In Tidbits, we cover games that are difficult to cover in our regular review template. In this Tidbits, we review Light Kin, Last Days of Lazarus, and Hatup.
Light Kin | 72% – Light Kin is a Belgian indie game that will test your reaction speed and mouse dexterity. You play as a dancing ember above a fireplace and have to collect same-coloured sparks that fly off, each time increasing your score multiplayer. If you touch the wrong colour, you lose one of your lives. By clicking, you can cash in your score, create a burst and change your own colour. It’s a very simple concept, but oddly addicting. Especially when the random effects get added into the mix and suddenly you’ll see your high score jump by a few hundred thousand points and you’re competing for the top spot on the leaderboard. It’s cheaply priced and while it won’t blow you away with visual spectacle or audio, it more than serves its purpose and ended up being a game I kept installed on my desktop to revisit every now and then.
Written by: Robby
Reviewed on: PC (Steam)
Last Days of Lazarus | 64% – Last Days of Lazarus is a story-driven action-adventure game set in post-soviet Eastern Europe and focuses on the story of Lazarus – a man who returns to his childhood home to see his sister after the passing of their mother. However, everything starts to collapse around him as he uncovers more fragmentary truths about his family. Developed by GrimTalin and Darkania Works while being published by GrimTalin also, we embark on a first-person adventure that is driven by multiple factors. Firstly, I must talk about the particularly strong narrative. The story takes many sharp and unexpected turns throughout and kept my interest as I progressed. There were scenarios I didn’t expect and also confusing sections, including unnatural phenomena, which took me some time to get my head around but overall, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality. I was tasked with solving multiple puzzles and mysteries along my journey which required both common sense and problem-solving capabilities. I found these fun and not too complicated to solve when I took my time to figure out solutions. The visuals aren’t cutting-edge or anything to be stunned by but they also aren’t terrible. There is plenty of colour everywhere that does make the game vibrant but the quality of both characters and surroundings didn’t quite do it for me. I would have preferred more detail everywhere to really complement the story. As for audio, the voiceovers were far from perfect and struggled to convey emotion when stressful scenes presented themselves; certainly not convincing considering the events taking place. The music and sound effects were satisfactory in my opinion but did impact the ambience in a positive way. The controls were straightforward and easy to learn, however, they felt clunky at times with the cursor movement. In conclusion, Last Days of Lazarus has fun and interesting gameplay with a story that kept me intrigued with each chapter but was let down by the audio and visuals that could have been crisper.
Written by: Victoria
Reviewed on: Xbox Series S
Hatup | 73% – Hatup is a platformer with a very simple goal for the player to accomplish, get to the exit with a hat on. It does add challenges such as spikes, enemies, and keys as you progress, as well as an extra room in the same level, requiring more precise timing with jumps and dashes, but it’s not as difficult as Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time or Super Meat Boy. It has simple, but pleasant visuals, and a repetitive but not super annoying soundtrack. There is a hard mode that doesn’t let you die at all, opposing the normal mode where you can die 3 times before restarting a level, but you can get all your achievements just by completing the game in normal mode, so don’t worry about that. In conclusion, Hatup only took me about an hour to finish, but it was a pretty fun experience that I can recommend to anyone that enjoys platformers or is looking for an easy 1000G, as it is pretty cheap.
Written by: Colombo
Reviewed on: Xbox One
Hello, I’m Victoria. I’m from the UK and have been playing video games for as long as I can remember; back on DreamCast. I’ve pretty much fallen for Xbox since I was around eight years old and remember BioShock being my first game on the Xbox360. Although I find it thoroughly enjoyable to not only experience gameplay, I also find comfort in getting lost and engrossed in the online worlds that sometimes differ greatly from what we know. Another side of my Xbox passion would be achievement hunting and gamerscore. I thrive when I hear the little sound of one popping up on the screen and I’m always finding ways to work on my backlog when possible. Horror is my favourite genre so if you have any recommendations, don’t be afraid to send them my way!