Original review published on Flickering Myth: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/09/video-game-review-bor/

There’s not much to say about the platforming genre that hasn’t already been said. It’s a simple concept that opens itself up to a myriad of design features limited only by the imagination of its creators.

Bor is the latest in a string of like-minded releases from the indie market. Developed and published by Dracoders, Bor has you play as an (Irish?) viking who must travel to four different worlds looking for his kidnapped wives. The question is does it offer anything game changing in the realm of platforming mechanics? The short answer is no, but it’s still very enjoyable. For the long answer, read on!

I basically covered the story with that sentence recap. Jump ‘n’ runs tend to not have extravagant narratives because of their focus on gameplay, which means I’m going to move onto the graphics.

You know, I’m not going to lie- when I first saw Bor, I couldn’t help but think “crude” and “cheap”. But then again, I had the exact same reaction when I was first recommended Rick and Morty. Dracoders uses a stereotypical viking schema to explore a fantasy-esque world full of odd-looking renditions of classic monsters like dragons, golems, and yetis. Every critter and person has bold outlines that seem like they were etched by hand rather than through a digital pen. As a result, there’s a literal roughness to their shapes that leaves them looking uneven at times.

Luckily, it’s all consistent and filled in with great, vibrant colors. Every figure and landscape is coated with bright hues that makes them resonate with life. Combine these two aspects and you admittedly get a charm that only grows the more you play. From the art direction alone, I can tell this is a game that had a lot of love put into it- in many ways, it feels like a throwback to the original Mario Bros. which also coasted on vivid shades that stood out in spite of the drab tint overlaying it.

The four environments you traverse through (Highlands, Snowlands, Forest, Castle) are distinct enough from a palette perspective- you don’t just get reskinned grounds, but different areas with differing functions. The Highlands feature grassy square knolls while the Snowlands have frozen blocks that liquefy if you stand on them too long; the Forest holds a poisonous swamp that damages you, while the Castle boasts rivers of lava that instantly incinerate you. While more could have been done, I acknowledge that just enough changes are implemented that you don’t feel like you’re reentering the same place again and again.

If there is one complaint I have about the graphics, it’s that the same background is reused for every level in the respective worlds, meaning you only get four variants for the duration of the title (excluding the secret levels, which include a cave canvas that is also utilized multiple times without adjustment).

From there, we move onto sound: there is no voice acting, outside of some grunts Bor makes, which means we’ll begin with the SFX. Here, Bor was a little too retro, and what I mean by that is this- older platformers from back in the day didn’t have much in the way of sound variety: it was the same noise keyed to the same action, no matter what you did, and that’s the case here. You have specific beats created for specific things, like the throwing of Bor’s axe or collecting a coin or jumping on an enemy, but it rarely if ever alternates. You could be falling fast and still hear the same exact note for getting a token as you would if you just grabbed it normally; a rock creature makes the same grunt as a bat when struck, either with boots or a hatchet.

There’s also the fact that some movements like footsteps and melting ice don’t even have SFX, but at least everything is well-mixed against the music, which is solid but very sparse. The four realms Bor has to travel through have maybe two tracks each, and that’s a big issue because it means you’re essentially listening to an unchanging melody no matter the adjustments in the level’s conditions. For example, hearing the same track play for a level where you’re being chased by a runaway boulder versus one where you’re slowly maneuvering your way past blocks is strange. Again, the score itself is pleasant and general enough that it isn’t distracting, but given the diversity in activities, I do feel it was a missed opportunity.

And that brings us to gameplay. Bor is self-described as an “old-school platform[er],” and if you have had any experience or memories with those kinds of games, you’ll notice the influence right away: I personally caught references to Super Mario Bros., Yoshi’s Island, and even the Donkey Kong Country series, and I’m sure I missed more!

The problem is Bor doesn’t do much in the way of spicing things up. To clarify, the levels themselves are distinct- though they are all primarily sidescrolling in nature, enemy/obstacle patterns and placements ensure no two areas play the same.

No, what I mean by spice is that you get a very bare-bones platformer. Bor is all about timed jumps, both for attacking and navigating, with the occasional ax fling thrown in for good measure. The few variables it tosses into the mix are not only taken from prior (and more exciting) games of the same genre, but also so sparse as to be a rare find. For instance, there’s an invincibility shield, but I’ll be danged if I found maybe three in my entire playthrough. There’s a p-switch that temporarily reveals hidden details, but it’s few and far between, and usually very obvious in location.

Because Bor doesn’t have lives, coins are instead used for a secondary function that simultaneously serves as an interesting design choice from Dracoders- the ability to pay, at certain sign posts, for some change to happen in the level. Whether this is adding more platforms or disclosing a secret location/item, it was all interesting and something I thought had a lot of untapped potential- suppose you were given multiple options instead of just one? Imagine the replay value that would come from being able to drastically fluctuate certain parts of certain levels. Alas, here it’s pretty straightforward and, once again, too scattered to be considered a substantial part of the game.

Now, while it is, for lack of a better term, vanilla, Bor is still very fun. The leaping is on-point, with some variety added courtesy of long, short, and double jump options. Terraces and floating cubes are never too far out of reach like in certain Mario games, and the levels are short and engaging enough that they don’t drag and overextend their welcome.

There are issues with the menus and control overlay that I need to address. Bor claims it offers partial controller support, but I didn’t see any such option- in fact, there was no options menu, meaning you can’t adjust anything. When you exit a locale, you also have to go all the way back to the home screen instead of the respective world you were on. And while the AD/Spacebar controls work fine for moving and jumping, I did find the shoot button “B” to be kind of awkward. If you put your hands close together it works, but syncing the bounce button to “W” and the projectile one to the blank bar (or, you know, giving players a choice in an “options menu” to do their own set-up) would have been better in my opinion. These are all small complaints, but they do add up in the long term.

Lastly, Bor regrettably has a number of bugs that require polishing. In my playthrough I witnessed the following: action blocks not activating, Bor falling off-screen yet not dying, being unable to pick up/let go of throwable enemies, getting stuck on invisible barriers when walking, and other more minor things. A number of these are technically game-breaking, but because they weren’t a constant annoyance (and because the levels are relatively quick), they didn’t hurt my enjoyment of Bor as much as they should have. That being said, glitches like these are inexcusable, and should be patched out in the foreseeable future.

I’ll also say that, while this wasn’t a bug, there was a design feature that angered the completionist in me. See, Bor has collectables in the form of shields- there are three in each level, similar to the green stars in Super Mario Galaxy 2, and usually require you to go out of your way to retrieve them. My issue came with hitting the middle checkpoint- if you die after that, you lose all the shields you collected beforehand. It was irritating- imagine playing Donkey Kong Country and having to recollect the K.O.N.G. letters despite getting to the save barrel.

Overall though, Bor was entertaining and surprisingly addicting. I beat it in two runs, which took me about four hours. Granted, I was doing side stuff like getting the aforementioned shields or trying to find the secret levels (two in each zone!), but 3.5-4 hours is what I imagine most people will naturally do. If you want to add the secret areas and shield collectables, then you can increase that number by at least two more hours.

Either way, at a $7.00 asking price, Bor is appropriately valued and definitely worth your time if you’re a fan of platformers.

Note – The Steam page description says that you have to save 60 wives, implying 60 levels. The game I played had 48 base levels and 8 secret levels, bringing the total to 56. Perhaps 100 percenting all the content leads to 4 additional planes opening up for play, but given that I did not do this, I cannot verify whether that is the case or if this is simply a typo on the storefront.

Pros:
+ Charming art
+ Colorful worlds
+ Simple yet solid platforming

Cons:
– Limited SFX and music
– Bugs
– Solid yet simple platforming

Original review published on Flickering Myth: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/07/video-game-review-dark-room/

When I was in high school, I was determined to be the smartest person in English class. Every time we got an opportunity to do some type of creative writing exercise, I took it as my chance to come-up with something so unique and out-of-the-blue that the teacher would recognize it as a masterpiece and hold it as a standard to measure the rest of the students up to.

In particular, I recall this one tale I wrote about a soldier who travels to an island with his platoon. Slowly, yet steadily, every member of his team disappears, leaving him alone when he confronts the evil scientist who is behind all the craziness: only, the scientist tells him that he doesn’t understand what he is talking about, and when the soldier turns around, he sees that the island has turned into a metropolis.

….I have no idea what I was trying to say in that story. I was so determined to outsmart the rest of my classmates that I forewent logical storytelling in favor of an incoherent, shock value plot. If I were to revisit it today, there’s no doubt in my mind that it would be rewritten from the beginning.

I bring all this up because I couldn’t help but feel that Dark Room could have done with a similar rewrite. Developed and published by Lexip Games, Dark Room features an age old tale popularized in suspense fiction since the days of Edgar Allan Poe: a man is trapped in a desolate building and must find a way out. Nothing wrong with reusing a narrative template, especially when we’re talking about a point-and-click title, but the question is does Lexip Games do anything significantly different with it that would warrant one checking this entry out? The short answer is it’s half-and-half, but for the longer answer read on!

We must begin with the story because the story is everything when dealing with limited gameplay systems in this day and age. Point-and-click games can offer unique puzzles (and Dark Room, to its credits, incorporates some- more on that later), but for the most part they deliberately limit themselves to a simple prompt interface. Part of this has to do with budgetary constraints, but part of this also has to do with the shovelware aspect of these computer titles. I spoke about this at length in my review of Reversion: Chapter 3, but it’s an unfortunate reality of the indie market: make these things easy enough to produce, and you’ll get a lot of developers trying to churn them out quickly for a fast buck.

I won’t accuse Lexip of this tactic because there was considerable effort put into aspects of Dark Room, one of those being the narrative. As I mentioned above, you play as a man who awakens in a room of a seemingly-haunted manor. After a superb tutorial that is brisk and terse, you quickly realize your goal is to search for an escape route all while finding out what transpired here.

