She Sees Red from Publisher and Developer Rhinotales
A “choose your own adventure” style movie/game. Good production value and an interesting story. Parental warning for graphic violence and brief partial female nudity.
An Interactive FMV Movie
It all starts out in the back room of a nightclub. Someone has killed several people at the club and that is where the story begins. A detective is on the scene, following the clues and uncovering the story.
It’s more of a choose your own adventure movie than a game. Periodically, you will be provided with 2 options that will appear on the screen. There is a time limit to make your choice. If you don’t pick something, the game will automatically choose an option for you. Once you select your choice the next scene begins and you get to find out what happens. This is done well as it can be completed with just a simple move of the d-pad or left stick to highlight your choice (on PC it would be a mouse click on the respective button).
Moving to the next scene is done well with no loading time in between. This helps make it feel more like watching a movie. There is a lot of action, graphic violence, and strong language (swearing). All of which fits the narrative and story they created. Depending on the choices you make, you may also see a scene with brief partial female nudity. The nudity seemed unnecessary to the scene and didn’t really add anything.
There are four possible endings that you can get depending on the choices you make. “Every choice matters” is the game’s mantra. The 4 different endings add to the replayability of the game as does the scene counter that lets you know how many of the available scenes you’ve seen. They added the option to “skip scene” after your second playthrough if you have already experienced it.This lets you get to the choices a lot faster so you can make a different choice and possibly get a different ending. We really appreciated the option to skip a scene so we didn’t have to rewatch the same material over and over again and could get to the new alternate scenes faster.
The game/movie is a little on the short side with a single playthrough/viewing only taking around 30-40 minutes depending on your choices; less if you choose to skip scenes.
The film production is well done with professional actors, editing, lighting, and sound design. It has an indie film look. We noticed the dubbed voice sync felt off in a few places but overall it was pretty good. The game is both dubbed and subbed and you have the option to change the audio track back to the original Russian with english subtitles. The original Russian audio seemed to fit better than the English VO but this may be subject to personal preferences.
They also added a Galley where you can view the behind the scenes of the movie that was filmed. Overall, the quality of the FMV is good and the story was interesting enough to make us want to find all of the scenes and endings.
She Sees Red is available on Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Steam, Andriod and Apple. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Active Neurons 2 from Publishers Sometimes You, Usanik STDand Developer Nikolai Usachev
A great sequel with fun new mechanics, nice soundtrack, and challenging puzzles.
A Logic Puzzle
This is the sequel to Active Neurons (Review Here ). There are more puzzles, new mechanics added to the game, and a great new soundtrack.
We noticed several changes/improvements from the original Active Neurons. Previously, all of the puzzles were single screen. Now, some puzzles will require you to move to a second screen which adds a bunch of new challenges. Solving the puzzles now comes with a bigger animated explosion that provides a very satisfying feeling. We also noticed that some of the options available in the first game are not present in this game; namely, Color Blind mode and Monochrome mode. This is a let down for those that use these accessibility features. Hopefully they’ll be added in a future update.
The soundtrack is great with lofi beats to keep you relaxed when struggling with a puzzle. They’ve also added an RGB sound graph across the bottom of the screen that visualizes the soundtrack. During our game play the background music cut out at one point for several minutes. Quitting and reloading seemed to fix it.
Much like the first game solving the puzzle requires moving an energy block to the goal(s) located elsewhere on the level. Once you press the direction you want the block to move, it will continue in that direction until it hits an obstacle. You will need to use these obstacles along with portals or the walls around the edge of the screen to help you maneuver through the level.
There are over 150 puzzles to enjoy and several unique game mechanics are introduced as you progress through the levels. As you make your way along this journey you will discover the 12 greatest inventions of humanity and reflect on the power of human thought. Once you complete the 10 levels for each invention you are provided with information about the invention. We really liked these nuggets of knowledge gained along the way.
If you get really stuck on a puzzle there is the option to see the solution for the puzzle at the press of a button. That was present in the original game and returns for the second game. It’s really nice for those that are impatient or just really stuck to be able to keep moving through the game. There is also a convenient reset button which restarts the puzzle in a second or 2. This got a lot of use for us especially in the later levels where mistakes cannot be recovered from. If you like the challenge of actually figuring things out for yourself, be careful when restarting levels as it is easy to accidentally select the solution button instead of the reset button. Fortunately, you can stop the solution from completing even if you accidentally click it.
It is a very enjoyable gameplay experience. The puzzles start out pretty easy and increase the difficulty at a nice pace while steadily introducing new mechanics to keep the game fresh.
Much like the original game there is little to no replayability after completing the game. If there is a 3rd game we would love to see leaderboards, challenges, or time trials added. Some would consider it a good thing that these additions aren’t present while others may find they miss having a reason to replay levels and the ability to compete with friends and strangers.
Active Neurons 2 is available on Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
SGR: Today we’re talking to Eric Freeman, he is the developer and producer for the minimalistic puzzle game, Déjà Vu, available on Xbox and PC. So, Eric, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Eric: I’m 29 years old. I live in Utah. I am a programmer by day and I really like making Unity games by night. So that’s where Déjà Vu came from.
