Cat and Ghostly Road from Publisher Sometimes You and Developer BOV Games
Fairly standard point and click game play mechanics. Enjoyable story and characters. Very nice art with extras in “Cat Vision”.
This is a point-and-click game where you play a cat going on a journey to recover your master’s soul.
You start out as a cat walking around in the snow and get into some trouble. Your cries for help are heard by an artist who saves you and brings you in from the cold adopting you. All seems pretty normal, until one night when an evil spirit attacks the artist and takes his soul.
It’s time for you to go on a journey to defeat the spirit and recover your master’s soul and save his life.
Like most point-and-click games you will be going to different locations, picking up items, and combining them to see what you can make. You also have a special “Cat Vision” that lets you see into the spirit realm. You will use this ability very often to find items or clues to solve the puzzles. One of the nice quality of life additions present in this game is the option to press the LB Button to get a visual indicator (shining star effect) for items or objects you can interact with. This helps you identify what you can and can’t interact with. It also helps save time trying to figure out what you might’ve missed. We ended up spamming this very often when accessing a new area or just going back to a previous area when we got stuck. If you get stuck, remember to check to see what items you can combine.
There are some mini games and puzzles throughout the game that you need to complete before being able to move on. You get an unlimited amount of tries on these so there’s no need to worry if you fail them a few times. There is a sneaky one towards the end of the game that took us a few tries before figuring out the secret (Hint: Cat Vision). We ended up over-thinking some of the puzzles and making them harder than they needed to be. Remember, the game wants you to figure it out and the hint is normally nearby.
There are standard fetch quests, getting an item from here and bringing it to there to use it, that are standard for most point-and-click games.
You could tell the game was designed for a PC with the pointer that moves like a mouse. But they did a good job mapping it to a controller with one thumbstick moving the character and the other moving the pointer.
The one issue we had was that the movement speed felt a little slow for both the character and the pointer. We would have loved to see a movement speed option in the menu so we could speed that up.
Overall we enjoyed the game, the story, and the characters but the art style might have been the best part. The backgrounds look great and have a little added extra when using Cat Vision.
Cat and Ghostly Road is available on Xbox, Playstation, Steam, Windows and Nintendo Switch. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Hero Survival from Publisher Sometimes You and Developer Pigeon Dev Games
Rougelite shmup mashup featuring a host of halloween horrors. Beware the Flintlock weapon due to game breaking glitch.
Hero Survival is a roguelite game in which you fight off hordes of classic horror movie monsters. You go around killing monsters, picking up gold, and rinse and repeat all while trying to avoid the enemies and shooting them from a distance. The round is completed by staying alive until the timer ends. At the end of the round, you are presented with four options to choose from for different weapons or items that grant perks. You can only choose one of the four options, but if you don’t like any of them you do get one free reroll so you can try to get something better. If you still didn’t get something you want, you can reroll again, but it will cost you some of the gold we hope you picked up during the level.
While in the level you will be earning XP by killing enemies. When you level up you’ll get to pick one of three random perks. There are 3 different categories that the perks fall into. One grants a chance to spawn a bomb from a dead monster, another grants a chance to turn enemies into blocks of ice, and the third category has various upgrades for your standard weapons. There are also some one time or temporary perks that only last until you level up again and others that stay with your character until you die. All of the perks, weapons, and items seem to be RNG.
Every tenth round, a boss (the Devil) joins the monsters and chases you down. In the early levels he’s not too difficult but, as one would expect, he’s a bit more difficult in the later levels and deals quite a bit of damage. Depending on which perks you’ve picked up along the way and your current health, he could one-hit kill you.
You can hold up to 4 weapons at a time but they can be swapped out in between rounds if you find a better weapon. After enough runs you’ll have had a chance to try out the different options and will find your go-to weapons and pray to the RNG gods that they come up.
After beating the boss and completing the tenth round, you have the option of starting on a different map with different bonuses (i.e. harder enemies, more xp, and more loot) or replaying the same map. The new maps have a different look, but, sadly, they play the same way. It feels more like a different skin than a new map. We would have loved to see the maps leverage different mechanics to make them play a little differently. Like, the ice in the snow map could make you slide a bit, or the sand in the desert map could slow you down. This would have provided more of a reason to continue playing the new maps even after purchasing all of the characters and weapons and would’ve been some much appreciated variation in the gameplay.