This information is revealed through collectible diary entries of various patients and doctors: participants in an experimental procedure involving an alternate dimension. I wish I could claim that I can’t say anymore for fear of spoiling the mysteries of the game, but it is here that I must bring back the point I was making in my introduction: that the writers went too far in trying to be uncommon.

When it comes to standing apart from the crowd, there are two methods a scriptwriter can employ: one, subvert expectations through anti-archetypal story beats and/or plot twists, and two, be vague.

Regarding the former, this is a task that can be hard to pull-off if you don’t outline properly (or let your ego dictate your view of your audience): M. Night Shyamalan’s entire career is a testament to its successes and failures, while my aforementioned essay is an example of something starting off interesting before devolving into a mash-up of incoherent globbery courtesy of poor planning.

Still, it is significantly easier to accomplish compared to the latter, which deliberately involves withholding information from viewers in the hopes of keeping them constantly invested. Horror, in particular, has employed the “vague” trope because it hits three positives: it builds-up apprehension, makes the mystery more enticing, and keeps the budget low. Of course, all but the latter are pure conjecture and based on execution, but you can see why it has massive allure amongst prospective horror entrepreneurs.

Dark Room, as you can guess, is vague to a fault, though I’m not referring to the backstory of the place. That is divulged through recordings that automatically play when you pass unseen checkpoints in the game: one of the head scientists reflects about the experiments, the Russian Government’s role in them, and ultimately what their findings were. Personally, I wasn’t the biggest fan of this for a few reasons: one, their appearance made no sense from a storytelling perspective (why were they suddenly materializing?); two, their mass expositions ruined the piecemeal rewards that should have been granted via exploration, and three, I didn’t understand why the writers felt it was more important for me to know what was going over the protagonist- in a mystery game you need to keep BOTH in the dark, otherwise the dissonance can lead to irritation with the playable character.

No, when I talk about vagueness, I’m referring to all the other narrative threads. The journal pages you find rarely relate to the location, with them instead often describing isolated incidents that occurred years apart; a note from the early 2000s jabbers excitedly about meeting the doctors compared to one from the late-2000s, which is a series of morose ramblings about strange dreams. Whenever I read these, not once did I ever feel like I was slowly uncovering any relevant answers. Other components in the game like human skulls, ensanguined furniture, and creepy messages scrawled onto the surfaces try to give off a sense of tormented history but end up feeling more like haphazard details with no connection to the overarching plot (why would someone be tortured if the scientists were trying to bring them back from the other zone?).

On top of this, the writers are annoyingly-equivocal about the supernatural. Let’s be clear- you are NOT alone. Knocking, screaming, fresh coffee, and bloody hands pounding on glass are all experienced by one sense or the other. There is someone or someones wherever you are, but whether it’s spectral or grounded is unclear from the get-go.

Why is this an issue? Because when we’re talking about being terrorized, there has to be consistency to that terror: that’s where the emotional crux is formed, whether it’s fear, hate, sympathy, or a mix of all three. When we watch a slasher film, the masked villain has a tangible factor to them; when we see people being plagued by an occult monstrosity, there’s a mythology or ritual behind it all. Horror can’t just be a greatest hits of anything that can scare a human being- you do that, you end up with trash like the Final Destination franchise wherein you’re more interested in being a mishmash of torture porn and fourth wall angst: you can’t be mad at the characters for acting like idiots because the circumstances surrounding them prevent them from doing anything intelligent.

Let me put it this way- the worst parts of Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street are the endings since they betray what was set-up before, but since they’re only present at the very end, it’s forgivable. You have to have constancy in your threat and atmospheric dread because it’s what guides the actions of everyone involved. If there is no chance of me being able to beat this menace, then I have to run (ex. slasher movies, running simulators); if there is a chance, then I’m going to take a strategic stand against them (ex. The Lost Boys, Resident Evil).

Because the danger in Dark Room is deliberately nebulous, I can’t feel anything. For example, there’s a part in the game where you’re greeted with a maniacal, off-screen laugh while you hear someone else hammering on a door as the lights coincidentally flicker: if it’s supernatural, why is a simple door stopping it? If it’s a person or persons, why are they letting me live? What’s the point in trying to scare the heebie-jeebies out of the protagonist when they have the ability to move through and influence the environment freely? And if they are evil in nature, why am I bothering creating access ways for them to get to me WITHOUT preparing myself to fight them?

I’m not saying they had to spoil the big bad or give them a corporeal appearance, but there’s no indication that there is even something well thought-out here. Lexip spent a lot of time crafting a Gothic setting, then decided to waste all that effort by filling it with some generic “godlike” entity that can subtly manipulate the environment, but only in such a limited way as to produce cheap jump scares. There’s no mystic logic, no palpability, just a bland antagonist(s).

Now, I could very well be wrong about them not having a clear idea. Lexip may have decided to withhold information for the sake of providing their hopeful sequels with revelations that will fit all the puzzle pieces together, but this itself is flawed because the basics of your lore should not be left hole-ridden for a sequel to fix; they should have a concrete basis that can be believably built on to a horrifying unveiling. For a great instance of this, look at The X-Files: the writers had a lot of secrets about the truth that they kept hidden, but the first few episodes still laid the groundwork- that it was extraterrestrial in scope and the government was doing everything it could to make it a conspiracy.

I had my problems with the execution of the backstory of Dark Room, but I acknowledge it had a good idea that gave a decent framework for something compelling to be constructed on. Yet, that does not happen, and so you’re left with tension-less acts interrupted by “gotcha” moments.

It’s truly disappointing because, as I said, there was effort put into creating something special, and there is no ego present. But the way they went about carrying out everything borders the line of hackery. All the subjects you read about come off like morons who were high on something, the scientists don’t have any impetus or Hippocratic characterizations to them, and the Russian state involvement feels like an outdated Cold War stereotype shoehorned to give the narrative an”evil bureaucracy” flavor (made all the more strange considering Dark Room’s timeline is set, at latest, in the 1990s, well past the height of the Soviet Union).

The playable protagonist isn’t much better. Revealed at the end to be called Martin, he does exhibit genuine human reactions to the stimuli around him, making him potentially relatable. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of these dialogues in the game, resulting in Martin’s responses being too sporadic to have significant weight. There definitely is something to expand upon in a theoretical follow-up, but for this part he just wasn’t where he needed to be as a character.

And that’s really the silver lining to all these narrative shortcomings: that they are amendable. Should a game, even an episodic one, have to be reliant on sequels? Of course not- Life is Strange and most of the TellTale releases are proof that individual entries are capable of standing on their own. But the best part about failing with a vague set-up is that you can fill in the blanks to give renewed purpose, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t any promise. Compare this to say something like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom wherein I don’t see how how the upcoming Dominion could possibly salvage what it left off.

Now, there is a possible counterargument in that this is a game that is meant to be played multiple times. Seriously, there are three difficulties, but the harder ones are locked away unless you complete the preceding one first. Completing easy unlocks what you could call “normal,” and doing that will unveil the “hard” one. Lexip set this up because they want you to revisit the campaign with the knowledge you gathered before, thereby giving the story more clarity whilst providing you with extra objectives to complete (ex. new files are available to view on a computer you login on).

The problem is, due to the aforestated problems, Dark Room isn’t so fun that it would warrant you wanting to beat it a second, let alone a third time. Of course, this is purely subjective, but even if you did enjoy it, there’s another issue- the “new game pluses” if you were, don’t offer a significantly different experience. The puzzles are barely changed-up, the cinematic set-pieces occur at the exact same time in the exact same manner (robbing them of their surprise), and the extra information you do get isn’t radical enough that you’ll have a “eureka” moment.

At least, this is all true for the second “normal” mode difficulty as that was the only one I did. If the third, “hard” mode significantly changes the gameplay experience, then I’ll concede that maybe it is worth it. However, not only do I doubt that it will do that, but even if it did, I don’t see the excursion being rewarding based on my level of enjoyment of the first two.

Graphics are up next, and it is here that I can be a lot nicer as this is a very beautiful game. We’ve all see haunted aesthetics before, and there’s admittedly only so much you can do: cobwebs, graying wallpaper, eerie portraiture, random bloodstains, it’s all been there, done that. But that does not mean revisiting all these with a fresh coat of paint is lazy- different artists add their own spin to common tropes and elements all the time, embedding them in pop culture for good.

Dark Room operates via an interesting art style that borders the line between photorealism and pencilling. Seriously, every single item, with the exception of preexisting paintings, looks like it was drawn by a talented sketch artist translating photographs into a pencilled form. Small details like the brownish rust of metal, breaks on a rotting table, the pepperjack tinge of an old suitcase, the yellow fade of a book’s pages, mold on a wall, and dust bunnies gathered up in corners is perfectly depicted in the game as though these were real rooms in a rundown building that someone decided to replicate to a tee.

On top of this, you have two other feats that deserve a lot of credit: the conveyance of depth perception and lighting through color. Regarding the former, all the vistas you transition between are framed on a rectilinear grid that does a great job at conveying 3D spacing on a 2D paradigm. This is a visual factor that many of these kinds of computer titles deliberately skimp on due to it requiring true artistic virtuosity, resulting in a number of them often looking blatantly flat. For all my problems with Lexip Games’s writing, it’s evident that they have fantastic artists working for them.

This is especially seen with the latter category of colored lighting. When I say colored lighting, I don’t mean it in the conventional sense wherein you have a light source with multiple hues: PnC titles usually don’t have the luxury of incorporating that kind of illumination. Instead, they rely on a painting technique known as chiaroscuro wherein you use contrasting shades of light and dark pigments to convey glows and shadows.

It would have been very easy to put the desolate dwelling of Dark Room under a pure desaturated aesthetic. After all, spiderwebs, grime, lint, wax, and dried gore all lend themselves to an ashen schema. However, courtesy of sources like candles, lanterns, and even LED lamps, there are a number of bright(er) locations that required some type of radiant distinction, and that was achieved through chiaroscuro. Just as the relativistic Doppler effect depicts light waves slowly dissipating as they move further from their origin, so too have the artisans at Lexip created a realistic-looking optical light illusion through subtly darkening shades: the part of the wall furthest from the beacon is blacker than the part closest. It’s an amazing feat that is consistently done in every location you enter.

