Yes most trailers are nothing like the product. They are in fact better because they are meant to showcase the best parts.

Oh come on, I'm not on jury duty here. If the marketing looks boring to me I'm not going to bother with it further, and according to the dev the trailer is indeed what you do throughout the game. The only reason I'm even posting here is because you replied. It's the PR's job to show me why I should care about the game, because I don't have the time to go and check out every game on the market. If the game tickles your fancy great for you, you don't need my approval to enjoy something.

Ordinary literally means an average run-off-the-mill person. What constitutes as "ordinary" depends on where you frame of reference lies (e.g. white people are ordinary in Europe while black people are not. In Africa it would be the other way around, black people would be ordinary and white people would be special). I wasn't even trying to bash the game, I just found GOG's description really funny considering what the main character looks like.

No need to get so defensive, I was just poking fun at the description GOG was providing where it says "an ordinary woman". And I did not mean to imply that you literally live in San Francisco, SF has become a sort of joke where all the hipster-weird looking people aggregate, if you see someone like that you associate it with SF.

Thanks again, seagaia.
Gotta say I was pretty pleased with the Anodyne Linux port -and the game itself; pretty fun and charming ;)

Well then if the trailer is true to the game, why whine? :P

Joking, joking, all in all and after all, there's no problem then, right?

Even the characters look uninterested.

Progress report: managed to find time to play the game at work. Cleared the tutorial and the next easiest level.

The trailer is accurate.

The fancy natural areas with blurred edges are lore areas where you can jump/run around and talk to NPCs. The areas with sharply pixellated edges are the actual challenge areas. I was kinda suspicious of the blurred edges but there's absolutely no confusion what's solid and what's not where it matters.

Overworld is 3d which predictably made me motion-sick; however, there's an option to disable the effect (I did).

Rooms are spacious and there's usually one challenge per screen. You can't grab onto ledges but you can wall-jump (and slowly slide down when not jumping). This makes the character very mobile and the gameplay super fast (whoosh whoosh whoosh).

Controls are excellent, precise, super responsive, except (perhaps) for one thing: I couldn't figure out how to jump down from a ledge and keep myself shielded. (Jumping down from a ledge is jump+down by default; there's an option to change to down only, maybe that'll work).

The main challenge comes from the fact that, unlike in other platformers, the reactivity of the controls (speed and jumping height) are unreliable by design and depend on the green/purple balance (green for jumping, purple for speed).

There are no explicit difficulty levels (story-only means exactly that, only npcs and lore) but many, many itemized settings which impact difficulty, from god-mode immortality and flying to additional platforms, always-enabled shield and slower energy adjustments. Basically, each single complication can be switched off in the settings.

Checkpoints accompany each potentially lethal challenge. The death animation is reasonably fast with automatic reloads (though slower than in Teslagrad) but can be switched off. Saving at checkpoints is automatic (again, can be switched off). Multiple save slots.

I got semi-stuck exactly once when I jumped down a smooth-walled pit and only got out via some weird momentum trick which I'm not sure I'll be able to repeat.

No puzzles and no secrets so far that I was able to find.

Thanks, very good info! I just started Ori and the Blind Forest last night, so my platformer muscle memory is returning. This sounds like it will be a good one to hit next.

And it's great that they let you tinker with the settings so much! Some games are ruined by not giving you the tweaks you need (like the ability to invert the X or Y axis). It sounds like they've put the player first here.

A couple hours in and I'm digging it so far. Already getting these entrancing character encounters which reming me of my great time with Anodyne. And the game mechanics are pretty unique, defintely great for speedrunning (which I don't usually do, but feel like I wanna try with thiis one).

yay man goty 2016

Immediately after reading the description platformer I was ready to dismiss the game, but further investigation has left me intrigued by the gameplay, the very cool friend concept and the option to avoid the platformer stuff in order to enjoy the more adventure/storyline aspects of the game. kudos and wishlisted

Not attacking things and discouraging leveling up were the most refreshing parts of the Undertale gameplay experience for me. I think these mechanics are over-represented in games as it is, and completely unnecessary for this game in particular. The gameplay mechanics that are here are interesting, and despite being conceptually simple (dark fast, light high), they very effectively open the movement options up to different play styles.

Social awareness is probably not as much a red flag for me as it is for you. (Brief tangent: historically, I think it's been a good thing - consider George Orwell (1984), Rod Serling (Twilight Zone), Pink Floyd, etc... All known for embedding their social views into their universally acclaimed work). However I think I can understand where you're coming from - seeing things that you wouldn't consider "games" celebrated as such and promoted *just* because they're socially aware, despite having very little in terms of traditional gameplay.

I'm happy to field this question for you - this game as a platformer stands up very well on its own merits! :) There's a wealth of thoughtfully-crafted levels with interesting movement puzzles, enough to last even seasoned platformer players about 6 hours casually. I'm actually thrilled beyond words that there's an example that is a game with fantastic gameplay *and* a reasonably realistic spread of demographics in the cast. Speaking as someone who doesn't go to Tumblr or closely follow either side of the whole feminism-vs-gamers debacle.

Not gonna lie though: The game definitely has something to say about society, much of it told indirectly, but I wouldn't call it propaganda by any means. Yes, the main character's a woman, but so are half of people. Yes, the mayor's a white guy, but that's because he's the portrait of an average politician :P (And conceptually, a game with a diverse cast doesn't seem like propaganda to me as much as "a game in an idealized world with only beautiful white people" does - but we're probably so used to the latter that it doesn't even register when it does happen)

Even still, if a game having a message or moral-of-the-story at all turns you off, there's a "Gauntlet" mode that bypasses the story and just lets you play the action stages. I've actually taken to speedrunning that mode - the dark/light energy mechanic is a great way to inject some creativity into coming up with speedrun routes. You'd be doing yourself a disservice to give this game a pass for fear that your political feathers might risk getting ruffled a bit ;)

edit: ah, and the "tumblerite" look of the main character - I'm guessing you're talking about the two colors of hair at the front? That's a visual nod to the energy bar mechanic/motif.

We went throught the same experience, thanks for the warning. I did not appreciate the plot "switcharoo" in Gone Home either, and unsolicited preaching from video games is a big no-no.

I'm with you, I don't care much about the background or political opinions of devs, but as soon as they're pushing political crap at me in that overt and blunt way (like Gone Home) they can kindly go forth and self-procriate.

On the positive side, for a 2D pixelart game, there is a really nice amount of options for gameplay and graphics that go above and beyond *most* other similar games. That's nice.

Just a quick follow-up, was able to play some over the weekend. The game does play very smoothly and control is a breeze so far. The shield mechanic works quite well, though there are a few places were holding multiple buttons gets a little fudgy. The characters are all quirky, similar to a lot of JRPGs. And some of the scenery is especially gorgeous. I'm in the dream canyon section currently and I love how it's done.

Thanks once more!

Library level is best level.

I'm very impressed by just how much awesome scenery pixel art and game elements (with mechanics!) were made for level entrances and such.

(I am NOT impressed by Aliph's lolrandom assholery in the third act. Like, what the actual fuck? I understand being weak-willed and going with the flow, but to display proactive assholery -- why?)

Ah, I'm in Act 2 at the moment. That sounds unfortunate. Maybe it's justified later on? The characters are really quirky, to the point of being more exaggerated story elements than actual people. But lots of other games have gone this route too. Hopefully they explain the personality shift later.