👍Positive:

Great art style, great soundtrack, nice gameplay. Achievements are direct and pleasant to get.

🤷Neutral:

Quite a lot of backtracking. Story is meh.

This is a game I won from Playing Appreciated. I joined the giveaway cuz of the art style, and it did not disappoint.

This is a point and click/HOG game. Unlike normal HOG games however, in this game there's no HOS(Hidden Object Scene). Instead, objects are hidden throughout the map. What's more, you can't pick up an item before knowing you need them. Tbf, it does get a little bit annoying at first since I'm so used to collecting everything in a scene before moving on, but after a while I got used to it and actually kinda like it. Have you wondered or get annoyed in HOG games, why you can pick up some items and not the others? This game solves that by only letting you pick up items after knowing. It's more logical really. And also it becomes kinda a memory as you can tell what items you're supposed to be able to pick up, and exploring a scene fully does pay off since you'll have a vague idea of where everything is. Another thing I really enjoy is that most of the achievements you can get normally if you just explore and clock everything. It is honestly a real surprise when I finished the game without using a guide that I end up with 29/30 achievements, and the best thing is, the game allows chapter select. What a delight that I can actually play a game with achievements without altering my playstyle or looking up a guide.

Now onto the art style which is the strongest point of the game. I really like the real world art style with black and white outline first and then the colors filling in. It's also really well done. As for in-game, it's just fantastic. It has the cuteness there but also oddly weird world and creatures, much like how it's wanting to portray: a child's imagination. I really like it. :D

And then last but not least, the soundtracks are great! The main song(menu/outro song) is just very pleasant to hear. The story itself is not really that pleasant(except the ending), and background music really fits the scenery and invokes feelings.

Overall I really enjoyed this short game. Probably the best HOG game I've played so far. Would 100% recommend. :3

👍Positive:

Visuals, music and story. All great.

🤷Neutral:

Puzzles are a bit easy.

👎Negative:

Jumpscares. A bit of directionless at the start of the game.

Woo I actually finished this one! It's a Monthly Theme game. I tried this game way back on 2018 August's Monthly(Second Chance) since someone suggested it, but got too scared at the start so I stopped. I'm really surprised I like the game a lot.

You know, there's several times that a game has left a strong impression on my mind but I just can't quite put words into it, and this game is one of those. It took me 3 days to finally sit down and write this review, accompanied by the soundtrack of the game to really remind me of the vibe it gave. It's not gonna be as coherent as others I imagine but bear with me here. :P This game is quite something. From the visuals to the sounds to the cultural information it contains. It feels kinda like Never Alone, where I'm just learning to seeing things that were out of my knowledge and it's so cool. The game builds atmosphere really well which is what I really like about horror games. There's no monsters that will chase you when you walking in the snow so in general I wasn't afraid most of the game, but the strange symbols on tree trunks and strange structures and also me being alone in the snow just really builds this feeling of isolation. The soundtrack is also amazing. It's interesting how little I notice background music until I actually listen to it without the game. What I love the most is each mystical creature has their own theme music and they're all really fitting of their characters.

The art style really is the best part of the game. Everything looks gorgeous and surreal, and when it gets creepy it does so really well. I also really like the designs of the mystical creatures. And the sound effects adds to the immersion a bunch, especially the snow crunching sounds when walking and other sounds like the baby wiggling and such. What really got me though is the story. It's a cliche story tbh, but the way they deliver it is brilliant. It's a combination of in-game mechanic and writing, which I appreciate since I actually really like to read about lore and story if it's written well. Especially in this kinda horror game, a nice long moment of reading is both relaxing and builds background knowledge and in this game's case tension. Remember me abandoning the game last year? It was merely because I read all the encyclopedia first and had the anticipation of there being scary monsters, also the fact that I'm alone in a snowy woods doesn't help. As for the actual story, there's several theories and the one I agree most is that nothing really changed and he didn't take the advice, hence the last remark on the news paper(to avoid spoilers I'll just leave it at that). I must say I'm most drawn to stories with suspense and surprise since they kept me wanting for more and thinking about them more.

