Recent reviews by Down Bad For Serperior

Solves the usual issue of "why add extra mechanics if you can just win by being good at minesweeper" by frequently generating puzzles that are impossible to solve without guesswork. Very interesting take!

Good pixel art, though the story the game thinks it's telling clashes horribly with its artstyle. Despite all this, would recommend.

Rotating a room to reveal more of the level or hide from cameras is a decent idea that is unfortunately hampered by finicky interaction controls, an unnecessary time limit, and unintuitive enemy AI movement - not to mention that the controls are uncooperative with the keyboard and control prompts are only given for controller.
At least it's free.

I've been looking forward to this game since the demo came out, and HOO BOY does it deliver. Plenty of good normal puzzles, plenty of good hard puzzles, all sorts of ways to twist your mind around recursion and space manipulation...

Easily my favorite puzzle game in years. I haven't even looked at the user-generated content yet - and by the way, have I mentioned there's custom level support? Incredible, you don't see nearly enough of that type of thing these days. 10/10.

This game feels like you're thrown right into the third act of a seventy-hour game. There's no direction, hardly an introduction, and way too massive a setting for having extremely limited fast travel. If you're the kind of person who'd love to read the wiki page on every character before opening this game, I'm sure you'd love it. If you prefer games to gradually expand your scope and abilities as you grow familiar with the engine, enjoyable to people who aren't already deeply invested in the setting, I'd recommend avoiding this game like the plague. That's exactly what I'm going to do from now on.

I'm sure the setting is very interesting to the people who made the game, because they sure made a lot of it.

A great combination of turn-based tactics and whatever Paper Mario RPG has going on, tied together with an interesting story and plenty of secrets. I also like that the game gives you the option to pause when it's in the background (which I used extensively), skip cutscenes (which I used after forgetting to save), and even auto-win battles for accessibility (which I never used). With good action commands and strategy, you never have to grind, and I ended up only very rarely having to use items mid-battle. Attacks are, with a couple of exceptions, pretty easy to see where to hit the button, making it entirely your own fault if you take much damage at all from them. just git gud lmao
A lot of the music is, well, background, but I love Gilda's, Ima's, and Rook's themes (they have lyrics).
Without spoilers, the last fight in the main story is incredible.

Also, I think there are a grand total of zero straight cis men (though the groundskeeper and tavern owner might be, idk), which I find mildly amusing.

It's quicker than The Room 3 and less ambitious (though also faster to navigate, which is nice), but still an excellently-made point&click. There's a few little secrets and some optional lore, which itself is rather tragic. The sound design is fantastic, as well, doing an excellent job of keeping me in the unearthly-horror mood.
Would definitely recommend.

A solid metroidvania with a very good fast-travel system. Also has a daily and weekly challenge that's a lot of fun. I do wish it was possible to change difficulty mid-game, but ultimately this is a lot of fun!

Overall, this game saw Salt and Sanctuary, thought "what if that but with girls," and then forgot that gameplay is an important element of a video game. It's very punishing, which can be good, except it's also very slow and tedious.
Dying is NEVER an "oh, I almost had it" feeling, but more a sense of "ugh, that shriek got old the first time it happened, I can't believe I have to waste another couple minutes getting back to somewhere interesting."
For a comparable experience, play Dark Souls without DSFix, modded so that you move at half speed, can't equip a shield, die in three hits against even basic hollows, and take contact damage.

Pros:
* map design is great, if a bit on-the-nose with the literal keys you have to pick up to progress
* good music
* fast retry

Cons:
* animations aren't very reliable. It's hard to tell when your dodge-roll invuln wears off, it's hard to tell when your parry is active, it's hard to tell when an enemy attack is going to actually hit so you can parry it
* health doesn't mean much. Even the scrub enemies deal at least a third of your health, so the addition of a few extra HP every level is like finding two pennies when you're short a dollar. Your limited healing item won't even heal back a single hit's worth of health
* a really ear-piercing shriek when you die. If you don't like loud noises, play with this muted. Or really, don't play this game at all. In general.
* parry-riposte is inconsistent. Some enemies will grant you a high-damage counter on parrying their attack. Some enemies will simply stop attacking. Bosses seem to continue their attack pattern, often hitting you with the next attack in the series and/or dealing contact damage because they're not affected by parries.
* fighting a boss is a completely different experience than the rest, and not in a good way.

This game is sorta like Megaman Battle Network, but faster and more difficult. Each character plays differently, which I found surprising, and with the exception of the ice girl boss and some low-damage enemies, I generally understand why I took damage and how I can avoid it in the future.

Pros:
* Good music
* Responsive controls
* Mostly well-telegraphed enemy attacks
* Huge variety of player and enemy attacks
* Several layers of strategy, including deckbuilding and map routing
* Easily recognizable enemies
* Difficulty modifiers if you want to see the endings. I do kinda wish it had a "no damage" cheat option so I can just sit back and enjoy being stupid OP

Cons:
* Some mechanics aren't very well-explained, like how much xp and money you gain after a fight, and what the different types of map nodes give for rewards. If explanations exist in-game, maybe I'm just bad at finding them.
* A few enemies seem to have nigh-unavoidable attacks, especially icicle girl and a few of the witch's cards

Very fun with a number of neat mechanics. Some of the levels are a bit finicky, but that also may be because of some cheese I found for them.
Love that there are multiple ways to beat levels, sometimes. Very helpful.

Edit: Not a huge fan of the "hit all switches without dying to get a star," because the barrier is usually more finicky or jank in the later worlds. The puzzles are still fun though.