This game seems to be a mishmash of wildly different and incompatble ideas forcefully mashed together by some rushed, overworked and not very experienced developers. Ok, the basic idea of you getting "stranded" on an island is nothing to write home about. But it can be done. CAN. This game doesn't. Instead of focussing their efforts on the actual environment, even though that's supposed to be the main selling point, the developers seemingly spent a lot of time inventing some meditation functionality. Wow! Seriously? Yikes. As others mentioned before, the day-night cycle is messed up, it's far too short and annoying. A good sign of the developers running out of ideas (or time, or both) and therefore cheaply creating needless artificial pressure on the player. Always a bad sign. Topology of the island(s) is quite inconsistent and more bent on getting you lost than anything else. Map is not helping, it's basically useless. It exists, but it might as well not. While I haven't encountered any major bugs, other have. It seem to run much better with wine than on actual windows, which quickly seem to become normal nowadays. Still, I suppose this game wasn't playtested much outside the group of developers, otherwise it wouldn't have been released like this.
For those too lazy to read: Save your money, buy something else. It's understandable that with the success of Stardew Valley others try to copy it. But most fail. Hard. This is a fine example of such failure. At first glance it seems like an updated 3D version of SV, which would be nice, but as soon as you actually start playing you'll quickly notice two things: Sluggish controls and loading times. LONG loading times. The game world is devided into dozens of, often needlessly small, maps crossing them quite literally is regularly faster than loading the next map. This screams serious memory management issues. The game doesn't really use that much ram but not due to good programming but because the developers were unable to cope with the whole map loaded and instead every few steps the world is just discarded from ram and the next piece loaded. Ouch! Secondly, the controls aren't what you'd call smooth. Movement response is sluggish and imprecise and fighting therefore is arduous and more a game of luck than actual combat. And there's a lot of fighting, too much actually. But that's something most SV copycats suffer from - since they're lacking original ideas they just fill the void with more enemies. Third, item usage shortcut and quickslot management is a mess. The game strictly adheres to gamepad-like controls even though it's not a console game. With a real console-type game you get a quickselect wheel or similar to efficiently and quickly choose items and tools from and a non-console game simply uses that big keyboard in front of you. This game does neither and it does it badly. Oh, and selecting from the inventory during fighting is a bad idea - time does not stop to let you think and plan. Bad design decision. And the game world itself is missing a lot. It appears too artificial and without depth, npcs are little more than quest markers and the story tries too hard to be mysterious and interesting and falls short of both.
Some bad underwater deep-down submarine simulation game. Controls are broken and fiddly, you can configure all you want but it still won't behave in any reasonable way. I never even made it consistantly far from the starting point, only once by sheer chance. I guess there's some story and crew management - never got that far. The developers clearly didn't do any research into how a submarine behaves and moves or at least how a ship does. Maybe they didn't even care… My advice: Spent your money elsewhere or apply for refund.
After Primordia, which was an ok but not necessarily very good game, this was heralded as a great improvement and it delivered - not. For this review I just played the game again because I had forgotten everything about it, despite it being only a couple of weeks since playing it last. And even now I find it difficult to come up with much. The graphics and design and some other ideas clearly and obviously take inspriration from some of the horror classics of the 90th like Phantasmagoria, Sanitarium and — most importantly — Darkseed. One could almost say some parts are a blatant copy. But while these were serious (and successful) attempts at psychological horror, this game is not. The utter lack of a story or any real content makes this an unsubstantial, boring and uninteresting game. Just having "Giger-inspired" graphics is not enough for a good game. Now, the premise of a man caught at an infernal, strange carnival certainly seems promising and interesting and opens up many possibilities but not much was really done to work with this. As a result, the game is more or less just a short series of random pseudo-horror puzzles threwn together with no story to bind them. It's quite sad to see what the developers wasted their time on. The voice actors are not bad and did what they could, but there is only so much they can achieve when the writers mess up. My advice to Wormwood would be to hire new story authors and writers (and new designers while they're at it) and maybe next time the result will be better. For anyone else: This game is worth neither your money nor your time. Spend both on something else.
