Mortarius

It gives me Sanitarium vibes, bur with H.R. Giger influences. It's short though. You can beat it in an afternoon.

I almost stopped playing it because it was too weird. I don't want to spoil the weirdest thing about it, but it's not the graphics. I recommend it, but it's outsider art, made almost entirely by one guy with a vision.

Short and sweet. Each case is 10-15minutes tops. I enjoyed it, but it mostly felt like doing inconsequential sidequests.

Theme and concept is the best thing about this game. Becoming planet-wide AI is great. I appreciate that music changes depending on zoom level - ambient/atmospheric in orbit, only to have more robotic/electric tracks when you zoom in on factories. It's no Factorio. Strategic aspect is minimal, to a point where it becomes more of an idle game than anything else. It can get quite grindy, so I recommend playing on easy, even if you can sequence break certain events.

It's a game about virus outbreak. If it came out today, it would be seen as some sort meta-commentary. Playing it in 2020 just feels quaint.

Art is fantastic. I think visuals came first, and rest of the game kind of grew around it. The city it takes place is surprisingly big and environments are wondrously detailed. Many adventure games give you a map with points of interest, but here it's all connected through alleys. Brings sense of a proper city. Puzzles are easy but not always clear. Sometimes I knew what I've had to do, but had to examine item first for that option to work. I've ended up abusing special vision to highlight points of interest, just to make sure I've checked everything. There is also one type puzzle they've reused 3 times. Not even hard, or illogical, but... Story is fine, but writing is weird and not very good. Characters behave like a type of character in this kind of story should act, instead of what this particular sane person should do. Not exactly consistent or well defined. It's enjoyable, especially fantastic art and the city environments, but could use more complex puzzles and better, consistently written characters.

I like the art, music is atmospheric, but I gave up after 10 minutes. It's an excruciatingly slow idle adventure game. You click and wait 2hours and a door is open. It's like someone played Neverhood and decided to make a game out of that 20 minutesin a corridor.

Mixed feelings about this one. One one hand I love the theme. It's really fun amassing a horde of deep sea creatures and lovecraftian horrors. On the other - gameplay. It's one of those 'group of creatures follow a single point'. It never felt like I was controlling a horde, more like watching chaos unfold. When you take inevitable losses due to AoE fire attack, there is little point of carrying on. Better to just restart and hope pathfinding behaves better next time. The whole time I was thinking how much better it would be with RTS-like controls, managing multiple types of creatures via control groups, flanking and generally more tactical approach to encounters.

It's roguelike hack and slash, on the more arcade side of things, rather than methodical diabloesque. You play as a whole family. When you fail a stage as one, you can try again as another character and level up gear/abilities for the whole group. It encourages exploration of playstyles and doesn't punish you much for sticking to your favourite.

Great art, reminds me of Beksinski and Giger. But that's about it. I really want to love this game, but it has token story and token worldbuilding, token puzzles and pointless morality system. It lacks proper structure to connect it all, it's like a slideshow of gorgeous scenes. I want to know who is that S&M lady with pet demon and murderous jester, but alas they are gone and forgotten a couple screens later.

After finishing it, I wanted more. It has memorable characters with their own little quirks, puzzles aren't too obtuse and I'm a bit of a sucker for the idea of hidden paranormal world. Gave me some of the Longest Journey and Gabriel Knight vibes.

The main character is a bit of an asshole and seems like a fantasy alt-girl rather than a real person. A lot of effort went into and I would like a sequel with better story, maybe exploring the weirder aspects of the game. As a whole, it's a ok/good adventure game. Wasn't frustrating, but wasn't all that engaging either.