It's incredible how heavily the narrative of "for a game about observation the timer is really polluting the entire experience" as if the timer isn't only a necessity in the pursuit of a perfect file and as if the levels aren't designed with the intention of replayability. You are only as limited by the timer as you feel the need to be, and I think that speaks volumes more about the individual than the game's arbitrary score attack elements.

That said Umurangi Generation isn't a perfect game by any means, namely dragged down by jank controls and sometimes awkward placement of objectives that feel as if they intrinsically limit creativity behind the player's approach. Yet overall the game's stellar visuals, themes, and especially the soundtrack are indisputably all bangers. There's a clear Evangelion influence present that took me by surprise, but wholly welcomed, and I believe it's perfectly encapsulated by the set pieces in a way that generates an extremely eerie atmosphere that is wholly unique to itself. It provides the player with the inescapable sensation of being a spectator to something much greater, and Macro further expands upon that with some of the best levels of the entire game in my opinion.

It's a short, tight experience that I don't regret at all.

A game about apocalyptic amateur photography. Honestly, how well you like the game depends on how much you vibe with the game's style, which is a main part of its appeal. The levels are fun to explore and jam packed with little details that drip feed you the overarching story of the world, from movie posters to discarded newspapers.

Mechanically, Umurangi is a photography game that plays a bit like a puzzle game. Sometimes taking the photos the game wants is like a game of Where's Waldo, but other times it's about figuring out where you need to be to line up the perfect shot. My only real complaint about the gameplay would be the timer. While it is easy to ignore and only impacts your bonus score, on a first playthrough it can really feel like the game is pushing you to rush from photo to photo, when it really needs you to slow down and soak in all the details.

[Disclaimer: Ich steh in den Credits, hallo!]
Ich weiß bis heute nicht genau was ich von Umurangi Generation halten soll.

Ein Fotografie Spiel bei dem du deine Augen nach bestimmten Motiven offen halten und dich manchmal kreativ anstellen musst, um all die Aufgaben abzuarbeiten, ist das ideale Gameplay für ein Spiel dessen Storytelling ausschließlich durch visuelle Clues erzählt wird. Ob es das Level an sich ist, Veränderungen im Freundeskreis, oder auch mal der plumpe Klassiker: Der Zeitungsartikel auf der Frontpage.

Das Spiel hat damals einiges mit mir gemacht. Ein Fotografie Spiel von irgendso einem Youtuber den ich noch abonniert hatte. Inspiriert durch die "Australian bushfire season" 2018/2019 und wie, trotz der eindeutigen Umstände die Politik lieber alles mögliche dafür verantwortlich machen wollte, statt die Situation in der wir uns nunmal befinden, erschien dieses Spiel im Mai 2020 gleich inmitten der nächsten Krise.
Ein Spiel darüber wie die Politik uns versagt hat, mit Lebensmittelmängeln überall, Alltagsmasken, Leuten die auf den Straßen protestieren, Ordnungshütern die stärker bewaffnet sind als sie es sollten, während Politiker sich eine schöne Zeit im Urlaub gönnen.
All das während ich mir Sorgen machte, ob Familienmitglieder Covid überleben würden, während meine Twitter-Timeline voll mit Polizeigewalt in Amerika war.

Sehr viel Chaos auf der Welt, sehr viel Leid und Ungerechtigkeit, Freunden und Bekannten die am Anfang vom halbherzigen Lockdown fast durchgedreht sind - und ich hockte hier und durfte mir lustige Sätze ausdenken wieso irgendein Videospiel nicht so gut ist um über die Runden zu kommen.
Und der Fotograf des Spiels hockte da und hat sich lustige Motive ausgedacht um über die Runden zu kommen.

Diese Parallele hat Klick gemacht, so wie kaum ein Videospiel jemals Klick gemacht hat bei mir.
Das Spiel hat damals definitiv etwas mit mir gemacht, auch wenn ich nun vier Jahre später, diese Emotionen nicht mehr genau beschreiben kann.
Rückblickend war es wohl auch so ein bisschen der Auslöser, meine Attitude gegenüber Spielen allgemein zu ändern. Und das ist mir unendlich viel wert.


