Rating: 9/10
Genre: Third Person Adventure/Visual Novel
Length: 10 - 15 hours
Achievement Difficulty: 2/10

1000x Resist has one of the greatest stories told in gaming, period. It's not the story itself that is the main focus but the amount of themes it touches upon, the similarities to real life. It identifies, criticises and emphathizes with blind religious belief, depression, the need to fit in, the importance of family and friends, the trust placed in others, the ability to recognise that everyone else has their own lives in spite of yours.

I'm not going to bother saying anything about the story, it's something you really need to go into blind. Read the synopsis on the store page, but know that it only describes the impetus of the story. It is the context for a story so unbelievably personal to the player character, "Watcher" and sometimes the player themselves. It's unbelievably beautiful and without playing it yourself there is nothing more to say.

But what is the gameplay? The game is essentially a playable visual novel. The gameplay in most chapters generally revolves around this sequence: You start in a hub world > (optional: talk to as many NPC's as you can while exploring) > talk to the key NPC that drives the story forward > do a 30 minute-ish linear story sequence > chapter ends. In the exploration, it's merely a third person walking simulator where you run around finding NPC's to talk to. In the linear sequences, the developers try to really shift the perspective in alot of sequences. Some are 2D side view, some are first person, some are top down. Each shifting view reflects the attitude of the characters and keeps the game visually engaging.

There are so many little details and design aspects that really bring the game to another level. None of the NPC characters have names, they are simply an adjective + "Shell". They are "Shells" because everyone in this world is a clone, and the similarity between each shell yet the difference between their personalities gives the feeling or a world so personal yet so different. "Creative Shell", "Diligent Shell", "Caring Shell", "Unlucky Shell". They are family, but they are not. The lack of lip syncing feels like an issue at first but it really grows on you and makes you feel like you're watching their thoughts rather than speaking with them. The strange, smooth and overtly bright texture work looks ugly at first but becomes so endearing, bearing the feeling of the players world being the alien world.

I want to talk about this game forever, but just play it. If you don't particularly care about riveting gameplay (although I actually liked the gameplay) and really want a great story, play this. The fantastic story, beautiful soundtrack (as much songs as Final Fantasy 7, and this game is 100 hours shorter!) and easy achievements really make this game one of my top 10 of all time.

Rating: 7/10
Genre: Puzzle
Length: 3
Achievement Difficulty: 1/10

Boxes is a "puzzle" game where you are presented a series of intricate puzzle boxes that you need to open, which will give you an item that is needed to a complete a puzzle in a corresponding main room in order to move on to the next floor.

It's VERY similar to the first "The Room" game where the game solely focuses on small objects and doesn't require to to explore a large room filled with different interactibles, which is great because this style of game is what I prefer.

The reason "puzzle" is in quotations is because this isn't really a puzzle game moreso than it is a "find the hidden object" game. A typical box is more about finding the next area to click then it is using your brain to solve any kind of puzzle. A typical box/puzzle would be: pick up an item on the table the box is on > use it on a hole in the box, rotate the revealed dial to open a new part of the box, solve an actual puzzle (usually something involving rotating tiles or matching colours) to get an item, use item on another part of the box etc etc until the box is open.

Some of the later puzzles in the last few boxes are a bit more complicated, but I actually just brute forced my way through more than one so they're not insurmountable.

Achievements are easy, if you complete the game you'll get every achievement. This is a great game you can complete in a couple of hours, but don't expect it to have any real substance or staying power afterwards.

Rating: 6/10
Genre: Metroidvania (2D Hack n' Slash)
Length: 8 - 10 hours
Achievement Difficulty: 5/10

8Doors is an extremely typical by the book Metroidvania. You play as Arum, who journeys into purgatory to find and return her fathers soul after he (and the entire village) passed away from a mysterious illness. While in purgatory, you become involved in a plot where other souls have gone missing and become fugitive souls, with more and more being corrupted by sin and turning into shades/revenants unable to to be recorded and sent to heaven/hell.

