Recent reviews by Devccoon

As a fan of monster collecting adventures and open-world games, I had to give this a try. I'm not very well acquainted with the world of premium gacha F2P games, so if you're a veteran of these types of games, you might be familiar with the tropes and accept its flaws, or too familiar and find it wanting. Not really knowing much about those games, I just wanted to see if this would be worth casually checking out.

And to TL;DR - I think it's worth a try. With some caveats.



The first ~2 hours were a slog and I was ready to give up on the game. Despite clearly a lot of budget going into it, the first impressions are atrocious. It stumbles terribly as it attempts to do genre staples (undercutting the BOTW-esque "exiting the cave" vista moment with a bunch of dialogue about something interesting you just saw happen during the cutscene) and it even commits the cardinal sin of making your player character very prominently featured in fully voiced and animated cutscenes, making roleplaying anything but a bubbly Youtuber rookie kid a non-starter for your character customization.

Truly, there's a ton of cutscenes and forced storytelling in the beginning, and it does the game no justice at all. It actively hurts the ability to get invested into the character you're playing or the world itself, because they throw in surprise twists and big revelations in the first 10 minutes, before you have any idea what "normal" even looks like in this setting, and that makes it all fall totally flat. You don't get to start navigating the open world for a good hour or more, even if you're skipping the dialogue to fast-track into gameplay like I started to do. Maybe there are some interesting themes there, but I only started to care about the story later on when the script was allowed to breathe.

While the game is a live service pseudo-MMO (there's a lot of MMO-like interaction and public areas designed for community and interaction with lots of random people), all exploration is instanced to you and friends, if you have any, so you don't get as much social pressure in moment to moment gameplay. The only real interaction I had with other players was mostly in this game's version of "shrines" where some were designed around two players cooperating. While the game gives you ample opportunities to show off your critters and customizations (which, surprisingly, you can do a lot of), it's on your terms.

I won't bother going into excessive detail on the monetization except to say it's downright healthy, in my opinion. No "bulk" discounts/extras for buying larger amounts of premium currency, the optional "subscription" is very fair and decently generous, and the battlepass and other FOMO stuff doesn't seem too excessive or necessary. This is not a gacha game in the slightest so far, although maybe in endgame there might be need for rare material grinds to beat some content or something... so my outlook on that "healthy" judgement might change later on. But casually speaking, I'm getting plenty of cool stuff to play with already, and not falling behind or getting stuck on grind.



The game has turned out to be a lot of fun in surprising ways. Once you get going, it's hard to quit. Exploring just keeps staying interesting and it's not showing signs of stopping. I'm delighted by the sheer variety of content there is to find and do, even if it's not usually challenging. There's a lot of rewarding exploration, stuff hidden in every nook and cranny, and plenty out there to just go grab out in the open. The amount of content that's actually tracked (present on the map, completion markers, etc) is low-density enough that it's not overwhelming. Most of that tracked content feels substantial and, often enough, unique. I'm surprised how little they seem to retread the same ground. Even relatively simple ideas like picking out which of the Aniimo in the area is "fake" by knowing about their behavior tendencies and recognizing patterns, seems ripe for spamming around the game world, but actually only comes up a few times.

Although there isn't a lot of challenge to be found and the game is almost boring with how upbeat and relentlessly safe and happy it wants to you to feel all the time, there were so many moments where I had to sit back and take in just how charming this game is. The attention to detail they've put into so many places, the personalities they've given to their critters and the ways they interact with each other and their environment really bring it to life. So many little interactions make this game feel less like a game, even though frankly, some of the gamier elements of it do betray that sense of immersion. (you go on a spree, capturing everything in the area, turn around and find they're all respawned back in and going about their business like you didn't just throw a ball pit worth of capture cubes until nothing moving remained)

Again, cardinal sin, not being able to relate to my own player character in this adventure, but being able to play as the critters is a game-changer that made it palatable for me. I spend very little time as my weird green alien child in this game. I love that customization extends to your critters and there's so much you can do with them, I find myself playing around with that stuff even if I don't intend to show it off to anyone. It all just comes together nicely to make you feel connected with your critters better. Although, major points lost for this game somehow managing to release without the ability to rename your critters. There's a button for it on the UI but it just says it's "coming later". That's one of the big features that would make them feel less replaceable/interchangeable. They have unique personalities and traits and colors and features and costumes and abilities and stats... but no nicknames. Wild choice, to leave that out.

