Recent reviews by ado

In a crowded deckbuilder genre, Moonsigil Atlas does a great job of distinguishing itself with a fun card-playing mechanic that evokes tile laying board games. There’s a little bit of a feel of puzzle solving for some combats, but in general it has a very fast-paced game feel. The three characters are all quite distinct and fun to play too, but you’ll probably find a favorite.

The game follows the 4-act structure on a node map of Slay the Spire, but both the card modifications and card packs give it a different feel. Card modifications are a bit like Monster Train where cards have a limited number of upgrades and the upgrades range from minor buffs to build defining/game-breaking changes (in a good way). The card upgrades really add to the run-to-run variance. It’s moderately challenging at the starting difficulty, with a really high skill ceiling. Around 30 hours or so to unlock all the content (I’m just shy of all unlocks on two characters right now), but even more playtime for achievement hunting and running at higher difficulties. Works surprisingly great on Steam Deck!

Love Eternal shines most in its pixel art, sound design, overall light horror mood, and clever platforming puzzles surrounding the gravity flipping mechanic. I was pretty bad at this game, so figure my 4-hour playtime is at the upper end of normal.

Feels wrong to criticize a precision platformer for being too hard, but I will say I never quite felt I got a handle of the character’s momentum when flipping, so I didn’t feel a big increase in skill as I progressed onto harder puzzles, just a lot of trial and error. The hitboxes for spikes also felt too large, all leaving some of the platforming feeling a little overtuned for my tastes.

It’s delightfully weird, and I’ll always give a thumbs up to an interesting precision platformer that saves my hands by keeping the runtime short.

Solid deckbuilder that stands apart from a lot of the genre with some different design choices (retain cards by default at the expense of lower card draw, fixed map with new routes revealed after winning a run, take it or leave it card pack drafting, and many other things).

A lot of cards available to you to allow for a variety of synergies (and some really busted ones at that once you understand them). There’s als a very hilarious boss reveal I won’t spoil, but in general there are some interesting enemy designs that call for different solutions and knowing how best to route to match your deck’s strengths.

The 90s notebook-doodle aesthetic and metal soundtrack is very charming, and the story unfolds in an interesting way to keep you chipping away at the mystery. Worth a shot if you’re looking for a unique deckbuilder.

Really relaxing autobattler with great vibes. like everyone I love the Citizen Sleeper-style UI. You might luck yourself into successful runs early, but personally I still need to get better to consistently win and push further into endless mode, not to say anything of the difficulty modifiers. Lots more enemies to encounter, characters & cards to discover, and synergies to learn.

Playable on steam deck for sure, but small text and it’s set up with the trackpad navigation, so no full controller support yet.

Was hoping to see some more improvements since early access, but it’s clear the team’s lack of funding forced this game to ship was sooner than it should’ve. They’ve tried some interesting new mechanics, but I think they all lead towards making this a very slow-paced deckbuilder. The overly verbose storylets don’t seem to provide enough interest and could still provide the gritty tone with less. The burn-and-play card playing system draws out turns more than a more standard system, and encourages really slow infinites.

Bigger failings on basic items like poor procedural generation of routes (like four elites in a row) and questionable card synergy design were big turn offs early in my first 1.0 run.

I played about 20 hours of Monster Train before abandoning it to buy the sequel when it was getting such great reviews. They’ve made so many small changes that have made big impacts, most importantly being the deployment phase, but in general the new clans are so much more fun to me.

Since then I haven’t looked back, and really enjoyed the 100 hours to get 100% of the achievements. There’s still much more to achieve in the game, and I’ll look forward to more content coming, both free updates and DLC next year.

Simple but addicting gameplay. I really can’t stop playing. Took like 10 hrs to get my first win in the Woodlands, but after that I quickly got 3 more, so it’s clearly somewhat RNG dependent. Looking forward to trying out the Swamp and Kingmaker.

It’s in pretty good shape for Early Access but I expect they’ll only tighten it up to mitigate the RNG a bit. I’d love it if there were some more unique item sets to encourage more build variety.

In this gorgeous, turn-based tactics card game, you play as three paladins tasked with restoring order after the king is assassinated. You face plenty of choices of who to support in their challenge for the throne. The world lore is interesting, the cast of characters is morally gray, and your choices drastically change the fates of others, encouraging replays.

I was always excited to see the boss art drop before a fight, even if there were a few too many fights in the gauntlet at the end. While I played on normal, I’d really recommend higher difficulties to best engage with some more interesting mechanics around the ancestral relics, or don’t rely on duping Hael’s Benediction card like I did

Promising demo with a solid twist on the deck builder genre. Playing sigils feels so satisfying and there are some unique synergies that are fun to explore. Will definitely be a one-more-run game to look out for in the future.

Rift Riff has such cute art, great sound design, and snappy UI interactions that combine to make this a satisfying minimalist tower defense game. It’s a perfect game for a 15-30 minute session!

After only a few hours, there is a pretty wide build variety available to you. There’s also room for players to choose the next level and upgrade. Interesting choices for your tools before each scenario, but also more complex mid-wave decision points with more upgrades as you go.

It feels great when you intuit the perfect counter to a level, but there are still times where a poor choice overwhelms you. Failing never feels frustrating because the runs are short and there are some forgiving quality of life features (refund towers for full cost, failure restarts wave instead of full scenario). I’m looking forward to the challenges ahead!