Quick Review: Human Resource Machine

The day I thought I was done delivering numbers in a factory, they pull me right back in!

Only one employee to do all this? Geez, big companies
and their stupid staff cuts...

A game by Tomorrow Corporation released on October 15th, 2015, Human Resource Machine can best be described as a “programming puzzle game”. You are not quite in control of your character; the crux of gameplay is setting up a series of commands, and then seeing whether they yield the desired result. Then, if the solution didn’t work: Extensively test each step, correct the bugs, make sure you don’t create ten more by accident (the joys of programming!), run, playtest and debug until you get the right combination of events to solve the puzzle.

In this game’s context, you start as a new employee in some nebulous delivery company, and you are tasked on each floor with delivering specific numbers from the Inbox area, and to the Outbox. The requirement changes every time. Your first commands are Inbox and Outbox, obviously, and starting at the second level you obtain the Jump command, which you can set after any other command and place the jump destination anywhere in the program, even at the very start, to skip steps or create a loop.

Still not sure why they added letters here, other than to make
your tasks even harder to deal with. Congrats to this game for
making me dread/hate letters, somehow.

If you think that's a lot of arrows going up and down
and all over the place in the command line... Ha. It gets
soooo much worse later on.

Past these are the Copyfrom and Copyto commands. Your worker can use the square tiles at the center of the room to set down numbers from the Inbox for later use, or copy a number already set there. Well… numbers, or letters. After which you can deliver to Outbox a copied number. After which, you get increasingly complex requests, such as Outboxing a set of two numbers in the reverse order (set the first on a square, deliver the second, pick up the first with Copyfrom, deliver it). After this? We get commands for addition and subtraction. And new Jump commands with conditions (jumping to other sets of commands if the number is 0, or negative).

Why the Hell does the program thinks letters count as a
zero anyway?? Shaking my damn head...

These add up on the command board, and it can turn into a complete mess of orders and arrows pointing up and down and everywhere, so the game later introduces the ability to leave notes along the command line, and a few levels later, the same for squares on the ground, “naming” them so you can remember their purpose. Great idea! Or, would be if you could actually type that text somehow, but instead all you have is your mouse, a large brush, and you can only draw the letters, so good luck fitting more than 7 characters on there. For the smaller print of the floor tiles, I can understand, but the notes within the program? Come on now.

"Mult"? ...I play too much Balatro...

Ugh! Management, never happy. Why do I still bother with
this when I could be working anywhere else...

And now, the mechanic that will make you go “Oh, this is a programming game”, something you might either love, or hate, or be divided on as I was: If you come up with a functional but imperfect solution for the set of numbers you were given, you’ll be told that it did work as intended… but then, your boss refuses the solution and gives you an Inbox sequence that will make your solution fail. By running the simulation, you can follow step by step and figure out where things go wrong – and you can rewind at will, but that’s not going to help if you can’t spot the error (or can’t figure out a way to solve it that doesn’t break something else)…

Oh hey, I finally did something right!

The system for this one is robust and complex, and there’s a bunch of decent mechanics and ideas to be found. The complexity increases as you’re tasked with tougher elements to deal with – stuff like multiplication, zero-terminated strings, Fibonacci sequences, and more. If you’re looking for a crash course puzzle game on programming, this is about as close as it gets, warts and all. It’s satisfying when your solution works for every number set, but it can be very hard to get there, and when it doesn't work, good luck figuring out where you went wrong. However, if you do love these, you can go for the extra challenges where you must reach a level's solution in the smallest amount of steps and/or moves (some levels have “best” solutions that can only be one or the other).

Not one I’d think I’d finish, but I can see why someone would love it enough to strive for its completion.

Human Resource Machine is available on Steam for 14.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Headlander

Talk about a head-ache!

In the future, everything will be plug-and-play.
Even body-critical technology. USBs? Too complicated.

