying eShop blurb. Let’s begin:

Immerse yourself in the epic battlefield with “Call of Honor Duty of Warfare,” a groundbreaking experience that combines the intensity of team-based combat with a gripping narrative.”

The battlefield is neither epic, intense, nor thrilling. I doubt there’s even a real narrative beyond, “go here and do that.”

Tactical Mastery: Assume the role of a skilled operative and lead your team through heart-pounding matches against a relentless enemy force.

The AI for the enemy and your team in Call of Honor Duty of Warfare is crap and barely non-existent. Your teammates will be useless and the enemy just runs straight at you(or wanders around aimlessly).

Points-Based Warfare: Engage in intense firefights where each kill results in a point deduction from your team’s score. The stakes are high – the first team to lose all their points faces defeat.

Translation: Call of Honor Duty of Warfare is a five-on-five shooter with no actual narrative whatsoever. There can be no real narrative here with this structure.

Dynamic Locations: Explore five meticulously designed locations, each presenting its own set of challenges and opportunities.

The locations are tiny and badly designed.

Arsenal of Destruction: Arm yourself with a vast array of more than 20 different weapons, ranging from powerful firearms to strategic grenades.

This is probably correct though the weapons are probably badly implemented and but one or two are locked at the start.

Prepare to answer the call, honor your duty, and engage in warfare like never before. “Call of Honor Duty of Warfare” is a solo-player masterpiece that combines intense team-based action with a riveting narrative, delivering an unparalleled gaming experience on the Nintendo Switch. Get ready to embark on a journey where every decision counts and only the strongest will prevail!

i… ummm… well… well all know that is bullshit!

The Actual Call of Honor Duty of Warfare

I was correct on most counts with Call of Honor Duty of Warfare. There was absolutely no narrative whatsoever. The AI is functional, but is simple: They run towards the enemy on set paths and automatically shoot when they see another enemy.The game plays itself. The area I played was boring and badly designed, with no real tactical options present, due to the AI. You start with one weapon. The game does not look as good as the provided screenshot. I guess the best way to show the game is with a sixteen second clip. Enjoy

So In the end, I basically correct about Call of Honor Duty of Warfare: It is garbage and not worth anyone’s time. It’s not the worst Midnight Works title out there, so it is getting a two, for the AI not being a complete embarrassment.

Overall: I predicted what Call of Honor Duty of Warfare would be, then played the game. I was mostly correct.

Verdict: Garbage

eShop Page

PS. SwitchStars has been attacked by Midnight Works. They’ve directed their staff to file false harassment complaints against the channel. Its shady and scummy. But I do have to wonder why they haven’t attempted to take me down. Guess I’m not big enough yet to make a difference, though links to my Midnight Works editorial(linked up top) have popped up on Reddit and elsewhere. It’s also done respectable numbers and has great longevity.

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Geometry Survivor is an auto-shooter that calls back to Geometry Wars, the series of twin stick shooters that needs to be revived by Microsoft(they bought Activision after all). I’m not the only one who feels a giant hole where it stood, hence this game, and others like Breakpoint. As for the auto-shooter(aka Vampire Survivors clone), I enjoy them. One of my top five reviewed ever is an auto-shooter, that being Army of Ruin. Geometry Survivor is an alright auto-shooter for what it is, though under-cooked. The weapons range from must have to near useless. There is only one mode, survive for twenty minutes. The UI isn’t helpful at all. The rate of credit acquisition is at a snails pace. I simply don’t feel like I make any progress. It does hook for a bit, but is no Army of Ruin or Vampire Survivors.

I could go deep into Geometry Survivor, but its a standard auto-shooter. You just dodge and move around while your weapons fire. It’s standard by this point, and does little to move the genre forward at all. Some of the weapons are cool, like the black hole and force field(that slows enemies in the field). The problem with them though is that the cool down is so long they border on near useless. You have upgrades you can buy, but most of them have to do with what happens when you take damage, like speeding up for a second, or invulnerability. In the end, Geometry Survivor takes cues from Geometry Wars, but honestly I’m not sure the mixture works. Even the music is reminiscent of Geometry Wars, but not nearly as catchy. I’d rather go back and play better auto-shooters, or Geometry Wars on my Xbox. The last thing I want to play is this. So this will get a YMMV with a six back-end score.

