Steam Reviews

YQMaoski · October 9, 2018, 2:39am

That’s why I mentioned in the review right away that there is a free version out there… I just want people to experience it, even if they don’t want to buy the retail Steam version. I think as long as you get used to a particular scheme, you will be fine. Both the keyboard and controller setups are pretty reasonable.

YQMaoski · October 10, 2018, 11:56am

This game hasn’t been released yet, but I had to give it a thumbs down:

(of course I can’t post any reviews on Steam before game release, so I wrote it into the Youtube description instead.

https://youtu.be/ggcOdtxng_8

Transcript of my review:

The Last Train is an alternative history simulation/survival game with fairly simple gameplay. Coming soon to Steam.

The game has a bleak outlook, and indeed, after all, it is the end of WWII and after atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, they retaliated on US soil (thus the alternative history part). In the end, food/supplies/everything is running out.

You are the last locomotive conductor remaining in the continental United States and your goal is to survive as long as possible while still keeping your train active and running, thus delivering people to where they need to be for one reason or another.

Because resources are scarce and people are few, you have to resort to simple crafting on your own and scavenging. The scavenging involves lock-picking empty buildings, smashing windows, cutting up dead tree branches, rummaging through trash, etc. You can also gather a few resources by delivering people to where they need to go, and in return, their payment is a few items here and there.

There is a story mode and a sandbox mode. I only played the story mode so far, but it feels more like a simple sandbox game anyway. There seems to be no overarching objectives. I find myself looting, crafting, carrying people to different cities, over and over again.

You can either have a very short run or a seemingly endless run, but even the best runs will come to an end, when you ultimately run out of resources.

This recording shows the beginning minutes of gameplay that ultimately ends in a game-fail state, but the game does not give any hint of a game-over. But there is nothing else that can be done. The game is just stuck here.

Another game that I played I managed to get really far, with plenty of fuel and food. Then your worst enemy happens to be your inventory size. You can expand the inventory through the crafting menu for your train, as you can increase the number of seats on your train that way. But you are driving a train, surely there is enough space on board to fit a few more people or to have a larger inventory by default? I understand the need to limit passengers so that you have to make some conscious decisions in order to plan your path out, but the very small inventory size (plus the lack of ability to stack certain items such as screwdrivers) really baffle me to no end. In this small point of frustration, the game really does fall apart.

Also, I cannot seem to find any end-game objectives or goals. As the days flow by, I start to realize that my resources are dwindling and that the cities that I have completely looted are not showing any signs of regeneration. In other words, I may have been overly cavalier about conservation of resources. After all, even if your inventory is full and you smash a window open, you can only stack onto the items already in your inventory, but not what is not already there. So I had lost a lot of things along the way. Perhaps I could have used these, perhaps not.

Ultimately, I kind of tired of the game after a while, because the story mode really had not a lot of progression. After the very initial story bit, I encountered no other story-extensions to let me know what more to expect. The scenery in the background of the train-moving scenes became repetitive, as did the motions of looting, crafting, delivering passengers, only to be told constantly that my inventory was too full.

The asking price of $15 USD (as we have been told by the developer) for the base game is a bit too high. It’s not unreasonable to use this as a way to waste a little bit of mindless time, if you have that readily available. This game should be $5 USD maximum. Plus there are a bunch of DLCs that are in the store page right at release. They are not just skins either, they offer some gameplay benefits. So the gameplay, feel, and the whole set of DLCs makes this feel very much like a mobile game instead of a full game on Steam. (I did not have the DLCs to be able to comment on them in detail, but their store descriptions sure make them sound like P2W kind of items.)

So I feel really bad for giving this game a thumbs down, mainly because of the fact that it is an indie effort, and it has an interesting idea (the plot). But bare-bones gameplay isn’t exactly fun, and gets quite dull after a while. I played for about 90 minutes, and I was repeating the same 3-4 motions again and again. I was really excited to try this game, but when I was done and turned it off, I am not sure if I want to ever play it again. The idea feels so rich and with potential, but the gameplay fell so flat.

To find out for yourself, visit the Steam store page:

The Last Train - Definitive Edition on Steam

Youtube Videos apparently have a 5k character limit, and so I had to stop…

YQMaoski · October 10, 2018, 8:39pm

I hope I am not boring anyone with a small indie title this time. I think a lot of people will pass it over, but I think it works quite well, and it’s quite fun. Good for single-player modes (4 different modes) and 3 different competitive couch coop modes, all for a base price of $1.99. It hasn’t gotten much attention, but I think it’s pretty good.

Review:

xist · October 10, 2018, 10:04pm

Spelunky is one of those games that I feel that I should try, and would probably like, but equally due to the randomisation I’m very wary. I really like fixed and balanced levels in the games I play, and since Spelunky seems to be different every time you play (which is no bad thing) I worry that I’d be rapidly put off by deaths, and without that consistency and a sense of overcoming my environment and learning the way, rapidly lose interest.

