They may be awkward dimensions, but they're my dreams... Interactive Dream Journal & Diary; Awkward Dimensions Redux is a personal game. Lasts 20 minutes to an hour with less traditional interaction. Focuses on getting to understand another person through an interpretation of their dreams, thoughts, fears, desires, and past work. It's a game about conversing with roosters, disembodied legs, standardized tests, Immature jokes, relationships, art, espionage, and a teenager coming to terms with life and growing up.
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I enjoyed it, but there have been better games that explore this surrealism. I also would have appreciated any sort of subtitles.
Awkward Dimensions Redux has been one of the most strenuous gaming experiences I’ve ever had, and not in a rewarding way either. The definitive proof that you should never trust Steam reviews.
1/10
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I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, I found this game flat out horrible. I hated almost every single aspect of it. I can honestly say I do NOT understand the overwhelmingly positive response this game received on platforms like Steam. Even risking coming across as a huge ass, I do have to state that I find it almost impressive how utterly agonising playing this game was and it didn't even take me an hour to beat.
To me, good art feels a bit like a conversation between the artist and the viewer. It's a dynamic back and forth between the two parties, the artist imbuing their works with their thoughts, impressions and feelings, and the viewer responds with their own interpretations and new perspectives.
Awkward Dimensions Redux (henceforth shortened to ADR) instead feels a bit like Steven Harmon chained you to a chair, taped your eyes open and made you watch a photo album from his teenage years under threat of violence. I am not kidding when I say that I have never seen any game or other personal art project that was this self absorbed and blatantly disinterested in letting the player find their own associations within the imagery here.
I know it’s typically considered contentious to treat something that is ostensibly a gamified dream journal this harshly but this game truly has close to nothing worthwhile going on here. There is always this tendency to be particularly forgiving towards semi-autobiographical stuff like this but I really don’t feel like ADR warrants such a thoughtful approach when it gives you quite literally almost nothing to hold onto, both in terms of gameplay and """story""".
I feel like ADR is emblematic of the peak of this “Steam Walking Simulator”-era type game design, where the mere notion that games should probably feature.. you know, actual game design, is passive-aggressively scoffed at by both the dev as well as a horde of college freshmen who just discovered the concept of abstract art. There are, of course, exceptions. “Proteus” for example, is a super short little walking simulator that doesn’t overstay its welcome and even offers some replayability based on its randomised set up, features great music and an interesting art style and grants you an interesting little adventure experience where the fact that you’re here to observe this uniquely created island each time is heightened by the music and visuals reacting directly to your observation of them.
Or take “Dear Esther” as another highly popular example. While there is basically nothing to do outside of walking from start to finish and it takes just about 2 hours to beat, the narrative is extremely deep and rich and made more interesting by the fact that the narrator will only ever speak about 40% of the lines that were actually recorded for that game, letting you uncover a different aspect of the story each time.
So what exactly does ADR bring to the table?
The idea is that we’re exploring the dreams of the dev, Steven Harmon, in his teenage years and experience some snapshots from his mind. Some of these dream landscape are more abstract than others, and some are obviously drawn literally from the devs life. While this could all be potentially interesting, this exploration of dreamscapes very seldom moves past just walking around in a confined space at a snail's pace and occasionally having to listen to Steven rant about something from his life - that is, when this game isn’t throwing some extremely janky mechanics at you and expects you to just deal with them.
Anytime the game threatens to become even remotely interesting, ADR immediately squanders it by either suddenly cutting away to another level without warning or introduces yet another unneeded and frustrating mechanic that further drags down the experience as a whole. Some of the locales this game takes us are visually quite interesting, but they rarely, if ever go beyond something you’d see in just about any other obscure 1st person puzzle game like “Kairo”, “Mind: Path to Thalamus“ and “’N Verlore Verstand”.
I understand that this is a deeply personal project for Steven Harmon (the developer of this game) and I DON'T intend on discouraging either him nor anyone else from transforming childhood memories and your upbringing into interesting art. But instead of taking the very relatable feeling of teenage angst and reinterpreting it in a way where we gain a little insight into the creator's mind or at least are given the freedom to freely interpret the abstract imagery we are presented with, all of the pent-up self hatred and disdain is instead let out on the player in the form of (seemingly) deliberately infuriating and obtuse controls, terrible sound mixing which oddly feels like it's meant to throw you off with how shoddy it is (seriously, the dialogue in this game is nigh unintelligible due to how terrible the balancing is), terrible platforming sections that were clearly not playtested very much, the walking speed of a crippled snail and - most damningly of all - a disappointingly cliché overall message. The only reason I even brought myself to finish it was out of some weird sense of obligation, or maybe even just morbid curiosity. The literal one thing I’ll give this game is that the OST isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard. It’s not groundbreaking or even all that interesting, but given the rest of the game, it feels like it’s worth a mention at least.