Overall: Geometry Survivors is an auto-shooter that takes cues from Geometry Wars, but I’m not sure the mixture works.

Verdict: YMMV

eShop Page

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The publisher wrote in an email to me, “I am very excited to officially ruin your productivity for the rest of the week and provide you with a key for Balatro.” And ruin my productivity it did, because quite simply, Balatro is a digital drug. This unassuming game, where you make poker hands into order to beat a set score, is addicting as hell. It’s like an onion, the deeper you go, the more layers you find. Balatro will get a Must Play with a ten back-end score. This will sit with site luminaries like Tux and Fanny and Army of Ruin, and it deserves it. But why? Why is a glorified poker game worth that score? Read on, and you shall see.

Balatro’s Unassuming Front

Above is Balatro’s game screen and it tells you all you need to know, at first. You get dealt eight cards, and you can either play, or discard up to five of them, If you play, you get scored based on the hand type, from High Card and Pair, to Four of a Kind and Straight Flush. Each card has an assigned value that should be familiar to people who play blackjack. Then the card score gets multiplied by a certain number based on the hand type. You get a certain number of hands and discards. It is game over when you run out of hands and you haven’t met the blind value. If you win, you win cash that can be used in the shop between rounds.

Balatro is divided into eight antes of three rounds each. Small Blind, Big Blind and Boss Blind. The boss blinds have special conditions, like clubs or spades are worth nothing. Or all cards played in the ante up until them or worthless. Or it could be a really high blind value(as you’ll see). In between each round, you get a shop, where you can purchase all kinds of special cards which do a whole range of things, that the next section will be devoted to. Now, if you lose, you start over from scratch. However, depending on the number of cards “discovered,”and other prerequisites, you unlock new deck types, vouchers and jokers.

The Onion

Now the special cards in Balatro, there are several types. There are 150 jokers, and you can have five at any time. Most of them effect the scoring somehow. One joker might raise the multiplier if you play odd value cards. Another, very powerful, Joker jacks up the multiplier if you have only it and no other jokers. But wait, there’s more. There are tarot cards, which do special things, like change card suits or create other cards. Planet cards raise the base value of individual hand types, and are very important to use early on, imo. Finally, spectral cards do interesting things and are relatively rare. One transform cards into special cards that do special things themselves. Foil raises the chip value, holographic raises the multiplier. There’s even a spectral card that copies a joker and destroys the rest.

But wait, there’s even more to Balatro: In the shop, you can buy packs of cards or all types even standard cards, as seen above. They come in regular size, jumbo size and mega sizes. The number of cards you select varies based on card type. You can also buy vouchers that do things like give you extra hands and discards and are permanent until you lose. You can skip the small and big blinds and get special tags that do special things, like create jokers and give you $15 if you beat the boss blind. Finally, you can peek at your deck at any time, and do card counting, which is pretty much required later on.

Goodbye Productivity!

Now add the previous section together, and you get one deep experience and countless strategies. However, one misplayed hand or discard could mean the end and starting over.But you’ll come back to Balatro, over and over again. One more round. One more ante. I stayed up late playing this game, and so will you. If I have to name a complaint, the price is a little steep at fifteen dollars, but considering Balatro will take over your life for a bit, it is well worth the money. Hats off to the one man development team, you created something great!

Overall: Balatro is an unassuming game that steals so much time, it is a crime. Absolutely amazing!

Verdict: Must Play

eShop Page

Game provided for free by the publisher!

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I hang out on a discord run by a YouTuber named SwitchStars. I’ve mentioned him quite a bit here on this site. Anyway, yesterdays on Discord he mentioned something in response to my Swords and Adventures review that can apply to Line Color World:

Line Color World seems like baby’s first video game. You have a road with traps lining it. You press A to move along it, leaving a colored line behind. Stop pressing A to stop. Getting to the end of each stage is just a matter of timing. It honestly reminds me of Falling Elevator. Except I liked Falling Elevator more than this. Yes, I enjoyed a title by a Midnight Works studio more than this. The blurb on the eShop says:

Embark on a tranquil yet engaging journey in Line Color World, a unique blend of challenge and relaxation.

Umm… If it is challenging, it is not relaxing. And boy is Line Color World challenging. It took me far longer to beat stage two than I should have. I gave up on stage three and went to write this review. It’s almost as if the game was not balanced of play-tested. Just rushed out the door. In addition to the challenge, the screen flickers for no reason at all, it is really noticeable on stage three. Did anyone supervise this at all? It wasn’t ready to see the light of day, and shouldn’t have been released.

