GOST of Time Review

Like many people my age, my childhood featured a non-trivial amount of time spent playing Flash games on sites like Miniclip, Nitrome, and more.  One of the standouts was called Chronotron, in which you created a little robot, “recorded” its movement through a level, then moved onto a new robot while your past self executed all the previous actions.  Solving puzzles in this way was unique and incredibly clever, and it’s always held a special place in my heart, to the point where when GOST of Time crossed my desk, I was instantly excited by it containing this gameplay mechanism.  Add in the fact that it was billed as a fusion between Hotline Miami and Rick & Morty, and I was completely sold on this pixelated time-traveler.  And to engage in a bit of time-travel of my own, I’ll bring a piece of the conclusion to the front of this review and say that, while GOST of Time doesn’t deliver on all its promise, it’s still a competent little puzzler that kept me engaged through its relatively short runtime.

Tower 57 Review

I’ll be up front about this: Tower 57 is one of those games that I just didn’t quite get.  Now, don’t get me wrong: I enjoy twin-stick shooters.  I also quite liked the dieselpunk aesthetic of the whole thing; it’s a style that you don’t see too often, and it was a nice change of pace.  Plus, the pixel art was so intricately detailed that it made me want to kiss my fingers like a chef.  And yet, the game was just…there.  The story seemed like it wanted to be darkly humorous, but was largely bland and generic, with characters coming and going too fast to break out of a single personality dimension.  The gameplay was straightforward and made perfect sense…until it didn’t.  It’s a game which I continually felt like I should enjoy, but I was never able to truly cross the threshold into legitimately finding enjoyment in it.  As a result, this is going to be one of those reviews that I write as much for myself as anyone else; I just need to get my thoughts in order to see what went wrong in Tower 57.