Recent reviews by Teo

With very unusual UI and unique looping animations, SOL CESTO looks and plays like nothing else. It's like an illustrated tome to a parallel universe, ala voynich manuscript, but cross-bred with a tiny 4x4 slot machine.

That, in addition to the warped, unsettling music makes it feels mysterious and forbidden. In that sense, it is a masterclass in atmosphere, I honestly felt like when I played The Binding of Isaac original flash game for the first time.

So far I am having fun grinding the early two levels while unlocking more content as in usual rogue-lite fashion.

Amazing value for money here, the game is so exhilarating. You can make crazy combos to clear the board in one click, and the planning and execution is really, really satisfaying. My wife, who is not a fan of the roguelike genre, is super addicted to Raccoin, she had 40 hours on the demo and now she's addicted to the full game.

Recommended to everyone!

In Haste, you control a charachter in third person, and you have to run fast in a hilly environment full of obstacles. This lady can litterally run up to 185km/h, so fast she can glide through the air. In order to go fast and keep your momentum, you have to land on the hills in the right way, while avoiding the many obstacles along the way. After you clear a set number of stages, you will confront a boss, which you can attack by avoiding their barrage of missles and lasers in order to get close enough to attack them.

Since this is a rogue-lite, there are also encounters and shops where you can obtain items that can make your time easier.

I have conficting feelings regarding HASTE.

GOOD:
- The moment to moment gameplay is fun and addictive, and the performance is good enough on steam deck.
- There are a lot of sliders in the options to make the game as relaxing or exhilarating as you want, I think it is very positive because this way more people can enjoy it in different ways. For example it is easy for me to enter a flow state with the endless mode on easy.
- The music is quite nice synthwave style of music that blends well with the gameplay to give a sense of speed.

NOT SO GOOD:
- On Steam Deck with default settings there is some stuttering when getting in portals from the shops and rest areas, which is very often.
- The character portraits and story really, really did not resonate with me, to the point I've been just skipping them outright. I am very glad for that option. I would describe them as "Tumblr" from ten years ago. Maybe that is your cup of tea, but I could not get into it.
- The core gamplay of running fast and landing on hills the right way and the rogue-lite mechanics do not feel very synergetic. I have not unlocked most items, but so far most of them are "heal x amount when you do y", "gain x boost when you do y", classic HP+, energy+, speed+, etc, there is not really ways to change the core gameplay in any relevant, exhilarating way. In a sense the rogue-lite mechanics feel like an afterthought.

I don't want to give this game a negative review, because it is in no way a bad game, and I still recommend it for what it is. I am sure I can get more enjoyment from it, despite the problems I've listed.

So far so good, seems promising. Very hectic for my taste, but I am new to Musou type of games.

Good but not great, I felt like playing a browser game and not in a good way. I also felt that in one run I saw all that there was to see, as in the formula cannot change all that much. I will be gladly surprised if proven otherwise by the full release.

It's a lot of fun and very addictive. On steam Deck, you can shoot the coins with the R2 and L2 triggers which feels really natural, but on the other hand, the text is really tiny.

If the text is made bigger and the difficulty is looked into, this could be a smash hit.

Simply put, Edmund did it again. I am not sure yet if it surpasses The Binding of Isaac, which I still consider his Magnum Opus and my most formative game ever, but it's very layered, massive in scope, full of content, depth, and systems. Moreover, it's incrediby addictive, to the point you lose track of time, two hours go by in what feels like ten minutes.

Finding the right level-up skills during your runs is a matter of luck, but you can end up making cool builds for incredibly busted cats. For example, so far I had:

- A healer that converted all heals into damage and burns at triple the healing rate, until he killed a mob. During bosses he would just focus the boss and get it to half HP in one turn. That was until he got rabies, lost all his intelligence, and became a DPS that would attack friend or foes indiscriminately.

- A necromancer that could give the leech status across half the screen to drain enemy hp, make them bleed and poisoned, and would damage every enemy when healed. She could transfer some of her HP to be able to be healed more and thus damage more. In two turns everything on screen was dead.

The management of space/cats/food/money is quite difficult in the beginning and with the "invasion" mechanics, things can get pretty intense.

Simply put, it's another Edmund game which you can play for hundreds of hours.

The game has a very interesting and captivating setting and graphics, but it ran terrible on Steam Deck. Not recommended.

Sulfur is a flawless combination of two genres I love: The Binding of Isaac-style rogue-lites and looter-shooters like the Borderlands. It features a unique art style, blending 3D environments with 2D "vector" sprite characters.

It’s a breath of fresh air in the rogue-lite scene because it raises the stakes in the most interesting way: there is no form of meta-progression other than the tools and gear you scavenge during runs and store at your home base, alongside your own knowledge of the game mechanics like the gunbuilding. If you die, you lose everything you have on you, the only things saved are what you left behind at base or what you "insured" using a rare and expensive insurance attachment.

The intesting part is that you’re equipped with an amulet that can teleport you back to base safely. But there's a catch, it has to be recharged by reaching the midpoint of a run, or by paying a hefty fee to certain NPCs. If it's not charged, nothing can save you. Furthermore, it’s not automatically activated upon death; it’s up to you to decide exactly when to use it, be it to save your skin at the last second or to return to base after finding something valuable.

This friction of balancing the urge to keep exploring for better gear, when to push your luck and when to cut losses and run, is what keeps you on edge. It shifts the typical rogue-lite dynamic away from "If I die, whatever, this run sucked anyway." to an active choice of risk/reward and setback/progression.

Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys the rogue-lite genre. This game deserves your attention, and I’m personally curious to see how its development progresses.

Simply put, a poignant and brutal work of art. I hope they translate it in more languages, this game should be accessible to everyone.