...for $3. Probably only found out about this one, since it was featured in a Point-and-Click game sale. Finished it in a single evening over the course of 5 hours. It was pretty okay. The backgrounds are really detailed, but the only things they give you to interact with are things relevant to the progression of the plot/game; there's absolutely no extra "fat" or optional content, as far as I can tell. You can pretty much brute force the puzzles the entire game, by using everything on everything, until you come to the solution of a particular puzzle, since everything you can interact with is relevant to the progression of the game, and they don't give you anything that isn't, so take everything that isn't nailed down. You DO sometimes have to do some pixel hunting, in order to find relevant things that you can take, that can be tedious and excruciating, and you may need to look at a walkthrough for that. Your character's walking speed is excruciatingly slow, but if there's a hot spot for transitioning to another scene you can click on within range, that speeds things up. There's also a "Punch Out" style mini-game you'll have to play with a few characters, and the movements are pretty delayed versus your button presses. My favorite part of the game was the haunted hotel; the rest of the game didn't really do much for me. All in all, can't say I regretted playing it, but it's a one-and-done that you play, when you don't feel like playing through any of your "Gold" content.
...for $2, and still feel ripped off. Only found out about this game, either because it was featured in a Point-and-Click sale, or because I decided to browse Daedalic's catalog. Just go ahead and play through the Deponia trilogy if you haven't, and if you have, maybe REPLAY it, instead of playing this. This game was just long and excruciating, and I almost can't put my finger on why... Took me 12 hours over the course of 2 days... There are dialogue scenes - especially near the beginning and end - that drag on ENTIRELY too long, you're just DYING for them to end... Wanna feel like you're in prison?...good, because that's what chapter 6 is all about, and it's arguably one of the longest scenarios in the game. A lot of 80s and 90s pop culture references are made, but referring to something else doesn't make you automatically cool, a lot of it comes off like "Hello, Fellow Kids!" (I'm honestly surprised that was a reference they DIDN'T make; they didn't really poke fun at themselves...) I do like dark humor every so often, but a lot of the humor here just misses its mark; you can only watch so many small animals get beat up, before it stops being funny, and starts coming off mean-spirited. It just wasn't any fun, and I honestly feel worse off after playing through all of it.
This game is missing 2 functions I look for in a Point-and-Click game: (1) Your cursor changing shape when you hover over something you can click on. (2) A button you can press that shows you everything on screen you can interact with. You can LITERALLY click on any point of the scene, and you'll get flavor text, if only to tell you there's nothing there...which is annoying, and increases the amount of guesswork needed to find everything there is to interact with, so it makes pixel hunting both necessary and excruciating. Either that, or making you use a walkthrough. In other words, they really didn't fix the problem from the first game. The artwork, animation, music and voiceovers are all still very high quality. I don't like what they changed Sally's character design to... In the end, I wasn't able to guess the culprit, and rather think they came out of leftfield; their motives didn't make any sense, and were a REAL stupid reason to murder somebody...so I can't say I found the ending satisfactory.
I played the original Detective Grimoire flash game, back when it was first released on Newgrounds in 2006/2007; so I'm kind of a Detective Grimoire OG. Honestly, I'm just glad the Super Flash Bros. are finally making commercially viable games now; rather reassuring, knowing they're still around, doing their thing! The game is missing 2 functions I look for in a Point-and-Click game: (1) Your cursor changing shape when you hover over something you can click on. (2) A button you can press that shows you everything you can interact with. You can LITERALLY click on any point of the scene, and you'll get flavor text, if only to tell you there's nothing there...which is annoying, and increases the amount of guesswork needed to find everything there is to interact with, so it makes pixel hunting both necessary and excruciating. The artwork, animation, music and voiceovers are all very high quality. I'm glad the culprit ended up being 1 of the 2 people that I actually narrowed it down to.
