Endless cutscenes. Lots of handholding.
2/5 ✩ 5/10 (3/5 ✩ 6/10 if not for unity analytics and logs generated in locallow)
Woke/safe dialogue that doesnt offend anyone.
Those that care can block in firewall or add 𝐜𝐝𝐩 . 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐝 . 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲𝟑 . 𝐜𝐨𝐦 to their host file for privacy reasons.
Linux users be aware it will only work on Wine GE, nothing else worked for me.
More details on this and various other technical issues which this game has quiete a few of further below.
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I had high expectations for this game and had been looking forward to it for a while and was so happy when I saw it arrive here. I had it gifted to me by another kind user since I didnt have enough in my wallet untill next payday.
It is decent, and looks good in many ways, the voice acting is good and the little music there is is ratty good. The whole world setting and exploring in the house was also good, but greatly held back by other things that influence the enjoyment of it all a lot.
- Mainly as other ppl mention, the clunky movement and frustrating camera angles!
One important thing to note here is that the controls ARE janky, yes, but when ppl say that he sometimes doesnt grab ledges and nails right, or jump out from the wall and down instead of where he was supposed to go, its not because of clunkyness, but the very short timeframe you have to accurately hit the trigger to make him move to where he leans. This means if you're not super fast when he leans left and make the jump, he will lean back again.
Jumping at this time makes him jump out from the wall and you fall down, which in some places isnt fun.
I suppose from a real world view this makes sense, he is only a rat after all, not a hummingbird who can hang sideways on his tail forever.
This took me ages to figure out too but its clear when you get the hang of it if you look for it. Whether its intended or a bug I dont know, but you CAN jump consistantly if you pay attention and is careful :)
What IS clunky is the general movement and jumping. Its doable but definitly not smooth and landing can be a learning curve.
- The camera angles are acuratly described by others as being frustrating and near imposible to work with. You cant see much most of the time specially on walls and climbing.
One tip for when you need to jump to opposite ledges with your back turned where you can flip the camera but still not see well, is to trust that you will land there without increasing your movement while jumping. simply jump and he will almost always land where he is supposed to, on the pole or platform both.
You also cant rotate the angle, only up and down, so the view can be very limited and for screenshot purposes, super frustrating.
Its doable here too, but make peace with this before buying.
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- Another thing is the immense amount of handholding :s
Its a game designed for kids. I did not think this watching the trailers tbh and expected more free exploration and platforming than it had. You can still explore but its within rooms and scripted events and there isnt anything to do really than look a the various settings and decorating, which I loved, specially the kids room what a lovely room!
But what I mean is that for example you are led to this room where it shows the stair has now fallen down so you cant get back up that way, which yes you can see that obviously, but the game still feels a need to thoroughly explain to you that you must now find another way up.
The script too is definitly designed for kids, it is 'politically safe' and very repetitive, at times boring, and reused the lines 'oh for furs sake' and such way too much to the point of becoming a little cringe.
There is also a LOT of dialogue. A LOT.
I would say that half of the entire game in total is made up of cutscenes.
Its very dragged out in some places and a few times made me want to skip it, something I also didnt expect from the previews :/
Its more of a story, a movie, than a game tbh. Everything has its parameter, you cant really explore much because all is locked behind events and rooms.
Its a cute game but things like this bring it down.
So, I thought more highly of it from the previews than it actually is.
As soon I started playing it and a bit into the dialogue and actual play, I knew it had to belong to a woke company and yes it is.
Handy Games is owned by THQ Nordic and the Embracer Group, two very woke publishers.
So, knowing this after, the game and its safe drawn out dialogue makes perfect sense.
Its still decent game and enjoyable, if you can look past the mentioned and get past all the technical issues mentioned below.
I want to check out the sequel despite all this, its located more outside in nature and looks great, and this will surely improve the camera angle issues.
Other small things like the first time you meet the butterfly the big message in the middle of the screen hangs forever untill you reach it.
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Its not optimized and has missing media packs you cant just install because of some windows license stuff so wine, winetricks and proton arent allowed to pack it 🤔
'Initializing Microsoft Media Foundation failed. It seems that the Microsoft Media Foundation is not installed on this machine or a newer version of Microsoft Media Foundation is required.'
Only Wine GE worked for me, everything else wouldnt work right otherwise, either from the start or it would get stuck after the first cutscene.
Other technical issues like the jittery movement when Matt moves and the poor cutscene quality are all very obvious and very present.
Its mentioned on other platform to turn off vsync for the jittery movements for Matt, which definitly helped for me. Usually its always better with it on for me.
But the cutscene quality was SO bad throughout?!?
Im asuming it because of this missing media stuff or something else, I see lots of ppl complaining about this, but nothing I tried would improve it.
Which kinda sucks when half the game consists of cutscenes :/
A few places also felt very unoptimized, like when you enter the governors place to escape the tunnel, omg so jittery.
But, here it is also doable.
If you can make it work and accept these other things, its a cute little game with immense amount of safe dialogue about Mat the rat who is in love with Nat the mouse.
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Save file is in locallow, I think, a file named dream_v38_G.journal.
I couldnt find anything else so asume it was that one.
Keybinds can be rebound but movement is locked to wasd and arrow keys.
Invert axis yes, and controller worked fine too.
Arachnaphobia mode, you can turn off spiders!
There is only a few but man that first dead one is super realistic so I support this option /brrr. The first one gets removed, the other time is in a mini puzzle thing near the end where they are turned into some maggot looking things, which I also get here because they are a little too realistic for my likes lol!
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I hope to check out the sequel too when it releases, I did like a lot of things about this one but it has too many technical, camera and control issues and too much handholding to be fully enjoyable as an adult imo.
Not worth full price because of these things imo, get with a bit of discount.
🐧 Arch Linux EndeavourOS
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