Sound is next, and there’s unfortunately not much going on here. Though their accents are a little thick (a look at the cast shows that they weren’t Russian), the voice acting is excellent, with the performers for Martin and Professor Stewart standing out. I said before that the dialogue for Martin features rational reactions to the foreboding nature of his predicament, and we get that from his voice, particularly when he briefly hyperventilates upon witnessing something scary. It’s a shame that there wasn’t more for him to say as he is talented.

SFX is next, and it’s pretty standard. The stock noises they have for things like thunder crashing, footsteps, and thudding work well enough, but they are hurt by the backtracking: having to hear the exact same “stair climb” going up and down a level, for example, is a little disappointing, but it’s countered enough by the short length of Dark Room.

Lastly, we have music, credited to Alexandr Zhelanov, and there are honestly only three tracks that play in the entire game. One is your general exploration tune, the second occurs during the introduction and flashbacks, and the last one is during the finale.

The first one has good and bad traits. As you can imagine, having one composition play on repeat for more than an hour does get repetitive, but it’s never grating, instead maintaining a consistent tone created by what sounds like some stringed instruments (possibly cellos). Despite not being inherently irate, it did trigger my OCD through the fact that it often sounds like it’s building up to something only to then loop back to the start of said build-up. Think of it like listening to John William’s iconic Star Wars overture, and instead of going into the main beat it continues to repeat that same trumpet fanfare. That’s what I got from Dark Room’s primary theme, with it occasionally being broken up by this beautiful piano chord that does not play enough.

The other flashback track is quite wonderful, conveying that somber elegance expected from a scientific discovery gone horribly wrong. It’s a shame we didn’t get more of the latter as Zhelanov is definitely a proficient musician and deserved an opportunity to bring his skills to the forefront.

The final one is more of an unwavering synth that hardly constitutes as a song, being more akin to an ambient track. It’s good, but hardly substantial.

Moving onto the gameplay, there isn’t too much to talk about. PnC means just that- move the cursor onto an interactable object and click it to either get an action or examination response. If it is the former you have the ability to continue forward with a deeper introspection or to utilize one of your tools in the hopes of achieving some kind of gameplay synthesis.

Items that serve their use disappear from your inventory, and all menus are quick to access. It’s a well-crafted system that achieves the baseline points required from a PnC. The question is, does it do anything more than that? Well, the answer is an assortment of parts. Throughout Dark Room, you encounter puzzles that change-up the gameplay, from connecting batteries to get the power up-and-running to a minigame that’s a carbon copy of a level from Unblock Me. Even if they were technically a little gimmicky, I did appreciate them and actually wanted a lot more due to them changing up the pace of things.

That’s with the exception of one, that being a sliding tile puzzle. My goodness did this drive me bonkers. I understand these appeal to certain fans, but for me personally it left me aggravated, and was the main reason I was reluctant to do a replay of the game.

The other riddles you’re required to solve for progression are reasonable enough. I did find there was a lot of pointless writing and numbers strewn throughout the world that had nothing to do with these conundrums, but that minutiae is ignorable enough, and tools are used reasonably well so that you aren’t as reliant on them as you may think.

My last point of contrition when it comes to gameplay has to be how consistently inconsistent the scene transitions are when moving from one screen to another. Sometimes it’s instantaneous, other times it takes a few noticeable seconds, but what’s interesting is that it always took the same amount of time, indicating it wasn’t a loading issue but a design feature. Definitely interesting.

So in the end, what do you get from Dark Room? You get a point-and-click title that’s not only far more polished than most of its contemporaries in the genre, but much more alluring. Someone in the Lexip Games team has to be an aspiring Renaissance Man as the combination of geometry and art in the game’s layout was excellent, and something other games should take note of.

Sadly, these creative efforts are countered by a deliberately amorphous story, a soundscape lacking in two of its three auralities, and horror that gets most of its spookiness from cheap scares.

It took me about 2 hours to beat Dark Room on my first playthrough, and then an additional hour for the second normal mode. I assume it would have been the same case for the hardest mode, making the game’s total runtime around 4 hours. But even if you don’t want to count those “new game pluses,” 2 hours more than suffices my $1 : 30 minutes ratio that the $3.00 asking price warrants.

However, I need to stress that just because something is inexpensive, doesn’t make it worthwhile. The reality is, similar to the Reversion trilogy, PnC games are mass produced to render production costs low and enable them to be sold at low price points. And considering the many flaws present here, I don’t know if I can recommend someone playing Dark Room, even if a sequel somehow turns things upside down.

Pros:
+ Gorgeous layouts and art style
+ Minimal, yet solid voice acting
+ Decent minigames

Cons:
– Milquetoast horror
– Lackluster story
– Near non-existent sound
– Slide puzzle

Original review published on Flickering Myth: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/09/video-game-review-struggling/

Much like how Ren & Stimpy inspired an era of gross-out cartoons, I’ve always felt that Super Meat Boy and, to a greater extent, The Binding of Isaac, had a similar effect on the indie game market. Both came out within a year of each other, showcased a morbidly appealing aesthetic, had violent imagery, and were massive successes.

Developed by Chasing Rat Games and published by Frontier Foundry, Struggling is another such entry in this era of ribaldry. This time you play as Siamese monster twins who have escaped from a lab, with each brother’s arm being individually controlled. The question is, is this a frustrating endeavor or does it work? The short answer is the sheer creativity sometimes outweighs the flaws, but the flaws do get irritating. For the longer answer read on!

We’ll start off with the story. Struggling is very tongue-in-cheek: from the beginning you’re given this extravagant history about superior beings who were castigated to the dark realms by humanity, with their hope resting on a prophecy detailing the rise of two heroes who would restore their status in the world. It’s done under the pretext of Greek Mythology, with the cited warriors even being called Hector and Achilles.

…and yet, all of that is completely subverted in the next few seconds. Hundreds of years pass, society has moved on, and now these former beings either remain underground or are privy to scientific experimentation by Homo Sapiens. One of these experiments is Troy, a conjoined reincarnation (or birth?) of Achilles and Hector. He gets free from his tank thanks to some shenanigans, and you spend the rest of the game moving wherever the developers take you.

Struggling does have some humorous writing bits, but most of the comedy comes from visual gags that are strewn throughout. The truth is this game is, for all intents and purposes, a platformer, and so there’s really not much you could have done in the way of parody, which is what I believe Chasing Rats was attempting in parts. Where they succeed they succeed, but where they have nothing to say they try and make up for with pure ludicrousness.

The problem is, the platforming genre, as a whole, is already built on being ludicrous- you go back to the first level of Super Mario Bros. and what did you get? An Italian plumber moving through a rocky world full of anthropomorphized mushrooms, turtles, and plants. That’s already ridiculous! You can maybe do a serious satire, but a spoof? It’s just not possible, no matter how blue the wit.

That being said, Hector and Achilles aren’t just a blank canvas- they do have a personality that comes out in subtle ways, whether it’s yelping when you’re about to hit a dangerous part, having happy expressions when they meet someone who pleases them, or grunting as they roll down an inclined plane. So it was nice to see that incorporated

But look, I’m ironically over-focusing on a part of the game that has no real bearing on its performance. Even if it falters with the parody-aspects, gamers won’t care because they aren’t playing Struggling for the narrative.

Instead, their first instincts will go to the graphics, which may initially be a turn-off. In my review of Bor, I was reminded of Rick & Morty because the crude art style felt reminiscent of Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland’s animated serial. Here, though, I can’t help but wonder if the aforementioned cartoon was a direct influence on what Struggling’s artisans were going for. The loose limbs, bulging eyes, flat faces, acid vats, heck even the screams of Hector and Achilles come off like something you’d see in an episode of Rick & Morty. Which was a good thing for me as I am a fan of that show.

But there are a lot of crass aspects that prospective gamers will have to deal with. Bloody visuals, death, pestilence, organs, pores, belching mouths, and farting unicorns. This is a game that literally jumps from the macabre to the silly in the span of a few seconds, but it’s all wrapped up in a grotesque blanket. So if these don’t sound like things you’d find appealing, this is the only warning you’ll get.

Regardless of your attitude, I can say that this is a beautiful game. Chasing Rats committed to an esthetic that looks like it was painted in Toon Boom, and so you get artwork that is consistently outstanding no matter the environment, which is good considering the amount of locales you will go through: from a laboratory to a grand canyon to a freaking dreamscape of singing mushrooms, it never looks out of place.

The lighting is well-done as well. Most of the time you’ll have a basic luminescence that matches whatever location you’re in, but the few times Struggling throws in a dynamic source, whether it’s colored lanterns or a regular torch, its radiance feels natural.

From there we move onto sound. There is no voice acting outside of the howls made by the protagonists (which aren’t the worst I’ve heard in a video game, but you do have the option to decrease the volume of just that), so SFX will be up first. Here, what I’ll say is that Struggling’s aural presentation is adequate but doesn’t stand out as much as I wanted it to. I think I’ve said in the past that platformers rest on having sharp sounds- collecting items, jumping, enemy deaths, falling obstacles, all should come with a memorable din.

There’s nothing distracting about the noises in Struggling, but outside of the sound of the brothers colliding with the side of a pillar, I don’ recall hearing anything that stood out (and even then, I’m pretty sure the only reason I remember that babble is because I caused it many many times!). Animals make generic squeals, cogs sound like they did in old Japanese steampunk media, and your death is the exact same squish and pop no matter the cause. Was there a missed opportunity? Technically yes, especially for people like myself who appreciate good sound design.

However, Chasing Rats MORE than made up for it with the music, and when I say music I don’t just mean the score- I’m talking about the editing. Music cues are something we experience all the time, particularly in horror, yet we tend not to pay too much attention to them because they’re usually obscure (or take a backseat to the story transpiring on screen).

