Buried Treasure's Scores

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For 211 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 45% higher than the average critic
  • 49% same as the average critic
  • 6% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 7.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Game review score: 83
Highest review score: 95 There is no game : Wrong dimension
Lowest review score: 54 Aefen Fall
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 190 out of 211
  2. Mixed: 21 out of 211
  3. Negative: 0 out of 211
214 game reviews
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    • tbd Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Rogue Invader
    It would be silly to directly compare this to Returnal, given the enormous difference in scale, but I can’t help but be reminded of it. That sense of enjoying failing at the earliest stages, with a constant sense of improving as I do.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Colt Canyon
    Most fun of all is when you find a pan. You can repeatedly lob it at enemies for one-hit kills, until, tragically, it breaks. It’s also splendidly gory, blood spattering messily across the screen as bullets fly in all directions. Just like grandma used to love.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Seek Etyliv
    It’s worth adding that it’s all presented in a tiny, two-colour rectangle in the middle of your screen, and looks lovely. The art is incredibly simple, but this belies the detail in the animations, the movements, and the perfect sound effects. This could have been much more throw-away, and still worked, and I love that it’s not. It is definitely a shame that the text is so incomprehensible, because it’d have been the cherry on top to have a great little story told as you played. As it is, however, you can just click through it.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Rivals
    Sheinman has displayed just what a talent he is. Coding, creating the art, writing the game, writing and performing the music (with vocals from the actors)… that’s all sickeningly impressive. Having it manage to come together as a pretty tricky puzzle with so many moving parts is deeply impressive. But more than that, there’s a depth of knowledge here that I find daunting, an understanding of music scenes based on a lot of reading, listening and thinking.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    When The Past Was Around
    There’s a really smart use of melody here, in amongst some really beautiful drawings. It’s not quite Gris, but hey, at least it’s not Gris. There’s a real feeling of visual poetry here, made all the better by the complete lack of dialogue. It’s pretty short, coming in around one to two hours, which is just about perfect for the tone.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Voidrun
    I love this. It’s just so splendid, and I’m absolutely bloody determined to keep getting better at it. It’s a slow process for me, but I’m definitely improving! And in the game.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    OVERWHELMED
    Overwhelmed‘s presentation is great, feeling very slick and modern, yet with ingenious nods to the genre’s history through its colour choices and ship designs. (And yes, I mean the real history, the one preceding a hidden bonus game in 2003’s Project Gotham Racing.) This absolutely doesn’t have the life-changing profundity of Geometry Wars, but not is it trying to. Instead, this is six brilliant little arcade vignettes, each compelling and compulsive, that form an excellent cohesive hole. And all the work of one guy – Paul Giovannini – but for the music by Mathieu “Richie” Dubois. My magical powers remain unchallenged.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Frog's Adventure
    It’s lovely, it’s cheap, and it’s longer than you might expect.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    MIRO
    Keep things in perspective: this obviously isn’t No Man’s Sky. It’s a small indie game with a far more limited scope, and a far greater desire to tell you an interesting tale. (There’s a very generous demo, too.) But it’s such a massive achievement, the aesthetic is wonderful (including excellent music), and it entirely entwined me in its compelling loops. Loved it.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Loop (2023)
    More than anything else, Loop is a dollar. In fact, it’s 90 cents this week, during the sale, just in case you needed 8p for something more important. That’s completely daft, and I’d have been delighted to have spent a fiver on this. This is very smart, very nicely designed, and gorgeously presented. The only negatives are the boring name, and the peculiar developer name of “Lofi Robot”, the trademarked name of a popular Polish robot construction kit.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Between Horizons
    There are far too few investigative games, and almost none where the solutions aren’t made inevitable by the process. For that, I found Between Horizons refreshing, if somewhat unsettling. But more importantly, this is a hefty, involving, and characterful game, with a novel setting, deep mystery, and a whole heap of interesting characters. And, unlike so many that boast of multiple endings, here the results can be light-years apart. The core beats of the story play out the same, but the results of your actions mightily effect the experience, and can dramatically alter how it concludes.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Frog Holm
    It’s that maturity that has stuck with me. That this is a cozy-game rug-pull is a treat, but despite only being two or three hours long, it’s the characters who have really stuck with me long after finishing. One frog called Liv especially, who in most other games would be played as a cranky old lady to patronise, but here is a force. I once knew a Liv – Jean her name was, she died at around 90, and I only met her when she was in her 80s, and she was the most splendid curmudgeon I ever spent so much time with.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Below The Ocean
    It’s very nicely put together, and the simple pixel graphics and four-colour palette belie some pretty clever physics. The tether operates according to proper underwater floaty properties, meaning you can wrap it around obstacles to complete some challenges, or allow it to swing you upward when taut (I’m not quite sure how realistic is the latter).
