Traveler's Game
released on Apr 05, 2023
You are Camus Chen. Yesterday you received a video mail from your friend Lu. He thinks you have too few friends and recommends you a popular game: 『This is a battle game but many people use it as a chat room』 Lu told you so. You decided to join your friends in this game to meet new opponents and chat with them while playing against them. Lu wants you to chill. But what you didn't expect is that some of your opponents will have a connection to your life in the future. One of them will even learn the great secret behind you and your friends...
Reviews View More
It's a real shame that Traveler's Game outstays its welcome, cause I think it has enough charm and novelty to make you look past its flaws for most of the game. I was attracted to it by the Visual Novel Real Time Strategy genre mix, I love weird hybrids like that. Shockingly, for the first few hours it suceeded at making a dual gameplay model that didnt feel like two inferior versions bolted to each other.
My stance on hybrid games has always been that they do not need to be great or the best at either of its genres, but the interplay between them must create something greater. For the most part traveler's game pulls this off.
The Premise is : you are a disaffected youth in china working for a travel agency. You get told by a coworker who thinks you are lonely, about an online game which other disaffected youths and general outcasts primarily use as a chat room, with the game part being mostly secondary. The game then follows the format of you adding new people as friends to play and talk to who have their own stories to tell and relationships and worries etc.
I think Traveler's Game has pretty good writing. I say I think, because the translation is pretty bad, but also I think it has to be good if it shines through even a shitty translation. Maybe someone who can speak mandarin can play the game and tell me if they agree. There is a nice contrast in the real-feeling characters you meet, it captures the vibe of whiling away the hours playing private online games with your new internet friend, confiding in each other because you dont at that point have anyone else to talk to about your worries, and they don't know anyone you wouldn't want the information to be relayed to.
It feels human and mundane, which I'm starting to realize are words I use to describe a lot of writing which I enjoy lately. Some characters have touching stories, others have interesting points of view and some are just funny or charming or even slightly annoying, like people are prone to be.
There are a lot of nice little touches to sell on the whole "online game within a game" conceit with one guy not starting the game because he didnt know what button he had to press, some people will leave without finishing the game, some people will only turn on their mic after you ask them too etc.
Unfortunately, the game is just way too long for what it is, it took me 11 hours to reach the ending and it feels like 6 or 7 hours would have been the right length for it (its like 8 euro as well, really cheap so I dont get the reason for the runtime). The translation is pretty bad, and I have a lot of room in my heart to forgive such things cause mandarin to english translations are hard as hell and the dev is like a team of 4 by my count, but my forgiving muscles are very sore by the end. There's a couple unfortunate troop types and even worse, the game doesn't even finish! It pulls a whole "to be continued" bullshit for the rest of it at some point but as I said the game is already outstayed its welcome so I very much doubt Ill play through that.
It makes me sad, cause I do think theres a lot to like, and Im being pretty nice to the game to give it a 6/10 but I cannot go any higher given its shortcomings.
My stance on hybrid games has always been that they do not need to be great or the best at either of its genres, but the interplay between them must create something greater. For the most part traveler's game pulls this off.
The Premise is : you are a disaffected youth in china working for a travel agency. You get told by a coworker who thinks you are lonely, about an online game which other disaffected youths and general outcasts primarily use as a chat room, with the game part being mostly secondary. The game then follows the format of you adding new people as friends to play and talk to who have their own stories to tell and relationships and worries etc.
I think Traveler's Game has pretty good writing. I say I think, because the translation is pretty bad, but also I think it has to be good if it shines through even a shitty translation. Maybe someone who can speak mandarin can play the game and tell me if they agree. There is a nice contrast in the real-feeling characters you meet, it captures the vibe of whiling away the hours playing private online games with your new internet friend, confiding in each other because you dont at that point have anyone else to talk to about your worries, and they don't know anyone you wouldn't want the information to be relayed to.
It feels human and mundane, which I'm starting to realize are words I use to describe a lot of writing which I enjoy lately. Some characters have touching stories, others have interesting points of view and some are just funny or charming or even slightly annoying, like people are prone to be.
There are a lot of nice little touches to sell on the whole "online game within a game" conceit with one guy not starting the game because he didnt know what button he had to press, some people will leave without finishing the game, some people will only turn on their mic after you ask them too etc.
Unfortunately, the game is just way too long for what it is, it took me 11 hours to reach the ending and it feels like 6 or 7 hours would have been the right length for it (its like 8 euro as well, really cheap so I dont get the reason for the runtime). The translation is pretty bad, and I have a lot of room in my heart to forgive such things cause mandarin to english translations are hard as hell and the dev is like a team of 4 by my count, but my forgiving muscles are very sore by the end. There's a couple unfortunate troop types and even worse, the game doesn't even finish! It pulls a whole "to be continued" bullshit for the rest of it at some point but as I said the game is already outstayed its welcome so I very much doubt Ill play through that.
It makes me sad, cause I do think theres a lot to like, and Im being pretty nice to the game to give it a 6/10 but I cannot go any higher given its shortcomings.