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

Quick Review: Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders

Starting strong with a literary classic adapted to video game! While I can’t call myself a huge reader of Agatha Christie’s works, I have read a few of her stories – but not today’s. Good! That means I’m not spoiled!

It's a Poirot story - it's always a murder. (And for those not
in the know, that's pronounced "pwah-row").

Developed by Artefacts Studio, published by Microids, and released on February 4th, 2016 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One (and on Switch in 2020), Agatha Christie – The ABC Murders is adapted from the Hercule Poirot novel of the same name. The quirky, mustachioed Belgian detective was hoping to enjoy retirement with just a few simple cases from now on. This peace is troubled when his London office receives a typewritten letter signed A.B.C., discussing an upcoming murder in the town of Andover. A challenge for the aging gentleman! The first victim’s initials are A.A., and she is found dead with an ABC (a dictionary-sized book of train departure times to all destinations in England) on her, left open at the A section. Aided by his friend Captain Arthur Hastings and Scotland Yard inspector James Japp, Hercule Poirot might be able to see beyond the mind games and find the culprit.

Poirot concludes that this woman is both sad and angry.
He's a better reader than I am.

Poirot can inspect people’s appearances to reach conclusions about their mental state, and then interrogate witnesses and suspects to get information. Most body observations stop at three details to spot on the person. Investigating scenes goes the same way – bring the cursor to an area, hover on it long enough, and a detail will be “noticed”. This is how you can find clues and information.

We've figured out the how, now to figure out the who and why.

Occasionally, Poirot will “put his little grey cells to work” and tie pieces of information together to reach logical conclusions. Some questions appear ahead of time, and you can try to solve them before the plot mandates it, though you may be missing the clues/observations needed for completion. There are no consequences for failing, so if a question has you stumped but you have all the clues, you can keep trying different combinations of clues until you catch the right one.

All this for a piece of paper? Can't I just pull it out?

The centerpieces are the puzzles, in which objects are tampered with to find new clues advancing the investigations. Some require information found in the current chapter (like a safe’s code), while others require keen observation to figure out how to take them apart. Most of them aren’t too difficult, but a few are tricky if you can’t spot the one detail you need to see to proceed. I did get stuck on one or two of these, but most weren’t so bad.

Careful, it's best to not piss off the suspects, just in case
they're volatile.

The biggest weakness of this game is that, while its story covers the entirety of The ABC Murders, it’s also very rigid about progress. Outside of moments where youmay not notice a clue or a way to move onwards, the game is otherwise easy, with most sequences being impossible to lose (and, in the case of the puzzles, the only failure is being unable to finish them). There are no repercussions for mishandling an interrogation. You gain some “experience” by behaving like Poirot, which means conducting everything to perfection and being gentle when asking questions (or showing narcissism by making him stare at himself in every mirror, I got a kick out of that), but it doesn’t offer advantages.

It's the kind of game where I love the story (or, at least, how it interprets the story it adapts to an interactive medium), but gameplay is very much a mixed bag. Observations of relevant characters are always too easy; observing relevant objects on various visited locations can be a tiny bit trickier, but you can just focus on what feels relevant and you’ll quickly get through them as well. Much of the game is just too easy – but if you’re just in it for a classic Hercule Poirot story, you’ll get exactly what you want.

Agatha Christie – The ABC Murders is available on Steam for 14.99$.