ROGUE LIGHT DECK BUILDER

A frankly fascinating game. It's short but cheap, so no worries there. It's simultaneously a janky satire and a genuinely dread-inducing depiction of domestic abuse. Very strange. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about it, but I had fun?

had a lovely first run. this is my jam and my ham num num num put the jam on the ham and butter it all up. then it's FOR SURE time for the microwave. melt it all together in it's tart state. a wonderful fall treat for husband

Perfectly good experience but it has issues that hamstring longer, more in-depth play and attaining achievements. So, if you are just looking for something to kill a couple hours and nothing more, I'd recommend it. However if you, like me, are someone who wants to get to grips with a game's mechanics and gun for clearing all of a game's achievements, I would avoid this game. The core issues with the game come from its weird physics jank. On a casual playthrough, they are a little bit funny but ignorable, but if you are trying to get perfect hammer swings down or are trying to do the speed achievements the hammer physics will get in your way and annoy you. Routinely, when going to start nailing, the hammer will initialize underneath the deck or otherwise start slammed against the deck board and you will have to spend time unsticking it. Again, this would be ignorable in a regular playthrough, but when you are gunning for time-sensitive achievements this strange issue will waste your time and kill your run. On top of this, learning to actually properly swing the hammer outside of "hard swing" and "soft swing" is a complete waste of time. Even if you've completed multiple playthroughs, the only real thing that guarantees chains of perfect hits are upgrades. Apart from that, what makes a perfect hammer swing happen feels largely random and detached from any skill/technique and the game never gives you any indication or feedback as to how you need to adjust your swinging to get perfects. I need to stress that this is a non issue for casual playthroughs but if you want to try and do the game's own speed challenge achievements, this is an issue because perfect hits are the fastest way to hammer a nail and chains of perfect nails make a lot of money. In totality this means that trying to do the game's own achievements are largely an exercise in frustration. And even if you do manage to start chaining perfects the game's janky hammer physics is liable to spawn the hammer such that it instantly ends your streak. In addition to these issues with the hammer/hammering nails the game has a bunch of other assorted weirdness that frustrate deeper play. There is a weird amount of waiting between finishing the last nail of a deck and the game registering that the whole deck is finished, which inflates a player's completion time. This issue also crops up with the "money planks" as the money will continue to deplete even after the player finishes the last nail of the board, causing players to lose out on a lot of money. The nail placement mechanic works well enough though infrequently (but frequent enough that it annoyed me) the nail will refuse to be placed in a reasonable spot on the board, which will lose you time as you struggle to understand why the game is suddenly not allowing you to do its one major mechanic. As a final note the repetitive mouse movement you do to hammer can get pretty painful with extended play. I understand that this is likely intentional but I think it is worth mentioning. All in all, the game is good value if you aren't achievement minded and are looking for a short quirky experience at a low price-point. However, as previously stated, if you are someone who likes to gun for achievements or master a game's mechanics I would advise against this game as its physics jank prevents the mechanics of the game from being something worth mastering and makes achievement hunting miserable.