This is a very by the book, unoriginal but still fine metroidvania. If the game starts at 10/10, for every step it takes forward it also takes a step and a half back. The world design is great and the environments interesting, but they're also tedious to play through with environmental hazards hot having the greatest hurtboxes. The platforming is fluid, but barebones and lacking any sort of real depth or skill with some areas in particular where the platforming just feels awkward.

The combat is ridiculously easy, with 90% of enemies being stun locked from the first hit, allowing you to simply roll towards an enemy and mash attack. The strategy also works for enemies who don't get stunlocked as all moves are so telegraphed even players with no familiarity can dodge. Bosses are far more interesting design wise, but have few attacks and obnoxious health pools, with every boss' second phase being the same as the first except with an extra attack at the end of each combo. Upgrades do almost nothing and apart from a couple traversal ones can be almost entirely ignored.

The world is no where near as interconnected as other metroidvanias, with ever area being entirely seperate and warp points few and far between (there is only one in each area), which means backtracking often feels tedious and unnecessary.

On the plus side, the NPCs and world are quite interesting with almost every interactable NPC having different dialogue depending on your progress through the game.

I had fun playing the game and it was easy to boot up and continue. Alot of games these days I play and don't really want to play again (so loading it becomes a chore) but I never felt like that once playing this game. If you are new to metroidvanias this might be a good game to set the standard, and it's also good for people who just love metroidvanias but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.

Achievement wise, 100%ing the game will get you most achievements, but the game also has 3 endings. You do need to speedrun (under 3 hours) the game, which is weird because you can't skip cutscenes or dialogue. The achievements are not hard, but you WILL need to complete the game at least twice so those looking for quick achievements might be better elsewhere.

Overall, a solid metroidvania with quite a few problems but nothing severe enough it doesn't stop being a fun game.

Rating: 6/10
Genre: Visual Novel
Length: 4~ hours
Achievement Difficulty: 1/10

I'm not going to go fully in-depth with this review as this game is almost the same as it's 2 (3?) predecessors so this below is some overall opinions of it and the difference between the others.

First of all, playing To The Moon & Finding Paradise are mandatory and you won't experience the same "revelations" without playing them. A Bird Story would help quite a bit too but I don't think is mandatory.

One of the larger problems is the release interval between games. I played To The Moon almost 10 years ago and making a trilogy with around 10 years gap, it's almost expected you forgot what happened making this game far less impactful than it is intended to be. I expect the next game won't be out for another few years, and by then i'll forget what happened here too. If you haven't played any of them I highly recommend playing them consecutively with a couple days break in between each game to sit with it for a while, browse forums, watch youtube videos etc before moving onto the next.

The soundtrack does ALOT of the heavy lifting. To The Moon is a 10/10 experience on it's own, and it feels like as the games continue they rely on tugging on the heartstrings with non-story beats. This story focuses on two characters instead of one, splitting your care factor while also taking place in a situation that, after revealed, kind of takes away alot of the care until the very end.

They did eliminate all puzzle solving and focus on story but at this point it may as well just be a regular visual novel as the only interaction in this game is walking around a couple of steps to chat with characters. Once you get to Act 2 (of 3, and also the largest) there's little to no gameplay at all.

It's a good game, but not as impactful as the other two. If for whatever reason you didn't like To The Moon I wouldn't take a second glance at this game unless you wanted 1 easy achievement for your completion score. As a fan of Kan Gao I plan to continue playing what he and his team releases, which will probably be 3 more games in a span of 30 - 40 years.

Rating: 8/10
Genre: Top Down/Casual/Adventure
Length: 5~ Hours
Achievement Difficulty: 2/10

What Is It?
A relatively short adventure game where your character sets off on a journey to photograph the mysterious TOEM phenomenon. You travel from small area to small area, taking photos of various things and doing quests for a wide range of beautifully designed NPC's that all involve taking photos for them or retrieving items.

PROS

• Fantastic art style
  
• Humorous dialogue with great character designs
  
• Well designed areas with large amounts of detail packed into tiny spaces

CONS

• Gameplay can get repetitive
  
• Some ambiguous quests and pixel hunting involved

Personal Thoughts
It's a great, casual game. There's no stress involved and you can't miss anything, you just take your time wandering around filling out your photo book and completing quests given by everything from ghosts to skeletons to monkeys and everything in between. The quests are all basically the same so the gameplay variety is a little repetitive. The achievements however are all super varied and easy to get. Highly recommend this game and i'll be getting the second one for sure, although i'll wait until it's on sale.