SGR: What got you interested in writing games?
Eric: I was nine when I first started. My parents didn’t like video games to begin with. They thought they rotted your mind, but I was allowed to program my own and play them. So, there we go.
SGR: Nice! A little loophole for you there.
Eric: Yep just had to make my own.
SGR: So you were nine when you wrote your first video game?
Eric: Um, I wouldn’t call it a video game, but yeah, that’s when I first got into coding.
SGR: That’s really cool.
Eric: Thank you. Yeah, I started with just modifying text-based adventures and changing the names of enemies to different things and changing the room descriptions. But then I started learning about if statements and for loops and all that kind of stuff and just took off from there.
SGR: Gotcha. That’s really cool. I’m guessing that was probably all PC games since consoles were pretty hard to edit back then since they were on cartridges.
Eric: Yeah, all PC games. A lot of the basic programming languages, I used Blitz Basic mainly, but I also touched on a couple of others, like Visual and Liberty Basic, but Blitz Basic was the best.
SGR: So, you started with a text-based game. You’re familiar with Zork, I’m guessing?
Eric: Yeah.
SGR: That’s awesome. I played those a long time ago.
Eric: Nice. My favorite text-based game is Frederick Pohl’s Gateway. I feel like not enough people recognize that game, but that was one of my favorites.
SGR: What was the inspiration for your game?
Eric: Have you ever played the game The Swapper?
SGR: Yes.
Eric: I played that game and where I thought they were going to go in the end, where it was like, Oh, you know, who are you? Are you like the clone? Cause you’re switching back and forth with which clone you’re controlling. So, did the real you die at some point during that game? And then they didn’t really go there in the ending. I was like, “Hey, what if I made a game about clones that talked more about that?”
SGR: Where did you come up with the name Déjà Vu?
Eric: Well it just sounded nice because in French it translates to “already seen”. So, it’s clones that are doing the patterns that you just did. It just worked.
SGR: Yeah. That’s kind of where I thought it came from. I really liked the concept actually. And the name tying in with it. That cloning mechanic seems to be really central to solving the majority of the puzzles.
Eric: Yeah. One of my biggest regrets with the game is that we didn’t introduce the cloning mechanic earlier. I think a lot of people get put off when they’re starting out in it and it’s just kind of generic Sokoban-ish type puzzles one after another. I probably should have introduced the cloning mechanic early and then had the other mechanics (lasers, switches, etc) tie in with the cloning and not just introduce all the boring generic stuff and then get to the meat of the game.
SGR: I don’t know. I feel like the mechanics built on each other pretty well. Because you’ve kinda got to introduce some of those basic mechanics since there’s not really a tutorial. The game is its own tutorial. So you’re really walking us through the process of “what is the objective here?” “put the blue square on the yellow square.” Okay, cool. You know? And then “how do I navigate?” And “introducing switches and doors and movable blocks.” I thought that you actually built on the mechanics very well. You kind of have to understand what those basic mechanics are before introducing cloning and how to use it.
Eric: Yeah, there’s a big balance there. I didn’t want people to think it’s just a generic Sokoban type game and then not actually get to the fun part.
SGR: Yep. There were a couple of puzzles that were kind of challenging. I’m not going to lie. I’ve beaten the game several times but Switchboard was a challenging level. Figuring out the key to opening the doors and the delayed clone movement was awesome.
Eric: Object in motion stays in motion. It applies even to a clone.
SGR: Yeah, pretty much. I used aspects of that mechanic on earlier levels, but introducing doors to function as a temporary stop to that motion, that was a new mechanic on this level.
Eric: I’m glad you liked it.
SGR: I really liked the music that you chose too. Did somebody make the music for you or did you find it somewhere?
Eric: I made it. Well, I worked on all the songs. The main menu theme Danielle helped me a lot on. I just realized I haven’t even talked about her yet. Déjà Vu wasn’t just a solo game. My girlfriend Danielle helped tremendously with a lot of the puzzle design. She helped out in the music, a lot of the story too, editing the chicken scratch I wrote into an actual fleshed out story. So, she helped a lot. This was a two-person project. But yeah, we did the music together. The main menu theme is a remix she did of one of my songs. Then I did the background track. On Xbox there’s also like the third piece that plays on that user engagement screen where it says “press any button to continue.” So, it was just those three songs in the game.
SGR: Awesome. Well, you guys did a great job.
Eric: Thank you.
SGR: I mean really, it’s very nice music. I don’t mind having it just kind of playing in the background, you know? Which is good, especially for a puzzle game where sometimes you can get a little frustrated trying to figure things out in a puzzle and dying, you know, a hundred times.
Eric: Yeah. Just had to be a little calming and fill the empty space.
SGR: I’ve played several puzzle games and one of the parts that you guys did really well with the music was that whenever you restarted a level, it kept the music going. You didn’t get to hear the same thing over and over and over again. I mean, several other games every time I would restart a level it would restart the song and I’m like, “I’ve heard the same 15 seconds over and over again.” because I keep dying and it was really nice that the music in Déjà Vu was seamless and just kept playing.