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Otteretto
    This is a brilliant little puzzle game, at a very decent price, and despite its seemingly simple beginnings it really has its claws in me.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Lulu's Temple
    The game, essentially, plays like the first chapter from a larger project. This hour-and-a-half of levels ends in a satisfying boss fight, and then runs its entertaining final sequence. Which left me with an odd combination of feeling delighted at such a neat morsel of a game, and saddened that I wasn’t going to carry on playing something so fun and well made.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Dangeresque: The Roomisode Triungulate
    That Matt and Mike Chapman are still making new Homestar content brings me so much happiness. It’s sporadic now, the two brothers having gone on to work on many other TV animations since, including a bunch of Disney projects. That they’re making entire games, albeit pretty short ones, is mindblowing.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    The Flower Collectors
    I was just so intrigued by this. I loved learning so much through playing, and it’s just shocking to remember that Holiday Destination Spain was a place of such turmoil and upheaval within my own lifetime. At £20, its four or so hours feels short, but as I mentioned, it’s immediately intriguing to go back and replay making different decisions, or deliberately failing to help certain people, to see the implications playing out.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Uncle Lee's Cookbook: Five Recipes for Disaster
    I had a lovely time with this especially interesting approach to the genre. Had it just been chapter 4 alone as a short adventure I’d have still been recommending this, but that it has the other four excellent conceits around it makes it into something novel and delightful.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Ghostlore
    This is a massive undertaking, and seemingly the work of just two people, which is mindblowing. The story didn’t hit at all for me, but I’ve found myself absorbed in that hypnotic ARPG space where I am delighted to just keep attacking and looting, while the other half of my brain listens to podcasts. And as much as I might wish for a world where indie developers are pushing the Diablo-like into entirely new directions, that world doesn’t exist, and I’m just so grateful that there’s anything else at all in the space that’s soon to be filled by the entirely standard arrangements of Diablo IV.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Find Yourself
    Created by one person, this is an excellent use of pre-made assets to build an Unreal Engine horror game. I love that there are tools that allow someone to piece something like this together, without the need for being able to build complex 3D models or record swathes of sound effects. It’s about the smarts in how they’re put together, and Alexandr Reshetnikov shows a lot of those here. The jump-cuts, the constant rearranging of locations behind you, the application of so many horror tropes at once – it all comes together so nicely for a very scary hour.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    The Supper: New Blood
    This sense of dreadfulness is taken further by how absolutely nothing else in the game is OK, either. Stewie doesn’t exactly stand out in this company, the motel’s guests barely any better, while the local area is broken, falling apart, and riddled with abandoned horrors. It’s all so bleak, so hopeless. The chief cop is corrupt running a protection racket, there’s a dead body in the local diner’s freezer, the rivers are all filthy and poisoned… But you’re using the vinegar on the rusty lever to release the potatoes! It’s an adventure game! Sure, the falling potatoes were meant to be the means of killing a prisoner, but everyone involved seems to have died before anyone got around to it, the prisoner included. But it’s a fun game with puzzles!
