As there are apparently people (≥ one person) commenting the demo on the non-demo page I want to do the same for justice's sake, until I will finish this game sometime for a full review. The demo version was a great pleasure to play. I unconditionally recommend buying the game after the demo. No bugs, glitches, crashes or soft-locks! Every section auto-saves and can be restarted but I never really needed it. The game is big, likely because of the immersive stunning environments. It also feels like an adventure game. I always stopped and took a look into the environment. Amazing for such a small dev team, and it runs well in latest Wine, Garuda on a 11th Gen intel GPU on 720p. All options are there, even for the style of subtitles and up to 4 possible keys for every action :-) ! For me, personally, I played the German written version and the writing is extraordinary, top-notch, sounding like emails that I would write. Playful. For me, this feels authentic and sometimes even fun to read. In my personal opinion, this is much better than average. I also liked how well the fiction was thought out, explained. After thinking about it, the odd things in the game even made sense for the story's setting. Overall, it looks polished to me. The (English) voice acting and language is apparently not on the same quality, I found the cursing too much – wondering, if they saved money with the English part. It's a bit strange that one voice actress with eastern European accent speaks all the female people, even when talking to her child (they could just speak their normal language). The only sad point is that there is no interaction with other characters. All of the environment is devoid of life except for occassional voice clips and static images on computer screens in the base station. After all, a very well made (demo) game. The sections were just right in difficulty. I never needed too long to figure out how to beat them and still they became somewhat elaborate later.
I finished the demo, my best possible rating would be 3.5 stars. It runs on latest Wine on my 11th Gen intel GPU with Garuda Linux. However, not so smoothly. The game uses the Unreal Engine. In this time, it produces scattered lags. Graphical presentation, the modelling and animations, are the best. Good: No limited lives, no occluded environment, no time limit. It is fully playable with caveats. It is a horror game throughout (no blood though) despite the cute look. The demo is a seamless connection of escape-the-room puzzles and feels comparatively big but the rooms are sometimes filled with hidden traps. There is no extra level selection scene. It ends at the big knight statue pictured above. The story is most minimal. The intro cutscene is shown in the trailer. Everything else is narrated by gameplay. No voice over. The explanation or help is minimal too but when I remember right, there are few key hints. The puzzles cannot be solved a prior. Random trying is not so much my personal preference. Sometimes I needed to cheat and passed without available mechanisms. These factors reduce the experience of blind playthroughs. Game design: I had to figure out at least some of the controls by myself. I did not know that you need to press an extra key to run and died directly being catched by the chasing hand, maybe even multiple times. Stressful scenes are unsuitable when controls are not introduced already. Unfortunately, my manufacturer provided keyboard with touch on keys is not good for gaming and here it really sucks. Selecting a target for the bear while activating a mechanism with the boy requires mouse input, an extra device. I tried a GCN controller but still needed the keyboard for the bear actions. Inconvenient. These factors make the experience is a bit inconvenient or annoying for me as someone whose frustration tolerance is not that high. I miss rewards or feeling success for escaping the rooms. This is why this game is not on my priority list now.
Playing v1.04 on Garuda Linux w/ Wine Staging 8.20, 11th Gen Intel integrated GPU, 32GB RAM. No crashes, no problems; soft-locked one very single time, safe reset via menu. Needed to turn graphic settings to between low and medium using graphics menu. Texture might not be top notch, cartoony but all animations are polished. Good QA. Solid controls and gameplay concept, it works well. No useless repetitions, you continue right where you die. No annoying game over or health management. Players need to solve puzzling situations via mechanisms, little to no logic thinking required, although not instantly clear. Difficulty is capped. In the middle, situations become more stressful. They tried to make it interesting for a broad audience. Another strong point is the ending. Realizing what the game and story is all about at the end, and the specific visual presentation is surprisingly touching, rare for me. Linear level-design. There is always only one way to proceed. One ending. For the sake of preference, consider - little to no hand-holding. No initial explanation. You need to figure out, what to do, much at the start. Directions and explanations are provided via key hints, paintings in the environment and hidden collectibles. - no fixed time limits - ambient music only. Builds up dynamically during progress, has real orchestra instruments. - hybrid between adventure and platforming. Free 3D movement. Main Gameplay concept is striving through large levels + some exploration for collectibles. "Combat" is mostly triggering mechanisms. Goes further than classic adventure. - story makes only sense at the end - a single long loading time before each big level - No HUD or screen stats. They likely thought it improves immersion. More annoying for me than helpful. I must guess how much time's left before deaths. Harder to predict, more stress (unwanted immersion). Personal criticsm to devs: - UE rendering sometimes too dark - stressful sections work against the exploration
I was well surprised. It runs like a charm on my 11th gen i5 notebook without extra graphics hardware and on Garuda Linux! Least but not last, the storyboard, the dialogues and the lack of battle explanation are the weak points. The intro battle is very weird and barely explained. The fantasy fiction is too much JRPG for my taste, but it provides some new ideas. It really doesn't hurt the overall experience, due to design. IMO, most important is gameplay which is tight, the controls work very well, they are well-introduced, progressively. It provides a refreshing but focused mix of simple side scrolling platformer and fighting mixing real-time and rounds which I have rarely seen but waited for. While it still has leveling and plenty of mostly casual dialogue, it's not important and kids certainly wouldn't mind it. Not too much metroidvania either. I rather find it engaging how the controls slowly grow more complex over the first hours. Strategy exists in choosing attacks and combos but it also requires reacting to the attacks of enemies otherwise your party members are dying too fast. The difficulty is leveled by powerful special actions like reviving all of your party. Later, battles even switch between side-scrolling and action parts. Not late in the game, I suddenly ran into a stronger enemy. Even before the 3rd party member joined. The enemies get stronger. There aren't many weak enemies in between. But losing fights was not a frustrating experience for me because I could learn to dodge the attacks. I got better by myself, not because of grinding. The player still needs to manage savepoints in the traditional way but there is no stressful life system. Many means contribute to balance the difficulty. The artwork is very lit and beautiful to look at. But it also looks like hard work. The animation is literally handdrawn. I am very happy about the discount, otherwise I would have missed this game. As a console gamer, it reminds me of Nintendo console games.
