A week after moving to a small town, you are confronted by frustration, an astronaut, and striped siblings... 4-Lung Boy is a short point & click adventure story, designed and illustrated by Anatola Howard (maroonracoon) & put into motion by denzquix
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very strange, very nice. i remember playing it back when i was still in the first stages of learning English, so i didn't really understand much of its story, but i thought it was very interesting nonetheless :)
Golden Boy, Born To Love and Live For Joy, I'm a Golden Boy
There, now that song is stuck in your head too (hopefully, if not go and listen to it right now until it is). I spent most of my playthrough of 4-LungBoy wondering what the title meant, cause the main character is called Golden Boy.
At first I thought it might just be a developer inside joke or maybe its supposed to sound a bit like Golden Boy when said with Sebastian Roth's german accent. I won't reveal what it means in this review but I'll just say I shouldnt have worried, its impossible to miss the answer playing the game.
This game plays the Gundam Opening theme, if that is a selling point to you
Its a point and click adventure with an appealing black and white "sketching in the back of your exercise book" type aesthetic that fits in really well. The themes of alienation, the discomfort and anxiety of first impressions and other problems when moving to a new area, especially a smaller place than you're used to are broached through a typical "get all the items in the checklist" quest through the usual inventory puzzles. The visual and audio design make me think of Ralph Bakshi for some reason, just 10 times tamer (why something that isnt raunchy reminds me of Bakshi I really cannot tell) and is charming in its photograph rotoscopes, minimal sound effects and other pages from the Itch.io Game Jam handbook.
"All the smart people move away from here, and until then there will be sanctuaries and good spots until I can run away".
I like how the eccentric Astronaut you're doing the tasks for mirrors your own experience, he is himself an outsider who yearns to escape, but seems to be in the process of handling it better than you thanks to experience. The titular 4-Lung Boy is also handled smartly in ways I wouldnt spoil.
The only reason why I'm giving taking off half a star or so is cause one final task requires you to beat someone at pong and the mouse kept moving away from the tiny window, causing me to lose which annoyed me.
"My pleasure will be the releases after irritations for now, and I have to find red flags and checkpoints, and healing circles of passion to keep the pleasure consistent"
There, now that song is stuck in your head too (hopefully, if not go and listen to it right now until it is). I spent most of my playthrough of 4-LungBoy wondering what the title meant, cause the main character is called Golden Boy.
At first I thought it might just be a developer inside joke or maybe its supposed to sound a bit like Golden Boy when said with Sebastian Roth's german accent. I won't reveal what it means in this review but I'll just say I shouldnt have worried, its impossible to miss the answer playing the game.
This game plays the Gundam Opening theme, if that is a selling point to you
Its a point and click adventure with an appealing black and white "sketching in the back of your exercise book" type aesthetic that fits in really well. The themes of alienation, the discomfort and anxiety of first impressions and other problems when moving to a new area, especially a smaller place than you're used to are broached through a typical "get all the items in the checklist" quest through the usual inventory puzzles. The visual and audio design make me think of Ralph Bakshi for some reason, just 10 times tamer (why something that isnt raunchy reminds me of Bakshi I really cannot tell) and is charming in its photograph rotoscopes, minimal sound effects and other pages from the Itch.io Game Jam handbook.
"All the smart people move away from here, and until then there will be sanctuaries and good spots until I can run away".
I like how the eccentric Astronaut you're doing the tasks for mirrors your own experience, he is himself an outsider who yearns to escape, but seems to be in the process of handling it better than you thanks to experience. The titular 4-Lung Boy is also handled smartly in ways I wouldnt spoil.
The only reason why I'm giving taking off half a star or so is cause one final task requires you to beat someone at pong and the mouse kept moving away from the tiny window, causing me to lose which annoyed me.
"My pleasure will be the releases after irritations for now, and I have to find red flags and checkpoints, and healing circles of passion to keep the pleasure consistent"