Eric: Yeah, making sure the restarts were super-fast and seamless was important for a game like this. Something like Hotline Miami where you die constantly was kind of the inspiration where you press a button on a controller and it just takes you back in a split second seamlessly. Because we really wanted trial and error to be a big part of the game, every level, once you kind of get the solution, can be solved in a couple of seconds. So, we wanted to make sure that death is not a big deal. You just press B and you’re back to normal. Getting hit by a laser, that’s fine, you know, messing up, making a mistake, you can get back to it as quick as possible to make it as least frustrating as possible.
SGR: So, what is your favorite moment of the game
Eric: Probably the ending. I feel like it’s hidden in there where the font color changes and I feel like not enough people noticed that. Do you know what I’m talking about? Getting the story right, a lot of people said that it seemed kind of abstract…and it totally was. We wanted the story to be minimal. In earlier versions it was a little more overbearing and there was a lot more wordy and it didn’t fit with how simple the rest of the game was. So, we tried to cut out as much as we could to make it so the story is still there. And we explained that with changing font colors and sound effects that really help tie it together in a weird way. But I swear there is a whole story there.
SGR: It was so subtle I didn’t catch that. And I’ve done this a lot of times.
Eric: I feel like most people didn’t, which is fine. I mean a lot of people guess what happened at the end without it. But I remember like one of the posts on the TrueAchievements website, which is one of the few places where I found people actually talking about my game, which was cool, but one of them asked, “Hey, what happened at the end? I don’t really get it.” And so I went into detail there about, “Oh, you need a notice the font colors and what they mean.” And then in a spoiler text I explain what that means. But yeah, font color is important in this game.
SGR: That’s cool. I’ll try to keep an eye out for it on my next playthrough. I guess that is the Easter egg isn’t it? My next question was asking you about Easter eggs in the game. So that just kind of go straight into it. Sounds like font color is the answer.
Eric: Actually, there are a few hidden mechanics throughout the game. I wouldn’t say any Easter eggs, but another one that people don’t really notice is, you know the level with four laser beams, going back and forth?
SGR: Yes.
Eric: So, a lot of my play testers were family members who aren’t very good at video games and that level really stopped a lot of them. But that level, the laser beam is actually slowed down by 5% every time you die on that level only. As long as you persevere, you should be able to beat it because eventually they’ll stop.
SGR: Yeah. I had a little bit of trouble with that one myself. I think I died, six times maybe trying to finish that one.
Eric: I try to make it really subtle where you wouldn’t notice. When a game has adaptive difficulty, you don’t want the player to know all of a sudden now they’re playing on easy mode because it’s like a slap in the face like, “Oh geez, I wasn’t good enough to play this.”
SGR: Right.
Eric: So, I slow them down by 5% every time you die. So eventually after a few times you wouldn’t even notice that they slowed down, but then when you get to the exit you’ll think, “Oh wow, I’m the best! I conquered this game!” They’ll actually reverse and just run off the map if you die enough times. I left that bug in because I thought it was funny.
SGR: I love that you did that. That’s really fantastic. It helps the game be more accessible to less skilled players. I noticed that you mentioned TrueAchievements, which is basically a site for gamer score and stuff like that which actually leads into my next question about what inspired the choice for the names of the achievements in the game? Specifically, the “lmao dead” achievement.
Eric: Yeah. LMAO dead. That was actually a Snapchat caption I got from Danielle and I thought it was a really funny caption. So, when I was trying to think of achievement names like, “Oh, if you die enough, why not use that LMAO dead one”. The name just came from an inside joke between Danielle and I. But, one of my favorite achievement names that are in the game is the “new clone, who dis?”, I thought that was a good play off of “new phone, who dis?”
SGR: Yeah, I liked that one too.
Eric: I tried to have a little bit of fun with it. Oh. And I used the open game achievement just to track how many people have actually opened the game because I didn’t want to put in any kind of third party tracking analytics. Then you need to have privacy policies and all that kind of stuff pop up and agree to it. “Oh, you’re being tracked when you play this game.” But you already agreed to those when you were playing on Steam or Xbox and so it’s out of their systems. So, I just put an achievement for as soon as you open the game just so I can see how many people bought the game and then actually opened it. Right now on Steam 15% of the people who bought it haven’t opened it yet. Which is cool because I like free money so I’m glad they bought it, but I do hope those 15% of people play it.
SGR: Yeah, so it doesn’t just “sit in the library collecting dust.” I actually liked that you added that as the description for the “Opened Game” achievement. Speaking as a fan of achievements and as a completionist, part of the time I hate it when there’s one that pops up immediately. I’m like, “but I didn’t like the game, but now I need to finish it.” I kind of get the idea, as the game developer, you want people to play your game. So it kind of draws you in with something that pops up immediately and then hopefully they’ll go on to finish it and enjoy it. The achievement description you used actually made me chuckle and curbed the annoyance I would typically have from the immediate achievement unlock.
Eric: Yeah. And you really should be front-loading those types of things to really make them engaging. I remember I was talking to somebody who worked on the Toy Story 3 video game and they said saying since it’s mostly kids, they needed to have achievements popping up all the time in the beginning so that they’re really invested in it. Like, “I complete one more race and I’ll get some more achievements.” So yeah, I tried to do that, especially with the text in between levels. We had to have it pop up after a really tough one, so it’s a reward, and then at the beginning it was every two or three levels we’d have another one just to like say, “you’re making progress” “the show’s going on.” It’s not just 50 boring puzzles from here on out.
SGR: Are there any parts of the game that you wish you could’ve kept in the game, but had to cut for some reason?
Eric: There’s nothing that I wish I could’ve kept in, but there was at one point saw blades in the game that would like bounce around on the walls. The physics were not very deterministic. Deterministic basically means, “if you simulate something, whenever you have the clone do it, he’ll do exactly what the player did.” The saw blades would bounce differently some of the time though. So, we changed most of them to be levels with laser beams because it’s the same kind of idea. If you walk into it, your block dies, and saw blades blocks paths. There were only one or two levels with saw blades that got taken out just because of physics problems and couldn’t have been changed into lasers. But I didn’t necessarily like them. I was happy to cut them.
SGR: So good cuts.
Eric: Yeah. Good, good cuts. But, yeah, it was really hard to just come up with puzzles in the first place. We didn’t want to cut anything really. We want to make sure that every puzzle was either adding something new or using a mechanic in a new way. We didn’t want it to be, you know, like Minesweeper. You already know what the mechanics are after the first level you play. So, we didn’t want it to just be repetitive like that. We try to add something new. It’s hard to come up with new, fresh ideas using the existing things.
SGR: Yeah. Overall, I think you guys did a really good job with the difficulty progression as well as, like, making them interesting. Something else we liked about your game is that you added a color blind mode. Your game is very bright…
Eric: Yes, it is.
SGR: …did you guys consider putting in a dark mode? What led you to choose such bright colors?
Eric: Yeah. So, what led us to choose the color scheme was actually the movie “Her.” I really liked the pastels in there. So, I was like, “Oh, when I make a game, I’m just going to use pastel colors” and then when I was working on Déjà Vu, it’s just a bunch of boxes and squares or whatever so it just kind of kept going with those pastel themes. But, yes, I definitely want to make some changes to make it more accessible for people with photosensitivity. We added the color blind mode after launch based on some feedback. And then, just yesterday somebody mentioned the photosensitivity, which I’ve never really thought of. Like, I know websites have dark themes now. I thought that was just because people like it, you know. So yeah, this is something that I totally missed and we need to probably patch into the game at some point. We’ll be trying to get that in as soon as possible.
SGR: That would be so Cool. So, any chance on more DLC?
Eric: Those first 50 puzzles were very hard to put together. I do want to, and we’re making jokes internally about that. Like, what would we even call it? And my favorite idea was just calling the sequel “Déjà Vu” again or “Déjà Two.” But, yeah, we did talk about a few more levels, but since they are so hard to put together, we were thinking about doing a pallet cleanser and something completely different before coming back to more puzzles.
SGR: That makes sense.
Eric: Sorry to disappoint you.
SGR: A as long as there’s something possibly in the works, I’ll be happy. Yes. What do you hope gamers come away with after playing the game?
Eric: I’d like them to say “Wow, that was a fun game.” It sounds cliché. I just want people to like it. I don’t really have any too deep meanings behind it really. You know, it’s not like Spec Ops: The Line where the players would come away with “war is bad” or something like that. Just “it was a good puzzle game.”
SGR: So I’m guessing you’re quite a gamer since you started kind of hacking games as a child and you’re mentioning a ton of games. Other than your own game, what is your favorite game?
Eric: Oh, geez. According to only steam hours, probably NGU IDLE. This is a tough one. I feel like it really depends on my mood because I have different favorites and different genres. If I’m playing a game with friends, I really like Borderlands. I put over 200 hours in Borderlands 2 during LAN parties, but, puzzle games…probably Portal 2 if I had to be honest. Although, Stephen’s Sausage Roll was another really good one that everyone should check out if they haven’t. Way harder than anything else you’ve ever played, it’s ridiculously hard. But yeah, I kind of go all over the place. I don’t really have a favorite genre. I used to play a lot of Counter Strike with friends. I’ve put tooons of hours into Mount and Blade: Warband and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I go all over the place, shooters, slower paced games… just anything.
SGR: Hmm. Well, you mentioned some of my favorites already.
Eric: That’s good. Oh, and Euro Truck Simulator 2! You have to give a shout out to that one.
SGR: Do you have any projects on the horizon that you either could or would like to talk about?
Eric: Well, I started working on a shooter with Danielle. A retro throwback boomer shooter or whatever the term is for those now. But, I don’t really have anything to show off yet. It’s probably going to be the exact opposite of Déjà Vu. It’s going to be super fast-paced, very loud, very aggressive, and a real good palette cleanser from the slow-paced puzzles.
SGR: How long have you been in the industry as a professional and not just a fan?
Eric: For videogames or just programming in general?
SGR: I guess video games.
