Recent reviews by CorvusCorax

A slightly misleading title since the majority of the objects you are looking for here have nothing to do with cats. But the main chapters do feature cats that eventually get united in a so-called kitty council. Until then you have different locations and each with different objects to find.

Now, the hinting system gives you a description as to where you need to look for the item in question. The list you already see on the right-hide side. But, let's say, you need to click on a flower in the park. It must be one particular flower not just any so you carefully need to read what the hint tells you where to look for it. What starts out easy on later stages gets more complex and challenging.

Locations are varied and they have some animation. The haunted house level is particularly funny with its jump scares and that it is divided up into various stages. You need to stop your ride if you need to take your time looking for everything. At one point you go to space and in another chapter you need to look for all types of foods.

Everything is great in this HOG! Some achievements might require you to start a new playthrough so as opposed to many HOGs you will definitely not be done in just 10 minutes here. Highly recommended if you are looking for a long-lasting experience.

The 4th one in the series. What started out half a year ago as 101 Cats Hidden is now a series with a new location (city or country) added every time a new episode is released. And if you look at the library of NaipSoft August will be a busy month.

It is a straightforward cat-based HOG. No more, no less. Only the pets you find have colours so if the default brightness bothers you, it can be changed with the slider on the left-hand side. You also have a zooming feature but don't expect any hints! And a leaderboard feature is also available since you race against time when playing. It's an alright game which is OK if you start familiarising yourself with HOGs and also if you love such games.

A surreal, funny little adventure game this is that takes place in the living room of the protagonist. Just interact with everything you can interact with and you are finished in 30 minutes. The more you interact the more monologue (or dialogue since the inanimate objects are actually alive) you get which also means lots of jokes.

I had fun with this one. It doesn't take itself seriously and it looks decent and has acceptable voice-acting (the creators do mention that for both AI-assistance was used). All this from a free game. Enjoy!

As more and more NFT-like games pop up on Steam one would think the quality increases. However, they are often released with missing features or with broken achievements. Turte is a good example of this: the game has one single achievement but it never unlocks and the "pool" feature is missing. Why not label the software as Early Access then?

The menus include a way too generic background and the distortion effect on the counter bothers the eye. It only gets worse and worse as the number increases (though this is mainly due to an autoclicker used). It is alarming to see that there is no quality check here not to mention that - as many "developers" claim it on the store page - a lot of content is generated by A.I.

Although the title says Chamber Survival, as soon as you start the game a huge text will appear filling in the entire screen saying The Lost House. There is no story here - no explanation as to where we are and why. Essentially, the first 5 minutes is included in the form of a video on the store page: you pick up an axe, go to a corridor and you get chased by two different zombies one after the other. The ending shows a closing door - this is where you get to continue the game next but I was not able to find the key I needed for the exit door.

In this room I was able to enter a locker that transported me back to the first room where the game started. There are some additional - redundant - actions here such as the option to sit down and drink (the animation shows a hand drinking liquid stuff without a glass or cup) and also the use of a lantern. But you already have a lighter in your inventory. In fact, you can use both at the same time (dual-wielding lighting objects for the first game in the history of video games!!!).

As you go back to the main menu you see an option called "more". Here you have tutorials on how to dual-wield items or how to hide. These sections are rather simplistic and completely unnecessary these days. Now, in the hiding section I managed to hide but didn't know how to complete the tutorial (as in exit properly without hitting ESC) so I simply let the zombie chasing me kill me. As a result of that I found myself in a completely new menu with the title "Horror Kit I-IV" in the upper-right corner. Hitting new game started a completely different game with the protagonist standing in a corridor and not being able to move (the only thing doable was turning around).

Back in the menu of this "second" or shall we say "hidden" game there was another menu for tutorials titled "example". Here some start off in a floating area which means leaving the playable area is a possibility - but this will result in falling for eternity.

This is so bad on so many levels. But most of all: this is unfinished. Or just assets were used to quickly put it together. And 6 EUR for this? Happy to have purchased it with an 88% discount in mind. What a letdown!

Although the synopsis refers to this one as a beat-em-up simulator, I see it as a clicker game. Just keep clicking and one character starts beating up the other. By clicking faster the smashing becomes faster. I don't see it as something too violent - I think the game is more on the lighter side of things. This is explained by the graphics that are very simplistic.