As for gameplay mechanics, it's the only one I have complaints for. Firstly I did get kinda lost at the start of the game since I went through the intro last year. After wandering around aimlessly trying to find the Huldra(since I just can't figure out her song since it's kinda not that directional), ended up looking up a guide. Another thing is the god damn jumpscares. There's a total of 3 in the game, and I do not like them. The first one is the end of finding Huldra. This one I'm the most betrayed that they did it since I can easily think of a better one without jumpscare. Just make the Huldra rapidly teleport forward while getting more and more bloody and then finally her face right in front of the camera. It would serve as a semi-jumpscare but also the creepy factor is enough making it not feel as cheap. I did read a comment saying that it's suppose to give the feeling that Huldra is jumping to feed on your blood but I still feel cheated. The next one is the Windmill, which is the most useless one. Doesn't really serve any story purpose and makes no sense. The last one is the Grim which is the one that I understand the most. Grim suddenly comes out and is suppose to be scary. I still jumped but it's fine. But overall, the gameplay is pretty fine. Puzzles are not that hard and it relies on the old pen and paper tactic, which honestly I really like. It has a whole different feel than other puzzle games in me really making the notes down. Here's my notes btw:

So yeah. I'll definitely recommend this game to other people despite it being a horror game. It's worth experiencing and if you're bad with jumpscares just note the three parts that have jumpscare down and you should be fine. :3

👍Positive:

Good story. Nice voice acting. Great atmosphere.

👎Negative:

Gameplay flow way too slow.

This is a Monthly Theme, Challenge Me and pagywosg game. All in one ey? :P Figured I should write the review as soon as I finished the game for the fresh experience and then go back to get the remaining achievements. After that I'm gonna add more to the review.

First off, dang I did not expect this game to be this scary. And like, the creepy atmospheric scary which I liked a lot. Ofc there's still small jumpscares here and there but it's subtle and not abused.

Ok so now I'm gonna talk about my first playthrough. I had a bit of issue at first tho with the game having very low fps(most likely due to my laptop being potato) and I had to lower the resolution a bit to make it manageable. My fps was still always around 15 tho and occasionally drops under 10, though thankfully there's no chase scenes that requires fast movement in the game so it's fine. It did slightly effected my gameplay flow but overall it's fine. There's also occasional screen tearing and audio glitches but eh I managed. All those things did effect my enjoyment of the game, but this is still a good game.

Next I'll talk about story. The writing is great, the voice acting is fantastic and overall it was a good time. There was several times that when I choose my response I thought it's gonna be neutral but it ended up being a negative comment which is a bit annoying. Especially the first time when we flashback to Michael on the beach. I didn't mean to be a jerk to Clarissa(cuz she seemed alright at the time) but the options kinda confused me. Also I did get a bit frustrated with the story not being clear and also Alex getting pushed around not knowing what's happening. I think it's just my mother instinct(?) kicking in cuz when playing games I usually bonds with the main characters and care for them a lot. Seeing them hurt or get pushed around just gets me angry and sad, especially if there's no clear explanation of why. Suppose I'm just not used to the horror genre since a lot of the times MC gets tortured with no reason other than "oh ghosts want to kill" or something. The suspense and atmosphere that the game built really got me spooked. I got goosebumps several times and was very tense in certain sections. One last complaint I'll make tho is near the end of the game, when you yourself is choosing the response to give to others, I'm not sure if I was slow to pick up on that but I thought it's another test and that I have to pick the exact responses I got so I ended up doing that and I just think it's a shame that I didn't get to do that on my own.

So in the end it's really hard for me to start another playthrough of the game since I just have no motivation since the game is too slow, so I'm gonna leave the review there. Possibly re-visiting later but unsure.

👍Positive:

Art style is cute and music is great.

👎Negative:

Gameplay itself. Notes not on point. Game mechanics not explained.

This is a Playing Appreciated game. It was on my wishlist for a quite a while before finally winning it so I was excited to play it, especially since I recently got into a mobile rhythm game so getting the grooves is nice, but sadly I did not like this game that much.

Let's talk about the good first. The art style is just so adorable and the story bits with the comic style is so cute. Music in this game is also just lovely all around. Different areas has their respective songs which fit the environment a lot. I also like the mechanics of dodging notes since it's a cool spin on rhythm since you're generally not hitting the notes, but dodging them. I also enjoyed the cool credit screen where you can play with the names. I just wished there could be more things to interact with. Maybe some things on the background you can use your tail to tap it or some other interesting interaction besides words as objects.

Now I'll talk about what I don't like, which is the main gameplay. The most important thing in a rhythm game for me, is to be on point. Every note needs to be on point so that it feels satisfying to play and when you miss a note you won't feel cheated. In general rhythm games are a combination of using your eyes to see where the notes' at and ears to judge the timing, and honestly everyone's timing will be slightly different. That's why for most rhythm games, you have a thing called calibration. Small offsets that the player can set to either change the judging of the notes or change the notes' placement. In this game, there's nothing like that, and the worst thing is I always have to hit "early" to actually get the hits on bells and polls. That is very frustrating and unsatisfying. The other thing is the controls. In most rhythm games, in order to not limit the player you usually can hit any lane you want to get the notes. In this game you use arrow key or w, s to move up and down. The only other game I've played that works like this is audiosurf, and in that game you can use a mouse which has far quicker and precise movements. Also the game doesn't tell you a lot of things and it's super frustrating. Like for example, the stage I had the most problem is Pihranna Jungle, and at the final part you had to tap the fruits down to get the pihrannas to go away. I did not know that and so I died at the end 2 times, which is super frustrating since I had lag problems before(fixed it by lowering resolution) and it's already a pain to get to there the first place. The other one is the final boss stage. How am I suppose to know the strings can be broken? Since the strings has electricity going through them I generally just avoid them all together. It wasn't until after 10 loops or so that I paused and look up posts on steam discussion. And thankfully I did since the egg and laser part are also not obvious at all as to what I should do.