YQMaoski · October 11, 2018, 1:20am

Even though every level is randomly generated, there are certain expectations you can have with the individual levels. Like you always expect certain things in terms of enemies, or you see a pattern and you recognize it. You also notice that the enemies always move predictably. You can start to recognize patterns and intuition to do what is appropriate amid all of the entropy. You will definitely die a lot in the game, no doubt about it, but the runs are typically so short that it does not matter, at least in the beginning when you are working your way through learning the first few levels and getting past it.

Now I still die a lot, but mainly because I am trying to improve, because in this game, improvement in certain areas equals a lot of gold/points, and your total gold score at the end of your run is your final score, whether you die or not. And so the daily challenges is all about maximizing your greed while staying alive.

There is also a no-gold achievement, which I think is probably the more difficult of the achievements, and the speedrun achievement seems also improbable for me. But clearly enough people have done it. So these are possible.

Anyway, I do hope you try it, I think it’s going to take a very special game to dethrone this one as my favorite game on Steam.

Vindace · October 11, 2018, 8:50am

The no gold achievement and the co-op achievement are the only two achievements I’ve not actually unlocked. I never had anyone else to play it with (not enough controllers either) and the gold one can be stupid hard.

@xist so within the Spelunky programming, there is basically certain ‘seeds’ that the game combines and picks from, within parameters to ensure that you can still progress. So while it is unique each time ( and admittedly sometimes easier to progress because of it) you can still recognize patterns. Enemy ai is always constant too, like Maoski said.

onLooSe · October 11, 2018, 9:34am

You don’t need another person to complete it… you can start player number 2 with the keyboard and grab him at the start… throw him to die and you can revive him at 4-3 even. I on the other hand had a lot of laughs using the second player as the ultimate weapon throughout this run.

YQMaoski · October 11, 2018, 8:51pm

This is a short but very cute game, it’s a lot of puzzle platforming but you get to deform and reshape the platforms/environment around you as you play.

My review link:

yoshirules · October 12, 2018, 11:28am

Very nice game we have reviewed

here is our review

For people that actually read our thread. I will give away 1 copy for this game. Just let me know if you want to enter this giveaway here.
This giveaway will run until Sunday 14 october. 18.00 Central European time
(you have to be at least a member for a week)

Note:I will buy it at Steam, I think I can still sent it to all countries, if not I will have to reroll

delenn13 · October 12, 2018, 12:50pm

I am not entering but thank you for being such a generous Dino!

Fraggles · October 12, 2018, 1:04pm

Sounds a lot like kingdom, how similar would you say they are to each other and what would be the major differences? I’d like to enter for it, thank you.

YQMaoski · October 12, 2018, 1:34pm

Biggest difference is that you have a lot more resources to manage, and your citizens need food. The game ends very early due to starvation, if you run out of food.

The game only lasts for 13 nights, whereas Kingdom can go on and on and on.
The enemies attack only from one side (both sides in Kingdom).
Mining is a big resource here, you can find all kinds of goodies in the mines.
Your people you can control and move (In Kingdom they are assigned to a side and they do what they want).
Reassigning professions for your people as needed, this does cost resources. (Kingdom I believe that once they pick up a hammer/bow they stay that way until attacked by the enemies and they drop their single gold-for-service as well.)
More enemy varieties here in this game, plus more ways to deal with them than just a firing barrage and kill.
The controlling scheme, you are not just a crowned individual moving around on a horse, you are more of a omnipresent overlord.

I am probably forgetting a few others, but those come to mind right away.

YQMaoski · October 13, 2018, 1:56pm

Here’s a classic example of a direct mobile port from a developer, there are a lot things to do in this game, but nothing outstanding. It’s half-idling for the wrong reasons. The active parts feel like time-wasting too. Needless to say, my review wasn’t exactly positive:

review link:

xist · October 13, 2018, 2:19pm

There’s only one true Space Raider -

YQMaoski · October 13, 2018, 11:29pm

This is a really psychedelic indie game, perhaps not for everyone, but it’s cheap and quite fun. It’s nice to just hop in and go explore. It’s mostly a 3D platforming experience, each level has a distinct feel, quite well done.

My review:

hivefleetbothan · October 14, 2018, 4:44pm

I actually just added it to the ol’ Wishlist after reading your reviews! If nobody else wants it I would love to give it a shot. (but wait and see if anyone else reads it first).

yoshirules · October 14, 2018, 6:51pm

giveaway has ended both won

YQMaoski · October 18, 2018, 11:17pm

Been a while since an update:

Here’s a new review from me today for a deck-building card game that has no RNG card draws, seems odd, but it works, and it’s quite fun:

Review link:

Earlier this week I had posted a short review for a live wallpaper that I thought was pretty cool:

Review:

This next game is a light roguelite dungeon crawler, it’s cheap, but it’s repetitive. It’s good for its price, but not meant for long sittings:

Review:

xist · October 19, 2018, 8:43am

That graphical style really puts me off for some reason…possibly because of the HUD components rather than the characters. And I think I understand what you mean because of what follows but the sentence “… each turn comprising of 1.0 turns” confused me a bit on first read. Now I understand that each action takes a proportion of your turn allowance, but the repetition of the word turn messed with my brain…

YQMaoski · October 22, 2018, 9:28pm

A bit older game I reviewed today:

Review link: