a murder mystery with a neat gimmick, that's really all i need in a game tbh. it's a short game, but that's not a bad thing! the story is well-paced and doesn't outstay it's welcome too much, and at $5 it didn't feel overpriced for the amount of gameplay you get.
i had a pretty smooth experience as far as bugs or glitches, maybe the biggest offenders had been patched out by the time i played. the only times i got stuck were due to me missing a line of dialogue or something, which could be a bit finicky at times. but i also enjoy tedious clue hunting, so the downtime was enjoyable for the most part. once i hit the late stages of the game i had to resort to a guide a couple of times and i had a lot of trouble with the big final scene for some reason.
But otherwise it was an enjoyable little mystery game where you get to snoop around a ship. Slowly uncovering each characters backstory and secret as you progress through the main story and unlock different gameplay mechanics keeps the game engaging for the majority of the runtime. as long as you can keep the story moving that is, if you get stuck or miss a vital line of dialogue it can certainly turn very tedious pretty fast. also there's not enough games where you get to solve a big mystery and i just love that shit
i had a pretty smooth experience as far as bugs or glitches, maybe the biggest offenders had been patched out by the time i played. the only times i got stuck were due to me missing a line of dialogue or something, which could be a bit finicky at times. but i also enjoy tedious clue hunting, so the downtime was enjoyable for the most part. once i hit the late stages of the game i had to resort to a guide a couple of times and i had a lot of trouble with the big final scene for some reason.
But otherwise it was an enjoyable little mystery game where you get to snoop around a ship. Slowly uncovering each characters backstory and secret as you progress through the main story and unlock different gameplay mechanics keeps the game engaging for the majority of the runtime. as long as you can keep the story moving that is, if you get stuck or miss a vital line of dialogue it can certainly turn very tedious pretty fast. also there's not enough games where you get to solve a big mystery and i just love that shit
Very ambitious, but very finicky about exactly what you need to do to progress. The story and characters are great, and the possessing mechanic is interesting. The 2 levels of possessing can make things overly complicated on trying to figure out how to proceed though. Very decent length and depth for this type of game!
It's a fun little game, never played Ghost Trick but I have played EarthBound. It does have some glitches, and it's pretty short (it took me only 4.6 hours to get all of the achievements), but for the 5 dollars it is on Steam I'd say it's worth it. The pixel art is really pretty as well. Not perfect, you're gonna have to deal with some bugs, but it's a good experience I'd say. Wish it wasn't so underrated.
for me this was kind of a "mediocrity by a thousand papercuts" kind of situation. the base concept is cool and a ghost trick+mother mashup game should be right up my alley but my personal experience was just not very good. three times i had to redo stuff after the game spawned me in a wall and softlocked me, which led to me saving pretty often, which then led to me missing something earlier on which barred me from getting the true ending. when i realized this (i was following a guide) i started over and just mashed through the dialogue, and realized again about 30 minutes in that i missed something else i needed to do, at which point i just gave up and finished my existing save and looked up the best ending on youtube. at which point i found that there are no commentary-less recordings of the ending on youtube! so i had to watch the true ending with some guy narrarating it into an xbox quality mic.
