Reviews - Apokaladle

I've just gotten this and played a bit, so these are my initial impressions. It's a pretty addictive little arcade game, with a fun variety of powerups. The difficulty levels feel pretty good; easy is a cakewalk, hard provides a reasonable challenge. My main issue would be with the graphics. They're not hugely to my taste, which is entirely personal. More troubling is the visibility of the powerups; there were a couple I couldn't really tell apart, and they just felt slightly too small overall. I'm slightly nearsighted even with my glasses, and I think this would be a bigger problem with people who have other vision problems such as colorblindness. All in all, it's a nifty little arcade game, of the sort I have a weakness for, and it's worth the price.

I got Paranautical Activity this morning and I've been playing off and on all day. It's really fun, although I'm quite bad at it; I haven't even beaten the first boss yet. So far, it's been punishing but fair. Every death I've had could have been avoided. The lack of mercy invincibility does mean that if you make the wrong move you can end up having most of your health drained before you can get out of it, but again those situations are avoidable. The game looks lovely, and I quite like dodging around in a field of brightly colored death. I also love the soundtrack, though it doesn't seem to fit with a self-described "horror" game. Then again, I don't really think of Paranautical Activity as a horror game, but rather fast-paced shooty fun. It's only in beta, and it definitely shows, but I've had more fun with it today than I've had with many fully polished games. I'm really excited to see where this goes.

I'm not that far through the game yet--at least I don't think so--but I'm in love with it. Between hearing that the tone of the game was similar to EarthBound, one of my favorite games of all time (I'd actually say that it reminds me of the first MOTHER game especially strongly, though significantly darker) and the devs' recent advertisement on TPB, I felt obliged to finally buy it. It grew on me slowly but powerfully; playing through the first dungeon and beginning to explore the world, I thought the game was competent but not necessarily rave-worthy. A couple hours later, and now I'm wandering through some sort of mental landscape filled with philosophical geometric constructs, and I can't wait to see what happens next. From what I can see so far, the darker and weirder parts of the story seem to be balancing on the knife edge between deep and pretentious. However, the game's maintained a sense of humor that gives me confidence. In summary, Anodyne is a delightful little gem that should not be missed.

I bought this off of IGS a couple days ago. I'd seen some gameplay footage that gave me decidedly lukewarm feelings, so I was quite pleasantly surprised when I actually got around to playing it. I haven't played that much of it thus far, but it's been thoroughly enjoyable and addictive. I do think it suffers a bit being compared to VVVVVV and Super Meat Boy, though; since I constantly heard those comparisons, my first impressions were slightly tainted with disappointment that KRUNCH didn't live up to them in the way I envisioned. On the whole, I'm definitely impressed. I anticipate spending a fair amount of time with this title in future, and I really look forward to future games from these guys. (On a sidenote, I was really impressed with the fast response I got when I emailed them about the freezing glitch I was having.)