There's also a sort of Farmville type thing going on in there? The homestead part is pretty separate from the adventure (until it starts giving bonuses that help you out) so that might as well be its own game. It definitely starts out pretty on-rails, forcing certain upgrades and not giving much chance for expression. But I guess it's nice to have something to tweak more and feel at-home with your critters. It's no Palworld base system, that's for sure... but if you like idle games, it's basically a little of that sprinkled in, doing its own thing while you adventure or sleep.



Overall, my feelings are mixed and I'm not sure I would give a 100% recommendation because it's hard to point to any one thing and say "I loved that", or "that's the best". There's a lot of stumbling, a lot of menus, an overwhelmingly frontloaded story, elements of poor immersion, but at the same time it's wildly creative and charming and addictive. There's so much clear love poured into many parts of this game and it's hard not to fall in love in turn, even if there isn't much challenge to it. I don't think it's going to keep me addicted excessively long (maybe that's a good thing, to have something to play that feels fine to put it down when I'm satisfied), but I could see myself coming back for future content updates regardless. I'm hopeful Aniimo can improve on its shortcomings and find its place as a pleasant, cozy monster collector staple.

Curious to see how this concept evolves into the full game. The demo plays out as a fairly sized single level, maybe an hour or more if you're dinking around too much. At the end, you 'score' your looted goodies and treasures. It's unclear whether the full game will segregate the dungeon into individual levels like that, maybe have some kind of hub or shopping system, permanent upgrades, etc, or if that scoring is unique to the demo.

I'm a little put off by the intentional overuse of fake-trademarked item names, vending machines and glowing signs. The demo doesn't really go into why those disparate elements are present, but the flavor text and mechanics of respawning after death as a new looter suggest the dungeon is very much set up to attract this attention. While I appreciate the game's use of Oblivion/Skyrim-style physics interaction and continuity of movable items placed in the game world, I wonder whether the deliberately tongue-in-cheek worldbuilding won't be doing the otherwise immersive elements of the game a disservice by creating a world uninteresting to be immersed into.

Still, I think the combat is handled interestingly and some of the physics interactions and fire spreading itself can be neat. I found some awkwardness toward the end (you could use wooden crates to stop up the spinning sawblades of death, but it's very jank and the physics keep trying to do their thing, which makes it really hard to tell whether the sawblade is still going to do damage, or just suddenly come back unstuck and kill you) which doesn't inspire confidence, but for the most part things worked well and there were a good number of interesting interactions. So far, it's a dungeon I would want to keep diving into.

Good game, easy to sink your teeth into and scratches that soulslike itch distilled into a unique perspective and playstyle. Many genre trappings are here, albeit with less pomp and circumstance and some things maybe not presented as obvious as they should be (there are multiple endings and you're probably going to lock yourself out of one without realizing it until you're sweeping the last bits of the game for 100% completion).

That sounds like a bad thing but it's pretty on-brand for the genre normally, anyway. The game design here does a good job of getting presentation out of your way and letting you get into the meat of it, which makes even your first run through pretty fast-paced. There's a lot to play around with build-wise, and it's easy to want to jump back in to play again with new challenges or just experience it again with different weapons whereas other games in the genre would have me exhausted by the end.

Some of the design choices here are fantastic, too: none of your build decisions are permanent. Every "bonfire" gives you the full ability to reassign points and respec to your hearts' content. There's a lot to play around with to dial in whatever playstyle you want, and you never fully feel stuck on a boss when there are so many tools to play with and ways you can completely change up your build to try a different approach. Loadout slots for that are much appreciated. And I've also wanted to see this kind of item system in a game for a long time - every item you get is a permanent fixture of your inventory. Effectively, everything works under "estus flask" rules. Pick up a mushroom, and that's now +1 maximum mushrooms you refill to when you rest. Love to see it, and it works very well here.

Overall the game does what it sets out to do pretty well, I think. It's not mindblowingly massive and there are some jagged edges here and there (particularly some extended fits of stuttering on occasion when the game seemed to be loading an area or maybe compiling some shaders while exploring?) which might rub a bit the wrong way, but I enjoyed the ride and can see myself returning off and on for another shot at it.

I love the game, guys.

But can we PLEASE get another song? How does this entire game only have one? All this content but there's just one BGM going throughout the entire thing.

