There's not a lot to say about LB (Labryinth), unlike say BW. There's no wasted potential here as the LB accepts that there's no potential to become more than a maze game in the first place. Despite my many criticisms, i can't really bring myself to give a non-recommendation because it's as advertised and the issues are quite minor. For people wanting to try out a maze game, LB is a marvelous beacon for what it stands for.
Inflexible tool with certain limitations holding it back from being other than a concept.
"Anything beyond the naive simple things, you're better off just wasting seconds reloading your game than to waste many minutes to rework this tool into something to suit your purposes."
Simple, quick game that will leave you hollow before it has even begun.
Conclusion
I would describe BW (Box World 3D) as a genuine, earnest puzzle game with a highly wasted potential of being more than a completed prototype abandoned somewhere along the way. I wouldn't recommend this game to players for the lack of further push of the basic concept BW developed in both game mechanism and levels. However, as BW stands right now as a game, it's definitely enjoyable despite the very short playtime and rough edges. For that, i have to give a recommendation despite the critiques i have, so please try it! 👍
Boring. Stagnant. Players are better off installing modpacks from servers...
Conclusion
I do not recommend JG for any players whatsoever until the core gameplay of JG is established and harnessed to stand above and beyond MTG. Players are better off git cloneing modpacks from their favorite servers as they will be familiar with how it works. Albeit packing visuals and nicer ambiance, those are secondary to JG as it has no main leg to stand that justifies me to continue playing this game.
Inspired from Hugues Ross' analogy: JG represents a bloody raw pork (MTG) with some recently unfrosted side dish (mods), some nice garnish (textures) and ambiance (music). The dish is still awful because there's nothing notable that separates it from a bloody raw pork on a plate.
An immersive "silent puzzler". Voxel building game optional.
In another voxel building game you might have heard of, building a simple house is as simple as punching a tree, interact with menus and "draw" lines of wooden blocks that will become walls and ceiling, ultimately pieced together as your house.
In Nodecore, before you even begin to idealize your house, you are tasked with the following: what are the ruleset of this game? That is one of the ultimate tasks that you will progress, before, during and after you've built your crude wooden home. The philosophy centering around avoiding explicit instructions allows Nodecore to become an enigmatic game with similarities to Understand and The Witness, which vastly entertained the puzzling mind inside me. Additionally, the limitations and mechanics in Nodecore is implemented such it is packaged with a well-rounded ruleset.
One of the realizations i made while playing Nodecore is when i create structures, which looks rudimentary in other voxel building games, whilst knowing that the precursory knowledge and resource is not trivial. In other words, buildings, monuments, etc are unique in more ways than simply aesthethics. They require understanding the limitations of the ruleset you've learnt, and then finding ways to overcome that limitation such that it becomes another rule in your corpus.
My main criticism would be forgetfulness, a burden that plagues humankind, even so far as to degrade my experience of Nodecore. I play Nodecore quite casually and do not play Nodecore often, resulting in higher probability of forgeting. In my opinion, this is the biggest hurdle for all casual players. There's many ways to solve this: the developer/community could make a (optional, separate) built-in reference, the developer/community could complete the wiki, the player could jot down notes, the player could create structures in-game to demonstrate a rule for their future-self, etc.
Albeit with some problems, this game is already pretty polished
Despite still having some issues undergoing development (please report bugs, devs can't test em' all), the core gameplay loop is enough to have fun with casual survival. The 0.72 release should further polish some of the existing mechanics.
For more technical players with redstone obsession, then i must warn you that the redstone system is currently borrowed from mesecons as of this review. What this mean is that you'll have to throw away some redstone knowledge from m*necraft either because of incomplete redstone implementation or not implementing redstone bugs (don't expect broken stuff like TNT duping haha). On the other hand, the redstone system is quite fun to mess around, and indeed prove to be useful to create farms and utilities. To get started, i recommend you try to relearn how everything works while keeping in mind how m*necraft's redstone work.
EDIT: Whenever 0.72 releases, i will create a more comprehensive review.
Bore yourself whilst listening to sick tunes.