Rating: 5/10
Genre: Visual Novel / Puzzle
Length: 3 - 5 Hours
Achievement Difficulty: 1/10

What is it?
A visual novel with light puzzle solving and area navigation. You play as Nairi, a child who has had to escape her (unwillingly) high class lifestyle after the kidnap of her parents. You play as her on her quest to discover why her parents were kidnapped while uncovering the mystery of both the eponymous Tower Of Shirin and the Great Storm that sunk the previous civilisation of Noora.

PROS

• Cute art style
  
• Interesting story with likeable characters
  
• Very easy achievements

CONS

• Insane difficulty ramp at the end of the game
  
• Dialogue a bit too slow moving
  
• Most of the game puzzles are typical fetch quests

Personal Thoughts
The story itself is pretty interesting but it's a game obviously designed for a younger audience. The dialogue is very light and there is abundant humour; only a couple of sections does it show a dark undertone. The puzzle solving went from ridiculously easy (fetch this, give to this guy and repeat) for 90% of the game to deciphering ciphers, rotating rooms and identifying and translating symbols, to the point that I don't think a younger audience would be able to complete.

There are two more games that appear to be much longer. While I had a reasonable time with this one I don't think the story was interesting enough to warrant buying the other games. If you're interested, i'd buy this game on sale to see if it's your kind of thing. It's very short while also being almost entirely a visual novel.

The mechanic for this DLC is awful. On top of having to chop almost all ingredients, most levels require you (and your partner) to wear a backpack to take the extra ingredients out of, and you need to put chopped firewood in the furnaces, which cook slower as the wood burns. However, the wood burns even when there is nothing on it so you spend more time replacing firewood then you do actually cooking. The 3* scores are also WAY too high for the amount you actually have to wait for things to cook while replacing the firewood.

Awful DLC, and basically emphasises all the bad mechanics of this game tenfold.

tl;dr
Rating: 6/10
Clear Time: 10~ hours
100% Time: 15~ hours
Summary: An interesting but repetitive top down shooter/adventure game where you sail to different islands, kill enemies, gather resources and upgrade your equipment. While the gameplay doesn't evolve beyond the two hour mark the gameplay offers enough interesting and satisfying gameplay that the lack of innovation doesn't detract from an overall fun experience.

What is it?
A top down shooter with adventure elements. The gameplay loop of the game is simple: sail your ship to an island, kill all the enemies (and optionally gather all resources) on the island to liberate it and gain material, upgrade your guns/ship then hop on your ship and repeat until the end.

The Good
The general gameplay loop is fun and relatively addicting. While the combat is repetitive it's always satisfying exploring and killing enemies and the weapons are all great fun to use. The art style and setting is fantastic especially as you're sailing your ship from island to island looking at all the clouds and the creatures that lurk below.

The Bad
Everything regarding the ship is lackluster. The combat is awkward at best and awful at worse, the ship feels very slow and having to spend time refuelling and repairing every so often is kind of frustrating. All the weapons while fun to use all feel the same and with 200 or so weapon mods you would think there would be some diversity but unfortunately it's all a mixture of fire rate/range/crit chance/damage.

As you need to spend the majority of your play time liberating islands to upgrade enough, there was a large amount of time between each story beat meaning I wasn't particularly interested in the story at all and all the characters are just bland copy pastes of each other. The "swarm" (the final faction of the game) felt super underwhelming and the twist at the end didn't do anything for me because I didn't even know who the character was.

Achievements
100%ing the game will get you everything. Nothing is hard, but it is time consuming. The "hardest" achievement is to acquire all weapon mods but this more time consuming than anything else. Liberating all islands will get you about 200 or so while you need to buy or find (or farm for the final tier) the rest.

