Recent reviews by Uroboros

Seems like the idea has potential but this demo is a mess and leaves a bad impression.

Jump King. That's what you get.
Doesn't respect your time, doesn't feel rewarding for pulling something off. I suppose like the original?

If you liked Jump King and want to scratch that itch, and don't mind what you're going to be staring at for your many, many, many, many falls? Go for it I suppose?

Not exactly inspiring confidence in the game when there is nothing to really do but a tiny amount of busywork and a cheap jumpscare...

I recommend this game not because the pricepoint to content is good, but because we need more horror variety and stories / scenarios that feel compelling. I tend to find the low-poly / retro thing can be wafer-thin nostalgia bait at the best of times, but the vibes here all fit properly. Mike Klubnika has a certain vibe I'd love to see more of.

If this game was longer and told a more complete story I would have more than happily chomped down on a full price tag for it. This tiny sampler shows there's a real meal to be had here, and just when I was hitting the "Oh damn this is getting GOOD", it draws to a close. This could have cascaded gloriously, especially remembering a certain scenario from Mike's free horror collection here on steam with the purgatory stacks, which without going back to check, this feels synchronised to.

Still, normally I would refund something so short, but it wasn't soulless, and this dev seriously needs feeding.
Horror curio collectors will want this.

This is going to be a hard review to write, there's a lot to talk about here, so I think I'm going to skip analysis and just go straight for the meat.

It's a story-focused game that plays out like a more interactive visual novel, and while ultimately linear it manages to never feel like you are being railroaded. Much of the game is a free-roam of a hub of sorts, which you might liken to sections in older RPGs where you wander around talking to NPCs as much or as little as you like, only here instead of a chore it's a joy. The world is shown to you in an organic fashion, deliberately making you the player feel alien to it, with various terms and lore being gradually expanded upon as the various characters discuss daily life and their essentially religious doctrine in loving melancholy.

It deliberately keeps most of its NPCs in a state of almost 'facelessness', making them blend together and seem unimportant background pieces, but you quickly start to realise that they subtly stand out even where they do not always distinctly have names we may initially understand. Their identities becoming more apparent the more you play. And while the graphics may seem simplistic in their stylised nature (mouths do not animate, character rendering has a certain flatter shading even while lighting and environment is more complex and detailed), the voicework is exceptional and truly brings the characters to life, especially when they are written with complexities that may not be immediately apparent. Even the most 2D seeming of personalities reveals aspects in time that make them feel like living beings, and while they can fall into certain tropes, they also stray from them often. Nobody is a pure hero here. Nobody is a pure villain. Even the nicest can be given to bouts of selfish rage, even the harshest can offer moments of tenderness, the most steadfast can waver, etc etc. And it all feels natural, given the circumstances they are shown. People don't often wear their true hearts on their sleeves, and can often act or speak to the opposite of their truth or their actual values. It makes for characters that you sometimes wish were less complex, sometimes you feel it would be so much nicer if an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ would stay an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ so you could keep mad at them and mentally discard them as irredeemable or dangerous or creepy, it would be so much nicer if the people you liked were immovable pillars of support and clarity and wouldn't do things that would deeply piss you off (whether or not you understand why, or if the reasoning is ultimately valid). And it makes them more valuable as a whole. It makes the things that happen to them, or the things they do, that much more bittersweet. The strongest emotions don't always have to be singular and easy, sometimes they should be messy, complicated, and leave loose ends.

There are so many themes to unpack that I am convinced it would take a much more attentive and studious mind to pick through them, but to me as an essential layman focusing on the experience, it was beautiful. Beautifully cruel. Mournfully loving. Tragically melancholy. Brutal, flowery, hopeful, defeated. Orbiting around subjects like family, loyalty, what real love is or should be, how trauma can twist a person, how necessity can make you a monster or a matyr, how good intentions can still result in atrocity, how even in lowly subsistence you can find joyous moments or strong bonds, just... agh, lots of emotive stuff going on. I can't even summarise what feels the most important beyond the things you may see as obvious in the trailer.