Conclusion
There's not a lot to say about LB (Labryinth), unlike say BW. There's no wasted potential here as the LB accepts that there's no potential to become more than a maze game in the first place. Despite my many criticisms, i can't really bring myself to give a non-recommendation because it's as advertised and the issues are quite minor. For people wanting to try out a maze game, LB is a marvelous beacon for what it stands for.
More in the comments...
Inflexible tool with certain limitations holding it back from being other than a concept.
"Anything beyond the naive simple things, you're better off just wasting seconds reloading your game than to waste many minutes to rework this tool into something to suit your purposes."
More in the comments...
Simple, quick game that will leave you hollow before it has even begun.
Conclusion
I would describe BW (Box World 3D) as a genuine, earnest puzzle game with a highly wasted potential of being more than a completed prototype abandoned somewhere along the way. I wouldn't recommend this game to players for the lack of further push of the basic concept BW developed in both game mechanism and levels. However, as BW stands right now as a game, it's definitely enjoyable despite the very short playtime and rough edges. For that, i have to give a recommendation despite the critiques i have, so please try it! 👍
More in the comments...
Boring. Stagnant. Players are better off installing modpacks from servers...
Conclusion
I do not recommend JG for any players whatsoever until the core gameplay of JG is established and harnessed to stand above and beyond MTG. Players are better off
git cloneing modpacks from their favorite servers as they will be familiar with how it works. Albeit packing visuals and nicer ambiance, those are secondary to JG as it has no main leg to stand that justifies me to continue playing this game.Inspired from Hugues Ross' analogy: JG represents a bloody raw pork (MTG) with some recently unfrosted side dish (mods), some nice garnish (textures) and ambiance (music). The dish is still awful because there's nothing notable that separates it from a bloody raw pork on a plate.
More in the comments...
An immersive "silent puzzler". Voxel building game optional.
In another voxel building game you might have heard of, building a simple house is as simple as punching a tree, interact with menus and "draw" lines of wooden blocks that will become walls and ceiling, ultimately pieced together as your house.
In Nodecore, before you even begin to idealize your house, you are tasked with the following: what are the ruleset of this game? That is one of the ultimate tasks that you will progress, before, during and after you've built your crude wooden home. The philosophy centering around avoiding explicit instructions allows Nodecore to become an enigmatic game with similarities to Understand and The Witness, which vastly entertained the puzzling mind inside me. Additionally, the limitations and mechanics in Nodecore is implemented such it is packaged with a well-rounded ruleset.
One of the realizations i made while playing Nodecore is when i create structures, which looks rudimentary in other voxel building games, whilst knowing that the precursory knowledge and resource is not trivial. In other words, buildings, monuments, etc are unique in more ways than simply aesthethics. They require understanding the limitations of the ruleset you've learnt, and then finding ways to overcome that limitation such that it becomes another rule in your corpus.
My main criticism would be forgetfulness, a burden that plagues humankind, even so far as to degrade my experience of Nodecore. I play Nodecore quite casually and do not play Nodecore often, resulting in higher probability of forgeting. In my opinion, this is the biggest hurdle for all casual players. There's many ways to solve this: the developer/community could make a (optional, separate) built-in reference, the developer/community could complete the wiki, the player could jot down notes, the player could create structures in-game to demonstrate a rule for their future-self, etc.
Albeit with some problems, this game is already pretty polished
Despite still having some issues undergoing development (please report bugs, devs can't test em' all), the core gameplay loop is enough to have fun with casual survival. The 0.72 release should further polish some of the existing mechanics.
For more technical players with redstone obsession, then i must warn you that the redstone system is currently borrowed from mesecons as of this review. What this mean is that you'll have to throw away some redstone knowledge from m*necraft either because of incomplete redstone implementation or not implementing redstone bugs (don't expect broken stuff like TNT duping haha). On the other hand, the redstone system is quite fun to mess around, and indeed prove to be useful to create farms and utilities. To get started, i recommend you try to relearn how everything works while keeping in mind how m*necraft's redstone work.
EDIT: Whenever 0.72 releases, i will create a more comprehensive review.