While much shorter than most, A Story About My Uncle spends every moment building itself up as an endlessly fun and sometimes challenging adventure filled with childlike wonder and dreamlike beauty.

I originally got this game in 2015 on sale due to the “parkour” tag and have had it sitting in the backlog ever since, and finally spent a weekend I forced myself not to care about school to play through it in one sitting. As I’m a teacher, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to instill wonder in students, and in tandem I’ve been thinking about wonder itself, and what used to give me that sense of “wonder” that certain of my favorite childhood media gave me. I really think the visuals, in the art style and locations, really sell the almost otherworldly invitation that had been coming back to me.

The parkour in the game is much less Mirror’s Edge and more like Uncharted, being able to grapple hook across these humongous levels that is super satisfying and sometimes provides a pretty good challenge when you’re on a timer. There are many instances of the fact “THIS IS A STUDENT GAME” being very clear and loud, but there’s enough passion and wonder to move past them.

A very pleasant story with very interesting, but no less annoying gameplay after an hour of play. The main glove allows you to cling to certain surfaces and, thanks to elementary physics, you begin to float... and fall, fall a lot. Luckily the game ends at the right time.

История о моем дяде. Очень приятный рассказ с очень интересным, но не менее надоедливым геймплеем после часа игры. Главная перчатка позволяет прицепляться к определенным поверхностях и благодаря элементарной физике, начинаешь парить.. и падать, очень много падать. Благо игра заканчивается в тот момент, когда надо.

I don't play many platformers these days, much less first person platformers, so A Story About My Uncle (ASAMU) was a bit of a step out of my comfort zone. I'd heard it mentioned on a couple of video game essay type youtube channels and figured I'd give it a go. It didn't blow my socks of it, but it was a neat a experience.

The gameplay is entirely focused around the mobility you get from your power suit -- a couple types of big jump, some grappling, and, later on, a boost. Using a combination of these abilities, you go from one checkpoint to the next, figuring out how to grapple-parkour your way through surprisingly hard challenges. There are no enemies or anything like that to worry about; the environment is challenge enough. The physics and movement felt really nice. That said, at times, I struggled to determine when an object would be in range to grapple, which lead to some annoying falls. Of course, there was almost always a checkpoint nearby, so it wasn't a big deal.

I loved the tone and environments of ASAMU. There's a great larger-than-life, otherworldly adventure, bed-time-story feel to it that resonated with me. While I'm actively in the "linear game are usual better" camp, I wouldn't have minded the game being a bit more open and exploration focused. As it is, you're generally going directly from A to B, with lots of checkpoints and high difficulty, which I found to be a bit at odds with the overall tone. Easier exploration sequences would have served to break up the challenge as well. There were a few areas in the game where every inch felt hard fought, to the point of tipping past rewarding and into frustrating.

There wasn't a whole lot of story to the game, but what was there was endearing. The voice acting felt a bit odd, with the cadence of delivery feeling particularly off, but it wasn't enough to break me out of the mood they were setting.

ASAMU is quite short, clocking in at around 3 hours. I think that was the perfect length, though, given the linearity and consistency of challenge.