Another infamous example of game design gone wrong. I like the setting and backstory of this game, the somewhat sad and hopeless "future" where people struggle to come by but still try to be civil. The art style does a lot to emphasis that. The game begins as a standard point&click adventure, good voice acting and not too many locations to get confused early on. You pretty much get thrown into this bleak world and know, you're in for good. It's a nice touch the ui gets completely out of the way if it's not needed - more games should do it like this! But then there is this point about an hour or so into the game where you hit a wall. There's a calligraphy puzzle and whoever decided to come up with this should be banned from game design and development - for life. Along with anyone allowing this to be part of the game and anyone not catching this during the testing phase and anyone being part of the management and not having the guts to kick these people out. I'm serious. I have no idea how anyone could come up with this and how it survived the initial design & review. The "solution" - if you can call it that - is given in-game and I even printed it out, but still couldn't solve it. I found a savegame just after this spot because apparently many people run into this and after countless tries for several days I finally managed it, once, but stopped playing the game and put it on my "never again" list. If this is a sign of how the remainder of the game is designed, I'd rather not waste my time on it, independent of how good the story or setting may (or may not) be. How none of the playtesters caught this and how the one who came up with this wasn't held responsible is beyond me. Unfortunately, this is increasingly common nowadays. And yes, I did try to use a graphics tablet instead of a mouse but it still wouldn't work. Now, imagine someone suffering from ms or parkinson attempting to play this game. Ouch…
Another game with a great premise and subpar execution. The original idea - as far as I can tell - is interesting and relevant, but the result is not. This game, like so many nowadays promising an interesting story and captivating gameplay, is simply junk, worth neither time nor money (I'm seriously considering reclaiming my money on this one). Sure, it might have super highres raytracing graphics and a well-made soundtrack and I suppose good voice actors, but it stops there. Well, let's go over it: First, you can't rebind the keyboard controls which is a big no-no. This make the game really awkward and cumbersome to play. Secondly, it's sluggish and runs slow and with stutters, even with the graphics settings turned way down. In fact, the graphics settings make no difference in sluggishness, neither high nor low has any effect on speed. This, combined with the shabby controls makes for a bad gameplay experience. Then, time-based puzzles. A simple puzzle doesn't get more "interesting" or "challenging" by setting a time limit. It only gets annoying, especially with the bad controls. It also means the developers were running out of ideas already at the start of the game - not a good sign. There are plenty little other things, like the task view sorted the wrong way around, but I think this is enough. SOMA is often compared to this, but there is no comparison. SOMA has a clear, straight, efficient gameplay with no slowdowns and you're not pressed for time solving puzzles. The enemies are an optional annoyance for those that want it - just switch them off and you're free to think and ponder. And this is the correct way to go. Unfortunately, many new games suffer from these problems. A great idea and story, good graphics, music and voice actors, but the game is below adequate, barely functioning and in many cases only half-finished. If it were still in development, this would be fine. But it is considered "finished".
Hmm, this is not easy to describe. Normally, I'll spend some time with a game to get into it, get a feel for it and make up my mind, before writing about it (or even considering a let's play). For longer games like this, the usuall limit is at least 20 to 25 hours, to get a grip. However, with this one I really had to push myself beyond 5 hours and I've now given up after about 14 hours. And I'm not happy about it. The game was developed by a smaller studio and clearly shows. Indie games have the advantage of more liberal topics, storylines and trying out something new. In this case it means less playtesting, looks over function and - most importantly - deficiant quality control. I've literally gotten stuck on seemingly small edges, stones and sometimes in the middle of an open area with no other way to continue than to reload an earlier savegame. Also, the game regularly loses its track on the mouse and you can no longer turn in one or the other direction. This can be fixed by opening the map and moving the mouse horizontally to both edges. During combat, however, the map is not available and since you rotate the battlefield view with the mouse this leaves without sight of the enemies. This is a consequence of the looks-over-function aspect, with prioritizes cool looking effect and fast battle animations over actual working combat. Sorry, but that's a failure in my book. The small studio has clearly overstrechted themselves and as a result came up with little more than a barely working product. Actual gameplay is also at a disadvantage - almost all your time will be spend grinding instead of travelling around, questing, speaking with people and experiencing the world. During combat characters (and enemies, too) can get into a pathfinding loop, forcing you to kill the game, as during an action you can't open the menu and quite the game normally. And if you want to change the keybindings and think about using xmodmap, forget it - it will crash the game, hard :(
This game is certainly not fpr everyone. You want huge, real-time rendered almost vr-like langscapes? Nope. You want fast 3d battles with lots of bling and enemies storming you from all sides? Sorry. You want a hifi orchestra-level soundtrack with impressive vocals? Look elsewhere. But you want a solid adventure game with puzzles that will require the occasional aspirin? Now we're talking. And with inside jokes and memes that people outside the gaming or computer scene won't even recognize as such? Then you're on the right track. Yes, quite a lot of people are put off by the pseudo pixelartesque look and the chiptune-like music (no voice ingame), but if that doesn't deterr you, you'll like this game. Ok, some of the puzzles are quite difficult and convoluted and sometimes characters have new dialog seemingly without reason, but that's rare. If you listen to what people tell you and combine it, it's more than often a direct hint on what to do. The game is surprisingly long and has several long "dialog cutscenes" to drive the story. It also has filler character that are irrelevant but serve to build the world, something that's more and more rare in modern adventure games. So, if you're into cyberpunk and like head-scratching puzzles and sometimes a bit weird humor, this game is for you. Also, the last few times I checked, the soundtrack was always included with the discount, sou you basically get it for free.
