It is a roguelike, I get it. I am supposed to die, which counts as part of the learning experience, I get that too. What I don't get is where my motivation is supposed to come from when all the game is doing is to punish the player, mainly with useless loot. I've had countless runs without finding any ammo. I've had countless runs without finding any food. I understand that in a game like this there will be shortages the player needs to deal with and to overcome with careful ressource management and ingenuity. But how does one manage ressources if there are none? The game really is entertaining for some time and does a lot of things right. But when the games RNG is that flawed and the game is letting you die over and over simply by letting you starve to death time and again, then starting over becomes a chore and finally a frustration. I can see why people like this game, but do yourself a favour and watch a couple of gameplay videos before you decide to buy.
POLLEN is a very pretty looking game and I am sure it looks amazing with a VR set. But this is also the problem with this game, since after finishing it in less than 4.5 hours (and I took my time) I came to the conclusion that I've just wasted 20 Euro for a very prolonged VR demo. The story itself begins promising. These are the 90s, although we are in an alternate reality where the two power blocks learned to combine their resources to explore space instead of jumping at each others throat. On a research station on Titan, something unspecified happens and you are send there as a replacement. The story unfolds very slowly and mostly through audio tapes and a view notes. Unfortunately, nothing really gets explained and you get only a view hints about what happened before your arrival. And the ending... well, in my eyes you need quite some audacity to sell something like this as "conclusion". Nothing gets explained, nothing really gets a satisfying conclusion. POLLEN was an impulse buy, I knew nothing about the game, although I did expect something along the lines of SOMA. But the game is little more than a walkin simulator. You walk around, listen to some tapes, play with stuff, solve some very basic puzzles and then the game is over. One of the selling points of this game is "interactivity", but "interactivity" actually means that you open locker doors, play with switches that do nothing or move a forklift a couple of centimeters and kick chairs. You can pick up stuff and here "interactivity" means that you can shake those things. And when you get a bit more creative and try things like putting a beer can into a microwave, then nothing happens at all. I am under the strong impression that the devs focused all their energy on the VR part and put things like the story on the "finish when there is still time" list. Unfortunately, there seemingly was not much time left when the VR part was finished. On the plus side, the game has nice bees though.