the music is kind of meh, it doesn't really draw much from mother or ghost trick and opts for a more edm-ish chiptune which i didn't really care for. there were multiple bugs with 16:9 aspect ratio that i'd expect from an action replay code, not a finished game, stuff like textures cutting off and stuff not rendering correctly in the widescreen areas. i think it's pretty hard to squeeze many characters into a short game, and with a runtime of about 3 hours and 10 characters, it's nigh impossible to sufficiently establish them as anything before their own personal "twist" is revealed. there's also some plot holes, most memorably with the mechanic of being able to look at what people are thinking (a mechanic that serves no real functional purpose other than having a reason to put in earthbound-esque battle backgrounds into the game). like realistically you could just look inside the minds of everyone and just see who is thinking about covering their tracks
anyways although i have all these things i didn't like about the game i don't think i disliked it. i don't really know that i actively liked it either but all things considered it was just kind of a game for me. maybe it would be like a 6 or a 7 for me if it wasnt duct taped together and if it wasnt so easy to miss the true ending
the music is kind of meh, it doesn't really draw much from mother or ghost trick and opts for a more edm-ish chiptune which i didn't really care for. there were multiple bugs with 16:9 aspect ratio that i'd expect from an action replay code, not a finished game, stuff like textures cutting off and stuff not rendering correctly in the widescreen areas. i think it's pretty hard to squeeze many characters into a short game, and with a runtime of about 3 hours and 10 characters, it's nigh impossible to sufficiently establish them as anything before their own personal "twist" is revealed. there's also some plot holes, most memorably with the mechanic of being able to look at what people are thinking (a mechanic that serves no real functional purpose other than having a reason to put in earthbound-esque battle backgrounds into the game). like realistically you could just look inside the minds of everyone and just see who is thinking about covering their tracks
anyways although i have all these things i didn't like about the game i don't think i disliked it. i don't really know that i actively liked it either but all things considered it was just kind of a game for me. maybe it would be like a 6 or a 7 for me if it wasnt duct taped together and if it wasnt so easy to miss the true ending
I remember this first being a Flash game, or maybe just a demo of it was on Newgrounds, but I loved it. Seeing it on Steam years later, I had to pick it up again. It holds up pretty well, the overarching mystery and each of the characters' stories are all interesting and fun to figure out. Just a solid narrative adventure game, I recommend it!
Aunque es cutrillo tuvo un algo que me enganchó y me lo pasé de una sentada.
A fun little mystery game. It's nothing exceptional, but it's not bad for what it is.
relatively spoiler free
It's a neat little indie game that does a lot with very little with a neat core gameplay/thematic concept that hasn't been explored much, but I have to say that despite its great character writing, I could not finish it. The game was quite buggy. Times when there should have been a pop up to note that there's new dialogue, there wasn't. Characters got stuck. Dialogue options I had already picked wouldn't become marked or vice versa, even though you often need to redo conversations to exhaust all the options. There's also how you can just possess someone, put them in a different room, examine an item as another character that was already in the room, and the character that's left will still say something he'd say when you examine an object as another you're not supposed to touch. It didn't really try to make sense of you possessing and letting people switch places in general.
The pacing was well done from a perspective in which you slowly discover more about each character, but in a general sense, it felt like everything kept dragging on.
In terms of gameplay and progression it's a mess. It's unintuitive, but luckily there is a hint system..Which magically disappears on the chapter you most need it. As it is unintuitive, your actions will often revolve around talking to every character as every character while occasionally trying a special character ability. But later on you can ALSO full possess a character, which can have different dialogue options, so that's another point you will have to brute force. There's a LOT of downtime in this game where you keep switching between characters trying to make it progress. That's not inherently an issue if it wasn't so unintuitive it's unsatisfying. It didn't really make me feel like I was solving a mystery myself where 1 unraveling led to another riddle to solve, I was trying to make the game let me make progress. Speakin of the mystery..The plot and mystery is rather unsatisfying too. Eventually it starts to feel like you're not really making much progress and keep hearing similar things that don't really say much, but then suddenly out of nowhere poof things happen.
That's not to say you shouldn't play this game. It's unique. It uses only a handful of locations and characters yet does a lot with them. It's unique, The ghost trick esque possessing concept gives a neat perspective for the story. The music is pretty charming and so are the mother style graphics, Even if the overall presentation is rather basic. But most importantly, it has a very interesting cast of characters that occasionally have some neat interactions/dynamics as well, as well as some neat moments when it comes to the dialogue. I think that makes it worth experiencing alone, it's just that it's so buggy and the last chapter is so convoluted to get the right ending and drags on so much that I ended up watching the end on a let's play. That's a pretty bad sign, but it's something I sadly just have to admit.
I don't want to spoil much else.
It's a neat little indie game that does a lot with very little with a neat core gameplay/thematic concept that hasn't been explored much, but I have to say that despite its great character writing, I could not finish it. The game was quite buggy. Times when there should have been a pop up to note that there's new dialogue, there wasn't. Characters got stuck. Dialogue options I had already picked wouldn't become marked or vice versa, even though you often need to redo conversations to exhaust all the options. There's also how you can just possess someone, put them in a different room, examine an item as another character that was already in the room, and the character that's left will still say something he'd say when you examine an object as another you're not supposed to touch. It didn't really try to make sense of you possessing and letting people switch places in general.