When I look back on it, why'd I buy this, or even think it would be any good...? Your jumps, double jumps, mid-air dashes, and grappling hook shots WON'T fire when you need them to, and you'll often end up HURTLING down to the very bottom of the level; the levels in this game often have a lot of verticality to them, so you'll experience this A LOT. The game can't seem to decide whether it wants to be linear, or a Metroidvania; many of the levels could've used an in-game map, which, the game lacks an in-game map system of any sort. There ARE fast travel portals sprinkled about, but they're few and far between, making backtracking to certain spots in certain levels still that much more tedious, even after you've picked up whatever ability you need to pickup whatever powerups you can afterwards. The music was very bland, and really just a very few notes played on a loop incessantly for any particular area. The 5th-or-so level, the whale's gut, there's a mid-boss that functions as a tutorial for the Charged Attack, but the game is SO BAD at teaching you how to use it, you'll think the game has been SOFTLOCKED (another reviewer alluded to this in their review); had to watch a YouTube clip to figure out how to do it properly, all just so I could lay this abomination of a game to rest... The game tries to be all grimdark (yes, the original Brothers Grimm fairytales were certainly that, but even THEY'D tell the people who made this game to reel themselves in), and all the fairytale characters that you fight are all essentially psychotic in some way. The Little Mermaid in this game has such a fascination with the human world, and a misinterpretation of what human things are used for, that she had a fountain made of toilets and urinals; points for creativity, at least. It's also possible to Platinum (100%) the game before even actually finishing it (before even finishing the final level or defeating the final boss), and without even discovering all the powerups or covering the entire "map" of each level... Don't bother trying to play the game on Hard - you don't get rewarded for it - the enemies are veritable DAMAGE SPONGES on the easiest difficulty. The chase scene at the end of the third level will EFF you so HARD, because it scrolls by too quickly, and you have to do it all in ONE run, without a checkpoint in-between; I'd say that was the HARDEST scenario in the entire game, but the second-to-final level EFFS you pretty hard, seven-ways-till-Sunday, too. The combat and platforming in this game are just OBJECTIVELY BAD, but ESPECIALLY the platforming. The plot twist at the very end was also very unnecessary, and while it was a little bit hinted at a level beforehand, still felt right out of leftfield, and only served to drag out a game that had long since outstayed its welcome.
I like how the social media app in this VN's world is called "Noise," because that's all social media is...Noise. Took me just a little over 15 hours over the course of 2 days to finish... After this, I think I'm gonna take a break from VNs as a genre, too... The voice overs were well-acted, and high quality, at least. The soundtrack was pretty bland and forgettable; I wouldn't buy it separately, or listen to it out-of-game, anyway. The Prologue was promising...and if you've ever been RAILROADED out of a low-end service job (or several) before, you'll be able to relate...so, y'know, it's kind of ANOTHER Misery Simulator, too... At first, the plot kind of reminded me of Death Note... ...but halfway through Act I, the complete-and-total implausibility of the whole plot just left me shaking my head. There's Suspension of Disbelief...and then there's just GTFOOHWTS. There are VERY few choices to make in the game (about one per each character), and you'll get 1 of 3 endings depending upon the combo of choices you make...but it still doesn't really matter, because after you finish the game, you can watch the other 2 endings you didn't get to see. Why they even bothered with different choices and different endings, I don't know, because it seems like they could've played those endings in a certain order, and it would've made sense, because each seems to lead into the other: Ending C, then B, then A. Oh, by the way, most of the sociopaths completely get away with their actions...and suffer exactly no consequence. Get real. Two stars for calling social media "Noise." Otherwise? Another game I wish I could've refunded...