Developed by Double Fine Productions, published by Adult Swim Games and released on July 26th, 2016, Headlander is… well, it’s Double Fine, so it’s weird. Someone awakens on a space station, to realize they are nothing except a head in a space helmet. Bodies are so last millennium. Even worse, they are the last flesh and blood human in the universe, since the rest of mankind has long transferred their consciousnesses into "Impostor" robot bodies to attain immortality. And all the places where these Impostor bodies live are controlled by the all-seeing powerful AI known as Methuselah.

In this screenshot, my character is in the bottom left, using
an orange body - stronger than red. Still gotta deal with
the lasers from the other guards...

Any hopes of saving humanity? In this world inspired by how the ‘60s imagined the future, your helmet can plug ("Headland") into any body without a head (using Q) and take control of it. Can’t find a body without a head? Activate the vacuum (Left-click) and pull the head off a body yourself to steal it! You can use the vacuum feature to pull out all sorts of things, granting access to computers, passageways, and more. It's a Metroidvania, so you gradually unlock abilities that allow you to go further. You can collect multicolored energy that fills up a gauge, granting skill points when full; these can be spent in the menu to unlock or improve abilities. Progress is also locked behind color coding, as many doors are locked unless you control a body of the appropriate color. The armed guards in the second area, as an example, are usually red, and you need to take their bodies to walk through red doors. But then, orange and yellow doors later appear.

Hmm. Orange... Yellow... yeah, let's go for yellow.

When lasers start flying left and right and everywhere - oh
yeah, it gets hard to avoid them all. Good luck moving that
frail robot body around...

The guards are equipped with laser weapons that you can then use against other guards and threats. Lasers bounce off walls, floors and ceilings, and you can use that to your advantage to hit enemies – but they, too, can do it to hit you. Your arsenal expands over time to include melee attacks, greater vacuum pull allowing you to rip the heads off robot bodies from greater distances, a thrust that can transform your flying head into a cannonball, force shields that can be used to bypass lasers, and so much more. As a Metroidvania, the interest is to explore every nook and cranny to find secrets and upgrades, and to return when new abilities (or bodies) are discovered. The plot is split into chapters, with teleporters (sorry, “zap pads”) between areas, so you can go back without having to trek the whole way through. The robot bodies can be frail against enemy lasers, even after upgrades to health regeneration, so those pads are much appreciated.

Found another secret area with a health boost! You bet
I'll take it - the lasers are only getting stronger in every area!

Speaking of the "chess" game,  wait till you see the Queen.
Now THAT's a boss fight I wasn't expecting.

And of course, this is Double Fine we’re talking about, so the absurd concept is delivered with a very tongue-in-cheek writing and a lot of sarcastic characters (especially the doors when they tell you that you’re in the wrong body to move ahead – they're called R.O.O.D., that says it all). The silly concepts somehow lead into an intriguing story that keeps you invested regardless. And they have fun with it, too; one chapter even includes a twisted version of chess with lasers (…don’t question it), and one game of it must be infiltrated to steal sensitive data. the concept lends itself to a lot of special challenges, such as when you’re forced to plug into specific bodies to progress, as an example.

It's a crazy ride, a solid Metroidvania with an excellent eye for aesthetics. It's worth checking out, whether you like the genre or the slightly more comedic tone.

Headlander is available on Steam for …..

Quick Review: Guns of Icarus Online

For a moment, I was afraid I’d have two game eulogies this year; turns out, there’s only one (it’ll come later in this set of Quick Reviews), but... today's title has definitely seen better days.

Enemy on the left! Uh... how do we say left on a ship
again...

A creation of Muse Games released on October 29th, 2012, Guns of Icarus Online is a multiplayer game about operating steampunk airships and going at war against other factions. Before I start, I want to say that, like pretty much every multiplayer-only game in my collection, this one has been sitting a long time unplayed; I received it in a Humble Bundle back in February… 2017. At a time where I can safely assume the game was a lot more active. And though it’s still receiving occasional updates, unless I’ve played at a particularly slow time, the playerbase appears to have gotten low - the most I saw on my first session was 9 players online at a time.

Say hello to my friend Mortar! You've already met Gatling.

