Recent reviews by EbonyBetty

Named my newspaper, The Washington Post so I could give out political bribes, sway elections, and do PR for criminal cover-ups just like the real Jeff Bezos.

Now lemme just take off my clown nose for a sec to genuinely say, this really is a fun and engaging management sim, 8.5/10. I tip my newies cap off to the devs.

I'm giving this game a thumbs up, but with an asterisk. I love the setting plus it builds off the gameplay of one of the best games of all time: 625 Sandwich Stacker. The new things like, the ability to pause orders + Gifts/Curses powerups from the yokai, is a really creative concept to keep the gameplay from getting stale. Unfortunately the Gifts/Curses is just way out of balance imo. Only a small select of yokai give actually useful Gifts, while some of their "requirements" (like stacking the meals in a highlighted area) felt too punishing and result in an automatic Curse. Then there's the soot sprites...ugh. There's gotta be a easier way to shake them off. Maybe if the devs tweak with the Gifts/Curses, I'll return to this. I'm giving this a thumbs up because there is heart here and perhaps a Hardcore Gamer(TM) will like the difficulties more than I currently am.

Instead of being the Sultan's wife, like Scheherazade from One Thousand and One Nights, you're more like the his jester, and this Sultan finds torturing small animals the funniest sh*t ever. But maybe...just maybe, with enough cunning plans, you might be able to pull a joke or two on him.

This is a story-driven deck-building strategy game. "Story-driven" is my jam, "deck-building strategy" not so much, and yet I adore this game. Figuring out the loopholes in the Sultan's game with the cards you've been given is the highlight and shows how significantly branching the story paths are. The narrative is tense, intriguing, and the characters are flawed in a way that makes them endearing. The first couple of attempts you will be at the whim of the RNG for certain events which can stop a playthrough dead in its tracks, which is infuriating. But after every "reincarnation" you figure out more info on how to beat the Sultan at his own game. I'm still finding new side stories by using different companion-card combinations during events and I've "beat" the Sultan properly twice now.

It's a Choose-Your-Own- Death Adventure to the setting of 1001 Arabian Nights and it's awesome. Plus for a China-based game I'm quite please at how progressive it is towards the LGBTQ and "unlikable" women within its characters.

8/10

A Noir detective Point-n-Click with respectful acknowledgement to the Voodoo religion and the culture surrounding it. Yes, it wears it Noir tropes on its sleeve, but it does it very well with such lovable characters. Plus instead of the usual rainy gray color pallet, Voodoo Detective opts for the tropical colors of hotel resort. Speaking of the resort, (spoilers) I like how the zombie disease and the Fontule family represent the Gentrification of historically Black neighborhoods, it was respectful and very well done.

It took me about 4-and-half hours to complete and there's no replay value once it's finished, and I don't see that as a con at all, since my free time is very limited. A great little detective story for a weekend afternoon. I would love to see an anthology series of Voodoo Detective solving different cases in other settings a la Nancy Drew or Sherlock Holmes.

8/10 Voodoo depictions in media that doesn't make my Grenadian heritage cringe.

Considering I dumped 30 hours into just the demo before this game officially released, yeah it def gets my thumbs up. A (mostly) relaxing gameplay loop of rearranging your Cosmic-7\11 to be the most efficient gas station it can be while simultaneously getting bombarded by SPACE BUREAUCRACY up the wazoo. It came to a point that I did the math where if I automatically approved large amounts of certain types of species regardless if their paperwork was legit or not in the limited time I was given, I'd still come out with a positive net profit/data at the end of the day. I became the systemic oppressive cog-in-the-machine-bureaucrat that also charged $20 to use the slushie machine. So I customized my Gas Station Attendant's appearance to
be Kafka from Mars.

The only gripe I have is that the RNG ramps up HARD in generating civilians mid-late game to the point that having two Bureaucrat-desks on each floor wasn't enough because my station was flooded with bunch of ships landing with 150 aliens in them, EACH. Feels like the numbers were off at that point. HOWEVER the dev(s?) for this game updates/tweaks very regularly and I can tell game comes from a place of heart and hard work.

8/10: Glory to TaoZone (literally in-game Galactic Amazon yet somehow only half as evil)

Roots of Pacha = The Cooler Stardew Valley: Unga Bunga Edition

I would talk about it more, but I need to breed faster racing ostriches. 9/10

Bobobo-bo bo-bobo shaves off his afro and opens a sushi restaurant, also his friend Dave is there. Still, Dave is the best friend a person could ever have, a real Samwise Gamgee. Which makes Boncho, the Frodo of this analogy. And Duff is, of course, Gollum.

9/10: Almost de-thrones Warioware in Fun Minigames, Gorgeous Animations, & Loveable B@stards.

"Have you been washed in the blood of The Lamb?" - An actual opening line said to me by a Jehovah's Witness at 8 a.m. on a Saturday.

Playing this game is the equivalent to going to a plumbing trade school.

Scratch that, playing this game is now the equivalent to earning a Civil Engineering degree from M.I.T.

Ever drink to much cough syrup before bed and then dream of a surreal urban jungle dystopia full of bug-people?Yeah, me too. Sludge Life is a great experimental 3D platformer that will have you scaling building tops that put the Assassin's Creed series to shame. 9/10 union-busting Glug Corp. CEOs