Recent reviews by The Rabid Otter

For the price point, this is good value. While I have heard this game compared to 7D2D (Seven Days to Die), this game's skill tree only has ca. 16 skills. There are skill books. It has some sort of base building, but I didn't get that far. The random respawn option is good, and unlike 7D2D, in this game multiple versions of your corpse can litter the landscape. This means you can find your old loot!

Performance is good, as one might expect on a low-poly game. Unlike 7D2D, which promised bandits over a decade ago and still has not delivered, this game has actual bandits who will hunt you down. Frankly, they are more bloodthirsty and dangerous than the zeds. There are multiple kinds of zeds. There are random airdrops, though they are hard to spot in the low-poly environment. Your map only tells you where you are if you have found a GPS unit, which is an interesting twist. However, your map does show POIs you've visited on your current or past runs, assuming you use the same character. Death drains some of your XP.

This review has been brought to you by a brain whose ADHD meds are wearing off.

This is a weird 4X game. Some of its weirdness is in the UI. Some of it is in the way it speaks to the player. It deliberately wrecks your assumptions for how a 4X game runs. At this price, 1.20 CAD, it is worth a look.

This is a hex-based squad game with leveling in a medievalesque world. You play a noble (king?) who is betrayed and barely escapes, chased across the map, with two henchmen. As you travel, the wankers who tricked you expand their influence across the map. While there are hexes on the map, you really travel along nodes along edges/connections/linkages. Basically, this mechanic is like a point-crawl in TTRPG terms.

You add crew, you buy equipment, and murder hobo your way across the land, heading (ostensibly) toward your home. However, only the first Act is done. I got maybe six hours out of my longest run, and I've played a few other rounds summing up to 11 hours.

On the tactical map, you have Queen's connectivity on the grid (which doesn't look like a grid, but is). It is satisfying to thump your enemies, though sometimes running is warranted to avoid a TPK.

The main problem (aside from it ending at Act 1, and you not knowing which way your home is located), is that once you get about six or seven crew, it becomes increasingly difficult to see which crewmember is up. They need to be more strongly highlighted.

I hope the game gets finished, because so far it is lots of fun.

Story is trite, but sweet. Young man is taken in by young woman blacksmith. Young man actually makes himself useful, gets apprenticed. Both are young with heterosexual inclinations. Hook up ensues, but with romance, too.

I like the respect between the MC and love interest. More erotic VNs should show that instead of domination power fantasy.

It is short (I finished it in 30 minutes?) but inexpensive. Production quality is on par with the price point. Only one continuity error (i.e., reference to noble's visit happening yesterday when it was the same day). There were two instances when a Cyrillic character showed up instead of what I think should have been an "Ah.." or "Umm." Some images are probably AI-generated, but at least they aren't the same RenPy images recycled over and over.

If you are not a sentimental romantic, you might not like this, but it reminded me of being young and in love, so take my money.

I bought this in a bundle. While it is basically a visual novel, the art seems original. The premise is confusing. I think the main character rescues a princess by happenstance and thereby falls into her good graces. He can then aid or undermine her. The ways to do this are murky, though.

The biggest problem is that this this game's dialogue needs proof-read for clarity and tone.

In terms of tone, the use of the idiom "dwag" is very distracting. This is not the only tone-related problem, but is the most glaring. Swearing is distracting simply because it doesn't sound consistent with the rest of the text. I'm fine with swearing in games, but it needs to fit stylistically.

However, the bigger problem is that perhaps 20% of the sentences are unclear, perhaps reflecting idiomatic translations from the original language (Russian? Ukrainian) into English. Other problems probably relate to translating case-based languages where nouns have genders into English, but that is just speculation.

The developer has posted a walk-through. This makes the game playable.

Fun little game. I wish it were a rouge-lite instead of a rouge-like, though. Or it had difficulty levels. Still, the game is lots of fun as you try to race to getting enough food prep equipment before the death spiral sets in. It has the tragic quality of RimWorld.

Revised review: I'd give this a sideways thumb, but I'm rounding to the nearest value, so this still gets a thumbs down.

A variant on the World of Tanks or War Thunder model of nickel and diming players who don't want to grind. The salt rubbed in the wound, though, is the loss of 20% of XP for leaving a match part way through, especially when it happens because the game seizes up.

What this game does well is the maps. While some of the sites will be familiar to people who have played two plus decades of fps shooters like Day of Defeat, Red Orchestra and the like, there are other maps, such as the ones in the South Pacific and South East Asia, that are refreshing. Furthermore, most buildings can be entered, which adds to the game play.

This is more like a visual novel than a tactical mech game. Fortunately, you can skip the story elements. Unfortunately, the game play just didn't hold my attention.

Console port. Combinations seem to be important. Too many cut scenes. Vaguely interesting world-building. No first-person view, just over-the-shoulder third person view. Got it in May 2025 monthly Humble Bundle. Not my thing.

Set in an alternate world where entities from the nooesphere (though they use a different term in the game) manifest and can be controlled by thaumaturges. Entities? Think tulpas, though tulpas who/that can only be seen by a tiny fraction of the population, and controlled by an even tinier fraction of that fraction. These entities manifest from traumatic emotions. Whenever they haunt or inhabit a locale, the emotions of humans in that locale is shifted toward whatever emotion manifested the tulpa (or whatever they are called in this game). You play a weirdo who inherited their powers from their father, who you don't like. One of your powers is the ability to capture and control these entities. Honestly, I initially thought this was a bit Pokemon-like, but it was done in such a compellingly weird way that I didn't mind.

It's mainly a detective game where you use your powers to read emotions left on objects. Sometimes you fight. So far I haven't died once, which is an accomplishment for me, even though I'm six hours into the game.

The best part of the game is world-building. The game is set in 1905. You are a Pole from Czarist Warsaw. In the introduction, you meet Rasputin (yes, that one) while you travel to a tiny settlement in the Caucasus mountains. There are deserting Czarist soldiers. The railroad and telegraph operators are dressed in uniforms, indicative of the Empire's role in wedding together this far-flung empire by means of steam locomotives and morse code. In the next chapter, you travel to Warsaw/Warszawa/Warschau. As befits an empire, the origins and names of the NPCs mirror their social status and position within an ethno-linguistic hierarchy. Anti-thaumaturgical agitators stand in for the the other kinds of ethnic intolerance that abound in Europe at the time, though there is also clear Russian-Polish tensions. In fact, this part of the game --- inter-group antagonism --- reminds me of _The Witcher_. Lots of superstition. Lots of historical anecdote. And a fair amount of historical explanation for those who are not familiar with the historical context. There are Okhana, the Czarist secret police. Labour unrest bubbles up. Nationalism strains at the chains of empire. Cyrillic signage abounds alongside the Polish Latin alphabet. I love the world-building.

The combat reminds me of a card-battling system. Between combat you can revise your special abilities. I'm not sure if that is the strength of the game, but it works. Your health regenerates to full between combat.

I had this on my wishlist for over a year, so I was happy when it came in my May 2025 Humble Bundle. Get it on sale. All-in-all, a deliciously weird game.