Eric: Well, this is our first major release. We started this project four years ago in 2016 and it’s been on and off for a while. As I said, designing puzzles is hard.
SGR: Yeah it is. I have so much respect and appreciation for the people who can create puzzles that actually make me have to stop and think, actually make me have to work, to figure out the solution.
Eric: Yeah. I honestly had no idea how hard it would be to make a puzzle game until I started this. I remember thinking like, “Oh, I’m just going to make like the simple top-down 2D game. I’ll have this done in no time.” I thought Déjà Vu would be a quick project…and 4 years later it’s released.
SGR: That’s awesome. And you guys are completely self-published?
Eric: Yep.
SGR: If you could give advice to somebody else who has those same aspirations what kind of guidance or advice or words of wisdom would you give to someone else that is where you were five or six years ago?
Eric: Download Unity and try to make like the simplest projects possible. Don’t try to make your dream project first because it’ll probably fail. Start with something simple, like recreating Flappy Bird. That’s a really good first project. You learn how to use input systems and on phones, you learn how to do the touch screen or gyroscope input. You’ll be doing UI stuff. You’ll be doing animation and all that kind of stuff. But it’s such a simple concept that you could get it done in a week if you follow the tutorials. So, start with really simple projects and then build from there. Puzzle games are hard. Just make a top down shooter first.
SGR: Those are great tips. Hopefully, they’ll help someone out there. Did you have in your head, like “this is step one” “this is how I want to end it” and then start building in-between? Or, were you just like, “this would be a cool ending” and then kind of work backwards?
Eric: For like the design of puzzles or for the story itself
SGR: Both.
Eric: Both. Yeah. So, the ending, we kind of had the idea for the ending pretty early on and then we were just filling in the parts in the middle. For the puzzles, normally what we would do is we actually drew them all out on paper first. We would just draw a box for like the level.
Then we draw where the start is and we draw where the end is. And then we just stare at it, say like, “okay, maybe it would be interesting if there’s a wall here blocking it in half.” So, then we draw the wall. I’m like, “well, they’re going to need to open that up.” So then drawn in a door, then had a button to open that door and then try to think like, “okay, well what would be the mechanic?” Just kind of build with pieces. You start with the beginning and the end and then you just try to figure out where you’re going in the middle. Sometimes you know you need the puzzle to use a certain mechanic like pushing dead bodies, so that makes the middle section easier to plan out.
SGR: One of the things that I noticed is some of the puzzles actually seem to have more than one way to complete them.
Eric: Yeah. There’s some achievements for a few of those like, “don’t let anybody die.” A lot of the later levels weren’t play tested enough so I didn’t really realize that some of them were easier if you just kill off one of the clones in the beginning.
SGR: Yeah. That’s how I did it on one of the ones. And then I actually went to YouTube and I watched the videos. This one guy had this super complex thing and I’m like, “I just killed the clone and got them to block the laser.”
Eric: Yeah. For the level Crossroads, that was actually the way we intended it to be, because it was the first level where you realize that there’s a mechanic where you can push dead bodies around. I was watching one of my friends play test it and he solved it without doing that. So, I went back and added a secret achievement for if you complete it without using dead bodies. And then I added the level that’s directly after it were it was only possible to beat it by pushing the dead body. So that way, if somebody solved it the other way first, they would still know that pushing dead bodies is a mechanic in the game.
SGR: Oh, something I love the way you did was the laser redirect blocks. They’ve got the countdown on them to tell you how long you’ve got to get the hell out of the way before it points that direction. I thought that was really well done.
Eric: Well, thank you. They used to redirect immediately, but during playtesting it was obvious that was really aggravating having to push the blocks quickly and use the momentum to slide them into place while you have barely enough time to get out of the way.
SGR: Yeah. The first time I saw that I was like, as soon as I saw the laser hit the block and the three dots start to fill before it shot off, I was like, “that’s awesome.” That’s going to make this so much easier. Cause I noticed that same little bit of transference of momentum thing. And I thought I was going to have to use that somehow. And I was like, “okay, this is going to be hard.” And then when I saw that and I was like, “Oh! Oh, that’s nice. I like that.”
I really enjoyed the pacing of the new mechanics. They came in right as the other ones were starting to be like, “okay, I figured this one out. I understand how to do this.” And then all of a sudden it was like, “BAM! new mechanic.” It kept me really interested in the game and wanting to play it. You guys did a really good job of introducing things in a way that kept it interesting and kept it from becoming too monotonous or boring.
We really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us about Déjà Vu. We wish all the best and can’t wait to try out the Dark Mode you mentioned.
Mask of Mists from Publishers Sometimes You, Stately Snailand Developer 9 Eyes Game Studio
Minimal combat challenges, some relatively easy puzzles, not a lot of story. Enjoyable but short game.
First-person Adventure Puzzler
You are a mercenary who has been sent to locate a missing person, the Archmage. This is where the story starts and stays until the end of the game. There is very little story development in the middle of the game. The majority of it is revealed by finding and reading things found through exploration. You will need to find clues, collect items, loot chests, find stone masks, solve puzzles, and explore the colorful magical world all in search of the Archmage.
