I was hoping to buy a great detective adventure—visiting crime scenes, examining clues, digging through documents, collecting evidence, and finally bringing the culprit to justice. And all of that in the atmosphere of the TV series Fargo. The German description of the game made it sound like that, too. But what I got was some bizarre mystery/horror/creepy nonsense. When I found the body at the beginning and the character just picked up the weapon, I thought: "OMG WTF! Don’t touch the murder weapon with your bare hands! It needs to go to forensics and then into the evidence locker! How is this supposed to hold up as evidence now?" Ten minutes later, when I realized what kind of game this actually was: "Will I eventually find a laser gun and start shooting at spaceships to stop them from abducting our cows?!" I did finish the game, but I didn’t have any fun with it. I’m just glad it’s over. I'll still give it three stars. Because if this game is exactly what you're looking for—just a casual horror/creepy adventure with minimal survival elements—then you'll get the full package here.
I just couldn't get any fun out of this game. It feels like someone sat down and thought, "You know what the world needs? A 'Well, life just isn’t fair' - simulator." And that’s exactly how it plays. The game is divided into two segments: rest phases and combat phases. So you constantly switch between checking your equipment, improving your stats, or talking to NPCs. Then it's time for "war," and you're thrown from one fight straight into the next. But the completely ridiculous stamina and fatigue system makes most battles boil down to just replenishing those while enemies beat them right back out of you. But that’s not even the worst part. The rest phases are constantly interrupted by NPCs treating you like their personal errand boy. And you have to do it because anything you don’t complete exactly as intended gets you hit with draconian penalties. That means if you want good gear and a decent amount of money, you have to grind hard and make a lot of sacrifices. Then, at some point in the game, everything is just taken from you. Just like that, you lose all your money and a huge chunk of your equipment. That was the point where I completely lost interest. You spend 20 hours busting your ass just to get some halfway decent gear, and then the game strips you of everything. Even your weapon. Yeah, no thanks—I don’t need a game that’s designed purely to frustrate me.
EN: I’m a programmer, and even though this is technically also "programming," it’s not fun. The reason is that everything ends up as endless spaghetti code because there are no self-iterating while loops or other ways to group all objects of a type into a list or array. There are now so many programming games out there that you really don’t need to play this one if you’re in the mood for something like that. DE: Ich bin Programmierer, und auch wenn das hier formal gesehen ebenfalls "Programmieren" ist, macht es keinen Spaß. Der Grund dafür ist, dass alles in endlosem Spaghetticode endet, da es weder selbstiterierende while-Schleifen noch andere Möglichkeiten gibt, alle Objekte eines Typs als list oder Array zusammenzufassen. Es gibt mittlerweile so viele Programmier-Spiele, dass man dieses hier wirklich nicht spielen muss, wenn man Lust auf so etwas hat.
This game really blew me away. I stumbled upon it more or less by chance, and apparently 8 years too late. The gameplay is divided into three core areas: point-and-click adventure, exploration, and programming (hacking). Overall, the game comes with many fresh approaches. I'll leave the overall gameplay principle aside because it's so unique that there's definitely no second game of its kind (unfortunately). Pros: - Freely explorable game world (where curiosity is always rewarded) - The world expands practically with your personal real-life programming skills. - Day/night cycles and NPC routines - You learn programming if you don't already know how (in a programming language similar on "Ruby"). - There are many social interactions and you don't have to constantly chase a quest log. Cons: - The camera control may make you think the game is still in early access at first... You get used to it over time. - While there is a description of programming basics that you have to piece together, there is no complete reference. - You can't wake up sleeping characters if you need to talk to them. This often leads to frustration because you have to wait for them to wake up. Both pros and cons: - Time is a factor. It's actually a cool idea. If someone says "It's urgent," then it really is urgent. If you don't complete the task in a timely manner, it will fail. Because the world keeps turning without you. If you're supposed to meet someone at the club at 6 p.m. the next evening, they'll only be there that one evening. If you don't show up, tough luck, the quest failed. Unfortunately, this leads to rushing or everything failing later in the game, as many storylines happen at the same time and overlap. All in all, this is a wonderful game, and I can only hope that a sequel or a similar representative of this completely unique genre will come to the market.