As soon as you hit ESC and find yourself in the menu you can see the many customisation options you have: changing the colours of everything, adding messages in bubbles, changing the level of brightness or the pattern of the ground and even automating the clicking so you won't need any auto-clicker software (at 8000 hits you reach all achievements anyway). Rage Simulator is a fun little game - it's a bit like holding up your middle finger to all those scam / clicker games released recently. And that's a good 25 minutes that's well worth it!

Meet Thomasina, self-appointed tomb raider (or as she likes to call herself: barrow digger) and follow her in the journey of uncovering some treasures. She ends up in a small, rural village and soon finds out that the person who invited her is nowhere to be found. As she gets settled in she decides to explore Bewlay and its peculiar denizens.

This is a classic point-and-click adventure game divided up into 3 main chapters. While the game has pixelated graphics its interface is modern and easy-to-use. The voice acting is fantastic (one of the best I have seen in the genre) with notable emphasis on the accent the locals have. Even Thomasina's vocabulary is unique. I appreciated the use of words such as "lass" and "pet" and hearing the following exclamations: "Hogwash!", "Curses!". Or just listening to characters ta-ra-ing to each other when saying farewell.

The game uses a checkpoint-based save system but manual saving is recommended due to the missable achievements. Puzzles are getting more interesting (and difficult) as we are nearing the endgame and our inventory keeps getting bigger and bigger with lots of items we need to use along the way. I appreciated the cutscenes we occasionally get and the Lovecraftian vibe that the game emits all the way.

I had a fantastic time with this game and - to be honest - I expected so given the publisher was Wadjet Eye Games. As for the developers: I recommend that you also pick up The Terrible Old Man and Football Game before this one. One thing I found interesting and this definitely affects the outcome of the gamer reviews: the ending is not the usual that you expect. However, given what we do during our playthrough it is very much foreshadowed so I wasn't really disappointed.

Ta-ra!

Shadow of Pharos is one of those horror walking sims where the story mainly takes place at your home. The protagonist wakes up and finds messages that tell him what to do. To help with immersion we can't simply quit the game but we have to approach the chair in our bedroom and interact with it. Also, settings can only be accessed if a special combination of the arrow keys is entered.

The game has some jumpscares and at one point you notice how it comes to an abrupt end without the credits rolling. Then you are back next to your bed again waking up to the sound of the alarm clock. It must be a sort of infinite loop in place or perhaps a checkpoint system in use and what you thought was the ending was actually game over.

There are also certain interactions you can make that can easily be missed. So, right now is the best time to play this game and experiment. If you have figured out the true ending you can let me know in the forum (also telling me how to unlock its sole achievement). Great atmospheric game that is completely free of charge!

Another clicker game with a lot of inventory drops but with upgrade features so that we can actually enjoy the game for a while. The very first upgrade you click on activates the auto-click functionality. As you purchase more and more upgrades, more shortcuts appear on the left-hand side. The arrows (cursors?) coming from these shortcuts aim at the VHS in the center of the customisable background and they are responsible for the regular clicks we gain per second.

But it isn't just the background we can change. The VHS cassette can have different appearances and the soundtrack can also be modified. All this emits an 80's vibe which makes playing this game more exciting than anything released recently under the bananaware umbrella. Also, the studio here is not a newcomer but has been developing games for several years now.

Give this one a try if you like idle games. It should be noted that given the availability of the (tradable) inventory items this will likely have the same fate as the other games we have recently seen in the itemdropware genre when (if?) Valve actions. Until then have some fun retro-style!

This is a free add-on to a game that is already considered a prologue to the upcoming Paranormal Investigators. It's an alright walking sim where we control a child who receives instructions from an unknown individual via cellphone. Some of the dark anomalies are very similar to the ones in 50 Floors.

This is supposed to be a tie-in to Richard's story who had the interview at the film studio and with whom we needed to descend those 50 floors. It takes 10 minutes to complete it and all takes place in the same house. It was an OK - albeit unexpected - little game. I'm fine with a little lore building but the lens flare was a bit too much throughout.

PS: The game must be launched separately from the folder for 50 Floors where its executable file is found.