Souls Like Strings

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

Godlike cyborgs re-enact Romeo & Juliet across untold millenia

Kinda surprised I liked this as much as I did; the prose feels overly flowery, the seemingly omnipotent technology the protagonists have access and its implications are mostly handwaved as irrelevant and there's not much going on plot-wise other than an enemies to lovers romance. Despite all that I really enjoyed the ~2 hours it took to finish; the limited world-building does what it needs to by setting up background intriuge and it's fun...

Light Souls?

Why

• Interesting, original IP and world in a big budget game
• Combat strongly encourages thinking & using abilities
• Strikes an ideal balance between combat, exploration puzzles & platforming
• Great aesthetic and worldbuilding, dark in tone not visuals

Why Not

• Surprisingly tough combat, don't assume it's a game for kids

Impressions

Kena looks like a children's game with bright visuals, beautiful vistas and cute sidekicks. Writing it off as such would be a mistake though, as the cheery aesthetics come hand in hand with a challenging combat system, satisfying puzzle platforming/exploration and a...

• Still on eslint/react-hooks, there are so many complex things to think about in order to use hooks 'correctly'
  • Made even harder when it's a giant legacy codebase and the people with context are gone;
    • do I need to lift this state rather than updating it in an effect or can I just remove the effect which updates it when props change?
    • why would the props for something like the default value of a search input even change in the first place?
• Not much else this week, Wednesday was a bpublic holiday and I...

Maybe I wouldn't like DnD after all

Why

• A lot of effort went into making a believable world
• Compelling characters with personality and their own stories
• Simple but effective art style

Why Not

• Swamps of dialogue with nothing to break it up
• No real sense of progress after 3 hours
• Trusts the player a bit too much

Impressions

I feel bad for dropping what's clearly a quality game so early, but three hours into what's meant to be a ~12 hour experience I need to feel more invested than I do here. I'm leaving...

Does this unit have a soul? Absolutely.

Why

• Nails exploration & world design
• Unique, beautiful artstyle with a matching soundtrack
• Modifiers allow for a variety of approaches to combat
• With Ground Healing on, platforming feels like budget Celeste

Why Not

• Runbacks are just unnecessary
• Brutal difficulty jump for the true ending

Impressions

Mio is an excellent Metroidvania which learns from its peers while adding enough to stand out. Despite a few frustrating design decisions I never wanted to stop exploring its incredibly designed and rendered world, eager to see what panoramas awaited.

The core...