Took me just a little bit over 7 hours, over the course of 2 evenings, to finish... I think I'm gonna take a break from Narrative-Adventure games, as a genre, for awhile... It's like, after awhile of writing the script for the game, they figured out their plot wasn't all that deep, so they peppered in a bunch of unnecessary mini-games, quicktime events, chase scenes, and puzzles to fill in the runtime. The rhythm games are pointless, because the GOG version of the game doesn't have the achievements implemented for scoring well, and there are no changes to the story whether you perform well or perform poorly, anyway. The plot twist we see at the end of Act IV, I suspected from the very beginning since the character was first introduced way back in Act I, and if our protagonist wasn't completely STUPID, the game could've ENDED at the end of Act IV, but bad writing choices at the end of Act IV lead to the plot continuing into Act V; it was just really contrived. Long story short, the whole point of this story, if there even was one, was that Gloria just needed to remember that she was the strong, independent woman she always was, and just pick herself up by her Big Girl Panties, and Girlboss against The Patriarchy. There's a lot of derelict imagery to visually symbolize the state of her life; we GET it, the crashed subway train in HELL is supposed to represent her feelings about how her life has hit the skids, WE GET IT! Couldn't have BEEN more cliche... It really is just a MISERY simulator; want to know what it'd feel like to be wrongfully held hostage in someone else's basement for an extended period of time? (Oh, wait, I'm having flashbacks to 2020, all of a sudden...) Then THIS is YOUR game! Honestly, though, what kind of woman has nightmares about Hell Mouths and Cthulhu Eyeball Tentacles, anyway...?
Check the trailer and preview screenshots. Do you see ANYTHING ELSE besides: (1) Menus, (2) Dialogue Scenes, (3) Battle Scenes and (4) A map consisting of nothing but squares with symbols on them, and some info in the margins? THAT'S ALL THIS GAME IS. The map(s) with the squares with symbols on them? THAT'S YOUR DUNGEON NAVIGATION. THAT'S ALL IT IS. The soundtrack was just ambient, droning WHITE NOISE; never came across the track that plays in the trailer in-game. The comic book art style and character designs are kinda cool, but that's really ALL the game has going for it: Its visual style, partially aped from Borderlands. This game's regularly on sale for about $3, and I don't wonder why...because it's definitely not worth the asking price; wished I tried out this game sooner, so I could've asked for the refund before my time ran out...another one on the "Hide" pile...
I'm not familiar with this developer's previous works, so I can only judge this game on its own merits. You play as a woman who looks like one of The Turks from Final Fantasy VII...at least, in the trailer and the title screen; otherwise, we only see her and other people as their in-game sprites, which look overly cartoonish (if not amateurish) for what is supposed to be a serious-minded horror-themed game; no voice-overs in the game like there are in the trailer, either...way to raise and dash my expectations... Works a lot like a point-and-click game, but with a side-scrolling view; find items, use those items on other things in the environment, and use your camera to either reveal hidden items or doors, or remove things that block your way. You'll see visions flash by, you'll get jump scares, audio stings, lights will suddenly go out, and you'll hear bumps-in-the-night, but ultimately, it's just all smoke and mirrors; there's really nothing out to get you. Too many horror cliches without any payoff. As much walking around and backtracking as you'll do at times, I wish the game had a Run button, but then dodging the one or two ghosts that you have to during the game's entire runtime would've been exceedingly easy, which is probably why such an option wasn't included...all for two obstacles. There's not much plot to speak of; our heroine's purpose is to meet up with her deceased father in her lucid dream; she doesn't have much back story at all, and neither do any of the other "characters" (people) we meet, if we can even call them that...since they have no back story. We don't even learn her name until the end. The ending felt abrupt, inconclusive, and left a sour taste in my mouth, like I got "The Bad Ending," even if it's the game's ONLY ending...no real catharsis or anything, like I wasted my time... WHAT DID IT ALL MEAN? Maybe discuss the game on social media, so the developer can get free advertising...which was always meant to be part of the plan...
...because it doesn’t work on mine. I’m able to run PS3 era console titles (Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, chief among them) - and even some PS4 era console titles - FLAWLESSLY on my machine, but for whatever weird reason, it’s NOT able to run this LO-SPEC indie game. I WOULD’VE found that out sooner, but obviously I EXPECTED it to RUN on my machine, so I didn’t bother to CHECK until the window for RETURNING it had already CLOSED. As such, I’d like to PROPOSE an AMENDMENT to GOG’s RETURN POLICY: So long as you can PROVE the game doesn’t work on your computer - and never did - you ought to be entitled to a return and refund even if you’re past the 30-day guarantee. When something like this happens, it makes me not want to buy anything, anymore. MAKE SURE TO TEST OUT YOUR PURCHASES RIGHT AFTER YOU BUY THEM!