Das Spiel an sich allerdings... na ja. Ich sehe durchaus, dass die Emotionen die ein Spiel auslösen kann, deutlich mehr Wert haben können als die technische Umsetzung. Aber Umurangi Generation ist leider ein Wrack.
Der Player Controller ist so basic wie es nur irgendwie geht. Ständig bleibt man irgendwo hängen, oder rutscht irgendwo ab, oder verhakt sind in irgendeinem random Asset war auf dem Boden liegt.
Die Navigation ist so schlimm, wie es nur irgendwie sein kann. Die Tatsache, dass ein Doppelsprung eingebaut werden musste damit du aus bestimmten Ecken überhaupt wieder rauskommen kannst, ist da schon Hinweis genug.
Nicht selten springst du gegen ein Brett und machst danach einen Super Bounce, oder du rennst einfach nur eine Treppe hoch und fällst durch weil du zu schnell warst, oder oder oder.
Das ganze wird nur noch dann schlimmer, wenn du im DLC die Inline Skates freischaltest, weil du mit denen nun wirklich ÜBERALL festhängen wirst und dich kaum durch eine Gasse bewegen kannst, um durch die hauchdünnen Wände zu clippen. Im Grunde kannst du jedem Level durch jede Wand entkommen, indem du einfach nur kurz Shift drückst. Aber selbst ohne es zu provozieren, ist jede Form der Navigation hier unglaublich mies.
Fehlende Komfortfunktionen im Rest der Steuerung und die Tatsache, dass die Mausempfindlichkeit je nach Objektiv komplett broken ist, runden den Eindruck nur noch ab.

Auch die Aufgaben sind nie sonderlich interessant und wirklich nur ein abarbeiten von Dingen die du "sehen" musst. Klar sind diese nur Mittel zum Zweck, doch da du Missionen nicht beenden kannst ohne wirklich ALLES gemacht haben zu müssen, und du auch mitten im Level nicht speichern darfst, kann das halt sehr schnell sehr frustrierend sein.

Im Grunde wirkt alles in diesem Spiel nur wie ein sehr basic, sehr janky, aber auch sehr ein umständlicher Mittel zum Zweck für das, was das Spiel erzählen möchte.
Und das Leute das akzeptieren um den guten Kern hervorzuheben, kann ich gut nachvollziehen! Wie gesagt, ich glaub das Spiel war der Anstoß für mich zu lernen Videospiele doch ein bisschen anders zu betrachten.
Es macht das Gameplay nur nicht sonderlich viel erträglicher.

Despite having a few bugs, and a few parts being a bit broken - I loved Umurangi Generation.

It's pretty much everything that I would personally want in a game. Beautiful Jet Set Radio-esque graphics, a kickass soundtrack, a variety of beautiful settings, and a general fun gameplay loop that's somewhat addicting. The progression in this game is great too, as you get more and more options, until you eventually can pretty much create any photo that you could ever dream of.

But it's the themes of this game that truly blew me away. So much fantastic visual storytelling, as we see a progression of a war from the perspective of a journalist, whose only voice in the world is the photos that they take. There are some seriously jaw-dropping moments throughout this game, and especially in the unreasonably good DLC, which has 4 of the largest levels in the game. The dedication at the end of the game is what really tied it all together for me, and made this into one of my favorite examples of 'games being art.'

Umurangi Generation is a game I will jump back into multiple times, but nothing can ever compare to the feeling of first exploring it's beautiful, yet tragic world - jank n' all.

10/10
Game #12 of 2024, February 18th

really enjoyed this! i've been a massive kaiju fan pretty much my entire life and NGE means the world to me so when jacob geller talked about this game i knew i had to check it out. set pieces are beautiful (and evangelion inspired) and the whole aesthetic of the game is just so cool. only downside was how much time i spent wandering around the level looking for the objectives. taking cool pictures is so much fun and then once i've taken like 50 i have to spend another 15 minutes wandering around aimlessly :(. this might just be a me thing tho cause im not the most observant person and also have literally never played a photography game before, though i will have to check some more out after this one.

As someone who got pretty heavy into street photography again this summer, I wanted to give this genre a second chance despite my lukewarm experience with Toem a couple months ago, but in my first impression of Umurangi Generation I just got reminded of some of the same design philosophy and issues as i had experienced back then. However I eventually found more intention here than in Toem.