Other than using the gold to reroll for better items or weapons, you can also use it to purchase new characters and new starting weapons. Each of the characters has different starting attributes/specs as do the weapons. A few of the characters appear to reference famous people/movie characters.
We did run into a game breaking glitch. All of our weapons stopped firing and couldn’t be reloaded. It looks like this issue happens when we have a “Flintlock” shotgun as a starting weapon and then add another one in between rounds. We have reached out to report this issue but at the time of this writing we have not heard back.
Overall we enjoyed the game for what it was and fell into the “just one more try” trap a bunch of times.
Hero Survival is on Xbox, Playstation, Steam, and Nintendo Switch. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
In Rays of the Light from Publisher Sometimes You and DeveloperNoskov Sergey
Intriguing backstory for those that take the time to find it. Fantastic use of sound design and visual elements to create the atmosphere. Relatively short walking sim/puzzle game.
An Atmospheric Walking Adventure
In a post-civilization world you find yourself in the decaying remains of an abandoned school. Nature has started reclaiming the building. This is where the game begins.
The world is empty and you are alone… or are you? This is where the atmospheric adventure starts taking you into dark areas with only a small flashlight to illuminate the way. You need to explore the building and side structures to find a way out. While the game is in first person and you do carry around a pipe, there are no enemies, combat, or jump scares to worry about. The pipe is just for prying open doors. Seems like it should be a relaxing walking sim, right? Wrong. The tension is built with a great sound design that creates a really spooky ambiance layered with other sounds like footsteps and lockers/doors being opened and closed. This combines with moving shadows and other things just in the corners of your vision as you look around giving you that super creepy feeling that you are not actually alone.
While searching the building you will spend some time in above ground areas that are partially lit by the light coming in through the windows. In contrast, the underground areas are very dark adding more tension and some navigational challenges. It is easy to get lost as some of the areas feel like a maze in the dark with only a lighter and flashlight to find clues leading to the way out.
While exploring the world you will find items to interact with or pick up. Some of these will be needed to solve the puzzles. You’ll also see a lot of writing on walls and blackboards all over. The puzzles can be challenging as there is no hand holding and it’s easy to miss a clue in the dark. We also found that you have to be very close to objects before you can tell if they can be interacted with or not. This made things a little more time consuming and we would have liked to be able to tell from a greater distance what is interactable and what isn’t.
One of the things you can pick up is notes scattered around the world. The notes provide backstory for what happened to everyone and the state of the world. The backstory is intriguing enough it makes you want to check every possible spot that a note could be just to learn more about what happened.
The game is on the shorter side and can be completed in under 2 hours depending on how lost you get when trying to find the clues to solve the puzzles and navigate through the maze-like areas.
There are two different endings depending on how much time you spend in the light. We thought this was an interesting mechanic but we don’t recommend trying for the low light ending on your first playthrough.
Overall it was an enjoyable game with an interesting story. A little too dark at times though as even with the brightness turned all the way up it’s easy to get lost in the darkness.
In Rays of the Light is available on Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo Switch. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Active Neurons 3 from Publishers Sometimes You, Usanik STD and Developer Nikolai Usachev
Good puzzle game with great features, accessibility options, and enjoyable soundtrack.
Active Neurons – Wonders of the World is the third and final installment in the Active Neurons series. Being the third installment in the series it has most of the game mechanics from the previousgames as well as several that are new to this one. Like the previous games, new mechanics are introduced to the puzzles at a regular pace to keep them challenging and keep things interesting. A few of the new mechanics that we really enjoyed are one that lets you swap places with another square, another that gives you the option to turn some blocks on or off (both add a whole bunch of challenges), and a mini puzzle inside the level that locks off an area until you solve it.
One of the best new additions is the Step Back button which lets you “rewind” your moves. There is no limit to the amount of moves that you can rewind and you can do it all with the press of a button. This allows you to make a mistake without having to restart the entire level and is especially helpful during the later levels as the puzzles will require a lot of moves to complete.
Like the previous 2 games, solving the puzzle requires moving an energy block to the goal 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 and solve the puzzle.
