Hello everyone, @Piroct here. After a traumatic experience of changing internet provider and waiting until they install everything we're back to offer you awesome reviews and interesting gaming news!
Today I'd like to show you a little cute, funny game that is a candy-eye, addictive and fun to play, and most importantly, has local multiplayer for us, nostalgics beings that like a good playing session with friends of flesh and bones. Please, enjoy!
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Let's get to it!
Juicy Realm.
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"Many years in the future, humanity looks upward in despair at plants, now standing atop the food chain. How could they have been so arrogant..."
Those are the first lines you can read in the description on the Juicy Realm's Steam Page.
Imagine a world where fruits are tired of being eaten by us, humans, and start building a whole empire that makes them stand a the top of the food chain, leaving us to hide from our new predators. It's hard to imagine fruits being intimidating enemies, right? Well, this game will make you think twice about that.
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Juicy Realm is a Top-Down shooter, almost like a bullet hell game that borrows Rogue-Like and Arcade elements to make up for a really good mix of smooth gameplay and candy-eye graphics.
The first thing you'll come across is the character selection screen. You'll be able to choose from 4 charming and well design characters!
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It's easy to guess how every character represents a specific play-style and the more you play with them, the more certain that guess becomes. We have the speedy Ninja, the resourceful Mercenary, the nerdy Botanist and the cute healer Boxer. Every one of them has a special ability that makes them unique at the time of playing. While the Ninja has a little device that can Stunt fruits, the Boxer has a potion that creates a healing perimeter for both you and your friend, and so on.
The Boxer is my favorite so far!
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And talking about playing with friends, Juicy Realms comes with the rare feature of local multiplayer, giving you the option to play from the keyboard while your friend plays besides you with a controller. I've always being a fan of home-playing sessions with friends and this game came in the right time!... Now that I spent almost a month without internet connection. And don't worry, as Juicy Realm is a Early Access game, it's still being updated regularly and the team behind the game has big plans for Online Multiplayer in the future!
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The combat is nice, smooth and responsive, although it has slight issues with hitboxes, is easy to get used to them and learn to aim without wasting bullets. The animations are well made and funny to watch, it's even kind of distracting, you'll be entertained with every fruits design and the expressions they make.
You'll find all kinds of enemies in this game, from bouncing blueberries, flying exploding melons and avocados that use their seed as a projectile to pears with handgun, grenades that... well, explodes into tiny bits that end up exploding too and the classic Apple with an AK! All different, well design with their own attack pattern and expressions and animations. As I said, It'll be hard to stay focused on your character.
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In Juicy Realm you'll find dozens of weapons, varying from melee and handguns to sub-machine guns and futuristic fire blasters! And although the game has a plot of fruits enslavering humans and dominating the world, there are certaing things that Juicy Realm doesn't take all serious, and I'm not complaining about it!
In the game you'll be able to find weapons like a big French Bread as a melee weapon, a "GG" keyboard that will fire messages of "GG" to every foe and my favorite of all, the Steam Logo that fires discounts everywhere like if it were a machine gun. It's pleasing to hear the cash register sounds in addition to the fruits death sounds.
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Every weapon has two stats so you can compare what's stronger and what's faster. Although there's no certainty about what those two stats mean, I'm almost sure is "Weapon Power" for the red one, and the "Bullet Speed" for the blueish one.
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There has been complaints about the UI not being intuitive enough to guess what some things mean and that some weapons that have more stats that other and end up being even weaker, but for now I haven't come across one of those cases. I'll remind you that this is an Early Access game and it's even open to user feedback!
As a Rogue-likeish game, Juicy Realms has randomly generated stages with random loot to pick up, and every level has a set of stages, and at the end of it you'll encounter a challenging boss that will put all your skill to test. Although this is the first boss and the easiest one, is one of my favorites. This little Goggle eyed, watermelon dog. It's slow of the mind but don't underestimate it's speed!
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And, at the end of every boss, you'll come across stores that'll become available when you rescue the traders in the different levels the game has to offer. For now I've unlocked two of them, I don't know for certain if there are more than two, but'll keep the hope!
This traders will come to your camp so you can visit them at the first of the playthrough and will also appear at the end of every level to offer you two goods at random. The weapon trader will offer you one weapon at random when it's in camp, so you can start with a secondary weapon.
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The other one is a badge vendor, some kind of upgrade seller, and every time you finish a level she'll offer you two random badges you can buy. It can be badges of "When you crit, bullets will pierce enemies" or a badge that simply increments your HP, and so on and on.
The game lacks a little of progression elements between playthroughs, although the game let's you save money between levels so you can use it later or on other playthroughs it doesn't feel like is enough to have a big advantage and reach further into the levels after lots of tries. This makes it harder but a lot rewarding too when you see yourself going through the level you always end up dying.
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And finally, the cherry of the cake, the soundtrack and graphic style of the game. It's simply beautiful, sometimes is even funnier to watch someone play while you see every detail of the characters and the environment. Juicy Realm has a really interactive environment, from flowers that react to your movements to bombs or vehicles you can use as explosives to kill lots of enemies that are nearby, the enviroment will be your playground, for your eye and for the fight.
The soundtrack is catchy and it's hard to get tired of it. Feels like a mix between high quality sounds and 16-bit sounds, it's really enjoyable. And about the sound effects of fruits and weapons, they're simply cute. Fruits having this squeaky but not annoying kind of voice and weapons making sounds as if they where out of a comic, I simply don't get tired of it.
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Juicy Realm is the perfect game for those who want to kill time while enjoying their time. And those who appreciate playing-sessions at home, you have another option for your parties!
Don't let the fruits get you!
Hope you liked this review as much as I enjoyed playing the game. If you are interested in trying it, please support the developers by visiting it's STEAM PAGE.
Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for more reviews and news from us. Don't forget to vote if you like it!
See you really soon, Steemians!