Long story short, this is one for people who enjoy a sci-fi setting but are looking for something melancholy, and don't mind having to spend time digging around a free-roam area to unearth its various interactions. That need for thoroughness to see everything may annoy some, and I very nearly missed a short cutscene of something important simply because I didn't interact with something hiding in plain sight. Even after being prompted by an NPC in an easily found and clearly marked area you'll very likely visit, and being told they found something, I never stumbled across where they had meant to direct me. I ended up going back two chapters when I later realised where it was, and I'm glad I did.
Otherwise I would have missed "Fixers Song", which a part of which is shown in the trailer. But its full in-game lyrics have more impact, and help enhance a certain bond.

Anyway, this was a hell of a ride, and I made the mistake of starting to play it late on a Saturday night, so ended up having to put off finishing it until the next weekend because like hell was I going to just dripfeed the chapters to myself on a work-week. Some plot developments will grab you by the throat and make you want to binge it until it's done. Ultimately not a very long game, but worth every penny.

Absolutely 100% worth buying even when not on sale.
The game takes risks with its setting and its story, banking on the bonds being meaningful and the environment/setting sucking you in, and it payed off in a major way. It establishes a normalcy and gently subverts itself in little ways that are always a delight. You never quite know what you're in for as you peel back the layers. I'm a sucker for a more 'settled' and stable ending where we get to see things laid out easy and explained in full, but that's not this game. The linear nature takes a back-seat for the finale, and the important big choices you make are informed by the faceted aspects of everything you encountered up until that point. It won't spell out everything that it results in, but it will give you lots to infer from.

This is one of those games that can leave a hole in your heart.
Sunset Visitor really outdid themselves as their apparent first release.

Holds promise. Well made, good audio/visual design and written consistently. Feels like a decent Warioware tribute game, enough that it sold me on the idea. An ADHD mosh-pit attended by earworms in an off-beat world.

Kickstarter burned me plenty back in the day but what the hell, I want HoloHammer to succeed if it means we get to see where they take this and what they'll come up with in future projects. Here's to you, random internet find!

I loved the concept of this game, as someone who had this exact thing as a (rarely) recurring nightmare. Immediately needed to buy it.

You know those liminal space dreams, and the ones with monsters that chase you while no matter how hard you run, you can never outpace them? It has that kind of surreal but familiar vibe. And in a way it delivered on some of that. The tension is definitely real, and initially it feels like the game is going to be truly special.

The problem is that you get a sense for the sloppy shovelware feel quite quickly. Menu buttons that are misaligned on ultrawide, arbitrary props that feel they were grabbed from an asset store and dropped in just to fill space empty, a car that doesn't make direct contact while reversing but rubbing next to you causing your controls to lock and a sudden message flashes up saying you died. It's just...

...well. It could have been great, but its just sloppy.
A bit of polish could have gone a long way. I genuinely hope they update this eventually. It could be special but instead it whiffs and falls in the 'budget bargain bin' category, which is a real shame.

Scratches a certain itch, but leaves you wanting more.

At it's worst, it is inoffensive.
At it's best, it's tense.

People looking for cheap jumpscares will be disappointed, but we seriously need more horror like this. Each mini story is really short, but they don't overstay their welcome. I would have happily paid for a longer game, so each of the ideas could be fleshed out more and given chance to really breathe. A great little gaming curio.

(Only a single jumpscare to be found, in the first of the games, which is also perhaps the weakest IMO)

Yet another game that takes the cool idea and just... does nothing cool with it.

A bunch of tropes from the lowest effort horror filler out there, pre-scripted events, 'unfair' mechanics that are just a test of patience that may not pay off if the game just decides to shrug at you. Yeah, nah. I gave it a fair shot but after a certain amount of boredom I have to be fair to myself :P

Maybe multiplayer has something to it but singleplayer was a whole lot of nothing.