wanted to like this game as i love point and click mysterious games but there were so many annoyances that sucked the fun out of it. Mainly the exploration aspects and unskippable puzzles. Exploration was thru a drab misty world and the only gameplay was to gather snippets of diaries and pics in order to figure out what happened there. Travel was 1st person and the movement was slow, pressing the run key only had intermittant increase of speed to be laughable, maybe 2 sec bursts. The devs used the same art assets throughout the game, drawers contained the same items and even the cabinets were the same 3 models. You were able to open drawers and chests but they were mainly empty, i think after opening scores of those same assets i found maybe 3 items to the point where i ignored them. There are puzzles, some you have to work out a box with doo dads to twist, some were environmental where you fixed an item in order to progress. Most were pleasant but the boxes were obnoxious, repetitious with little reward, maybe a picture or a diary page with few info. There is no option to skip the puzzle boxes and after the same puzzle five times in a row i was over it. The rest of the exploration was enjoyable, but the game mainly consists of a walking simulator, light lamp simulator and open drawers simulator with a few arcane puzzles with crap hints to figure them out, it just wore thin and any charm of the game was lost to annoyances. skip or buy on deep sale
This is a Hidden Object game with adventure elements such as exploration, puzzle solving etc. If you are not a fan of this genre then this game isnt for you. I do like it, and this older game was very enjoyable and pure from the new ones I have become familiar with from Artifex Mundi and Big Fish. first of all, the devs cut out alot of the frustration that confound the new HOs such as tedious back tracking to get an item in order to build an item in order to do an action etc. They intersperse quick travel requests after you complete that item and will transport you immediately to the location its used if you desire. There is a map which shows actionable areas with quick travel. The story is intriguing, you solve a deep mystery with Holmes, its a bit gory. The art isnt as beautiful and detailed as the newer games but quite serviceable and lush. For once the messy HOs have a real reason for being that way, crimes scenes of mayhem. In fact what is most enjoyable about the game is the seamless story telling where HOs serve a purpose instead of just plunked into the plot to add game play. The voice acting is so so, accents a bit off. The music is orchestrated but can get a bit repetitious, you can change volumes or mute. What is missing are multi leveled HOs where you solve mini puzzles within the HO which can be fun from newer HOs, these are straight find items HOs. You cant zoom but i didnt have too much trouble finding objects though some of the names were off such as calling a canteen a flask etc. The puzzles range from easy to more convoluted and hard but i was able to do most with only skipping one more obnoxious one. there are achievements but i did miss the morphing objects from the new HOs. Overall its a very pleasureable game to play whist in bed
I was excited to play this as I love builder type games, add in some survivor aspects and im golden. Game ran lovely. Some blurring of landscape as you moved but otherwise unnoticeable. Graphics are nice and rich. The worlds seem varied, not just a color change, though it was disappointing to see a different looking plant or stone have the same description of one that you researched on another planet. The building aspect was fun & seamless once you learned how to mouse click up/down the menus. a console adaption. you have to find data upgrades in order to unlock recipes so get ready to grind worlds for them. Once unlocked you can manipulate building components to your hearts content. or rather your inventory limit. Its satisfying to finally get a secure structure over your head and the feeling of making it back to base after days away is immeasurable. Soundscape is nice, gentle and eerie at times, with a cool surround sound feel to it. space flight is a blast, pretty intuitive once you lock your space ship movement. Pretty glowing review eh? why two stars? after hours in game im done. the whole game is based around constant repair, resource gathering. every thing takes many different types of components, researched, refined, crafted. THERE IS CRAP ALL FOR INVENTORY IN GAME. why is it I can build a many leveled base, complicated machinery tech but for the love of god cant put a cube of wood together to hold my stuff?? game becomes a tedious inventory shuffling game. sure, you can sell all your stuff but then be stuck having to fly back to that one world that had that stuff you spent hrs grinding already on. mods only allow stacks to increase. i spend more time in game inventory shuffling in order to tweak out one more empty slot in order to go out and do what i love, adventuring, gathering, building. im just done. waste of money.