I can't knock the game too bad because the demo already soaked up so much time, and there's much more to play with in the full game, but I really was hoping for more on the music front.

Great card/dice-building game. At its core, the game is about balance. Corruption (damage) and purification (healing) apply in opposing ways to yourself and enemies, so the same card effects you can use to defeat enemies can heal yourself. Everything being based in dice means there is a lot of RNG but it makes for an interesting design where everything, even "bad" rolls, tend to have their own uses. You want to intentionally take corruption (damage) as much as you can without hitting 0 so you gain the bonus actions tied to your health bar. Doing so puts you at threat of any little unexpected damage source (forgot about the enemy's thorns?) losing you a heart, but those extra actions can swing a fight in your direction massively. That risk-reward balance feels great.

Astrea has so many mechanics it makes my head spin, but each character has their own armload of unique ones that overlap in various ways so it's only *marginally* overwhelming trying to keep up with it all in a given run. It's certainly enough to have you theorycrafting multiple builds on every character instead of easily finding the one 'win button' option, but does also mean that planning a build from the start is usually not viable. You have to adapt to what comes your way.

It's quite addictive when you start getting into it. The amount of choice you get in how to both build your dice pool and how to use the actions available to you on a given turn can flip the game upside-down. Every win or loss tends to feel earned. You can even make game-breaking synergies, but you have to earn those, too.

I'm really into proper idle games and hoped this would at least have some element of idle play but the store page should not list "idler" at all. You're meant to be dodging rocks, picking up their pieces, building up your haul and moving on to the next stage. Theoretically you can sit on an earlier stage and let the game play itself but the game really isn't built to support setting it aside and letting progress happen while you go about your business.

So it's really just a short incremental game with active gameplay. It's fine for the price, IMO. Plenty of dopamine and upgrades; it's a good, simple game loop that works. I think if anything, prestiging as a mechanic here really falls short, because half of the upgrades barely affect your initial progress or just prevent prestige from resetting anything, effectively invalidating the mechanic later on.

Decent little incremental, doesn't overstay its welcome. Janky but not in a bad way. Hits a lot of sweet spots for dopamine. I didn't really gel with the backstory or its presentation, frankly the secrets and hidden bits can be really hit or miss simply because you build up to so much chaos it's hard to deliberately stop and smell the roses. The jank hits in a bad way when you're trying to engage with those, and a particular one involving collecting a specific set of fruits at once turned into my cue to set the game down. The timer and goofy physics and giant hole being ever-present threats don't help when you want to get a little puzzle-y.

Pretty straightforward and fairly easy metroidvania. Interesting exploration where you are slowly piecing the separate maps together which opens up new points of traversal to move between them. Doesn't do anything mindblowing with its premise but it's a fun, quick, humorous and accessible romp, almost a cozy game in some sense.

Quirky, charming game perfectly captures that early 3D vibe, from the sound and visuals to the janky and endearing models and animations. It feels like the developers thought of every way to use what they had for interesting new experiences and the game really never stops surprising and delighting throughout.

And you thought Megabonk was addictive?

Ball Pit is a fitting name, weirdly enough, because this game's every bit the "5 more minutes" experience you got at the local Playplace back in the day. Though I don't fully 'get' the theming here, it's a lot more put-together than others in the wave survival/bullet heaven genre. Initially straightforward, it starts strong with great music and an evolving stage of play that concludes in a satisfying way. But what really drove me to write this review was the way the game unfolded in its progression.

All these sorts of games have meta-progression, but it usually ends at some stat boosts and quality of life, like rerolls and such. Ball Pit has those too, but takes it to the next level. I don't even want to spoil the surprises coming your way, because exploring the new twists on the mechanics and major changes to the way you play which ripple throuhgout the whole landscape of the game is such a unique joy brought to a genre that's become rapidly quite predictable.

Honestly, my biggest gripe with the game so far is that while every character has a fully unique benefit-drawback combination that completely changes the way you play or build with them (not just stat boosts, but effects that are too special to put on a simple item), one of the characters comes with only a drawback. There's one character whose only thing is that the game now picks all your upgrades for you. No big game-changing features or abilities, or any form of special luck power to make more synergistic options appear (seemingly), he just removes a core feature of the gameplay with no positive tradeoff. It's just an annoyance because it's not like he isn't playable and there aren't many more characters to pick instead, but that's truly a baffling design decision for a game where you're meant to play around with all the characters.