Due to the simpler presentation of Struggling (and focus on visual gags, as stated above), I was able to pay more attention to the harmonic indications this time around, and they were amazing. There are tonal shifts (crawling through a shaft only for it to suddenly get flooded with vermin), but they feel organic courtesy of how seamless the music goes from track to track (techno to quiet to a bone-chilling percussion crescendo in that example).

That’s a testament to the composer and sound editor, who happen to be the same person – Leandre Monette. He devises a lot of sporadic beats that don’t come off as haphazard because of superb mixing. One part has you traveling through a canyon with a stereotypical Sergio Leone-esque harmonica humming away. You suddenly come to a bar in the middle of this nowhere, and a saloon piano kicks into form!

Another thing I have to highlight about the tunes are the little Easter Eggs you will hear if you pay attention. There were two I personally noticed: one, falling into a body of water sets-off a leitmotif that is eerily reminiscent of “Dire Dire Docks” from Super Mario 64, and two, climbing a building plays a riff of the 1967 Spider-Man theme. I’m sure there were more, but even if there weren’t, I was floored by the diversity in melodies. I said in the graphics section that you will go through varying locales, and the compositions fit no matter the range: man-made or natural, science or fantasy, musical or standard, it does not matter. Monette is definitely talented.

Finally, it’s time to talk about the gameplay. The first thing to note is that the developers themselves highly encourage you to play Struggling with a controller “unless you hate yourself” (per a title card), and I 100 percent agree. I can’t even imagine how this could be pulled off with a mouse/keyboard set-up (although you CAN if you want).

Struggling works by having you control the arms of the brothers to move- one joystick mobilizes one, the other mobilizes the other. Hitting the respective bumpers triggers the grip function, which is utilized to drag, flip, or climb across the terrain.

Going into this, I was very afraid it would turn out like the Octodad games, which controlled so horrendously I stopped playing after 12 minutes. Thankfully, significant work was done here as Struggling’s scheme works. It does take some getting the hang of, but once you break it in it’s fairly easy to maneuver. The clasp function, in particular, is terrific, with Troy being able to latch onto any surface (not coated in saliva) and pull himself through slight twitching.

That being said, the physics engine was not designed as well as it should have been. One of the biggest issues you’ll run into is the game’s gravity, which impacts Troy’s actions like swinging, pulling himself up, and hauling items: actions you WILL have to do multiple times throughout the levels, and that consequently get aggravating. The problem is the limbs don’t always respond well to your joystick motions, meaning they’ll frequently get tangled up, forcing you to do some awkward jutting of the joysticks to free them. Luckily, this is alleviated when Troy earns the ability to detach/regenerate his tentacles, but this seems more like an unintentional convenience than an intentional design feature.

Another issue is that, because of the gravitational force, your arms have a tendency to swap suddenly and cause a weight shift that screws up your movement, a facet not helped by the head being a bobbing dead block. For example, there are parts where you need to swing using one appendage as a fleshy rope, but Troy’s head will cause the pendulum motion to bend at the top of the oscillation, messing the curve drop and ruining the momentum you are trying to build. A solution to this would’ve been to simply have the dome automatically stick to an arm during these parts.

Additionally, I didn’t like a few features. The first was, whenever you boot back up your game, it goes to a lair that can only be escaped by either climbing to the top or exploding your characters’s heads, rather than starting directly at your last checkpoint. The second was the lack of a “restart” option on the menu for whenever you mess-up; it was a little dumb having to wait for Hector and Achilles to “officially” die from whatever hazard you were encountering when you knew it was inevitable. Thirdly, the collectables here, taking the form of hats, don’t do anything. Some are hidden behind puzzles, but most require you to navigate a harder path (beckoned by the soft whisper of “secret, secret, secret….”). However, all that effort is for naught since they’re purely decorative and fall off relatively easily- having some additional power-up or the revelation of an extra path via wearing them would have been nice.

So what do you get with Struggling? You get a video game that will hurt your fingers: seriously, it’ll be natural for gamers to press the clench bumpers hard (like myself) despite it not having an impact on the in-game clutch. But you also get a title that proves just how insanely imaginative the indie world is. I was blown away by the utter zaniness exuded by some of these set-pieces, from escaping a crashing plane on a motorcycle to scoring a floating goal against a basketball team of giant ducks to playing a pinball boss fight. And backing up these antics is an adaptive score that knows how to bounce between coy, humorous, and dark.

I really wish I could say that all this makes-up for the unpolished physics, however that just isn’t the case. There were too many times where I got annoyed by the faulty swaying or my limbs getting knotted up. And while there are (thankfully) plenty of save points that prevent you from having to backtrack, you will no doubt have to repeat a section multiple times because of flaws out of your hands.

It took me a little over 6.5 hours to beat Struggling, which at, a $15.00 asking point, falls under my $1.00 : 30 minutes ratio. I do always say to support indie developers, and I can definitely tell that Chasing Rats are full of great craftsmen and programmers, but Struggling didn’t quite hook me as much as I wish it had. I appreciate the uniqueness and look forward to the next release from CR, but at the moment, the slightly clunky controls prevent me from recommending their debut title at full price (for Steam at least).

The OST, on the other hand? That is definitely worth the $10.00 asking price.

Note- Struggling also offers online co-op, with each player taking control of a single appendage. This reviewer did not do that and so this review does not reflect it in the final verdict.

Pros:
+ Visionary acid-inspired levels
+ Uncommon gameplay
+ Soundtrack/music editing

Cons:
– Inconsistent physics
– Ubiquitous SFX
– Strained pointer and middle fingers

Original review published at: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/08/video-game-review-what-happened/

NOTE - this review does not take into consideration the Spooktober update provided in October 2020 which reportedly updated the game significantly.


Not since Life is Strange’s “Polarized” has a video game title been so astutely reflective of its experience as What Happened. Developed by Genius Slackers and published by KATNAPPE SP. Z O. O. and Sourena Game Studio, this is a game that literally begins with you flushing a toilet and ends with your character making a drastic decision. Not many games can say that, and few still can say they tried to do it seriously.

And serious they had to. What Happened is a story-driven adventure that tackles mental health issues stemming from depression. It’s a crisis that affects millions of people worldwide, and is only recently starting to get the attention it deserves. As such, it needed to be treated with special care, particularly when placed in a medium whose primary purpose has been to entertain players.

But, in trying to be distinct and careful, I fear the developers may have gone too far in the arthouse direction and not stayed close enough to the core scientific principles that dictate the flow of dysthymic thoughts. As a result, you get a storyline that overstays its welcome, which is a major issue for any product trying to raise awareness. That’s the short answer; if you want the longer one, read on.

Unlike past reviews, there is no way for me to speak about my problems with the narrative without going into spoiler territory. Not only do I have a personal connection to the subject material at hand, but it would be impossible to point out my specific critiques without giving away specific plot details. Because of this, I am going to reiterate my quick review above to those who are possibly interested in this psychological walking simulator: it is very experimental in its presentation and has terrible pacing. If that is fine with you, check it out and do not read anymore. If you believe the extra information will not impede your potential enjoyment and/or want a more introspective analysis of the script, then continue as you wish.

Not since Life is Strange’s “Polarized” has a video game title been so astutely reflective of its experience as What Happened. Developed by Genius Slackers and published by KATNAPPE SP. Z O. O. and Sourena Game Studio, this is a game that literally begins with you flushing a toilet and ends with your character making a drastic decision. Not many games can say that, and few still can say they tried to do it seriously.

And serious they had to. What Happened is a story-driven adventure that tackles mental health issues stemming from depression. It’s a crisis that affects millions of people worldwide, and is only recently starting to get the attention it deserves. As such, it needed to be treated with special care, particularly when placed in a medium whose primary purpose has been to entertain players.

But, in trying to be distinct and careful, I fear the developers may have gone too far in the arthouse direction and not stayed close enough to the core scientific principles that dictate the flow of dysthymic thoughts. As a result, you get a storyline that overstays its welcome, which is a major issue for any product trying to raise awareness. That’s the short answer; if you want the longer one, read on.

Unlike past reviews, there is no way for me to speak about my problems with the narrative without going into spoiler territory. Not only do I have a personal connection to the subject material at hand, but it would be impossible to point out my specific critiques without giving away specific plot details. Because of this, I am going to reiterate my quick review above to those who are possibly interested in this psychological walking simulator: it is very experimental in its presentation and has terrible pacing. If that is fine with you, check it out and do not read anymore. If you believe the extra information will not impede your potential enjoyment and/or want a more introspective analysis of the script, then continue as you wish.

I wouldn’t necessarily have had a problem with the uneven thematic material were it not for the fact that the entire game takes place in one of these acid trips of Styles’s. I understand that this was the only way for Genius Slackers to imagine up a fantasy-esque scenario while still existing in the real world, but it just made it harder to feel for Styles given the lack of hard connection. One could also argue that the team was exploiting the harmful, hallucinogenic effects of LSD, but I refuse to jump behind this assertion due to What Happened being an artistic endeavor on their part: if video games are allowed to use war, sexual abuse, crime, and other human vices as part of their freedom of expression, then drug dependence should not be off-limits.

I mentioned a psychosis before. That psychosis is depicted as a clone of Styles’s that frequently berates and taunts him for his past, present, and future actions/indecisions. In theory, it’s one of the best creations of What Happened due to it representing what every person with depression experiences: innate hate. Both literally and figuratively, there is a voice in our heads that constantly questions why we did what we did and punishes us for even the smallest of mishaps. Accidentally messing up your order to the barista, having to cancel plans with people, or even getting one problem wrong on a test can trigger the wrath of this vociferous entity.

Unfortunately, several problems arise with this manifestation. One, is the voice acting (which I’ll speak more at length later); two, its dialogue gets very repetitive very quickly. To be fair, this was always going to be a dilemma as it’s a tough situation; these thoughts feel fresh each time they spring up in our heads, but the truth is they are essentially repeating the same thing. I suppose adding more variety to the converses would have yielded crisper results: that is, going the Frasier route and substituting common sentences with more intellectually-sounding phrases might have made these exchanges more enticing and/or distressing to listen to. The writers could have also had the two Styleses react to more than just the same three topics of classmates, ex-friends, and family. When we’re in this state of repressed anger and anguish, we take it out on everyday stimuli, not just our primary catalysts.