There is much to love about this game, the bright colorful artwork, the passing seasons , many animated flavor bits like leaves blowing, water ripples etc. There are events that add fun to the game, just because. There are trippy mermaid concerts, and a hermit with self worth issues. There are calves, chicks, ducklings to grow, horses to ride, lands to explore. There are some slight skill trees, do you ace combat or do you want to just wander around and forage. There is love too and friendship. The sheer amount of stuff to do is great, you build up your farm the way you want, you try and make friends for gifts and bonuses, you build up a community center or not. All the while a clock is ticking to seasonal end and new crops to plot or to while away the winter crafting. The music is pleasant and charming as well. What is not pleasant or fun is the timer. very short daily timers leaves you exhausted trying to get something done before you pass out, which incurs a big penalty if you cant get to bed in time. Just getting up in the morning, checking for tv recipes and then watering your crops or tending to animals puts you into the late afternoon when shops/homes close and you have to wait a day. Its rush rush rush which ruins the whole laid back theme of the game. I almost quit in the beginning as i hate timers. i stuck with it and im glad, it gets better the second in game yr. Still, the game is a grind. Sell what you can to gain money to buy the next improvement. grind grind grind. rush rush rush. Im playing to get to the point where i can just chill, farm maybe. try the absurdly hard fishing game, explore. whatever, but at almost 70s hrs in im finding it hard to play cuz of the grind, the insane rush. take that as you may,
Game starts off pretty intriguing, I do love me some snooping spying games. The premise is unique, based on found footage genre only this time its a phone and thats the entire game landscape. You search the phone for clues about the missing owner, emails, vlogs, apps, history etc. All good voyeur gameplay which is enjoyable for the most part. The acting is decent, the char we are searching for is attractive in her photos and vids tho a bit whiny. The problem is the dialogue trees, certain responses shut you out of actions and even sometimes forcing a restart. I found it off putting, why allow certain responses based on personal ethics and then punish you for using them? there are very unlikable and shady stalker types in the game which you discover and the game wants you to hand over pics or other personal info on the lead char who we feel is in danger from just those types. Its infuriating. Then there are mechanics that dont work, clues that appear and disappear, leaving you to log out of game to make them come back. clues are flashed rapidly with no way to check them out later if you miss etc. there are also checkpoint saves, no telling where they are at but you can lose progress if you quit. In the end i just gave up, trying to find the 'magic' dialogue tree that would allow advancement in the story. It just went against any immersion value. 3 stars for unique game design. i didnt finish the game
This game was on my Gog wishlist for ages and full disclosure I finally got it for free on Epic. But I will get it on Gog for my perma library as I did enjoy it thoroughly. It starts off a bit slow, the tiny characters are hard to see and I didnt get into it at first. Given time the game really starts to take off and you become invested in the characters, or for me at least the main character. I found the others annoying as heck. You explore the scenery, looking for actionable areas and using a radio to find hidden stuff. There is conversation every step of the way, in fact, the story IS the game. You make choices in dialogues and that changes the game and endings. Its very relaxing and enjoyable. Fiddling with the radio, listening to the snippets of songs and radio plays, morse code and various other soundbits was great fun. The game gets pretty dark and creepy at times. I found the graphics nice, the painted back drops were very good. As i said before the soundscape is very engaging as well. The story is intriguing and fun to tweak. There is replay value as you want to see what happens if you change responses. The games saves automatically as you go. Lots of documentaries open at the end to see the making of which was fun. Some cons, the tiny characters are very hard to see. The reponse time for your dialogue choices is very very fast, if you blink you miss out on choice. The worst bit was the radio tuning, it takes forever to scan all the channels manually, and it resets as you leave a level so you have to reset it to the channel you want usually at the other end of the spectrum. There is no fast travel, for that reason alone i didnt finish gathering all the letters. just couldnt bother with walking all that way again. its still a very fresh, novel and fun game with a clencher at the end. well done
I have had this wishlisted on Gog for ages, still do, waiting on a good sale but I did receive it for free on twitch. Game started out not too promising as I couldnt get the opening scene to work properly, there was quite of bit of jagged movement which caused immediate nausea as well. I fiddled with settings for a bit but couldnt get the book to open and the game froze. I gave up for months, then idly thought to give it another try. boy am I glad. I still had to fiddle with settings, mainly adjusting graphics to reduce the laggy movement of the camera while maintaining the best graphical quality my pc could handle. Got it to work and the story took off. Its very immersive storytelling, movement is for the most part fluid, you dont really have to be accurate with the mouse pointing, the game guides you on the right path. There are tricky bits to figure out how to advance the story, usually by interacting with the environment in some ways, occasionally very obscurely. The 'chapters' are each unique stories, each with their own art and tone. They ranged from normal environments to flights of fancy, spectacular at times. Throughout all is the voice over narrator which was well done. The music was perfect, melancholy and immersive. I was left with wonder at the end of the game, not too often has that happened to me. The game is reminiscent of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. The story is such that you will want more, I know I do. Will get it on gog for my permanent library