The game features multiple factions warring over a large map, taking, stealing and reclaiming territories, similar to other multiplayer games I’ve played in the past (such as For Honor). However, combat is exclusively dogfights. Each airship has a crew of four, the captain steers (forwards, backwards, turning left or right, and ascending/descending), while the other three can man the ship’s weapons or fix any machinery that gets broken by enemy fire. You don’t need to have four human PCs on one ship; all it takes is one. However, the captain must always be a human player, so if you’re on your own, your job is automatically to drive. I imagine the big interest in this one is to have a full team of four communicating and coordinating their efforts to both get to the guns in time to shoot down enemy ships that come close, and repair what needs to be. The tutorial focuses a fair bit on repairing and maintaining the ship, with piloting as its final course.

Hell yeah, I'm on fire! Wait... No! Ahh! I'm on fire! Ack!
Quick, the extinguisher! My gun is on fire!

There's a wide variety of battle types and matchups. The friend I played with and I went through two modes that could be played between the two of us; together as a team against CPU enemy ships, whichever team destroyed three ships of the opposing team won; and me versus him, attacking each other across the desolate deserts, broken cities, and graveyards of giant dead machinery. (And him wiping the nonexistent floors with me, ‘cause he has more experience with driving/piloting games than I've ever had – but hey, I got to test the game, that’s what matters!)

Nothing a little percussive maintenance can't solve.

The tutorials cover every position, so you should know how to operate no matter where you land on a team. You have Practice options to play on your own, summoning enemy ships at will to train yourself, or playing against CPU pirates. Multiplayer has 5 modes allowing for varying numbers of players and teams (2v2, 3v3, 2v2v2v2, 4v4, and King of the Hill Mode can be an 8-player Battle Royale). There’s even Skyball in there – whatever that is.

I do wish there was a mini solo campaign to this thing, it
would be interesting to have. I could have taken more
piloting skill tests like this one at the end of the tutorial,
where we're driving through canyons.

Add to this a ton of options for your secondary tools when driving and many choices to customize the look of your personal ship (though a lot of cosmetic stuff is locked behind real money) and weaponry loadout (lots of different gun and ammo types). Like I said earlier, I can imagine what Guns of Icarus was like at the height of its popularity, and even a few years after that; the concept is interesting, the controls and mechanics take some getting used to but can make a seasoned player a definitive threat on a map, and there are enough lore and details to have players care at least a little about the story.

Hello, pirates. Time for you to go down.

However, though I still linked to it and tell its current price at time of this article’s publication, I don’t know if I can “recommend” it, not nearly 13 years into its existence and with such a massively decreased player base. Unless you buy copies for all your friends as well, but even then, I don’t know how much mileage one can get out of it at this point. Same for the update, Guns of Icarus Alliance, advertised in the base game.

Still, if you’re interested, Guns of Icarus Online is available on Steam for 4.99$ USD. I also don’t know how much longer still it’ll be available for purchase, after all this time. But hey – not a eulogy for once!

Quick Review: Girls Like Robots

I already covered this one a tiny bit late last year during my Missed Year Plans. Time to go in depth.

I'm more wondering why they're grouping together
right there, on the soccer - excuse me, chickenball - field.

Created by Popcannibal and released on February 14th, 2014 (fun date for the concept), Girls Like Robots is a puzzle game in which all the characters are square heads that must fit into various grids and situations. Plenty of students at that school: The titular Girl, the Nerd, the fan of bugs, and so on. The titular robots are here, too. The concept is that these squares have positive and negative opinions of each other, and it’s up to you to sort them into the grids to reach maximal happiness for everyone.

One of the stranger puzzles in the game, where you have to
set characters to block the one guy who's moving around
all happily.

Girls like to be next to robots – and robots like to be next to girls, too, but they cannot handle being surrounded by four girls. Nerds enjoy robots too, but robots are indifferent to them; nerds specifically like occupying the corners of a level’s field, they also like to be next to girls (while girls don’t really like them). Nerds also don’t like to be too many close to each other. June, another square character, is a loner; she doesn’t really care having people next to her, but she loves being next to bugs. Speaking of, bugs on the field will move to empty squares away from other characters you place. Every human likes pie, so you can place a pie among angry people to make them happy! Except robots. They’re the only ones who hate pie. Also, no one likes to be placed on a burning square.