The combat is pretty simple and can be rather repetitive. You only have a single sword and pistol for your melee and ranged attacks. There are only 3 different types of enemies in the game and a single boss fight. With so little variety in your enemies it is easy to figure out how to avoid their attacks. Given that the game is set in such a magical world we would have loved to see the option to use magic in one way or another.
There is a crafting mechanic for potions. Before you can craft the potions you will need to locate recipes and the ingredients for them. Some of these are hidden in chests while others are out on a table waiting to be picked up. They did a good job making sure you never felt like you needed to hunt down the items. You could just pick them up while on your way to the next location and there were extra in case you missed a few.
The artstyle is a pleasant Disney-esque fantasy cartoon-scape. They did a great job capturing the look and feel of the indoor, outdoor, and underground areas with changes in lighting and color.
One of the nice touches they added was the Navigation Crystal mechanic. These allow you to leave a ruin after reaching the end of it without having to make your way all the way back through the level. Activating these is also a requirement for moving the story forward and unlocking the final area.
Most of the puzzles are easy to solve. They can often be solved with minimal trial and error. However, the game also provides an answer key nearby, sometimes in the next room. There are a few puzzles that require platforming. These can be a little difficult due to the inherent challenges of platforming from a first person perspective.
All in all, the game can be completed in just a few hours and was an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.
Mask of Mists is available on Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch and Steam. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Party Panic from Publisher and Developer Everglow Interactive Inc.
A party game probably most enjoyable when using the “drinking game” mode. Lots of mini-games, some with challenging physics.
A very colorful group of Mini Games (Party Game)
There are over 30 minigames to play, enjoy, or get frustrated with. It has online or local split screen co-op both with the option to add bots which is always nice to see in a party game.
There are multiple options for customizing your character to make it fit your personality. You can change the color and add a little bit of flair with various hats, glasses, capes, and some other items. As you complete the different game types you get to win loot boxes. These can be opened from the main lobby and each will give you the choice between two clothing items. We really liked having the option to pick which of the items we wanted.
There are a few games modes to pick from and play. The two “Party” game types have the option of turning them into a drinking game.
Minigame Party – Which randomly cycles through the list of minigames.
Custom Party – Same as Minigame Party but you can remove games from the list of possible games to play or to practice. We liked having the option of removing the games that we didn’t like or had played too frequently.
Gauntlet – Make your way through a procedurally generated obstacle course. This keeps the gauntlet interesting as you never know what obstacles you might run into. They also let you choose how many obstacles to add so you can make the course longer or shorter.
Board Game – This is a “Mario Party” type board game with two different boards to choose from. You will need to roll a dice and move around the board. After everyone completes their moves it loads into a random minigame. They made the choice of having you manually move your character around the board. This lets you explore the board and figure out where your character will stop or which path you will choose to take. You can also choose to punch or kick your opponents when you’re passing them. We would have liked to see the option to have the character move by themselves to help expedite the game play.
Trophy Island – You get to free roam and explore Gooberland trying to locate and collect trophies. There are some areas that are blocked off initially and get unlocked by exploring and interacting with the environment. While in Gooberland you will have to complete challenges in order to collect some of the trophies. Some of the challenges are enjoyable while others are very challenging due to issues with the game mechanics/physics. These issues stand out the most while driving the car and during some of the precise platforming.
We ran into an issue where our character did not spawn into a minigame forcing us to sit out on that game. While playing the Board Game mode we noticed that it picks the games in a truly random way. Some games appeared more often in the rotation than others so that we had played the same mini-games a few times before seeing new ones. We also had issues with the camera clipping through walls while exploring Trophy Island.
The art style is a little cartoonish with the characters having very long arms and large heads. While playing you will notice the characters making random weird facial expressions to other characters or just at random times. These can be rather amusing.
Party Panic is available on Xbox One, PS4 and Steam. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
A short enjoyable puzzle game with a couple of cool mechanics and a very bright background.
A minimalist puzzle game
You need to move your square to the yellow square somewhere on the screen. Its start is pretty simple and can be completed without thinking. After a few levels they start to add new game mechanics and the difficulty starts to ramp up.
Eventually you are introduced to the clone mechanic. Presumably this is the mechanic that inspired the title. It allows you to record your movements and clone your square. After making your clone it will play your recorded movements. This was a big surprise when we figured out that if you keep moving in one direction and clone yourself the recording will keep moving in that direction. This was one of the coolest mechanics introduced in the game. Overall, the controls and game mechanics are simple and work nicely as intended.
There is a narrative thread in the game. It is told through text on screen after completing every few levels. We didn’t feel this “story” element really added to the game in any appreciable way.
The game has a very relaxing soundtrack which helps soothe the frustration when getting stuck on a level. Some of the later levels you will probably end up restarting over and over trying to figure out the solution. Luckily, you can reset the level with the press of a button and get back to trying a different method within a second or two.
There is the option to enable a Colorblind mode. We love to see developers putting in the effort to make their games more accessible for all gamers. The one thing we do wish is that there was an option to lower the brightness of the background or play the game in “dark mode” as most of the screen is white which can be painful for those with photosensitivity.