Was hoping for an experience like what Papers Please gave, this game has all the addictive fun but only a slight emotional impact. The gameplay is fun, you navigate from various cameras and solve mini mysteries regarding what you see, or not, the story is very fluid with different outcomes depending on your actions/inactions. This allows for multiple restarts as you try and get all the endings. Throughout all is a timer, which hampers the fun greatly, timers are money (to pay rent, buy more cameras, food), plus story timers to solve mysteries or subplots, for which you gain large rewards. there are insta fail events which cause game overs. each game is randomly generated which resets which stories you get, you still start in same place, just different events. Its a bit clunky at times dealing with the multiple windows, people knocking on your door and micro managing physical needs and jobs. you get different clues at different times so it pays to keep an eye on the camera, but that damn timer has you pull off to earn money, grocery shop etc. After playing for several hours im tired of it. Having the same scenarios play out and solving for each whilst you wait for new events gets old. I wish they had a better story mode, as I do want to see all the events and cameras and their final stories, which is quite interesting to see the final camera shots displayed. endings are abrupt with story cards concluding your actions and feel pretty shallow and unsatisfying. i was hoping for a more indepth and emotionally charged time with the game, got instead a light fun time waster with repetitive gameplay and a sense of grinding in order to gain new scenarios. get it on deep sale and enjoy
im trying to like this game, a big fan of Poroit and was excited to get this game. I love point and click adventures as well. So whats the problem? Pros: some interesting puzzles, nice to play as Poroit and I like the evidence gathering to reach conclusions. Graphics are ok, cartoony but fits. can play with french with english subtitles which is cool or vice versa Cons: egads. well, mostly at every turn the devs rip you out of immersion, every game transistion... meaning walking into another room, opening submenus, plot points etc they splash a huge monitor covering screen with oft repeated game tips... no art, nothing, blank screen blabing how to do a simple game mechanic already explained for the umpteenth time. Game often interrupts your liimited exploring to declare its time to deduce, then walks you thru it heavy handedly, in the end you just shove a clue into a vacant spot and wait for the deduction to finish because it has no intrigue or grey matter involved, its just busy work to pad out the game. Exploring the scenery is also weird, you get a mouse icon that you have to gradually target until game decides you are at the right pixel to get it to advance. why they did that instead of just a single click to explore hot spots i dont know, it feels like a mobile device mechanic. its stupid frankly, you just end up sliding the mouse around until it snaps into some vague place to progress. the worst bit is that the game quickly becomes a chore of making the UI work. I spent an hour trying to get one puzzle to work due to funky hotspot targeting. Movement and puzzles seem to be for mobile games, its just clunky, huge and ugly. Any charm of the game is quickly lost due to lack of immersion, terrible english voice acting and exploration being interrupted by game telling you what to do next and where. blah. aint got time for this, on to next game
11 hrs in review and I'm trying to figure out if I want to continue. Graphics are ok, colorful and the characters are well done but on the landscape its a bit hard to see items or to tell if an area is accessble. The story I find interesting and I do enjoy the exploration, finding lore books, interacting with NPCs, the quests are different from fetch quests and offer some challenge in areas, others are easy filler ones. The sound track is very good, orchestrated and lovely to hear while playing. the banter from your companions is fun at first then you realize how short of a loop they are on and it gets old. All that is pretty enjoyable, its easy to get into, no huge learning curve, easy interface and inventory. Whats getting me down is the looting. You cant see actionable loot, even dead npcs unless you are very close and have the 'always icons on' toggled. items will then highlight if you mouse over them. It does a key you can use to display items, but once again you have to be close to have your mouse hover over it and display it. Of course they decided that when you use that key, all action is paused so you cant even move and search at the same time. Add in a weirdly flat and yet cluttered landscape which makes it hard to see items and you have to click the hovered name, not the object to loot. Its irritating. Combat is ok, but uninteresting. You only have 4 stats to level up, all skills are held in gear you find or craft. So combat is attacking with whatver skills your weapon has, up to 3? which use up energy. When energy is spent you can take a potion but basically thats it for your skills, its then a smash fest. To attack you have to drag lines to enemies to direct who does what, who takes what, who heals who. so back to my reveiw, am I going to continue playing this? not sure, im bored, theres no skill tree to level or look forward to, meh story, loot and combat. I may, the price is right for this mildly entertaining game.