The gameplay loop consists entirely of following a restriction of checklists with the photos you need to take for the game. Add to that, an incentivesed speedrun for a bonus if you complete all of the bounties in the current location below ten minutes, which seems utterly antithetical to the joy of photography.
Is the act of being a gamefied contract worker really the only possibility for these types of games? Does it really also need a ticking timer in the corner to stress me out on top of that?
And I can understand the feel for the existence of the former, but only because we are trained to expect some kind of tangible objective to follow as gamers and game designers. Umurangi Generation to my suprise actually found a way to elevate this game design obligation. (I get into that a bit further down) "If there are no conditions to be met how else could you call it a game, how else would the game know you did the thing!" could be argued. My problem with this notion is that every photography game I have played inevitably turns the inherent creativity of that artform into something different instead of searching for a way to fully embrace it.

For about fifteen minutes of trying to check off the ten-solar-panel-bounty from the list in the second level "Otumoe Tai" I was naively ignorant towards the little, extra symbol next to that objective, because I genuinely didn't even want to consider that the game asks for further, more specific restric.. I mean conditions to take my shots. I legit thought my game was bugged or some shit, but turns out I was truly a bit naive and that Umurangi Generation wants it's players to take most of their pictures with a very particular lense or distance to the sub- and objects for successful progression. In those twenty minutes my efforts at photography became really uninspired and after that realisation the recovery from this seemed pretty usless to me and the game.
The timer, which in my playthrough continued in red numbers upwards to infinity (it should just disappear after you failed or only be unlocked after your first completed run of a level) for no apparent reason other than to tease me with exactly how much time I have been wasting in this game, was not encouraging a different mindset.
There were two levels after which I gave up on trying to loose myself in "making art" and just tried to speedrun the act of pointing at the right thing with the right thing in the right way, but failed each time to get the bonus and dreaded to complete tasks in which I was asked to count a bunch of things again. If I had known this game was more about counting shit, finding specific stuff or the semi-puzzle of detecting an angle(often a single intended one, for the most egregious of the bounties to my delight illuminated by a neon green circle, which presumably also earns the player some extra cash to stand in and take their photo from but Idk) to combine multiple of the intended sub- or objects in one frame, all with, and I'll say it again, A TIMER STARING AND JUDGING YOUR EFFICIENCY, I probably wouldn't have bought it on a whim and engaged in a little more thinking feller behaviour before that. I should just stop going into games completly blind and adjust my expectations with a bit of research beyond looking at some screen shots or looking at a high number next a promising ramping curve on a Backlogged entry, smh.

Thoughtfull level design kind of alleviates some of those complaints a bit. Like when I was inside the Train a bounty asked to photograph twenty sticky notes. I knew the game wouldn't get my lazy ass to actually count all the things on my screen again, but low and behold I eyeballed it and the first snap I took of a wall in the kitchen had generously, exactly that amount of yellow squares rendered on it. Occasionally my illiterate ass got stumped by a single word in the objective (my dumbest moment, which I would like to share for the readers amusement, was seeing the words "two coffees" next to the word "downlight" in which the context of coffee made me unironically, on autopilot and by association deduct, while also not really questioning the lack of a space between the two, that "downlight" had to be an in-universe drink.. you know like bud light.. In retrospection I am fully selfaware that this was hilariously stupid, but Idc to admit this while simultaneously still blaming the game, because this was the first bounty with two entirely different genres of things, there is an overabundance of in-universe food items in this level and the term "ceiling light" exists. Lol. Hell, I should just play games, with the option available, in German. The word used in that version of the game translates literally into ceiling light and not "Einbauleuchte" as google translates my headcanon light beer,(I only looked this up after the fact tho) would have saved ten minutes of my time which I am now more than matching with this self-reporting paragraph about my own idiocy for your entertainment. Edit: I actually managed to find a streamer with an even dumber thought process than mine https://www.twitch.tv/superantonio64/v/861937373?sr=a&t=20s all love tho and the photo is pretty fire)

