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.

Don't repeat my mistakes: Umurangi Generation is a "10 minute timed photography session" (per level) with environment storytelling about living in the apocalypse as a civillian.

While the environment storytelling isn't obscure nor yelled into your face, it talks about something that a lot of us have normalized and unless you're quite into politics, it is possible that you will miss what the games try to talk about.

With a game full of details and almost no dialogue, you will want to explore everything but the time mechanics will advice you to go against it and try to complete the level as fast as possible and while it's cool to think the timer is there because it's not like you're in a safe place in every location, I feel like it's a mechanic that clashes a lot with it's core design.

The way you beat levels is by doing certain objectives like finding an angle where you can see 8 boomboxes and take a picture, 100 candles, etc. The only challenge aside of the angle, is that a "blue bottle" shouldn't be in the picture. Why? The game says "You'll know why as you play" but.. I didn't, I never did. I had to ask a friend what the blue bottles were when I finished the game
Basically, they're a "Portuguese man o' war", an animal that in this game is as infamous as a cockroach due to spoilers, but to me it wasn't really easy to piece specially because I had a graphical glitch (which I believe happens with AMD cards) and these looked like a 2d stain of blue paint. The first time they're introduced it's in a level with lots of graffiti and paint cans so I was incredibly confused on why I kept being penalized.

The game truly shines in it's DLC; Macro.
Macro shows where it all began. It's a prequel from the main game that starts just before the first level and slowly climbs up into what made them take pics in the first place which is something I really love.

Despite being poorly executed, it has a lot of impact and charm and I really want the dev to make another game with more QoL.

On the technical side this feels held together with duct tape and a dream (try walking up stairs without clipping through them lmao), but everything this game does is so cool.

The DLC stages are the best material in the game and massively bumped this up for me, both in the scale of its storytelling and environment design, as well as taking its political themes up to the 10th degree.

Shoutout thorhighheels

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

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.