Three, and most importantly, it’s not depicted as an entirely negative thing. Let’s be clear: having an auditory persona regularly challenging your ability to do anything logical is a horrifying thing that no one should ever have to live with. We will all make mistakes in life- learning not dwell on them or feel intense remorse is a key part of becoming an adult.

In What Happened, this pessimistic Styles is obviously a terrible “human being,” but there are many times during the game where you will have to listen to him in order to get through a section. For example, one scene has you move past lockers with shadowy hands lashing out of them ala the Wallmasters from Ocarina of Time. It’s impossible to successfully navigate past them without being grasped, and so the only way to escape their clutches is to listen to where the voice tells you to turn. Another part sees a giant shark swimming through the hallways. The only way to avoid it? Heed the directions of anti-Styles.

The term ludonarrative dissonance was coined to describe gameplay systems that were at odds with story intent. Not only does that apply here, but it’s quite unfortunate given that there clearly were good intentions from the devs. However, the way they went about implementing these ideas has turned a 100 percent adverse singleton into an on-again, off-again helpful sprite.

I realize I haven’t really haven’t been talking about the actual story. The reason for that is because of the way the plot is presented: a fragmented collection of emotions and memories under the psychedelic impact of window pane. To those who played Call of Duty: Black Ops, you may recall the penultimate chapter wherein Alex finds himself wandering through a building whilst experiencing mnemonic chaos. Imagine that applied to an entire video game and you have What Happened. Every perspective of time blends together into one collage, and so you’re frequently getting glimpses of the past and nonce, interrupted by bursts into another realm full of trippy visuals that highlight Styles’s delusions. It’s an experimental take on conventional storytelling that yields mixed results. On the one hand, you definitely get the gist of what happened, who Styles is, and what he wants, but on the other, there is no hard character arc for him. Every time he seems to be making progress or on the verge of an epiphany, some rehashed element from his history comes back, reignites the demented twin, and sends you on a retread of hopelessness.

You may be thinking that this makes for an accurate portrayal of depression- that it can feel like an endless cycle. There are two points of contention to this. One, as I said before, subjectivity plays a part in the perception of depression; some people make progress, others stay in a state of futility, and still more go through alternating phases of happy and sad. And I can tell you that, based on his dialogue (technically monologues?), Styles falls into the first category of being someone who wants to get out. Because of this, his alternating progressive/regressive character arc comes off as frustrating. You can’t help someone who pulls back their hand at the last minute- that’s not how AA works, and it’s not how even the most kind-hearted person can work. This ties into point number two, which is gamer incentive. As a player, I have to have some reason for putting my character through a harrowing journey- if Styles’s relapses fail to give intrinsic motives, and you’re not going to provide extrinsic rewards, then why am I doing anything?

I suppose that’s one of the limitations with a video game format, but it’s not like gaming is a new medium- these constraints were well-known beforehand, and for Genius Slackers to miss the boat on this is disheartening. They had the right idea, and I can’t fault them for wanting to do as much good as possible, but Styles’s circular injudiciousness doesn’t mesh well with basic gaming parameters.

What makes this worse is the sly implementation of choice. Throughout What Happened you’re apparently given the ability to change Styles’s behavior and guide him towards a happier finale. It sounds good in theory, and I love when game choices are less blatant- none of that painfully obviously, black/white, good/bad nonsense pioneered by Bethesda and BioWare. The problem here is that the vast majority of the title is not only linear, but has you following orders from the anti-Styles for the sake of successfully advancing. And so, I wasn’t even aware that you had the option to do some decisions differently, making it a little too subtle. As a result, I received the worst ending, which had Styles commit suicide, accompanied by a title card informing me (non-verbatim) “maybe if you had cared, things would be different for Styles.”

The sad truth is I did not care for Styles, and while there were severe story flaws (outlined above), the bigger issue was the pacing. About two hours into What Happened, it takes a huge dive, and I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it’s because of how redundant the narrative/writing gets or the lack of true exploration value (more on that below), but even the many scenery changes failed to charge up my excitement for the rest of Styles’s odyssey. I found myself spending the next four hours doing what I could to slog my way to the finish line- this is a game that really should’ve been wrapped up under three hours, and honestly there were a few beats in the story where I felt it could’ve actually concluded without stretching on for another chunk of time. So yeah, I was pretty disappointed.

The graphics, luckily, are very palatable for the most part. There’s a reason the Unreal Engine remains so popular among independent developers- it gives their world access to AAA specs. Like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, What Happened opts for a photorealistic schematic, and I was blown away by the quality of the texturing. Every single item, let me repeat, every single item was superbly composed to the point where there was no blurriness upon closer inspection. The stalls from a bathroom, the carbonated wood of tree trunks, heck even the freaking skin on characters are constructs that could be broadcast in 1440p and still look damn good.

I’ve complained in the past that video games artisans often spend hours designing an area only for it to not be utilized much in the final product- why do this when 90 percent of the player base won’t care for your efforts? With What Happened, though, we finally have an instance of time invested being in-sync with gameplay. Locations you are only temporarily in (a forest lit by moonlight) don’t have much detail compared to places where you spent an exorbitant amount of time. The most prominent example of the latter is the school: it’s three stories tall and packed with browsable classrooms. The corridors themselves are decked with paraphernalia reminiscent of high school life; in retrospect, it’s ironic that I started off this review comparing What Happened to Life is Strange as the academic decor is very similar between their two secondary educational institutions: bulletins, senioritis displays, banners, crumpled up papers, it’s all there.

The real conceptual feat, however, are the interiors of the aforestated learning spaces. Styles is required to enter different ones depending on where the narrative takes him, and each one is so distinct that I’m underselling it by using a descriptor as simple as “distinct”. We’ve all taken multiple subjects at school, and classrooms can be very personalized depending on the teacher.

Such is the case here- all of them are little customized hubs that not only fit the topic of the year, but also whatever personality the instructor evidently had. Some are adorned with motivational posters that incorporate puns into their educational adverts, while others feel more standardized and bookish, reflecting a serious professor. Geography classes have globes, art rooms easels and brushes, science rooms beakers and test tubes, and desks all around are full of notebooks, writing utensils, and etchings. I am seriously underselling just how in-depth everything was- even books on shelves weren’t just generic rectangular shapes but labeled textbooks and famous novels! Every inch of the walls was adorned with a piece of scholastic minutiae, and the floors were hard to navigate because of the strategic placement of tables and chairs. I wish I had jotted down more notes because it was all terrific. And because I was required to return to these locales multiple times, I got to appreciate the effort put into their construction.

What makes all this even more amazing is how naturally the environments adapt to unnatural phenomena. The poison in Style’s system warps reality around him, consequently transforming the vistas around you into dreams from an inebriated surrealist. The school gym court freezes over like the Centre of Hell from Dante’s Inferno, the principal’s office is overgrown with dense vegetation, and the school foyer is drowned with water as though flooded like in Genesis. It’s very easy to imagine up crazy scenarios, it’s another to successfully implement them into a world without it coming across as silly. That luckily wasn’t the case here.

Another major side effect of Style’s intoxication are the blurring of pigments, and boy does it lead to some fascinating visuals. If there’s one thing What Happened does objectively great, it’s intense colored lighting. I’m sure we’ve all played a game or two that decided to throw us into a spiral of viscera through conflating illustrations and mashed-up hues; but in trying to be “cool” and “out-there” the developers left us with a headache. This is because not every piece of chroma works well with the other- you can’t throw a bunch of paint onto a canvas and expect it to look “pretty” just because the individual dyes looks good on their own. The same applies for illumination: balancing the RGB model is key to any aspiring digital artist- going too heavy on either end of the spectrum, blue or red, will tire the eyes.

And yet, Styles will happen upon any crazy color under the sun and it…works. I walked into a chamber with flashing rainbows, and then another with a green tint as though I was inside The Matrix. Some venues were pearly white, others pitch dark, and still more that wavered in a midpoint between the two extremes. What a dazzling title!

All that being said, there are a couple of downsides to the graphical splendour. Hair looks terrible, as though an artist plucked strands of papier-mâché, stained them, and tossed them on top of everyone’s scalps. It would’ve been fine if it matched the art-style, but here it’s at complete odds. And because it’s at complete odds, there’s an uncanny look to the characters’s facial expressions courtesy of the stringy eyebrows. Not helping this are the floppy arm animations, which make Styles move like a zombie half-asleep. Secondly, while colors are used well, the lion’s share of the actual lighting is purely static, meaning you don’t get much in the way of dynamic changes.

Sound is up next, and here I have to go back to being negative, starting with the voice acting. I hinted at my thoughts before, but now is the time to flesh them out: Styles is terrible. Both personas are played by the same actor, Amir Ali Ashraf Kashani, and he drops the balls hard. There’s no pain in his voice, no anguish, no agony, just pure resignation. What? Even at the very end of the line you will still hear people suffer. Even if we take the stereotypical image of depression which is someone curled up on the foot of a bed, deadened to the world around them, this does not equate to being vocally neutral. It’s like he was doing a lineread out of pure boredom.

His taunts as anti-Styles are just as emotionally-stunted. It lacks the subtly terrorizing, condescending, skin biting tension that this mental menace should possess. I said beforehand that including more dialogue digressions would have helped with the repetition, but given how bad Kashani’s performance is, I’m starting to doubt that.

The other characters are better off. Style’s ex-girlfriend, Rose/Maya (note- apparently two different characters, but in-game they look and sound the same, making the dissimilarity confusing), played by Rozhan Hoseini and Lisa Suliteanu respectively, is excellent- you truly get a sense that she actually cared for her former beloved when he began this descent into madness. Her lapses into disdainful rhetoric (caused by Styles’s corrupted recollections of her) are just as good.