But man, thank god, most of these problems seem kind of more.. unimportant once world building does it's magic, the story fully lifts the curtains and the worth of the camera in your hand achieves it's, by the game intended, purpose. (I actually won't spoil that much of the story or themes in here)
Those very specific things you need to photograph lead the player to examine the Mise en scene,(unless of course they just unpluck their thinking box and only scan the enviourment for the crucial thing) so while the gameplay could feel like contract worker's fetch quest to me, the lists are admittedly kinda genius in getting the player to focus on each individual polygon, it's meaning and as a result in it's enviourmental story telling and exposition. A part of this trick Umurangi pulls, which shifted my initial annoyance about it into appreciation once I got what it was doing, were the at first glance decivingly simple descriptions which lead me to inspect every render in some of the comfortably small levels to rule each one of them out. When a prompt asks to photograph a specific word for instance, I would in tandem, even if just accidentally, read most of the sentences on a poster, graffity, the small print on a random box, the food item label, or beyond just the headline of a magazine a NPC might hold in their hands.
This got me to properly inspect the green fireflies while searching for a butterfly which lead to some cool isolated close ups of one, or aware if the large amount of cigarettes, knifes and medkits in the UN millitary camp while searching for those objectives(some of the first clues hinting that there is something more sinister going on than the rooftop photo-session like in the intro level before that), or to fully inspect the unravelling apocalypse outside a moving train while joining the flashing of a red light.
How the entire Walled City is looking for solace inside VR gaming headsets, while I was taking shots of a the word "gamers" a bunch of times. Crazy how a prompt like "photograph the word gamers 7 times" can lead to such a hard hitting declaration by the game I myself was currently escaping into. Seeing a fully armed and ready Military OP right next to a twitching dude with a VR headset tucked to his face is pretty jarring imagery. Or how your first sight in that level are a bunch of joyful folks dancing in the streets, I in an instant felt obligated to capture with my shutter, just to turn that camera lense and understand what the name "Walled City" truly encompasses.

Through this design Umurangi Generation engaged me in it's story, themes and humanity with a sharp but subliminal efficiency. All of the games I've played then forgotten in which the gorgous, painstakingly sculpted 3D models, digitally printed graphic designs, each intentfully placed static pixels on my screen transformed into backround noise after the obligatory respect for the effort, all of which are contrastingly focal in this world and even highlighted in their low-poly beauty through the gameplay of toying around with an array of lenses and settings gifted to the player.
A part of me believes that all of these observations I just attributed to the games design would have still taken place without it's reliance on checklists, but the existence of one itself gives context. Who am I taking these for? Who even pays me for it? The ominous implication of getting a fine for photographing the blue shells, which needs a bit of time to fully settle in, comes to mind. That this at first deceptively simple mechanic to get the player to be more careful with the framing and not just mindlessly waste a filmroll has genuine meaning in the story was brilliantly executed.


The music is also more than worth mentioning, but I have to admit I fell like condensing a plethora of tones and soundscapes into a few sentences, not wanting to adding another wall of text, always boils down to using genre descriptive buzzwords. In the context of this review a famous Elliot Erwitt quote on photography is fitting "The whole point of taking a picture is so that you don't have to explain things with words"
Maybe that's why I'd rather listen to, or play music than attempting to find the right ones for something that maybe can't be reduced to them and my RYM is as empty as my ball sack after listening to this OST. Anyways.
Bouncy, atmospheric synth- and drum-sample-heavy EDM, Breakbeat and Hip Hop transcends the atmosphere even further and goes hard from the moment you are greeted by the flapping vapor-waves of the penguin at the starting screen. There might be a few duds here and there, but the sheer volume and consistency in the catalogue for such a short game is impressive on it's own.
(Pretty irrelevant, but why did that MF choose the surename Adolf in his music?? Or did his parents do that to him? I couldn't find it out)

