Buried Treasure's Scores

  • Games
For 210 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 49% same as the average critic
  • 5% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Game review score: 83
Highest review score: 95 Perfect Tides: Station to Station
Lowest review score: 54 Aefen Fall
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 0 out of 210
213 game reviews
    • tbd Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    In the end, if you’re after solid, satisfying puzzles, it really doesn’t much matter the layout of the puzzle book. And here you get exactly that, which is why I am enthused to share it with you.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    There’s no depth here, no sense of ambition to do anything novel with the genre. But it’s just a good time, and picking out super-long-distance headshots is never not satisfying. Don’t expect to have your life changed, but do expect some 90s-ish FPS entertainment.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    It is, in many ways, an exercise in frustration. But it’s a far more controlled one than QWOP or Getting Over It. Those games leave me feeling useless, unable to achieve, always thwarted. But Heavenly Bodies makes its goals possible, and a sense of progress always available. It is, ultimately, a chapter-based puzzle game, intended for you to win. That’s crucial.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    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
    • 76 Critic Score
    There’s nothing innovative here. It’s just a really adorable execution of the current trend for monochrome hidden object-me-dos, that made me smile a whole bunch while I played.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    This is a fascinating game, with more than one ending, but no matter how you play forcing you into some ugly situations. It’s so interesting to play this familiar setting from the side of the “infected” one on board, and to be confronted by the realities of your actions.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 92 Critic Score
    I’m adoring it, just as I did the first game a few years ago. It’s so zippy, bonkers, rapidly advancing, funny, colourful and challenging. The combat is far rarer and less of a faff this time too, and sometimes delivered as another puzzle rather than an obstacle.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    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
    • 80 Critic Score
    I found two really satisfactory endings. One that bloody scared the bejesus out of me, and another that I’d consider a “good” ending. All extremely worthwhile. And yes, because people always ask, it does have jumpscares.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    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
    • 82 Critic Score
    Each round I get a higher score, a little bit further in, and gain a smidgeon more understanding of the process. Plus it has kick-ass music, and a superbly bemusing visual style.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    A bright, cheerful, superbly well-made platformer designed for everyone to enjoy?! Have we, too, fallen through a portal into another universe? In fact, this is the continuing work of Skipmore, a Japanese developer which has previously given us, amongst others, Kamiko, 1-Bit Rogue, and Synopsis Quest. Transiruby is their finest yet.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    The whole game is a twisted tribute to Italy’s Ravenna docks, and Romagna mythology, as well as an almost impenetrable folkloric cautionary tale about nostalgia and its erasure of time. Which isn’t something I’ve been able to say of any other game. I love the artistic choices made, and still don’t know if the game suffered from translation issues, or if its blending of English and – think – Catalan was a deliberate decision – I liked it about it either way.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    So, so much has been poured into this, every tiny crack packed with details and extras. The sheer number of computer games to find and play, some dreadful, some pretty decent, is bewildering. Let alone the amount of art created for one-off throwaway gags. And perhaps most importantly, that created to illustrate the repeated goals to escape from creature’s bottom holes.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    At £20, I’m hesitant to recommend it. At £10, I’d be demanding you buy it. But then, value is relative to the person purchasing, and you’re a big girl/boy, you can make that decision for yourself. Either way, this is a fab puzzle game, with just adorable art and music.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    There's so much ambition here, and it's delivered with such brave pacing, within a world that competes with Dunwall on looks, and some of the best voice acting I've ever encountered. While it occasionally frustrated me, if nothing else, Conway's soothing, mellifluous voice saw me through.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Hopefully it’s relatively clear at this point that this game is odd. It is indeed wonderfully strange, set in some sort of adjacent reality, where death and life seem to overlap. You are as likely to be solving object puzzles as you are to be cooking raw brains to restore the internal organs of a renter. It’s creepy, but presented as if it were anything but.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    But there’s so much that’s great here, so many inventive ideas and interesting exploring. For the longest time you don’t have any means of attacking at all, and when hours in it eventually does give you a way to fight back, it’s not with a conventional weapon. I love it for that.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    I call BS that this game is, as its marketing claims, a reaction to Covid-19 lockdowns. It has nothing at all to do with that, and I suspect was thought of beforehand. But it’s definitely about the crappy horror of anxiety and agoraphobia. And as I say, it’s actually about it, rather than some beacon of hope within it. Or it’s just a mean super-short horror game in which you’re repeatedly mocked, both by unfair deaths and a very horrid narrator.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    I’ve had a fine old time with this. I’ve carried on playing for far longer than I’d planned, and am about to carry on playing once I’ve finished writing this. Which is a useful reminder that it’s important not to dismiss games because they do what other games have done a lot, especially when they do it this nicely. Also, to remember that storylines based around the enforced wearing of trousers are always welcome.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    I think the social media narrative delivery is a brilliant idea, one I hope a bunch of other people have the sense to steal. It’d be lovely to see other games running with that conceit, much as so many picked up on the lost phone gimmick. But if they don’t, then I Hope She’s OK has offered it with aplomb.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Oh, and goodness me it looks amazing. The screenshots obviously show off the lovely modern interpretation of Game Boy-ish graphics, but a lack of motion doesn’t do it justice. Even the level picking screen is a thing of beauty. Add in some of the best music I’ve heard in a very long while, and the completely brilliant sound effects, and this is a fine package.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    There’s a good amount of game here – it’s a lot shorter than The Witness, but then, good – I’m a way in, and I’m convinced. And indeed frustrated that this isn’t already more famous. Being derivative of something enormously popular is often more of a hindrance than a help, and that’s likely an issue too. I mean, I strive to review things in isolation, and yet all I’ve done is compare it to The Witness throughout. It’s kind of inescapable. But I honestly prefer it, even though I can recognise that it’s not as good in almost every way.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    I want you to buy it and play it. I want you to see all the clever things it does, all the lovely surprises, all the silly moments. But I don’t want to recommend you do that, then you play it and say, “But hey, it just doesn’t make sense – and also I wish he’d have gotten a theatre school friend to do the voice over.” You know that already, go in and enjoy it anyway. And heck, it’s £1.50. You’d spend more on a glass of Coke.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    This is from Minor Key Games, who blew everyone away with 2013’s Eldritch Reanimated, and have since put out a series of very odd little projects, none of which have really caught on. In amongst them is Eponymous, which also received seemingly no attention at all, which is a shame – it deserves some, hence my highlighting this now. And for a couple of pounds, it’s an hour’s oddness well spent.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    In another universe this got picked up by Valve and became the next Portal. In this one, it’s a buggy release on Steam that I feel shouldn’t be priced. Or at the very least, be in Early Access. But gosh, it’s impressive.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Add in some lovely music, and I’m having a great time. I love these simplified versions of larger genre, and while I certainly do wish for more complexity in the battles, I’m still hooked on having yet another turn after each failure.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    It’s a shame that there will only be bug fixes from now on – it’d be great to see this embellish into a bigger, more complex idea. Also, I would love to see a change where only one mouse button moves the screen around, as it’s currently tricky to move branches and leaves without accidentally moving about. But there’s definitely enough right now for your weeny £4, and it’s captured me (and oddly, my 6yo) for a decent amount of time. Ooh, and as I type a thunderstorm is rolling in over my latest tree.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The timing of this is perfect. If you’re worried it’s insensitive to make a game about the deluded thinking of extremist far-right Americans just now, know that actual real-life America has far out-satirised anything this game has to offer – it feels positively mundane compared to reality’s present offerings. Plus, any wisps of discomfort I had were removed by the brilliant reveal at the end. Which is then, I’m delighted to say, followed by a song.

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