Line Color World seems like a game jam project, picked up by Halva Studio, then rushed out the door and sold for $2.99. The game should be free. It’s terrible and if you paid for it, you got scammed. There’s not really much else to say about this game. I mean again, if Midnight Works makes a better game, you really screwed up. This game gets a Garbage Verdict with a two back-end score(at least the aesthetic is alright).

Overall: Line Color World is somebody’s first game sold for three dollars. It is absolute garbage.

Verdict: Garbage

eShop Page

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Swords and Adventures bills itself as “the fast-paced, addictive RPG you’ve been looking for.” Unfortunately, it is anything but. Well, it is fast-paced, but only in the sense of how fast you’ll die. You’ll die fast because the game is all dice rolls. You see, combat is rolling either a combat die or a magic die, Then hope for the best. Combat and magic has two stats, Combat and Magic respectively, then Combat Damage and Magic Damage. One I think deals with your chance to hit. The other is how much damage you do. when you do hit Oh and magic attacks are limited by MP, which needs to refilled at a temple. But it really doesn’t matter, as you’ll still die constantly. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s start at the top with Swords and Adventures.

You have three classes to chose from in Swords and Adventures. Barbarian, Elf and Wizard. Barbarian focuses on the combat stat, Elf both, Wizard focuses on the magic stat. You then travel through one of three areas facing monsters. If you win you get gold, XP, and an artifact occasionally. If you die, your gold and artifacts are taken from you. There’s a town, with five places, The inn restores health. The temple restores MP. FIghing School raises a stat for gold. The shop sells artifacts. Finally, the square has quests for you.

The downfall of Swords and Adventures is the “combat.” There’s no explanation for how any of it works. If you enemy throws a 1, and you throw a 1, sometimes you’ll draw, sometimes you won’t. I think it has to do with the base stat, but I’m not sure. Either way, its not fun. There’s no game play here. Just roll the dice and pray. Real RPGs have stories and options to make things interesting. This game has neither. It’s a mix of frustrating and boring, not a good combination. It is therefore getting a Not Recommended with a 4 back-end score. Swords and Adventures is a complete game, but it is broken to the very core. How anyone though this is fun, is anyone’s guess. Not recommended with a four back-end score.

Overall: Swords and Adventures is a rogue-like RPG that is absolutely no fun to play at all. Skip!

Verdict: Not Recommended

eShop Page

P.S. For some reason, I feel like posting a decent game called Dark Dungeon Warrior!

The post Swords and Adventures Switch Game Review appeared first on The Game Slush Pile.

I just come off reviewing a Pretty Girls game that was pretty good. Now I have to review Hentai Girls College Crush, which is the same exact game as Office Romance and Hot Police. It is bottom of the barrel, low effort garbage that is stinking up the eShop. I hate Pakotime more than I hate Midnight Works. At least with Midnight Works, their trash is varied. Pakotime Just releases the same AI generated garbage over and over again. And they’re not alone in this style. BigBoot Studio, the geniuses behind the tour-de-force Jigsaw Ice Princess has released Jigsaw Dinosaurs. among other titles. I actually own Jigsaw Dinosaurs, but refuse to review it for some reason. I have to review to this garbage for the hits I’ll get. Its insidious.

The word Hentai appears in every other lewd game now, even if it doesn’t include actual hentai. Developers do it for the same reason, I review the games, for the hits, and well tricking people into the thinking games like Hentai Girls College Crush contain tits. It doesn’t. It is rated T. It is really annoying and I wish they’d stop doing it, seriously. If you’re going to have the word hentai in the title, I want hentai, not tame AI generated imagery.

If you noticed, I just copied and pasted a paragraph I used in the other two Hentai Girls games. Why not, this review can be as low effort as this entire series. Heck, I probably put more effort into trashing these games as the developers do making them. Though I make far less money, as this is a labor of love. So, yes, do not buy Hentai Girls College Crush, it sucks.

Overall: Hentai Girls College Crush is total and complete garbage with absolutely no redeeming qualities.

Verdict: Garbage

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The post Hentai Girls College Crush Switch Game Review appeared first on The Game Slush Pile.