As for replayability options, they added a “Best Time” under each level which gives you the option to replay each level trying to beat your best time. We would have loved to see an online leaderboard to compare your times against friends and strangers. There is also a Player Statistics area that you can see at the end of the level selection area which shows your Total Time and Total Deaths. The total time does not calculate the total amount of time played it just adds the total best time for each of the levels. The game is fairly short and can be completed within an hour depending on player skill.
Déjà Vu is available on Xbox One and Windows. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Destroy All Humans! from Publisher THQ Nordic and Developer Black Forest Games
Remake of the first game with some additional gameplay features. Some of the dialog is a little dated.
A remaster of the Original Destroy All Humans.
The game takes place in the United States of America in an alternate history circa 1959. An alien named Cryptosporidium-136 was sent to earth to prepare for the invasion and disappeared. You play as Crypto-137 sent to earth to figure out what happened to Crypto-136. Crypto’s mission is to infiltrate and sabotage secret government facilities and defeat Majestic (the secret shadow government organization in charge of everything), find out what happened to Crypto-136, and finish his mission.
While invading earth you will travel to different locales around the USA, and have to deal with townsfolk, police, the military (tanks, trucks, soldiers and robots), and Majestic. Everyone is scared of you. If they spot you, they’ll try to stop and kill you before you can take over the world.
Luckily you have a lot of alien tech at your disposal to aid you on your mission; like various weapons, a jetpack, a flying saucer, and several awesome abilities. Your abilities are Holoclone, which lets you disguise yourself as a holographic clone of anyone, Cortex Scan, which lets you read people’s minds to get intel and provides a little back story, Psychokinesis, lets you pick up and throw things or even people, and Brain Extraction, to pull the brains out of humans.
The Voice Over work for the main characters is great but the townsfolk are a little off and tend to be repetitive. We noticed that the repetition in the NPC dialog isn’t limited to their conversations. There’s also a limited amount of variety in what you hear when scanning their brains. The thoughts start to repeat after just a few minutes of scanning people. Some of the thoughts also just seemed dated and kinda wrong by today’s standards. While playing you will occasionally hear Crypto cracking jokes about the human race. Some of them are kinda funny.
The little things that have been added to the remake makes the game very enjoyable to play for fans of the series or for those who are new to it. They added a new system to this game that was not present in the previous iterations of Destroy all Humans. There are optional bonus objectives to complete for each mission. You can still complete the missions without completing the bonus objectives. Mission replay is available at any time to give you the chance to go back and try them again. Completing all of the bonus objectives in select missions will unlock skins for Crypto. We liked the replayability this adds to the game.
Once you finish the mission for each town, you’ll unlock a free roam option for the location. This lets you access all areas of the town so you can find the collectibles and easily access the 4 challenge areas for each location. The challenges are Armageddon, Abduction, Race, and Rampage. You will receive a star rating for the challenges. They can be a bit of a struggle at first since Crypto only has stock weapons and not all of his powers are unlocked. They become a lot easier and more fun if you go back with a maxed out Crypto with all of his powers and weapons unlocked and upgraded.
The game has a good check point system that makes saves pretty often. This comes in handy at times but can be your bane at other times. We ran into an issue on a mission where we needed to protect a truck from taking too much damage. The truck had 1 hit left when we hit a checkpoint triggering a save and had to finish the rest of the mission making sure it did not get hit at all. We ended up having to restart the mission and protect it better at the beginning as it was easier and less frustrating than the alternative.
There are a good variety of mission types. Some will have you destroying or sabotaging things (buildings, Tesla coils, military equipment), others require stealth. Some are follow or escort missions for both people and vehicles. The stealth missions can be a challenge if you are not patient as you will spend a good amount of time in Holobob form. While in Holobob form you are unable to use your powers as this would compromise the illusion and get you spotted.
Destroy All Humans! is available on Xbox One, PS4 and Windows. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Mr. Massagy: Mayo Edition from Publisher and Developer Green Lava Studios
Humorous “Mature” dating sim.
Mr. Massagy: A dating Sim
You play as Johnny. Your “wingman” recommends a new dating app, Linger, to find girls that are up for giving massages.
Like most dating sims you have different conversational responses to choose from when you’re on your dates. Some are innuendos, puns, and even cartoon references while others are kinda douche-y or “normal”. Some of the responses were not what we would’ve expected to say the least.
Each character in your Linger app requires a certain player level to potentially match up with them. They also have specific preferences so you’ll need to match your profile description to what they’re looking for in order to be successfully matched up. You’ll earn stars for successful dates which let you progress onto the higher level character dates.
The star rating challenge for each of the dates adds some replayability for the people who want that while others will replay the dates just to see what happens with the other dialog options.
You have a total of 10 characters to choose from for dates. Some of them are the craziest cast of characters you might ever see in a videogame let alone the scariest dates you might ever go on. A couple of them are a little bit psycho and can lead to the opposite of a “happy ending”.