Swapping characters around an already-filled grid,
instead of placing them yourself. More complexities!

It gets weirder by Act 2, with part of it happening on a farm. Cows will release their milk if surrounded by angry people, so for once, the goal isn’t to make everyone happy, but the opposite. Cow milk can douse fires, too. We have new robots with mustaches; they have a grudge with June and hate to be next to her, and she returns the sentiment. And then, there’s fish; they hate being in corners, love being next to each other, and like being next to anyone, but nobody else cares about them. If that’s starting to sound weird, wait till you reach Act 3 and aliens are involved…

Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed.

Yup, they're in space now. It's just something that can
happen in Square Head Land.

There are multiple switches of gameplay, and you might not always know what comes next. Most of the time, you can place anyone anywhere, but other times you don’t get to choose in which order you place the characters; or maybe you can only place them right next to other squares that were already placed. Or maybe the level makes you swap squares around already-filled grids, figuring out where to best place everyone for maximum happiness. Or what about levels where the goal is to stay as close to an even amount of happy and unhappy? Puzzle levels are divided into chapters within each act, so that mechanics and alterations to gameplay can be kept in their own little area.

Some of the bonus mini-games are pretty fun.

This puzzle game is a great example of starting off with a very simple concept and expanding it over time, throwing new curveballs occasionally to surprise players. Every level has different requirements for bronze, silver and gold medals. You can move on to the next level as soon as you get bronze; however, you might want to go for better scores, since each medal (thus, up to 3 per level) grants new points that are added to a "Bag of Happy". At certain Bag thresholds, you unlock new Bonuses, which can be new challenges that either ask you to go for the highest possible score, or special gameplay modes. There’s a comical tone to the presentation the whole way through – especially the narration’s witty comments between levels.

Girls Like Robots is available on Steam for 6.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Dreams of Aether

First, Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, now this – more of these April Fools games, please!

Guess we've got to intrude into the dreams of others
to rescue them, and beat whatever nightmare this is!

Developed by Lepioid LLC, published by Aether Studios (which are behind the Rivals of Aether fighting game series, which expanded into a franchise), and released on April 1st, 2025, Dreams of Aether is an odd thing. Then again, for an April Fools title, this is to be expected, really. This entry focuses on standout Rivals character Absa the goat, who gets trapped in the land of dreams by some Eldritch entity. She is helped by some strange piñata creature, who reveals that other fighters are stuck in their dreams as well. The only way to leave from this story of a dubious degree of canon is to reunite everyone and fight the entity, with the piñata creature, Añi, joining in for the showdown!

Just one of fifty microgames!

Gameplay is WarioWare with a Rivals of Aether flavor. Series of seconds-long microgames that increase in speed and difficulty on each stage. Each of the main four stages introduces 10 microgames and one “boss” (just a longer microgame). Controls change for each vignette, but always involve either the arrows, the Z and/or the X keys. This, combined with the pixel art style, gives it a Game Boy Advance feel.

Featuring cameos of unofficial/fanmade Rivals characters!

Two at the same time? Oh, that might be ovewhelming.

The final stage, Añi's, adds another five microgames; but then, the game takes a hard turn into something I’ve never seen a microgames collection do. For the final boss, you must complete TWO minigames at the same time, on every round! You better be good at multitasking. The system is made so that microgame controls don’t mix up during that round (ex. You won’t have two games that require pressing, say, the Z key next to each other, so you won’t fail one while doing the other correctly). The final boss microgame is a music stage where Absa repeats Añi’s dance moves to the rhythm, all while also beating more microgames. It’s a kind of challenge I’ve never seen before! (It’s also a bit more lenient; you technically have eight lives for this one instead of four.)

A true peanut butter and chocolate situation, somebody put
WarioWare and Friday Night Funkin in my furry fighting
game. All at once.

It's so much fun to see these characters do stuff other than,
well, fighting each other endlessly.

