BLAEO — Backlog Assassins Extraordinaire

CastleStorm, a decent mix of tower defense and Angry Birds

16.4 hours of playtime
42 of 46 (91%) achievements earned
Personal rating: good (7/10)

Castle VS Castle

Goal of the game: you have to defend your castle against… another castle.

If you enjoy destroying walls of castles by throwing projectiles on it, like in Angry Birds, don’t hesitate to try it.

Shoot at the castle or its fighters.

Or control a hero.

Or use magic.

Or send troops to defend your castle (or else to capture the enemies castle).

1 2 3 4

Poo time in our "epic" story ^^

I really liked the graphics and the general ambience of the game.

There is a story and it’s stupid enough (in the good way) to enjoy the cutscenes and even laugh at some really funny dialogs.

The main story is divided in two parts. You begin with knights and finish with the vikings.

But the gameplay of the two camps is nearly exactly the same. Even if there are a lot of options to customize your castles (projectiles, troops, spells, upgrades, ...), it's a repetitive game.
It’s even more repetitive once you understood the best “strategic” to employ at each fight. But thankfully, the mission objectives can vary (capture/destroy castle, fight boars…).

In facts, the main problem is that the game is far too easy (with mouse and keyboard, you can try with controller but it will be really hard to target).

Despite its flaws I enjoyed Castle Storm.

Use preset castles or customize one yourself.

DLCs: One for playing once more the knights and the other for playing the vikings, in stories that continue the main game. It’s skippables DLC. The gameplay doesn’t change enough to justify the buy. And the main story can conclude without it.

Starward Rogue, a not too bad top-down twin-stick rogue-lite

26.5 hours of playtime
20 of 49 (41%) achievements earned
Personal rating: average+ (6/10)

Goal of the game

Starward Rogue is similar to Binding of Isaac, Nuclear Throne, Enter the Gungeon, …
Quick reminder of what you have to do:
It’s a twin-stick (move and target separately) shooter in which you control a mech.
There are several floors, each divided in rooms. You navigate inside floors like in a maze, you don’t know to what room leads a door until you passed it. You can find the boss of the floor directly or you have to fight common enemies/sub-bosses before. In each of these rooms you may find different kinds of upgrade to help you. The game is finished once you killed the final boss. If you die before, you'll start from the scratch.

Overall feeling: It’s not bad but there are flaws everywhere.

Pros

There are a lot of different kinds of tools to help you.
You begin with:
-a primary weapon (infinite ammo)
-an energy weapon, to kill enemies or being protected against: shield, repulsive magnet, ... (limited ammo which refills at each room)
-a missile weapon (only refills when you find missiles). It is able to destroy enemies and their projectiles too.
In addition of that you can find:
-various passive upgrades (kept forever).
-items (works only once and disappear).
-modules (it works like a passive upgrade, but you can carry only one at a time).
-…

Second pro: the patterns of the common enemies projectiles. There are various, original and often beautiful ^^
Boss patterns aren’t bad either, but it’s more like “let’s fill the screen” ;)

Boss Fight.
My mech is surrounded by my drones, while he's shooting and using his shield.
You can also see there are temporary bonus, written in white, which obey to certain conditions.
Yes, it wasn't easy to push F12 in same time ;)

Cons

-Projectiles patterns are beautiful but multi-color. And projectiles exist in various forms and sizes.
And when you have yourself several drones to help you (which shoot in green, red, orange, ...), a blue AOE attack, a purple energy weapon, and an orange primary weapon… it becomes A RAINBOW FEST in which it is really hard to understand who is shooting what!

-There are various kinds of weapons/passive upgrades/item/… but not a lot of choices for each these categories. And there are shops and cash everywhere. After few games, it was already felt repetitive because it seemed that I’ve already discover nearly everything.

-The graphic aren’t great. Judge yourself on the screens. And all the floors looks the same. Explosion/flame effects are the worse. They are unnecessarily big and they often hide everything else.

-The camera is fixed. I would have wished that when you target on the right, the screen move a bit on the right… It may sound like a minor flaw, but NO.

-I had technical issues too. (I don’t think it came from my computer installation).
When there were too many kinds of projectiles and explosions at screen, the sound effects shut off themselves.
Loadings could be really longs at launch too.
And the most stupid bug I got was when an enemy was stuck in the scenery: I couldn’t kill him and so I couldn’t leave the room and so I couldn’t continue….

-The looping electronic music can quickly irritate after few hours.

Impossible to kill this stuck ship... After 6/7 floors (more than 1 hour) it was like a GAME OVER without dying... :'(

To summarize

I really liked the various kind of items that I could use. But every games looked so similar and so repetitive. Because every sceneries looked the same and at each new games I could use nearly every items that I used the game before…

More than all other problems, it’s the repetition which bored me too much and forced me to stop to play it.

End screen with useful stats: around 2h to complete a run but I spent only the half of this time to fight. It's a good opportunity to mention that the teleport system to navigate between rooms isn't really efficient...
This screen proves also that there are too many shops (there are upgrades/weapons/.. in every secret rooms too... sub-bosses/bosses can both drop it too... and there are chests everywhere...).

GoNNER, a very original but short rogue-lite platformer

7.7 hours of playtime
19 of 19 (100%) achievements earned
Personal rating: good+ (8/10)

In first, I’d like to say that I really liked this game. But why? Because everything is greatly weird and original ^^

There is a story, but it’s very limited and only through artworks (without text or animation).
The only part that I really understood is the beginning: you have a friend and it’s a whale (weird, I said^^) and you spend your time to play with him…until
…(the game start) you are front a floating character, without your head.
He will allow you to chose 1 head (different passive abilities and number of hearts), 1 weapon (each with different kind of shot and push-back back effect when you shoot) and 1 item (that you can activate every few seconds).
And your deadly adventure begins.

Time to choose a head.

Care to not lose it ;)

Your strange journey is divided in 4 worlds each with a boss to beat. Between each world you can see your whale friend, who can give you bonus (extra heart/ammo...).
Each level is filled by various enemies. If you are hit, you'll temporally lose your head, weapon and item until you grab them. You can kill them by shooting or jumping on them. But you are not forced to kill them all. You have to progress from levels to levels through snakes mouth located at the other side of the entrance of level.

There is a an original money system in the game, some strange glyphs. To get 1, you have to kill 5 enemies in short amount of time. This money will be used to buy new stuffs at shop (1 shop per world) or when you die, if you have enough glyphs you will be able to start again at the same level.

You can unlock new heads/weapons/items by finding them directly in levels or by buying them in shops.

The first boss (The 3 biggest flying monsters).

White world (as in the other worlds, the ground and wall only appear when you are close enough).

Kiss your dear whale to obtain a little help.

What I liked the most

The graphics are minimalist but really original, and the money system is even more unique.
The gameplay is great too: you can move, shoot and kill very fast. The sound effects, the explosions make it really fun.
And the music perfectly fit this weird universe.

BUT

The game is really short, there is not many head/weapon/items to unlock or secret things to discover.

If you reach a long combo by killing many enemies in a short amount of time, the colors will change at each new hit.

You should really try it, it’s a great game. And it’s not hard to get 100% achievements.

There are some jokes inside the achievements.This one is perhaps only understood by rogue-like players ;)