Ben (Conner Evans), Style’s former BFF, is as good as Maya/Rose, but my biggest gripe with him was that he sounded too old for a high school student.

Finally, Styles’s parents (Mehdi Yadegari and Hamideh Rayeji) are also given a few lines here or there, but they don’t stand out and feel like atypical suburbanites from the ’50s, though I acknowledge that this was possibly what Genius Slackers was going for.

The SFX lacks sufficient polish. Footsteps sound fine enough, but they don’t correspond to your movements at all, instead opting for two settings: one to play when you’re walking, and one for when you’re running. I noticed this case of auditory duality when I experimented with other actions like shuffling locks and opening/closing cabinet flaps- there were always two variations, no matter how hard/soft you pressed the key or how fast/slow you closed the cover. Combine this with the inconsistent lip-syncing and you have a lazy sound set-up.

The music is an improvement. The composer (whose name I could not find) succeeds at matching his compositions with whatever mood Styles’s erratic personality takes him to. While I did find the atmospheric arrangements to be more evocative than the direct set-piece ones (largely due to the latter being bromidic rehashes of melodies heard in other action games), neither was distracting. And I honestly almost found myself tearing up during the poignant scenes due to the beautiful orchestral beats.

Speaking of action, we can finally talk about the gameplay. Well, this is a walking simulator, so on the outset there’s not too much going on- Styles can either amble or jog through environments, and there will be times where you will have to do one or the other. What Happened was presented to me under the horror genre, but it’s honestly more akin to a psychological title that veers between the dramatic and thriller subsects. There are instances where it can get scary, but this feeling quickly wears off, and the vast majority of the time you’re just wandering through exotic locales for the sake of advancing the plot.

Exploration does yield some extra tidbits about Styles presented through journal entries. And while they are nice and, in some cases, introspective about adolescent frustration, they don’t tell you anything significantly different from what you get through the primary script, which is disappointing. The one thing walking sims hypothetically have, above other genres, is the freedom of unadulterated reconnaissance into their settings for the purposes of uncovering extra information. Firewatch and Gone Home were both astute examples of this, and I wish I could have listed What Happened alongside them, but it was a missed opportunity. In spite of their size, most rooms only have one diary page or postcard, making it pointless to pull open any other drawers once you find one stationary. Why not include vellums that disclose ancillary details about the side characters? Ben and Maya/Rose are hardly fleshed out- heck Styles’s father, the man who is the impetus for this whole adventure, is only in two scenes! There was so much more content Genius Slackers could have added, especially since you’ll have to reenter the same suites again and again.

There are some puzzles thrown in for good measure, and a couple of chase sequences to add some quick thrills, but you’re mostly just going to be following a predetermined, linear path down acid lane. One of the more interesting sections involves having to avoid the aforementioned shadow hands as they haphazardly spring out of nowhere- succumbing to them sends you into various Limbos ala the Nihilanth’s rifts from Half-Life 1, but these guys merely appear thrice in the entire runtime. And on the question of missed potential, Genius Slackers actually implemented a decent physics engine that’s barely used!

But I don’t want to get too off-topic with “what could have beens,” so I’ll end the gameplay section on a critique of a major design flaw that I did not even think was possible in this day and age- the lack of an options menu when playing.

Let me clarify something- whenever you boot back up your file, it opens up with Styles waking up in a cavern. He then has the power to go through one of three doors: new game, continue, and, what do you know, options!

Having it on the main menu is fine, but why the heck is ONLY there? We can only see the effects of changing the brightness, sound levels, and other features in real time. How does it make any sense to not give prospective consumers this staple of the gaming industry? A huge, outdated drawback.

So in conclusion, what do you get with What Happened? You get an indie company’s attempt at undertaking the depiction of dysthymia in a video game. It was always going to be a challenge, and they do a few things right: from personifying the voice in our heads to interloping memories with contemporary thoughts. But sadly, this is hurt by a story that traipses haphazardly to the finish line and integrates choices under a hypocritical banner of linearity and submissiveness to the evil Styles.

Styles himself has a receding arc that impairs player incentive to continue forth, the sound architecture is lackluster, and you aren’t compensated for exploration. Sure, everything looks magnificent courtesy of the Unreal Engine, but What Happened is ultimately all style and little substance (pun intended).

Genius Slackers is not the first to portray mental illness in a computer game, and they certainly won’t be the last, but hopefully the good and bad will be taken from their efforts.

Pros:
+ Graphical texturing
+ Coloured lighting
+ Reexplorable environment
+ Suicide hotlines listed at end

Cons:
– Terrible pacing
– Mediocre sound/bad lead performance
– Overstuffed story

Review originally published on Flickering Myth: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/04/video-game-review-ramiwo/

Playing Ramiwo, I was unfortunately reminded of another indie title called Virginia. Like Ramiwo, it marketed itself as a walking simulator with a deep narrative, but the end result was more akin to an overly-ambitious animated film that ultimately failed thematically and artistically.

Developed by Matto and Bil Deerberg (I am unaware if the latter is also the name of his company) and published by Deerberg himself, Ramiwo offers slightly more gameplay freedom than Virginia (and certainly angered me a whole lot less), but the fact that I was so blatantly made aware of the latter isn’t a good sign. Ramiwo advertises itself as being an exploration game providing “sweetmeat” for one’s brain, but you’ll find that both aspects are significantly limited, consequently making the game a hard sell. That’s the short answer- if you want the longer one read on.

Beginning with the story, I can quickly say that there isn’t one. You play as a floating cube that has no characteristics to it. Maybe Deerberg intended for there to be a subtler tale told by the background sounds and imagery in front of you, but if there was I couldn’t discern it.

That imagery makes-up the many settings. Ramiwo is an interesting game in that it takes place on a cube-shaped planet divided into 96 different worlds (16 on each side, 6 sides total). I say interesting because the idea of traveling through differing environments to get to an end-goal is the perfect excuse to engage in a visual orgy, and Deerberg does exactly that. While each face of the “dice” features a specific motif for the mini areas to follow (industrial, jungle, water, etc…), the regions themselves are uniquely crafted on an individual basis. You’ll see awkward geometry resembling the labyrinthine descriptions in a Lovecraft novel; matter and masses moving in crazily, yet distinctly controlled, manners; wetlands rife with strange plants and totems, and urbicidal scapes taken from some post-apocalyptic future amongst many others. In particular, I liked the luminescent tints some places had based on the way that particular land’s sun shined (ranging from common yellow to even purple!).

Deerberg’s imagination is on point, and made me wonder if he was influenced at all by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, which was about a series of different burghal environments as described by an objective viewer.

Unfortunately, all that creativity is hampered by the bizarre art style in front of you. It’s as though Deerberg was going for photorealistic graphics, realized halfway through he wouldn’t have the money to fully render his vision, quickly downgraded it to try and resemble Minecraft, only to realize he didn’t have the budget for THAT either, and then started changing it back to his original intent only to give up halfway through. What I mean by that is, while environmental pieces don’t look cartoony, they lack good texturing, making them resemble the out-of-place polygon models from the PS2 era. If it was always his wish be abstract, I just don’t see the effort because every solid in Ramiwo strikes me as though it was taken from some pre-designed model in an old game engine and haphazardly put into the game without much craftsmanship.

Making things worse are a couple of graphical hitches. First, I noticed some texture pop-in during times when I would walk through one place or another. Secondly, and most unforgivably, is that the game isn’t optimized well. Every minute or even half-minute the screen will go white or grey for a few seconds before returning back to normal. It got really bothersome, especially for a title that rests its appeal on the visuals in front of you.

Sound is another disappointing category. There is no voice acting, and the music is literally just a single stringed instrument playing some solo piece on repeat. Occasionally it’s altered by the respective world you’re in, but, for the most part, it stays constant. It is peaceful sounding (which is the perfect accompaniment to a walking sim), and the musician behind it is clearly talented, but considering how wacky some of these locales could be, I felt the lack of diverse melodies was a missed opportunity.

The worst part is the SFX. I don’t know what Deerberg’s aim was here, but if it was to be insipidly surreal he nailed it. You’ll hear a variety of the most random noises you can possibly think of, including: pencil scratching, saw cutting, bubble spattering, weird buzzing, and even a baby cooing amongst a plethora of others. Sometimes they make sense by fitting the terrain you’re in, like the sound of a waterfall when near a body of moving water or a pig snorting when you’re on a farm, but for the most part it’s so desultory, as though it was thrown in at the last minute.

The game design itself has flaws too. As a walking simulator, the point of Ramiwo should be to successfully drift through all the adjacent worlds, with said worlds being fun to explore- if you’re going to limit someone’s gameplay to just wandering around a free roam map, you have to give them the ability to do so without (unreasonable) restraint. Given the concept of almost 100 planes to visit, you’d think Ramiwo would fit the bill.

Each place you enter has four entry points that connect it with the other squares in its vicinity, these “portals” (if you will) marked by graffiti etchings that aesthetically resemble the drawings from Antichamber (on a side note, a stenciled art style would have been perfect for this title). The problem is the space you’re given to amble between these entryways is so small, you’re really not able to appreciate the geography. Want to take a closer look at that monolith in front of you? How about those polychromatic flora on the other side? Nope, take one step too far and you’re teleported to another venue. And considering you’re not given a visible boundary line indicating the warp zone of these beaming glyphs, you’ll find this will happen to you very frequently. Why Deerberg didn’t think to expand the area for player examination when he put a lot of time into conceiving these intricate, colorful designs makes no sense (unless he didn’t want gamers to notice the poor texturing most of these surfaces have).

So ultimately, Ramiwo was a big missed opportunity. Deerberg could’ve given us an arthouse version of a Rick and Morty episode- a relaxing journey through a series of demiurgic dimensions, but instead we got a poor man’s video game adaptation of Sliders. To add the cherry on top, you can’t even pause- pressing the escape button hits you with a “game over,” meaning you have to beat it one sitting.