In classic WarioWare-like fashion, you then unlock three bonus stages – one where all the microgames are mixed up, one where you start at max difficulty, and one that’s all about the dual microgame mechanic with complete randomness. You can play every microgame on its own; in that mode, you play the three difficulties of each microgame in sequence, then they repeat a little faster, up to 300% of the original speed. Finally, you can replay every stage and try to get three stars on each; you gain a star by beating the boss stage, thus up to the third difficulty.

Oh, these dual microgames get tough.

This isn’t just an April Fools, it’s a solid game. It takes every good thing about WarioWare-style gameplay and executes it perfectly, even throwing curveballs for those who are already fans of the "genre". It’s not as big as those games, with about 50 microgames instead of a hundred, and the story mode can be finished in under 30 minutes, both of which are acceptable for a quick and (originally) free game. There’s enough in terms of bonus challenges to extend one’s playthrough! As a tie-in to Rivals of Aether II, released in october 2024, this one feels like a clever promotional thing, sure, but also, it’s just a good game.

Dreams of Aether may no longer be free, but it's still got a decent low price of 2.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Beltmatic

Imagine, if you will, every factory-building game ever, but reduced to the simplest expression.

Just one of many, many factories.

A creation of Notional Games released on March 29th, 2024, Beltmatic puts you in charge of a “factory” in which numbers are created. You see numbers scattered around the giant map, and a big delivery area in the circle. All the numbers you create must be directed to this delivery area using treadmills and extractors. Set an extractor onto a number, link it to the delivery area with treadmills. Collect enough of the number that’s requested, and you go up a level! Now you have a different number to collect, and you may have unlocked something new.

It takes so much work in the early game to get numbers
anywhere close to 10...

At first, all you have is 1s, but then you’ll unlock 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on – it doesn’t seem like much, but these add up. As you level up, your prime request is the number on the delivery space – and these numbers become harder to obtain. It’s not always a prime, but it usually is, or it’s just one or two operations away from a prime number. You unlock new tools over time; the first is a bridge allowing your treadmills to cross over each other, which quickly becomes necessary.

The mathematical buildings have different shapes and function differently from each other. Most involve an A and a B – yes, we’re getting algebraic in here –, the operation, and its result. First is the adder, A+B. Then it’s the multiplier, A*B. The subtractors and dividers are A-B and A÷B, so you must pay very close attention to which number is sent where. For division, you end up with both the proper result, and then the remainder (ex. 5÷2=2, with remainder of 1), so you can use these to obtain other numbers that you can redirect elsewhere if necessary. The final operation is the exponentiator, or A^B; you can get some big numbers out of that one. It takes a while to unlock every option but having them all available is a plus.

Your factory will get pretty damn big after a while.

The final unlock is a storage box, which you can put on the field to store one number into a single area, so that your buildings can keep producing numbers instead of letting them get stuck at the end of a treadmill. Storage squares can contain up to 10,000 of a number. In addition, you can create new treadmills leading out of a storage square and into more operations and buildings.

Alright, I've made the number I wanted, not to tie it all
back to the delivery area. That shouldn't take too long.

But you don’t have just one number to produce every time; you can level up your treadmills and buildings so that they’ll churn out operations faster, allowing for more numbers to get produced per minute and reduce clutter as numbers go through. This will subtract a lot of the time taken for numbers to get to your facility after going through many other buildings on the way. However, leveling up any building will be tough, as you need to collect a large amount of up to three different numbers beforehand. There is no other cost to upgrading a building or the treadmills; just the hard work of making the numbers through complex series of operations, and getting them home.

With all 6 buildings unlocked, that’s an extra 18 numbers to crunch. This multiplies the factories around your reception area – not to mention just how much it divides your attention. Good thing there’s a menu keeping track of all the numbers getting fed into your delivery dock, and which ones are no longer necessary – this can allow you to cut off the unnecessary branches and delete those factories.

Everything's moving into the delivery area, riiiiight there
at the left of this screenshot.

