PolyPals of Steam

We would like to first reiterate that Hanabi despises Visual Novels.

This game can be played solo or with up to 4 of your polycule. You can be nice to each other and help one another out with their love choices, or you can sabotage their love life in an attempt to make that character yours!

There are four starting characters to play as: 

Yellow: who we still aren’t sure of what kind of monster he is

Red: An ifrit we believe

Green: A Zombie

Blue: A Frankenstein's monster monster

At the start of the game you can choose to change the name of the characters from colors, to their chosen names, to your own name! Best part? You can choose their pronouns with a choice between He, She, or They! The game itself also recommends that you play either in the same room, like a family board game style game, or on an external voice app like Discord or Skype to experience the game fully. 

You then take turns like any board game picking where in the school you wish to go. Each place offers you different boosts to different stats. After the first round, there is also the option of going to the shop to buy seemingly random items. Some of these items boost your stats, where others, if you make the right decisions, can unlock certain scenes with, hopefully, your chosen love interest!

The long version takes about an hour if you are reading everything.

On to the DLC!

The DLC adds 2 new date-able characters: Zoe and Calculuster. Zoe is basically a female version of Cthulhu and Calc is a sentient computer. Both give new interactions between other characters that are a delight.

This game is super cute! It was recommended to us by a twitch streamer named Cosmic Shiba. Think Fortnite meets Animal Crossing. There is no tutorial from what we could see so good luck! It is both keyboard/mouse compatible and controller compatible. We played with both and it really depends on what you are more comfortable with. 

Customization is amazing! Every time you finish a match you receive certain items that let you unlock different characters or items. Plus you get coins that you can later use in the shop to buy unique items as well! For example: Hanabi, after finishing a match, unlocked a gravestone customization that was just an opened pizza box!

Rare  non-steam game review by Hanabi:

This game reminds me a lot of Tera. So of course I had to pick the loli race, Lyn. Character creation is a bit lax as you can’t customize the color of your tail and ears which is sad. I love me some customization.

Review by Hanabi

I have been playing Gems of War off and on for years. I seem to always come back to it when I am bored. I have my own guild which is great because I know I will never be kicked for inactivity and when I am super back into it, I can make my guild as active as I am!

This game is one of those multiplayer games where the only interaction you have with another live human being is during chat. The pvp is computer controlled. I mean, yeah you can form a guild with your polycule but other than that theres no gameplay as a team?

Please be aware, at the time off this review, this game was in beta.

Do not be scared off by the minimum requirements. Those are mostly just for VR stuff and you can easily play the smaller to medium maps on a lower computer (such as Hanabi who sadly can’t load in fast).

This game is amazing! Yeah it’s a bit wonky in that the characters look like they are possessed by something that has never had bones before but when we say this game is scary WE MEAN IT!

You and up to 4 of your polycule are Ghost Hunters and your job is to just identify what ghost is haunting the place and get out of dodge! You have equipment to help you with this and as you level up you have the option to buy more and better equipment. However, if you die, you lose all the equipment you brought with you!

The sound is amazing! You use the in-game voice chat to talk and it’s super immersive! The sound goes far away or comes from the left or right depending on where your partner is standing. Ghosts will breathe behind you creepily or make loud thudding noises. 

A few issues is mostly with the Spirit Box, used to “talk” to the ghosts, or at least have them answer your questions. We feel its attached to certain key words such as “where” and “old”. It only says “Near, Far, Behind” or “Old, Adult, Child” on occasion it says “DEATH”.

This game is riddled with problems! The tutorial takes all of 5 minutes but it actually doesn’t teach you anything! It doesn’t even tell you how to use the UI. You just have to guess. The controls are super slow and clunky. After almost an hour of “playing” you get nothing done as you are still struggling to understand basic things that a tutorial should teach you!

The first thing we would like to mention is that this game is free to play on mobile devices and $5 on Steam. The downside of the FTP is the ads that pop up with the ability to use a micro-transaction to get them to go away. The Steam version has no ads and gives a few added cosmetics. This game is cross platform so it does not matter which version you choose.

Right off the bat, if you wish to play online with your polycule create a private room and give them the code. If for some reason you do not have at least 4 players, than you should open it to the public, otherwise you and your partners may not get to play together. We recommend playing with as many people as possible.