But it’s not like it’ll take you long. I completed Ramiwo in about 1.5 hours, and at a $5.00 asking price, that doesn’t qualify it per my $1 : 30 minutes of gameplay ratio. I wish I could say that the kaleidoscopic excursion is worth it, but with restricted movement, an annoying flash bug, and half-baked graphic design, it isn’t. If you really want to kill one and half hours on an acid trip with this, get it on a sale.

Pros:
+ Imaginative level design

Cons:
– Graphical hitches
– Faulty texturing
– Nonsensical sound effects
– Limited roaming

Original review published on: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/09/video-game-review-verdant-village/

Note - this is a review of the Early Access version of the game that was available 09/2020. Any changes since then are not reflected in this review

Sometimes great ideas emerge from the polymorphization of smaller ones. Take two radically different franchises, such as Final Fantasy and Disney, and throw them into a mixer- now you have Kingdom Hearts.

Likewise, new genres emerge from the combination of preexisting templates. One of the more interesting ones of the 2000s has been what I call the “farm RPG” spin-off, which has blended farm sims with role-playing elements to create games that emphasize resource gathering, exploration, social interactions, and energy conservation. Rune Factory, Terraria, and of course Stardew Valley are some of the more famous examples to emerge.

Developed and published by Exodus Software, Verdant Village is another such farm RPG (and perhaps the latest one, at the time of this article’s publication, to spring-up in the indie market). Unlike it’s predecessors, though, it seeks to differentiate itself through downplaying its agricultural roots and emphasizing the RPG aspects. The question is, was this wise and/or is it worth checking out? The short answer is too many issues exist at this time, but its spirit is strong. For the longer take read-on.

To clarify, Verdant Village is still in early access, meaning existing in-game content is prone to change. Indeed, during my own playthrough, I found many areas and buildings that were inaccessible, instead prompting the tagline “this area of the game hasn’t been implemented yet.” Per Exodus’s own words, they expect a fully-furnished product to be ready “by the end of 2020,” though are keeping potential delays open to “no later than Summer of 2021.” That being said, this review will attempt to be as fair as possible to the current state of the game, and a redux review may be issued at a later date closer to the Summer 2021 deadline.

We’ll begin with the story, which, at first glance, seems like the archetypal one seen in the Harvest Moon series wherein you play as a protagonist who is trying to make a living and name for themselves in a new town. The difference is, whereas in those entries you were presented as the inheritor of some piece of land, here the aforementioned role-playing principles come into play- your character has awoken on on a mysterious island with amnesia. After picking their gender, you’re rescued by the ruler of the nearby Kingdom of Amberglen and his daughter, who nurse you back to health, give you a house and plot, and leave you to your devices.

Obviously, functionally speaking, it’s the same as the beneficiary set-up , but there are subtle narrative differences implemented here that I was sad weren’t continued into the main game. For example, the daughter, Lorelei, openly questions why her father would leave you alone with a home instead of setting you up in the city inn. There was a missed opportunity to use this opening as a jumping off point to satirize (or, if you wanted to take it seriously, deconstruct) the tropes of the farm RPG genre, but alas, that is the extent you’ll see of this potential. From here on out, Verdant Village plays like any other similar title in terms of your interactions with the townsfolk- everyone you meet is mostly jolly, privy to telling you information about the area, and is openly willing to task you with very important things they need done. And yes, I understand this latter point is a trademark of RPGs in general (strangers entrusting strangers with quests), but considering the emphasis placed on your outsider status in the exposition, I was hoping to see some hesitation on the part of at least a couple of people.

But yeah, as far as the story goes, that’s about it. References are occasionally made by the citizens to a past crisis known as the “The Collapse,” but it’s as vague as “The Event” from The Big O. If there is more that comes out of the memory plot, I did not witness it in my playthrough. Pretty bare bones, but that’s also atypical of these types of games.

Next, we move onto the graphics, which coast on old-school artistry. Seriously, you have two different types of art here: the close-ups and the general arrangement. The close-ups are clearly derived from visual novels, with NPCs looking like kawaii anime characters. The general design, on the other hand, refers to what you see when you’re moving throughout the world, and here it seems that Exodus was influenced by SNES Quintet games. Maybe it’s solely cause of how hair was drawn, but I was reminded of classics like Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma, and Soul Blazer.

Now, to clarify, Verdant Village isn’t a carbon copy of those works- there’s something distinct about the way humans, nature, and architecture look. Humans are thinner, with rectangular faces compared to their oval JRPG counterparts. Trees vary depending on their genus, ranging from gnarled branches to grand-standing oaks. And buildings feel individually assembled, as though each homeowner had an active role in constructing their own dwelling- the residence of the blacksmith is smaller and more compact compared to the residence of the farmers, who have a sprawling mansion.

My point in listing all of these is that there is a true craftsmanship in Verdant Village that I have not seen in many famous older releases by such bigwigs as Square and Game Freak (take a look at any forest in any first-to-third gen Pokémon game for instance, or the inner layout of most abodes in Secret of Mana). It’s a testament to the artisanry of Exodus Software, and their commitment to making a unique environment to explore. None of this is even taking into account the changes caused by the four seasons, which are far from reskins and put Oracle of Seasons to shame in terms of aesthetic creativity. Summer nights bring you a flurry of fireflies, while springtime bathes the area in a yellow glare.

Speaking of glares, luminescence is creatively conveyed during dusk and twilight through the combination of a murky gradient, preexisting torches, and scotopic eyesight. By the former, I mean how the screen naturally darkens as the day goes by; by the middle, there are lanterns strewn throughout the landscape that automatically turn on during sundown, disclosing an annular glow that lighten up the pixels in their confines, and by the latter, I am referring to a radiance that surrounds your character- it’s labeled “night vision” in game, and you can earn perks to increase its ambit, but I was admittedly unsure as to how to receive said perks. Nonetheless, it blends quite well with the beacons during eventide.

Another thing I appreciated was how raindrops actually impacted the surface. In most smaller budget games, rain is presented as a pre-rendered particle effect that MIGHT cause nature’s tears to blur your perception, but is otherwise just a nonexistent backdrop that phases through things. In Verdant Village, it won’t impact your navigation, but you will see the droplets splatter upon contacting the ground, with two different versions in place depending on whether the beads hit a solid or liquid area. A rainy day also eliminates the need to water your crops, making it more than just a pretty overlay.

Not everything about the graphics is good, though. There were shortcuts taken, most notably with the shadows- they are nothing more than dark circles surrounding each person and component in the game. In fact, many things, like birds and the aforestated downpour, don’t even have that, making it a little disappointing.

On top of this, Verdant Village has an issue with its depiction of 3D spacing. What I mean by this is, 2D games obviously rest on creating the illusion of an extra dimension, and they typically do this through geometric prisms and land placement: how things are arranged and drawn on a flat plane can make wonders, especially when you throw in color.

The problem here is very hard to describe, but essentially nothing looks as elevated as it should be. Going through a complanate location such as a swamp or beach or ranch looks fine, however the second you arrive in a place with altitude, like grasslands with hills or a mountain pass, it can’t help but feel like you’re zigzagging your way horizontally rather than travelling vertically. I’m not sure why this is compared to other sprite-like games, but if I had to pick a theory, it would be the use of hues. The higher something is, the larger its shadow, and the larger its shadow, the darker its circumference of influence will be. In Verdant Village, every place has the same level of lighting, (and by lighting I of course mean the tint of an object since there aren’t real lighting systems). Because of this, there’s no sense of up/down distance or depth of field. I doubt it’ll ruin anyone’s experience, but it’s worth saying.

What WILL probably ruin people’s experiences, though, are the strange geography schemes that impact navigation. Verdant Village is one of the few times I’ve witnessed ordonnance in a video game that was pointlessly obstructive. Amberglen features structures and rivers like any other medieval-inspired hamlet, but it’s a genuine pain to walk through. Bridges are infrequently placed, architectonics bizarrely rise on acclivities, both of which impede your movement and force you to maneuver in weird angular shifts. You will find the placing of such static obstacles even worse in places like the morasses, jungles, and sierra bluffs even worse.

And it all made me wonder why? Why do this to players? Why have them waste a few extra (in-game) minutes having to oddly steer when you could have just designed the environments to be easy to roam? To give a great example of how this impacts motion, we can look at a small-scale version of this issue: to get from your orchard to Amberglen, you have to walk down, then right- why not just have you walk right? Why throw in that offbeat downward ambulation? It ruins the kinetic flow.

From there, we move onto sound, which is objectively unsatisfying. No voice acting exists, so I’ll begin with the SFX, which is a series of repetitious noises. Each action you can do has a set sound that does not alter no matter what- upgrade your pickax to a mithril one? Doesn’t change the fact that it hits ore with the same din as your original mattock. Want to pick up a piece of wood or a flower on the ground? Don’t worry, they “pluck” the exact same. What about cutting down a giant evergreen versus a slim palm tree? Well, if they both fell down in a Verdant Village forest where there was no one around to hear them and they made a sound, I guarantee you they would crash in a similar fashion.

There’s also the lackluster attempt at ambience. You get a lot of stock noises like frogs and mosquitoes in the marsh or wind in a field of grass or crashing waves by the waterfront, which wouldn’t necessarily be bad except that there is clearly no source for these audible pieces. There are no critters basking in the middle of a bog or shrubs swaying as though they are being blown or regenerating sea surfs. It really feels like it was thrown in last minute.

That being said, there is a saving grace with the music. The score, presumably composed by an in-house musician at Exodus, is very enlivening. It takes those symphonic melodies we’ve come to associate with the fantasy genre and modulates them for a smaller setting. There are only five or so tracks, and they play regardless of location or time of day, but I honestly preferred this over syncing attempts in past farm RPGs wherein you have a single theme for a designated locale that restarts whenever you reenter said area.

Now, having a different set of tracks for night/afternoon/day or adding individual OSTs for each season would be nice and a big improvement, but what you have here is very pleasant to hear. Regardless of the activity I was doing, I never found myself distracted by the compositions, which speaks to their universal tone.