Personal Thoughts
It's enjoyable enough that I would recommend if you have nothing else to play. Liberating islands on your own ends up making you so overpowered that the majority of the game after the 40% mark becomes ridiculously easy and you become drowned in resources.

tl;dr
Rating: 4/10
Clear Time: 5~ hours
100% Time: 5+ hours
Summary: An artistic masterpiece that falls flat regarding anything that has to do with gameplay. While it's a must play for visual experience, it's must not play if you're interested in any kind of good gameplay.

What is it?
A first person walking sim/puzzle game with some light combat. The way the game works is, you're chucked in a huge area with lots of branching paths. At the end of each path is some kind of switch that unlocks another path, and the goal is to hit each switch (and complete some puzzles) until you are able to hit them all and the big door opens up that takes you to the next big area. There are about 5 sections in this game and all follow the same style, with some being much more linear than the others.

The Good
The HR Giger inspired artstyle is seriously a sight to behold. I have never seen texture work quite like this in a game. The artists and modellers and concept designers must have worked non stop for years upon years to craft something this viscerally beautiful. Every part of every area is stunning and while it does end up becoming quite repetitive it's obvious the main draw for this game is it's incredible art design. The final area in particular is shockingly beautiful the art book could be 1000 pages long and still not be enough. Seriously, it's ridiculously beautiful.

The Bad
Everything that isn't art related. This is a walking sim where you need to walk through areas that all look the same, so getting lost is the name of the game. The puzzles are frustrating and not intuitive, and there's one puzzle in particular that is so obnoxious the completion rate between the chapter before it and completing this puzzle actually drops by like 20%. People actually gave up because of it. The non-puzzles are also boring, just hope that the end of the path you're walking on has the switch you need to hit otherwise it's back to the hub and down another path.

The combat is REALLY bad. Your main weapon is is a kind of ramrod that shoots about a meter in front of you and then retracts back in. You get two guns a bit later that are basically just shotguns that do the same damage as your first weapon. Problem is, most of the enemies are ranged so you spend most of the time running up to an enemy, hitting them with your retractable p****, running around in circles avoiding their projectile until it recharges than dashing back in. The guns have such short range that you need to get into melee range ANYWAY to do damage and the enemies take a 4+ hits from your weapons to die. The combat isn't frequent but it's frustrating enough that it ruins almost every good experience you're having.

Achievements
Super easy. You'll get all but one just by beating the game, with the last achievement being based off what choice you made in the first chapter to progress. So just beat the game, start a new game and spend 20 mins doing the first chapter, make the other choice and you'll 100%.

Personal Thoughts
The combat being removed from this game would make it at least a 7/10. In fact the puzzles could be removed and this game could be a walking sim through a HR Giger inspired world with the time spent developing the puzzles and combat being changed to actually have a semblance of a story and a coherent ending.

tl;dr
Rating: 3/10
Clear Time: 30 minutes
100% Time: 1+ hours
Summary: Another in the long line of simulator games; this one's unique concept and great aesthetics are marred by the fact it's just boring, at least with what is offered in the prologue.

What is it?
A first person walking simulator where you receive chocolate orders, pick up ingredients, pour them into a bowl, mix them, package them and ship em off to strange British people across the world.

The Good
The aesthetics are generally really unique. I've always loved steampunk settings and having one in a simulator where your office is high atop the clouds with hundreds of blimps soaring across the sky is bliss.

The Bad
The demo at least is just boring. You can really only do one thing in the demo: pick up packets of cocoa and cocoa related products and pour the correct measures into a bowl. All the extra activities, like mixing and wrapping are just simple button clicks with no creative input. By the third chocolate I had already felt like I grasped what the demo had to over and by the 10th I couldn't wait to uninstall. The demo chocolate orders have almost no diversity and my final 5 orders were the exact same.

Achievements
Easy. Just complete all the objectives then continue to make up top 10 chocolates to get everything.

Personal Thoughts
I don't really know how you can make this interesting. There are alot of covered machines which i'm sure will add more diversity to the game when it releases and I messed around with the custom chocolate making machine but if the main part of the game is just pouring objects into a bowl and then hitting a few switches and buttons.....then it won't be for me. The game is NOT bad and I hope the full release does well but I can't imagine this will hold anyone under the age of 25's attention (not that it's aiming for that!). I'm 31 and I was barely holding on.

Good luck to the dev in the final release!