Overall tho, I don't mind the game, but it's a huge disappointment. Guess hype really is a bad thing in some cases huh?

👍Positive:

HOG gameplay.

🤷Neutral:

Story and voice acting kinda meh.

👎Negative:

Way too much backtracking.

This is a Monthly Theme and a pagywosg game. It's a HOG that has achievements~Thankfully the achievements aren't too hard to get.

Gameplay is just like any other HOGs, but since I like HOGs it's fine. Although cuz of the achievement I'm having the limit of not using hints which is a bit eh. Story and voice acting are both kinda meh. There's cheap "jumpscares" but I didn't get scared at all. It's just whenever it happened I rolled my eyes and thought: "Here we go again. ". lol The worst thing about the game is there's wayyyy too much backtracking. There's three main paths that each has like 6 to 7 places, so I'm having to spend so much time backtracking to the right place which is annoying to say the least. Nothing much else to say really.

👍Positive:

Pretty alright party game if you have friends to play with.

👎Negative:

Grindy achievements. Limited gamemode so it could get boring after a while.

This was for August's Monthly Theme. A party game. Tbh, I don't really like party games. Probably due to me not having a large group of friends to play with. lol

In this game there's 2 game modes. Party and arena. I mostly played party since most achievements required party mode. Party mode basically has a few sets of mini-games and the goal is to get as much coins as possible and also be the last one standing since you'll get a pot of gold if you do. And arena mode is just fight to the death. Tbh I could've marked this as beaten long times ago, but I decided to get a few of the achievements that I'm willing to grind for. It is a huge grind and I can't imagine how much more I'll need if I want to 100% it, so I just gave up. It's just an average game with annoying to get achievements. The only complaint I have is that block collision is sometimes kinda wunky, especially on miners mayhem level. A lot of the times I can't jump onto a block and will get stuck on the edge. Other than that, it's a game that I really wouldn't recommend to anyone but there's also not much flaw to it.

👍Positive:

Could be fun for a bit to see the tree grow if you have an auto-clicker.

👎Negative:

Boring gameplay. Grindy achievements.

I've actually beaten this game when I first won it(2017/April) since it's a PA win, but when I was playing around with the new library system and saw the game I figured I could try to 100% it.

This is not really a good game. You grow trees by clicking, and you trim branches by clicking also. I'm not entirely sure if this is how Bonsai works, but as a game it's boring. Plus the graphics are not that great. The game even crashes if you grow a tree too much without trimming. And oh boy the trimming achievement is such a grind. It really is just unnecessary.

🤷Neutral:

If you love HOG games I guess play it just for the sake of it.

👎Negative:

Game is blurry. Hidden objects hard to find with their weird models. Grammar, characters and story are bad. Nausea inducing scene.

This is a pagywosg game. I have never played a bad HOG before, and I thought there would be no bad HOGs cuz they're pretty easy and straight forward and hard to mess up. But now I have.

I thought this is gonna be a nice relaxing experience with another HOG game, but this game is just bad. It's made in Unity, and the graphics are super blurry. It's 3D, which made me realize just how great the previous HOG games I've played with their drawn background since it's just so damn hard to find the objects in 3D. The blurry-ness of the entire game didn't help. Also it might be that they just found inconsistent models since a lot of the times models and models does not look like they fit together. I ended up just clicking everywhere in the HOS(Hidden Object Scene), which is definitely not what you want players to do in a HOG game. The worst scene tho is the rotating HOS. It's so damn dizzying with the camera movement and such. I rarely gets dizzy at games and this game achieved that. In theory could've been a great idea to incorporate moving HOS but they messed up big times.

Now for the story, it's all over the place. Grammar is bad, story doesn't make sense, characters are boring. Oh and, the menu music is a overused copyright free music. When I opened up the game and heard it I had a bad feeling and I was right. Also, did I mention how stupid the expert difficulty is? You have 20 seconds to progress in the game. If you don't make any progress, you'll have to start all over again. Also if you click too much there's a notification window pop-up telling you to stop wasting time but at the same time you can't click to close the window, thus the window itself is wasting your time. Wtf!? Just don't play this game. Play other good HOGs instead.