Gonna go even more off the rails here and talk about my love for street photography a bit, although truthfully the game feels more like you are a war correspondent, which I cannot speak on in the slightest and like I explained it even kinda convinced me of its game design philosophy on photography after some time and thoughts, but still.
Street photography in general seems impossible to replicate inside of a Video Game. You try to capture the slipt of a second in time, in an endless stream of movement. No looped animation circle could achieve that. Street photography specificially(hell, realistically war photography even more so, but probably for different more legitimate reasons) even if harmless can be an adrenaline rush. "Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear" You'll need to be friendly, confident, subtle and bold in the same breath and not afraid of some verbal confrontation. It is kinda therapeutic to me and genuinely helps me with my, during covid developed, agrophobia and social anxiety. If they catch me while snapping it I just smile and tell them what I am doing, most of the time they don't even care. I only take pictures in touristy spots and mostly groups of old people and their dogs, but I still sometimes catch myself not wanting to disturb anyone and once I only take one picture in a span of twenty+ minutes that's when I am done for the day. I just do it for myself, to get better at it and photography.
It also lets you view the world through a different lense (bad pun intended). You start noticing and appreciating lines, shapes and people you were previously blind towards and develope an eye for when a real or interesting moment is about to unfold out of the nessecity to capture it. "All the the technique in the world doesn't compensate for the inability to notice"
There is no way a glorified screenshot in a Video Game could ever come close to that specific experience. That game would need to be a money-eating, ambitious risk and for a very niche audience. And probably the only, I hate say this next string of words, open-world-game I would get giddy for. Shit I'll just go outside and do my thing there.

Like I said I don't actually want write about or spoil the story, beyond a few observations up to the halfway point at least. Mostly because it's the one thing best experienced for yourself and someone smarter probably did a better synapsis or analyses about it. That reminds me, now I can finally, fully delve into that new Jacob Geller hood classic, this time without skipping the portion about this game. Also this review is way to long already. Holy.

I might bump the score eventually, because I am aware I sometimes like to judge games for what I wish they could have been, which is silly when a game achieves what it set out to do well enough. Despite having even more nitpicks like the finicky 3D platforming I didn't care for or that I wished the NPCs had at least some kind of reaction to shoving a camera up their faces or words to say about it and the world instead of just changing the poses of the player characters friends. The score will always be capped though, because the implementation of a timer is inexcusable to me. (I've said that like four or five times now lol, but I was just unable to ignore it in my playthrough)

The layers of presentation, the very unique branch of the low-poly (gonna throw reductive buzzwords out again) "neonpunk vapor-wave" aesthetic, the bopping OST and the detailed, environmental world building gives Umurangi Generation the worth to spend your time and money on, but I would recommend leaving the house if you go into this expecting it to scratch more than a very simple and gamefied itch for photography, although it found a way to give purpose to it's use in a slightly different context.
I actually would recommend the latter to eveyone here, in all of the ways you choose to interpretate it. Aight, imma grab my film rolls and head out.

Umurangi é sobre ser o último a ver o mundo morrer, apagar as luzes antes de sair. O verbo é ver, literalmente, pois o que podemos fazer é apenas presenciar e registrar, em filmes que ninguém verá. O plano de fundo toma inspiração muito clara e direta do Terceiro Impacto de Evangelion, com um vetor anti-colonialista havaiano dando uma direção política interessante ao fim do mundo que retratamos - os heróis e os vilões não são óbvios, e o fim sempre é uma bagunça. Diante da impotência, apenas nos resta viver: dançar, pintar, encontrar na comunidade uma euforia que acompanha e precede um luto contínuo - alguns já se foram, e o seu futuro não existe mais.

Ainda que não seja do tipo de vaguear por mundos digitais, me senti um pouco comprimido pelos objetivos rígidos de cada fase: tire X foto com Y lente. Sinto que foram colocados para guiar o seu olho por pontos de interesse, porém achei que, ligados a um timer e a alguns bugs no reconhecimento das fotos, distraem o jogador de absorver totalmente o ambiente e tirar as fotos que realmente quer tirar. Como tiramos essas fotos por dinheiro que não temos como gastar em funcionalidades de gameplay, há quiçá um certo comentário sobre como até no fim do mundo: a última geração ainda precisa de freela pra viver.

Quando se trata de fotografia, sou uma batata. Não entendo de composição, edição, lentes e boas práticas. Ainda assim, gosto de tirar fotos, especialmente quando consigo através delas capturar uma sensação, ou uma narrativa - ainda que através de um olho destreinado, com resultados porcos que muitas vezes só fazem sentido para mim. Umurangi Generation me deu um cenário cativante para fazer isso, e até me ensinou um pouquinho sobre como tirar fotos de um jeito em que ainda seja meu. O mundo deles pode ter morrido, mas fica nas minhas memórias e na galeria, desconfortavelmente enfiada no fundo de users\[username]\AppData\LocalLow\ORIGAME DIGITAL\Umurangi Generation. Imagina como foi achar isso no Steam Deck.