Please dear dev, in the extreme edge case you're reading this: Don't stop making games. I don't mean for this to discourage you - or anyone - from making extremely personal art like this, but PLEASE consider that this utterly pretentious, passive-aggressive style of ""game design"" and story telling is not automatically deep OR interesting simply because it elicits strong emotions.
A picture says more than a thousand words, especially when those words are barely intelligible.
I'm really sorry but this isn't good and I'd never recommend it, even to die-hard fans of this genre of game.
1/10
1/10
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, I found this game flat out horrible. I hated almost every single aspect of it. I can honestly say I do NOT understand the overwhelmingly positive response this game received on platforms like Steam. Even risking coming across as a huge ass, I do have to state that I find it almost impressive how utterly agonising playing this game was and it didn't even take me an hour to beat.
To me, good art feels a bit like a conversation between the artist and the viewer. It's a dynamic back and forth between the two parties, the artist imbuing their works with their thoughts, impressions and feelings, and the viewer responds with their own interpretations and new perspectives.
Awkward Dimensions Redux (henceforth shortened to ADR) instead feels a bit like Steven Harmon chained you to a chair, taped your eyes open and made you watch a photo album from his teenage years under threat of violence. I am not kidding when I say that I have never seen any game or other personal art project that was this self absorbed and blatantly disinterested in letting the player find their own associations within the imagery here.
I know it’s typically considered contentious to treat something that is ostensibly a gamified dream journal this harshly but this game truly has close to nothing worthwhile going on here. There is always this tendency to be particularly forgiving towards semi-autobiographical stuff like this but I really don’t feel like ADR warrants such a thoughtful approach when it gives you quite literally almost nothing to hold onto, both in terms of gameplay and """story""".
I feel like ADR is emblematic of the peak of this “Steam Walking Simulator”-era type game design, where the mere notion that games should probably feature.. you know, actual game design, is passive-aggressively scoffed at by both the dev as well as a horde of college freshmen who just discovered the concept of abstract art. There are, of course, exceptions. “Proteus” for example, is a super short little walking simulator that doesn’t overstay its welcome and even offers some replayability based on its randomised set up, features great music and an interesting art style and grants you an interesting little adventure experience where the fact that you’re here to observe this uniquely created island each time is heightened by the music and visuals reacting directly to your observation of them.
Or take “Dear Esther” as another highly popular example. While there is basically nothing to do outside of walking from start to finish and it takes just about 2 hours to beat, the narrative is extremely deep and rich and made more interesting by the fact that the narrator will only ever speak about 40% of the lines that were actually recorded for that game, letting you uncover a different aspect of the story each time.
So what exactly does ADR bring to the table?
The idea is that we’re exploring the dreams of the dev, Steven Harmon, in his teenage years and experience some snapshots from his mind. Some of these dream landscape are more abstract than others, and some are obviously drawn literally from the devs life. While this could all be potentially interesting, this exploration of dreamscapes very seldom moves past just walking around in a confined space at a snail's pace and occasionally having to listen to Steven rant about something from his life - that is, when this game isn’t throwing some extremely janky mechanics at you and expects you to just deal with them.
Anytime the game threatens to become even remotely interesting, ADR immediately squanders it by either suddenly cutting away to another level without warning or introduces yet another unneeded and frustrating mechanic that further drags down the experience as a whole. Some of the locales this game takes us are visually quite interesting, but they rarely, if ever go beyond something you’d see in just about any other obscure 1st person puzzle game like “Kairo”, “Mind: Path to Thalamus“ and “’N Verlore Verstand”.
I understand that this is a deeply personal project for Steven Harmon (the developer of this game) and I DON'T intend on discouraging either him nor anyone else from transforming childhood memories and your upbringing into interesting art. But instead of taking the very relatable feeling of teenage angst and reinterpreting it in a way where we gain a little insight into the creator's mind or at least are given the freedom to freely interpret the abstract imagery we are presented with, all of the pent-up self hatred and disdain is instead let out on the player in the form of (seemingly) deliberately infuriating and obtuse controls, terrible sound mixing which oddly feels like it's meant to throw you off with how shoddy it is (seriously, the dialogue in this game is nigh unintelligible due to how terrible the balancing is), terrible platforming sections that were clearly not playtested very much, the walking speed of a crippled snail and - most damningly of all - a disappointingly cliché overall message. The only reason I even brought myself to finish it was out of some weird sense of obligation, or maybe even just morbid curiosity. The literal one thing I’ll give this game is that the OST isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard. It’s not groundbreaking or even all that interesting, but given the rest of the game, it feels like it’s worth a mention at least.
Please dear dev, in the extreme edge case you're reading this: Don't stop making games. I don't mean for this to discourage you - or anyone - from making extremely personal art like this, but PLEASE consider that this utterly pretentious, passive-aggressive style of ""game design"" and story telling is not automatically deep OR interesting simply because it elicits strong emotions.
A picture says more than a thousand words, especially when those words are barely intelligible.
I'm really sorry but this isn't good and I'd never recommend it, even to die-hard fans of this genre of game.
1/10
it sure is not good