If you get really stuck on a puzzle there is the option to see the solution. This option has been present in all of the games and is one of the many staple mechanics to the series.
The game is broken down into 2 areas; the “Wonders of the World” which spans from the Great Pyramid of Giza to the Lighthouse of Alexandria (BC), and the “New 7 Wonders of the World” which covers from the Colosseum to Christ the Redeemer (AD). The New 7 Wonders of the World is where the difficulty really ramps up with new mechanics being introduced. Sometimes you’ll need to combine a few mechanics to solve the puzzles. There are 140 puzzles to complete between both areas.
They brought back the colorblind mode accessibility option from the first game. Sadly, the monochrome mode from the first game was not part of the comeback. The colorblind mode is extremely useful and we recommend using it whether you’re colorblind or not as it adds icons to all of the interactive blocks making it easier to know what each of them does.
There is a great relaxing soundtrack that comes in handy when you start to get frustrated with the harder puzzles. It works well with the minimalistic art style.
Overall the game is enjoyable, the puzzles are challenging, and it’s a good ending to the series. Since there’s not really a “story” you don’t need to have played the previous games to enjoy this one.
Active Neurons 3 – Wonders Of The World is available on Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo Switch. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
I, AI from Publisher Sometimes You and Developer Satur Entertainment
A grindy shmup
A vertical shmup
You play as an AI that gains self-awareness and escapes the lab that created it. During the escape you possess a spaceship and take off. Using this spaceship, you need to make your way through an enemy army to reach a stargate.
There are a total of 20 missions you will play through on your way to the stargate. Most of the missions will end with a boss battle where you have to defeat a large heavily armed battleship. The other levels will end with your ship flying into space and onto the next mission.
After killing the enemy ships they will drop blue energy which is the ingame currency. You can use it to upgrade your ship in several different ways and to purchase superweapons for the ship. The superweapons do a lot of damage but have limited ammo. You can refill your superweapons’ ammo by finding pickups after killing enemies or destroying asteroids. You can also find repair kits for your ship’s armor the same way. The asteroids can be shot to be destroyed but they don’t cause any damage to your ship if you fly into them. So, you can literally just push them around if they’re blocking your line of fire to the enemies.
Since you will be traveling through space, most of the levels have the same background (space with parts of large machinery or ships added here or there). Sadly, when upgrading your ship it doesn’t change the appearance at all. We would have loved to see it change when adding rockets or upgrading the weapons or armor. It’s nice to be able to see your ship look badass when you’ve upgraded it to be badass.
After completing a mission you are ranked on a three point scale. If you are able to kill all of the enemies and collect all of the energy you get a 50% bonus to the energy collected. If you die in the level you will lose half of the energy/currency you collected before dying. This added a little bit of risk/reward to missions.
You are able to replay missions at any time to try to increase your rank or just to grind some more currency to upgrade your ship. Sadly, you will need to do some grinding to upgrade your ship’s main weapons and rockets just to keep up with the challenge.
New enemies are added every few levels to keep the difficulty up. Some of the enemies look similar to others but with a different attack pattern. You will need to upgrade your ship’s main weapons and rockets just to survive. Depending on the upgrades you choose and how much you grind for currency it is possible to make yourself overpowered.
We would have loved the option to remap the buttons in the game since “shoot” was mapped to one of the triggers instead of the way most shmups map shooting to a face button. However, with the auto-fire feature enabled from the options menu, this was less of an issue. Auto-fire actually lets you play the game one handed at times if you don’t want to use the superweapons that are mapped to the face buttons.
In the audio department, the “AI” voiceover work could have been better. There was an effect added to try and make it sound more “computery” but we didn’t think it was as successful as they wanted it to be and the overall voice acting itself could have been better.
The sound effects are good and fit the game. They did a great job adding the option to control the volume for music, sound, and “The sound of the main gun” separately. This was a great choice as you will be hearing that sound effect constantly and we found the clicking sound of the main gun to be a bit annoying.
Overall the game was enjoyable but the grinding for currency to upgrade your ship felt mandatory just to stay alive in the later levels.
I, AI is available on Xbox, Nintendo Switch and Playstation. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