You can unlock all the achievements by reaching Level 30 and upgrading all the buildings to Level 8. I've done both, so I personally consider to have beaten this game. It’s a fun challenge to figure out how to reach all the numbers that are requested. Really, this game is all mathematics, so it’s going to appeal to nerds like me and other folks who like crunching numbers, but may not be for fans of more classic factory-building games. I suggest playing with the PC’s calculator open, and maybe the factors calculator in a window. One of the bigger issues is just how many of each number is needed to go up a level or upgrade a facility; it eventually turns into a waiting game when you can’t produce them faster and need to wait for those quantities to tick up. The other option is to repeat your factories wherever possible to produce more of one specific number per second. But overall, yeah, it's a fun one.

…Okay, I’ve made exponentially more math puns here than usual.

Beltmatic is currently available on Steam for 6.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Balatro

Oof, I’m in for some addictive gameplay. I better not lose myself into this one. …Too late.

Developed by LocalThunk, published by Playstack and released on February 20th, 2024 (I know, I’m a full year late to the party on this one), Balatro is a very unique deck-building roguelike based entirely around poker hands, Jokers, and a myriad of special cards.

Two pairs? That should do the trick for now...

A run is divided into Antes, themselves divided into three Blinds: One small, one big, and a Boss. The latter throws in an additional effect to disrupt your strategies. The score required at each blind increases. A run is "won" if you can beat the boss of Ante 8, which will usually require you to score 100,000 points. You can choose to skip a non-boss blind, which grants a small reward in return.

Before playing a hand, you can discard multiple times, up to 5 cards, and then draw as many. Judge which poker hand will give you the biggest score and try to gather all the pieces. Then, choose your cards – again, up to 5 – and play them. The system will only play the cards that count (ex. If you play 5 cards but only have two pairs, one card won’t be scored). Be careful, though; you have limited discards, and you must reach the score in chips in a limited number of hands.

Oh, I've got a good feeling about this one!

The hands go from the simplest High Card all the way to the Straight Flush or beyond. Hands all have a base score and multiplier (Mult), which you can level up using Planet Cards founnd in the Shop. This can add up, and may encourage players to focus on one hand type over another.

At the top of the screen are your equipped Jokers. Every Joker has an effect that radically changes gameplay; many of them add to your hand score (Chips) or Mult. Some rarer Jokers may even multiply your Mult. Jokers can come in different editions, which can impact the scoring or the base game (Foil, Holographic, Polychrome or Negative). You start with only five slots for Jokers, but can gain more (thanks to Negative Jokers).

Let's make sure the planets help as much as possible.

    Too bad I seem to already have all my Jokers. Then again,
maybe I can get a better one up there.

After beating a blind, you earn the base money reward, extra cash for each remaining hand you didn't play, and even some interest. Then you access a shop screen with randomized Jokers, a voucher, and card packs. Vouchers cost 10 coins but will provide passive bonuses and changes to gameplay; the packs can include Planet cards, Tarot cards (which can modify cards from your deck), regular cards for your deck, more Jokers, or even the rare Spectral cards, which can heavily change your run.

2,900e13? Yikes.

Can you figure out the best combination of effects to beat Ante 8? Can you… go beyond? The further you go, the bigger the numbers become; by Ante 14, blind chip scores need to be expressed in scientific notation because the numbers are too damn big. The last time I saw scientific notation in a video game was in an idle clicker! And oh yeah – there are 15 different “Decks” to unlock or use, each with their own special effect, AND on top of that you can also unlock additional Stakes to make the game harder. Imagine winning Ante 8 with every Deck, at every stake. Ouch.

Ugh, how I dislike boss blinds with face-down cards...

Yeah, this is extremely addictive. This is very much a roguelike; you never know what you’ll land on at every turn, and you make do with what you find. Some runs will end prematurely, some will go far (but not far enough)... or maybe you’ll win. There’s so much content to find, and so many secondary challenges, that if you want to beat the game just once, you’ll need maybe 10 hours (at least for the time it should take to learn all the mechanics and how they can be changed through gameplay). I know I was hooked; by the time I wrote this paragraph, I had spent 20 hours in this alleged “quick” game, and I had only beaten it twice (at publication, I've now won 9 times). Be very careful; when you start playing this one, it’s hard to put down.

Balatro is available on Steam for 14.99$ USD.

Still addicted, send help