I really dig the aesthetic but the janky controls and clumsy movement really make this game hard to enjoy. Played the game without the Macro expansion so I was a bit disappointed by the impossibility to tweak your aperture, shutter speed and ISO, as it's a photography game, so to speak. I also found the post-processing options really lackluster. Moreover, the first two levels are absurdly small and can be traversed in their entirety in a matter of seconds. First impression was kind of terrible, so I preferred to refund the game and move on rather than sticking to it and waiting for it to reedem itself.

I am so confused about this game.

On one hand, it's not what I wanted. My superficial expectations for the game were for it to be a photo sim set in a cyberpunk dystopia.

But on the other hand, what I ended up getting was a photo sim set in a cyberpunk dystopia using environmental storytelling from the perspective of a photographer... With arcade goals and a timer that lock a lot of the tools for photography.

It's this weird clash where the music is incredible, the art direction can be stunning, the details and on the nose commentary gel soooooo well together. The mission goals are a cool way to force you to go around and get creative taking pictures while exploring the levels. But that timer encourages to do all that as fast as possible. Which discouraged me from really settling in and taking everything in.

Not to mention the score system is fairly arbitrary. I had instances where taking a photo of a wall would earn me tons more than one that was significantly more detailed, complex and difficult. So I didn't have much reason to not take pics that just earned me the most points as opposed to what I thought looked better.

Also the game is big jank. I would get launched 400 feet up in the air just by climbing up the stairs, go at mach 5 by slightly touching a rail, clipping under the map just because i walked forward.

That said play it because the cool stuff IS REALLY COOL.

I REALLY liked this, the way you learn about the world is super cool and it's a game with a lot of generational anger that deserves to be seen. The gameplay is stylish and taking pictures is fun, some stuff is a bit janky at times but that's not a big deal.

I have one small and incredibly stupid nitpick that I need to rant about so here it goes:
part of me feels like the game wouldn't be the same without the timer, that it would lack difficulty without it
...But another part of me wishes it wasn't in the game and really doesn't like that stuff is locked behind having to replay the level again but faster.
I think I might've enjoyed my time with the game even more if they either:
did away with the timer entirely
-or-
had failing to deliver in time result in a game over (ofc this would require redesigning the game significantly)

Slowly piecing things together about the world and it's people through nothing but a camera lens was such a fun journey and I wish I could experience something like that again. Despite some of the issues or the janky controls, I feel like it's hard to give it anything less than 5 stars because of how much it's inspired me as an artist (and how much it stuck with me days after I finished playing). This game makes me wanna make cool art and let my feelings be known!!!

ALSO THE MUSICS GREAT THANK YOU THORHIGHHEELS

Being someone who loves the practice and execution of photography, this game scratched an itch that most games can't. The idea of a photography game in this specific style, taking place in the shitty future on the verge of impending doom, absolutely ROCKS. Even with no dialogue, the game conveys its message and atmosphere strongly through effective world-building and interesting imagery. Every corner has something new to see, making for some incredibly cool pictures in the process. The amount of familiar camera add-ons makes for great variety in your pictures, along with every single useful editing tool to give them that extra flair. I will say that the camera did bug out for me at times, refusing to switch lenses after activating the flash, but other than that the UI is super easy and intuitive for beginners and seasoned photographers.

For me, photography has always been important in capturing specific moments, memorable moments that you will look back on and happily cherish for the rest of your life. This game is easily the closest thing to replicate this feeling, as the more I capture Umurangi, the more and more I fall in love with it. I couldn't recommend this enough.

Excellent as a photography sim but horrendous as a functional game. The amount of times I clipped through the wall while trying to line up a shot was obscene. The parkour is dysfunctional and the collision is near non-existent. There was never a point where I didn't walk through the fences, stairs are unusable without mashing jump. I didn't even know you could jump until Area 3 because stuff kept flinging me in the air. It sucks because the world looks cool as hell, holds a ton of political allegory and you're given a ton of freedom to capture it in the best light possible. Plus music by ThorHighHeels? I might come back one day for a more scenic, casual exploration, but aspects of the game baffled me.