If you are not the imposter, you are given a list of tasks to preform. Completing these tasks is the goal of the ‘regular’ crew in order to fill up a green bar on the top of the screen. Completely filling the bar is a win, along with finding out who the imposter is.

If you are the imposter, your goal is to sabotage things to prevent the crew from filling up their task bar, and of course killing off the crew. Once you have killed off the majority of the crew you win the game!

You need to be really good at lying while also not being suspicious. Doing anything the least bit suspicious could mean you get launched out the airlock or into a lava pit even if you aren’t the imposter!

Play with 8 of your polycule and up to 10k of their polycules! This pack includes 5 different games and can be played across the internet.

BIDIOTS: Draw amazing paintings and then bid on them. Attempt to collect as much money as possible! There is no eraser and having to use either your finger or a mouse adds to the hilarity. Trying to figure out what each drawing is is probably the best part. Predatory loans has a really catchy jingle. After the half way point you get a screw to screw over your fellow bidders.

Bomb Corp: This game is highly anxiety inducing! Skip this one unless you are an adrenaline junky.

Fibbage 2: A fun trivia game where you write in an answer in hopes to fool the other players and to find the actual answer to score points. Some of the “truths” certainly sound like lies! If you accidentally type in the truth as a lie, the game will alert you.

Earwax: Hilarious game of sound! The Judge is given a choice of prompts, then the players choose two sounds that they think best represents the prompt!

This game has been out for probably 8 years at this point, however it only recently released on steam and that’s why we are reviewing it!

This is a Sega Game. Sadly it does not have the iconic voice saying Sega which makes me sad.It is an MMO so no matter how big or small your polycule is, you will all be able to play. This game is beautiful! Despite its age it still holds up! The game is pretty big to download but once it has, it runs smoothly even on using the bare minimum of requirements.

Character Creation: As with most games, there are only two genders to chose from. However, the customization is amazing and you can change litterally any small detail of your character into anything! Honestly the customization alone makes this game worth getting. There are only 4 races: Human, Newman (basically elves), Cast (robots/androids) and Deumans (demons). Each has their own specialization that shows which class they would be the best at. You are able to change some things such as hair and clothes in game.

Classes are Hunter (close combat), Rangers (AR’s and Launchers), Force, Braver (Switches between close and ranged combat), Bouncers, Fighters (close combat), Gunner, Techter, and the one I played, Summoner. Be aware that you can multiclass or switch classes completely in game!

If you love collecting cute pets/animals in MMO’s, Summoner is the Class for you! Sure you can use other weapons but why when you can have an endless supply of cute pets following you around that attack your enemies at long range? The game claims they can evolve, but after a quick google search that is a lie. Apparently “evolve” is really just improving their rarity which I as of yet have no idea what that even does as feeding them the same named eggs is what gives them better stats. Sure the downside is you can only have one pet at a time out, but who cares?! All the adorableness! I mean just look at these beauties!

Pets shown: Mellon, Trim, Sally, Wanda and Maron

On to the game itself!

The tutorial is quick and easy but also doesn’t teach you everything. This is definitely a learn as you go kind of game. I personally do not like the key bindings as the movement keys (AWSD) are right next to the weapon change key (F) and my fat little fingers keep slipping especially during a huge boss fight! Man that’s annoying! Also, there is NO WAY in game to change from windowed mode to full screen. Let me save you a google trip and post this link which tells you how to get full screen. Another google trip I will save you is looking for personal quarters. You need to go to the block change elevator, scroll all the way up and there will be your personal quarters. Free players get a small one room. There is a chance to get a 3-day pass or something that will unlock two more rooms that you can have fun putting stuff in. Once the pass wears off you will be unable to enter those rooms but the stuff you put in there will stay exactly how you left it.

As a Summoner attacks are pretty easy and really your pet tends to attack on its own which can be super helpful when you don’t realize an enemy has Snuck up behind you. Each pet has different abilities/ways of attacking, for instance “Sally” does long range bubble like attacks but also has a special attack thats like a black hole and sucks enemies to it to be able to hit multiple targets at once, and “Wanda” basically just jumps and bites at their ankles. You have the option of changing the names of your pet. The pets I mentioned are their default names.