The gimmick in the game is that the controller vibrates a LOT. Like, you’re gonna wanna have fresh batteries or a wired controller when you play this game. Depending on how much your date likes your responses the controller will vibrate a little or a lot. And if your date is successful enough to get you a massage it’ll vibrate more. Successful dates with each person will lead to a different massage experience, both in terms of the pace and intensity of the vibrations. You are able to replay the date over and over again trying to get a better rating by picking different responses. You can also replay just the massage portion of any date you successfully completed.
You’ll want a turbo controller for this.
My Name is Mayo: A clicking game “with an emotional story”
This might be the strangest game ever. You literally just press a button to tap on a jar of mayo thousands of times. As each achievement unlocks the in-game achievement list will reveal the next lines in the short stories. There are multiple different “story lines” in the achievements/trophies as well as some random facts which are tied to specific milestone numbers of clicks.
In order to progress each storyline you’ll need to click on the achievement picture in-game. Some of these will equip a new outfit on your jar of mayonnaise. You’ll then need to keep tapping to unlock the next achievement/outfit in that story line and repeat the process of equipping the new achievement and clicking some more until the whole storyline is unlocked.
This part could’ve been organized or laid out in a much clearer and more obvious way. The current setup has the storylines all mixed together so it’s harder to see the connections between the achievements. They help themselves a little by color coding the text for each storyline and the locked achievement titles are a reference to the preceding achievement that needs to be equipped to unlock them. At first we weren’t able to follow that there were actual story lines at all due to the jumbled nature of the list.
Mr. Massagy: Mayo Edition is available on Xbox One. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Aircraft Evolution from Publisher Sometimes You and Developer Satur Entertainment
Overall a pretty enjoyable game, decent graphics but a little short as it can be completed in about 3 hours.
A shoot ‘em up like, action, side scroller with a hint of RPG elements.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to fight your way through 4 time periods, starting from early WWI all the way to a futuristic war. You’ll be attacking the enemy and reducing their bases to smoldering ruins. You need to utilize all of the weapons in your arsenal to accomplish this objective.
There are a total of 40 levels to play through. As you move through the levels and through time from WWI and into the future, both your available aircraft and the enemy equipment will evolve. The enemies start out as simple tanks and soldiers before evolving into plasma cannons on tanks, airships, and turrets.
While your enemies evolve automatically you do not. You will unlock different aircraft after collecting experience and leveling up. You can upgrade your aircraft using the in game currency. The upgrade system is done very well as it is easy and clear what your upgrade will do for your aircraft.
There are random resource drops in the form of crates floating down with a parachute. These contain fuel, repair kits, and different types of bombs (which are your primary weapon) all of which you can use as soon as you pick them up. The repair kits and cluster bombs come in very handy.
You are also able to purchase these same items from the store between levels. We found that each of the bombs are useful for different strategies or play styles. We ended up finding our favorite and sticking with it most of the time as it seemed to work better for our play style.
At the end of each of the era’s you will come across a boss type battle which helps break up the repetitiveness of the levels as it adds a bit of a challenge and serves as a landmark and transition to the next time period.
Aircraft Evolution is available on Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Liquid Sunshine from Publisher and Developer God As A Cucumber
Fun puzzles. Great story and soundtrack. You might want to wear sunglasses because it’s really bright.
A Graphic Novel and Puzzle game in 1 package
It is a side scroller puzzle with 3 characters that you control; a Monkey, a Horse, and a Rhino. Each character has its own mechanics, strengths, and weaknesses that you will discover throughout the game. Some of the puzzles you will come across require the use of 1, 2, or all 3 of the characters to find the solution. All 3 of the characters need to make it to the right side of the screen before proceeding to the next puzzle or chapter.
Like most puzzle games, it starts out pretty easy with basic puzzles teaching you the mechanics which it does nicely. The real challenge comes in the later puzzles, which require more and more steps to complete, making you move characters back and forth over the screen and replacing one character location for another when finding out that you need that for a later part of the puzzle.
The story is told to you in the form of a graphic novel between levels. You start to learn and understand the relationship between the characters all while enjoying the Graphic Novel. This was an interesting choice and done very well. The Graphic Novel really earns the graphic part of its name as it has mature themes including violence, drug use, and crime. The visuals are great and are done in a black and white minimalistic design. They are able to get a surprising amount of detail only using black and white images both in the novel and with the level design. We experienced some eye fatigue caused by staring at the screen with the bright white areas contrasting with the black areas. There’s just so much stark white on the screen it’s like staring at a very bright bulb.
There are hidden diamonds on each of the levels for you to locate. Sadly there’s not much to do after completing the rather short game which can be completed in 1-2 hours depending on skill. Locating missed diamonds or rereading the graphic novel between the levels are the only reasons to replay the levels. We would have loved to see an option to read the graphic novel on its own without having to recomplete the levels.
There is no voice over work in the game at all, just a really good soundtrack (almost retro feel) and sound effects. The game does a really good job between the soundtrack and effects you almost forget and don’t notice that there was not a single word spoken.
Overall its an enjoyable puzzler, with a good soundtrack and interesting choice of artstyle.
Liquid Sunshine is available on Xbox One and Steam. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
