Booth

released on Jul 22, 2020

Year 2036, as the environment on earth continues to deteriorate, untainted food sources have become extremely difficult to find. Every piece of food entering the country must pass a series of tests, executed by the government-employed inspectors.


Released on

Genres


More Info on IGDB


Reviews View More

Somehow a nicer dystopia than the one we currently live in (no food delivery fees)
v
v
v
v
v
Despite my personal struggles with my wrists, Im actually impressed with Booth. Some scattered thoughts:

- The artstyle is pretty pedestrian. Its entirely forgivable when this was made by seemingly one solo dev, but I also have a bias against this sort of... and I mean no disrespect by this, but "lazy pixel art" style. This might actually work to the games favor, because you might not expect that--

- The game is surprisingly well designed. Much to my surprise, the game has a very interesting and compelling series of events planned out and you can see the tricks the game is trying to pull on you if youre paying attention. These things dont happen on accident, they require consideration and vision and Booth absolutely earns some credit there.

- Its both a positive and negative that the game is so long. This was nearly 10 hours for me. Over 40 gameplay segments. Thats impressive for a solo dev, and I think some events later in the game do require you to have really marinated in some of the games concepts. But boy was I ready to be done with the food inspection line.

- I think the narrative and world building, to go along with the event planning, are also pretty interesting, even more than I was expecting. At first it feels a bit arbitrary but I was fairly invested in the outcomes in the second half of the game.

- The typos and strange grammar really did sort of.... diminish I guess? the seriousness of some moments tho. I understand maybe english wasnt the original language for things but it does demonstrate that editing passes are pretty important when youre trying to write something with gravity. I dont hold this against the game at all tho.

I think Booth exceeds how good it ought to be, based on all the things it has going on. This ought to be just a really average, sort of pleasant but largely not notable game - and somehow its not. Its def worth some sort of recommend I think.

Story is genuinely interesting, but it really misses the mark like other games of similar genre did, gameplay loop is just stressful, not challanging like papers please or entertaining like va-11 hall-a, the artstyle is also pretty scuffed.