October '20 Play Log I

I was highly intrigued by the idea for this game. Whether or not you use guides is extremely important for this game. If you do, it takes out most of the challenge, but if you don’t it becomes somewhat unrealistic in hard mode. The game is enjoyable overall but has some critical weaknesses:

• Without using guides, which game topics match genres, what aspects to spend more time developing in a game, etc, are a complete mystery. In order to figure this out you need a QA report which tells you why your game did or didn’t do well. It’s not available right away though. It becomes available relatively quickly, but it takes a huge amount of resources to do, which isn’t realistic early game. Of course, you need the information to improve so your company survives, so it’s a catch-22. In hard mode, whether your company survives long enough to get over the hump comes down to whether or not your random configuration choices when developing a game are good ones. Perhaps this is realistic, and it certainly adds challenge, but IMO it adds challenge in a way that isn’t enjoyable.
• Later in the game once you’re established and have researched most things, it ceases to become a challenge even on hard. You’re just waiting for the remaining years until everything unlocks doing more of the same: hiring and training staff, releasing 95%+ rated games, and updating them. Very occasionally something becomes available to be researched. The last third of the game until all technology is unlocked lacks any challenge or change and simply becomes a grind to finish.

Verdict: 6/10

I have mixed feelings about this game. It’s quite addictive, but very grindy. The fact that you have to wait a while for things to be crafted is frustrating. It’s fine at the beginning, but once you’re a little way through you end up needing a significant amount of a resource, and it takes >10 minutes to do each one. There are some things that you can get to reduce the time, but in the end I ended up using a mod to decrease all crafting to 1 second and found the game much more enjoyable that way. The alternative would have been idling it regularly. Overall it’s cute and addictive, but if you’re not a fan of grindy/repetitive games, I’d suggest giving it a pass.

This game is… different. Not scary per se, but definitely a dark (but also cute) atmosphere.

Pros:

• Good graphics and sound effects
• Bulb boy and his dog(?) are pretty adorable
• The bathroom scene is quite funny (if you appreciate toilet humour)

Cons:

• There are certain parts where you roll around that would have been much easier with keyboard controls
• Extremely short

Verdict: 6/10