Beside’s the main game play, there is also the Casino and the cafe. The casino is very glitzy with playboy bunnies walking around to help you learn to play the games. My fave is the shooting game while Dr. Flesh’s is Black Nyak. You need Casino Pass’s to redeem them for coins to play in the casino. The cafe is...ok? You need to collect your own ingredients (meat, fish, seasonings, etc) and take them to the chef. You then have to PAY an exorbitant amount of Maestra (the in game free currency) for them to make a dish for you. I honestly do not think it is worth the space in your inventory. The meals give you bonuses but in my opinion not enough to warrant having to collect the right ingredients AND pay upwards of 20K for food.

Now to my issues with this game:

Unlike most games where after you complete a mission they either just automatically give you the rewards, or tell you who to go see to collect it, PSO2 gives you bubkis. Let me save you some time. You need to go into your menu and find where it says Ark Missions. That’s how you get your rewards by clicking”Collect rewards”. However if you have more than one reward to collect, this button will not collect ALL rewards at once, rather you need to hit it multiple times. On top of this, to level your class, you need to constantly return to the lobby and find the class master/instructor dude to add points to your tree.

Storage is a pain in the ass! Again, unlike other games where you can click multiple things to send to storage, you have to click on each individual item to do so. This is very tedious and time consuming, especially when your in the middle of a mission and need to make room in your inventory.

Obviously the entire tutorial. Yeah it shows you how to move and attack but that’s it. Later on after you have been playing a while it suddenly yells at you that you forgot to play your practice missions and then tells you how to do that even though at this point you’ve been on multiple missions!

WARNING: Do not have your speakers/headset set to high...it will hurt as soon as you load up the game.

ShellShock Live is a game for up to 8 of your polycule. In this review we only had 2 players so can only tell you about Deathmatch and Soccer.

The games variety is amazing! Customization while you level up and even your weapons level up. Speaking of weapons...you can literally shoot bananas at your opponents..We find this highly amusing.  There are multiple game types like the ones we are reviewing here, make sure to try them out!

The colors are stunning and very glowy. 

Deathmatch: Exactly what it sounds like. Kill each other before the other kills you! If you are good at angles/math you may have a slight advantage.

Soccer: Hit the ball into the goal. We are unsure which goal belongs to whom but honestly who cares? Not all the weapons will move the ball so choose carefully before you shoot!

First things first. This is “technically” a same-room game, we have played it across the internet countless times and it works just great! Only one person needs this game and everyone else just needs some sort of screen with internet access.

We decided to write a fuller review now as it turns out people actually looked at our steam one and it was our highest looked at! So..thanks for that!

Anyway, into the review! 

Stardew Valley is basically your average pixelated farming simulator. It’s reminiscent of Harvest Moon. You go around trying to fix up your late grandfather’s farm, making it your own. The villagers are friendly for the most part (@!#$ Shane) and some of them you are given the option of dating after getting them to 7(?) hearts. The layout is: Your Farm, where you sleep, cultivate fields, etc., The Town, has all your needs like the hospital, general store, villagers houses, etc. The Beach, self explanatory. The Mountains, contains the carpenter, the homeless man and the mines. Finally, The Forest, again self explanatory.

Amazingly this entire game was made by one person! The story is rich and there is plenty of replayability. You can marry same sex as well! With multiplayer you can marry one member of your polycule if you so choose and even have children.

The mods for this game are insane. We highly reccommend the Stardew Valley Extended mod and any they suggest. It adds more NPCs, both marriagable and not, plus more in depth story! Dr. Flesh and I got a mod that can make the children you have, which I swear look like babys of Satan, into cute red foxes!

You are  given an option to play pg-13 version or the 18+. For this review, I played the pg-13 version as I was streaming it for Hanabi on Twitch. They frown upon adult only content.

As soon as you open the game you are greeted with beautiful art work!  Throughout the entire game, you are able to tell each scene was drawn with care and passion. The facial expressions are priceless.

The soundtrack is very relaxing and makes a perfect accompaniment to the art work.

The days go by pretty quickly which kind of ruins the pacing, making the game feel rushed.There is only a few minutes of dialogue each day and the only choice you get to make is who to hang out with for a day. The dreams also repeat but thankfully you can skip them.

First play through I (well we because Hanabi insisted on watching and making me pick Malik a bunch) ended up with the Friendship ending. It was very cute, but made us more determined to figure out how to get the poly ending.