Verne: The Shape of Fantasy

with beautiful art and immersive story, but has different kinds of gameplay that are not typical of it - like quick-time events. There are also timed puzzles, which I am not a big fan of, but it's manageable. I could complete all puzzles, without frustration, except for the last one (time limit). The world and lore are familiar if you have read Jules Verne, and gives the impression of a largescale adventure, but not really. I have finished the game in 5h (found and read all collectables), while some others here did it in 3h. It has the setup for a much bigger story, so I was surprised it was rather short. If you know the lore, some characters may look out of character, but it's explained why in the end. For some reason, nearly all Nautilus crew are strong female stereotypes, and the corridors were decorated with Soviet-era-like revolutionary posters. Somehow those looked forced and out of place for the period. All in all, it was fun, and I greatly enjoyed it. My only gripe was with the (cumbersome) controls that can be hard to get used to, and the timed puzzles. I played with a controller, and it was still confusing. The character moves slowly, but we can run. However, there are sections where running is disabled, and it has tested my patience. I recommend this to all point-and-click lovers, you won't regret it. And don't rush it, because it's short.

Pros: - puzzles that are not frustrating but fun - beautiful pixel art backgrounds Cons: - characters and their animations could be better

I really enjoyed the game and you should give it a try if you are interested in a "modern" adventure that's more of a novel than a point & click puzzle challenge. The overall game is good, but has some minor flaws imho. The setting is just great. The whole Jule-Verne-Universe is fresh and interesting. As a fan of SciFi literature the game made me VERY curious about the books of Jules Verne, and I'm definitely going to read them now. You are going to learn a lot about them, if you are reading every piece of information you find in the game. PROS + decent pixel art style + interesting premise and universe + wants you to explore the world + lot's of information about the life and work of Jule Verne + fair price if on sale + quicktime events can be disabled in options CONS + dialogs are not always written very well + plot is pretty straight forward and with foreseeable "twists" + too few and to easy puzzles - don't expect point & click mechanics + quicktime events can be annoying especially with mouse & key controls + animations often very basic/wooden Despite of all the cons, I can see some (yet unused) potential and I would be very interested in a sequel that addresses these gameplay, presentation and narrative issues.

This game has some nice good things, the story is creative, the art is quite beautiful, it's well dubbed and the music is also good. If you like to know more about Verne and his work, the game also features some wiki about it. However, there are things I dislike, like the gameplay, I believe point and click will be better. The way the inventory works, and some of the puzzles, it's a bit annoying, I found myself pushing the wrong button all the time. The game also falls short, it's like 2-3 hours, and the story I found it creative from a writters perspective, which is fine because the game is an homage to Verne, but it does not land interesting to me in the end. For the price range I would tag this game as a 3-3.5 star, but I like to support indie devs and I think the game has enough interesting ideas to bump it a bit.