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Frame of Mind
    Running at about an hour long, that this is free feels such a brutal shame, but invariably the correct thing to do with a student project where there’s no actual company registered behind it. Still, if they’ve any sense they’ll form one themselves and embellish this into something even longer and more involved. Because this is a huge demonstration of talent, and extremely worth your time.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    The Last Show of Mr. Chardish
    I was really, really impressed by so much of this. As a piece of visual art, I haven’t seen anything so pretty in forever. As an idea, it’s fascinating. In its execution, it occasionally lets itself down. But I’m still so glad I spent time with this.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Slider
    I cannot fathom why this is free. I even asked the developer, Daniel Carr, and he sort of shrugged and said he wants as many people as possible to be able to play it. So, take him up on this!
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk
    It’s about 20 minutes long, and right now costs less than 50p. I went into this thinking it was a cool approach to being outright strange, and left being surprisingly touched by its depth of truthfulness, if lacking in tangible hope.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One Way: The Elevator
    I really enjoyed this. It’s so lovely, and if you ignore its rather clumsy attempts to pluck on heartstrings, it holds together well. There are a bunch of decent puzzles in there, plus there are whole sections of the game you won’t find the first time through. It’s sweet, but there’s a depth to the design of the tower that reveals itself as you climb. It’s cheap too. And most of all, there’s all that waving!
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Papercut Art Gallery-Nature
    This gobbled up a couple of hours of my life in a really enjoyable way.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mythic Ocean
    So, yes, it makes absolutely no sense. And yet within its own doolally world, it makes all the sense. It’s a lovely, daft, interesting, deep and complex game, with no combat, no death, just choices and consequences. Ethical dilemmas and questions of morality. And, perhaps most importantly, a head-banging puffer fish and a breakdancing crab.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mind Diver: Student Version
    This is a fantastic piece of work, and a satisfying experience in its own right. There’s a solid couple of hours of game here, that I’d have been happy to have paid for (although perhaps then more annoyed by the lack of resolution), that honestly should be all any indie publisher needs to throw money. And for us, it’s a fascinating experience, unlike anything else I’ve played.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Home Safety Hotline
    Oh, and it has a very brilliant, and extremely reachable ending (something I think too many post-Papers Please games make unrealistic for most to ever see), followed by a new game+ that will address any lingering questions you may have. I know this has received more coverage than some other games featured on Buried Treasure (including some pretty huge YouTube attention I wasn’t aware of until after reviewing–it’s fair to say our audiences don’t overlap much), but for some bizarre reason this hasn’t extended to reviews, and all-important review scores, so here we are. Home Safety Hotline is certainly too repetitive, lacking that one extra twist that would have propelled players to the ending, but its imagination, writing, and performances ensure it succeeds.
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In Progress & Unscored

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    • tbd Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Master Of Pottery
    I’ve had such a good time! I haven’t giggled like that in a long while. I’m not proud of it, except that I am, but I snickered and smirked and properly laughed my way through building the silliest pots the ever-expanding collection of tools allowed me to. And then felt enormous pride as my pottery drew in the crowds to my exhibitions in their hundreds, raking in cash, with people writing me letters begging to buy my work. My Work. Capital W. [Early Access Score = 78]
    • tbd Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Geometric Sniper
    Should you buy this now? Well look, it’s £1.35, so you’re not exactly going to be taking out a second mortgage. But understand this is, at the most generous, a demo at this point. I’m just so taken with the ridiculous idea, and the lovely presentation, that I couldn’t help myself. [Early Access Score = 75]
    • tbd Metascore
    • Critic Score
    Gunfire Reborn
    I really like the shooting! It’s a very satisfying FPS game, with a great collection of enemy types, and weapons that are very definitely becoming favourites. There really is a lot of great balance already in place as I switch between rapid-fire blasters and one-shot rocket launchers, responding on the fly to the mix of enemies in any given area. [Early Access Score = 78]

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