The pacing was well done from a perspective in which you slowly discover more about each character, but in a general sense, it felt like everything kept dragging on.
In terms of gameplay and progression it's a mess. It's unintuitive, but luckily there is a hint system..Which magically disappears on the chapter you most need it. As it is unintuitive, your actions will often revolve around talking to every character as every character while occasionally trying a special character ability. But later on you can ALSO full possess a character, which can have different dialogue options, so that's another point you will have to brute force. There's a LOT of downtime in this game where you keep switching between characters trying to make it progress. That's not inherently an issue if it wasn't so unintuitive it's unsatisfying. It didn't really make me feel like I was solving a mystery myself where 1 unraveling led to another riddle to solve, I was trying to make the game let me make progress. Speakin of the mystery..The plot and mystery is rather unsatisfying too. Eventually it starts to feel like you're not really making much progress and keep hearing similar things that don't really say much, but then suddenly out of nowhere poof things happen.
That's not to say you shouldn't play this game. It's unique. It uses only a handful of locations and characters yet does a lot with them. It's unique, The ghost trick esque possessing concept gives a neat perspective for the story. The music is pretty charming and so are the mother style graphics, Even if the overall presentation is rather basic. But most importantly, it has a very interesting cast of characters that occasionally have some neat interactions/dynamics as well, as well as some neat moments when it comes to the dialogue. I think that makes it worth experiencing alone, it's just that it's so buggy and the last chapter is so convoluted to get the right ending and drags on so much that I ended up watching the end on a let's play. That's a pretty bad sign, but it's something I sadly just have to admit.
I don't want to spoil much else.
guys i never found out help
A mash-up of Earthbound and Ghost Trick, this game is a exciting murder mystery with style and mystique. Every character is engaging and complicated, with layers upon layers to unwrap. I would love to see the developer return to this concept someday because just thinking about it kept me engaged for years.
Edit: adding more thoughts years later. The core gameplay loop works so well because of how it ties into the characters. Each person has three levels of possession. The more you know about a person, the easier it is to advance to the next level of possession. On Level 1, you have some minor control of their body, but you’re often a secondary party to their conversations. On Level 2, you can move anywhere, but your dialogue options are only things the character would say, and they’ll carry on conversation without you. Level 3 is complete control, your own words and actions. Traveling through the ship and grasping all its characters is often glitchy and obtuse, but the central feedback of meeting the entire cast and learning their life stories is so rewarding that it hardly matters. The final climax of learning your true identity, exposing the killer, and unraveling the other mysteries is especially rewarding if you’ve reached Level 3 with the whole cast. It means each person can provide the piece of information that only they could know, preventing the Final Threat from arresting/extrajudicial killing any innocent party.
I always got the impression the dev got shamed about some rough patches. The price dropped from $10 to $5 not long after it came out, with a public apology about glitches and so on. But I think it’s well worth the original price. It’s so nice to see a game really try something and exist with such a unique identity. I think this game rules. I hope the dev has the time and money to make more games eventually. I want that for every dev. I want the spirit of creation to reward this kind of passion project. All of them are worth far more than they could imagine.
Edit: adding more thoughts years later. The core gameplay loop works so well because of how it ties into the characters. Each person has three levels of possession. The more you know about a person, the easier it is to advance to the next level of possession. On Level 1, you have some minor control of their body, but you’re often a secondary party to their conversations. On Level 2, you can move anywhere, but your dialogue options are only things the character would say, and they’ll carry on conversation without you. Level 3 is complete control, your own words and actions. Traveling through the ship and grasping all its characters is often glitchy and obtuse, but the central feedback of meeting the entire cast and learning their life stories is so rewarding that it hardly matters. The final climax of learning your true identity, exposing the killer, and unraveling the other mysteries is especially rewarding if you’ve reached Level 3 with the whole cast. It means each person can provide the piece of information that only they could know, preventing the Final Threat from arresting/extrajudicial killing any innocent party.
I always got the impression the dev got shamed about some rough patches. The price dropped from $10 to $5 not long after it came out, with a public apology about glitches and so on. But I think it’s well worth the original price. It’s so nice to see a game really try something and exist with such a unique identity. I think this game rules. I hope the dev has the time and money to make more games eventually. I want that for every dev. I want the spirit of creation to reward this kind of passion project. All of them are worth far more than they could imagine.