Finally, we come to gameplay, of which there is a lot to talk about. As mentioned in the story section, the goal is to become a self-made man, but unlike preceding farm RPGs where you were encouraged to achieve this through recreating the Hanging Gardens of Babylon via your very own grand acreage, Verdant Village provides numerous ways to increase your personal wealth and income. Mining, hunting, fishing, foraging, archaeology, cooking, and even alchemy (amongst others!) are all valid avenues. The thing I enjoyed the most is how none are prioritized over the other- they all come with their own pros and cons that you will have to take into consideration when deciding which to pursue: mining can quickly get you valuable gems, but trekking to the quarry takes time and constantly breaking rocks tires you out quicker; you can go the old-fashioned route and cultivate a giant plantation, but keeping it moisturized daily and having to wait up to a week for the crops to grow is a time sink; fishing is simple and easy, yet you can’t guarantee whether you’ll get a prized trout or a common aquatic species, making it a bit of a gamble.

You can see that a commonality for all these activities is stamina, which is utilized for every action you do save walking and smelting. You can restore it through eating food and sleeping, but chances are you’ll exert yourself every day because of the relatively low endurance meter. Due to their not being a personal leveling-up system, I don’t know if you are able to increase your avatar’s capacity, but what I do know is that enhancing your tools results in their associated strokes draining you less and less as you improve them further. Many of these abilities do have their own associated experience bars that you can level up through repeatedly doing them, but I wasn’t sure what they yielded in terms of gameplay. Still, it can only be a positive thing.

In spite of the variety, Verdant Village suffers from a big grind issue, and I mean this economically (since there are no extravagant skill sets). With the exception of foraging, you will find it in your best interest to get better tools and/or order additional appliances so that you aren’t constantly weary from whatever enterprises you choose to pursue. To do this, you will need to manufacture metallic bars that the craftsmen in question (most of the time being the ironsmith Sven) will utilize for the upgrade. The problem is prospecting the caves for the minerals needed can be a drag- you will frequently run out of strength, forcing you to return home, rest, and continue the excavation in the next period ad nauseam.

It’s not just mining that has this headache. Like I noted before, woodcutting, fishing, and other ventures have their own toll that you will have to pay for the sake of progression. And while you will notice a decline in exhaustion through the refurbishing of your tools, the sheer amount of times you need to repeat a task ensures that you are in this for the long haul.

Another thing that ensures the long haul are the quests, which are a massive misfire. Every single one I played was nothing more than a gigantic fetch quest- a character either needs a ridiculous assortment or a ridiculous amount of items and it’s your job to go get them. Sometimes you’ll get an idea of what they want from their preceding description, but there are just as many times where you won’t know and may end up filling your log with an entry that you know will take a while, which wouldn’t be a negative were it not for the fact that your journal only has 10 spaces- try and exceed it and either you or the person you’re speaking to will inform you that you have too much to do, which makes no sense from either a story or gameplay perspective.

While all fetch-related, they can be divided into two categories: random and grubwork. The former requires you to find an item or items whose presence is dictated by a RNG. For instance, collecting seashells entails you to go to the shore and find the right husks, only the possibility of you getting all the ones you need is slim to none, meaning you’re going to have to make monotonous trips again and again until Mother Earth grants you respite!

Grubwork, contrarily, puts the furtherance mostly in your hands. You’re going to have to toil until you earn enough raw materials to get the NPC what they want. Sometimes this can be as simple as preparing an individual’s favorite meal, but other times it can be a massive investment. For example, if you want to increase the size of your rucksack, you’re going to have to get this chick 10 spools of wool. Sounds simple right? Well, to get wool you need sheep -> to get sheep, you need a barn -> to get a barn, you need 35 slabs of bronze -> to get bronze you need 105 pieces of copper, 70 tin, and 35 coal -> to get that you need to mine for a long while (and this isn’t even taking into account the assets you need to procure a loom to spin the fleece).

As you can imagine, both of these are tedious tasks, with the latter making the grinding worse than it normally would be. There could have at least been a silver lining in the form of juicy subplots wherein a narrative is conveyed through your dialogues with these characters; since the head shots already look they’re out of a VN, Exodus could have taken a further cue from that genre and really driven home interesting or humorous tales, but alas, these threads are as basic as a “a nearby village suffered a harsh winter, go get me 100 flax,” or “I want to make mushroom soup, go get me some fungi” or, my personal favorite, “get me these odd items cause I like them.” It also doesn’t help that the bulk of the NPCs are cut from the same types of cloth: you have the extroverted young females, the older blasé men, and the younger optimistic gents.

The worst part are the rewards. You would think, given the many past years’ worth of great sidequests in other franchises, that the developer would have understood the relationship between time sunk and award given, but they don’t. Ninety percent of the time, you’re provided with either recipes for your cookbook or useless furniture designs (not even the furniture itself, just the blueprint to spend money ordering it from a catalog).

That’s not to say that they’re all like this as there are a few tasks which unlock the previously mentioned skills (or the equipment needed for them), but the vast majority of them are. You will kill many in-game (and real life!) hours collecting scraps in exchange for instructions on how to bake a blueberry pie. It’s unfortunate when RuneScape, all the way back in the early-2000s, knew how to appropriately compensate players for their undertakings.

An additional flaw RuneScape unintentionally reveals about Verdant Village is its lack of a good market system, which could have not only added depth to the game but alleviated some of the problems with the quests. What I mean by that is, instead of having to waste your own time accumulating goods, you’re instead given the option to obtain them via trade or bargaining. To be fair, some of that exists through the storekeepers in Amberglen (you’re able to purchase sugar directly instead of growing sugarcane), but it’s nonexistent for ores, produce, flora, and animal skins. And though you are able to sell anything to any retailer, if you accidentally oversell an item to a shop, you’re unable to buy it back or undo the transaction. Seriously, imagine if a version of the marketplace system from Secret of Evermore was implemented here.

For all my complaints though, I will say that Verdant Village runs very well. Screen transitions are solid, there’s never any lag, and I only encountered two bugs in my playthrough, one of which was near-immediately resolved after contacting the developer on the Steam forums, which brings up a solid point: Verdant Village has a great community. Seriously, for a small indie title, it not only has extensive discussions going on in the comments, but also a burgeoning wiki that I was able to consult whenever I needed extra information on item locations and help with quests.

I believe part of the reason for this amassing of gamers is the relaxing atmosphere of the title. As you all are more than aware, 2020 has been a depressing year, and with September being the month for Suicide Awareness, that factor has only been amplified. A beautiful farming simulator that doesn’t pressure you or rush you or punish you, that has likable characters and a large open environment, a title that embraces freedom and serenity; THAT is the perfect remedy to indulge in for the remainder of the decade.

And the truth is all my big criticisms are amendable through patches and updates (which Exodus is, as we speak, constantly doing). Throw in the ability for your protagonist to build platforms or ladders and you solve the wayfinding issues; simply append supplementary dialogue to existing conversations with villagers to give their jobs more weight, and administer the option to mail order every supply so that players can prioritize and grind for what they want to do (hide it behind a quest if you don’t want to put it upfront!).

As noted, Verdant Village is currently in early access, but you can still play it for the price of $15.00. RPGs, of course, technically provide enough content, but you have to understand that a good chunk of it comes from iterant undertakings, and the pitfalls I outlined above, while fixable, aren’t yet fixed.

If you’re a fan of this genre, want a calming game to wallow in, and wish to support a passionate independent developer who is actively working every week to make their game better and better, then Verdant Village is for you.

Pros:
+ Unique art style
+ Peaceful setting
+ Diverse endeavors
+ OST

Cons:
– Navigation
– Poor SFX
– Nothing but fetch quests
– Grind heavy

Originally published on Flickering Myth: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/12/video-game-review-alba-a-wildlife-adventure/



There’s something about animal photography that strongly stirs me. Perhaps it’s because I grew up reading nature catalogues, flipping through page after page of colorful creatures beautifully captured by some talented photographer. Ads for Zoo Books enchanted me, EyeWitness encyclopedias were checked out from the library, and every other week I found myself playing NabiscoWorld’s two “video safari” games (anyone else remember that amazing site?). Any chance I could get to see visceral images of fauna in their habitats I immediately took.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I was instantly enthralled by the concept behind Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. Developed and published by ustwo games, Alba sets you on an island of 61 animals and tasks you with helping save their home. Yet, in going the open-world route, I feel the game makers ultimately lose the charm they are trying to maintain. That’s the short answer, for the longer one read on.

We’ll begin with the story- you play as a young girl named Alba who is spending a summer vacation with her grandparents on the Mediterranean island of Pinar del Mar. Prior to the events of the game, a fire broke out and ruined the isle’s signature nature reserve, leaving its fate up to the mayor. While the majority of the townsfolk evidently want the preserve restored, sociopolitical dealings have convinced the Mayor to replace it with a luxury hotel. Teaming up with her friend Inés, Alba sets out to reclaim the once proud sanctuary.

As you might imagine, there is a strong environmentalist message behind Alba’s main narrative- conservation of the biosphere, respecting the livelihoods of other living beings, and stopping unnecessary industrialization on elemental grounds. What I really appreciated about Alba’s take on these familiar themes is that it never veered into preachy territory. There are a number of citizens, including the protagonist’s Grandfather, who make a reasonable case for the proposed grand lodging: tourism is drying up, businesses are closing, and it’s been over a year since the refuge was destroyed with no one bothering to do anything. The game also chastises ideas about the conflagration being deliberately set as nonsensical conspiracy theories. By being rounder in its approach, Alba ends up looking more thoughtful.

That’s not to say it’s perfect. The man behind the hotel’s conception, a guy named Sérgio, is your typical mustache-twirling greedy real estate tycoon, and the controversy surrounding the Mayor’s decision to support Sérgio comes down to cliché political machinations. But for an independent title that is evidently catering to children, Alba stands out in a genre that, all too often, speaks down to its audience.

The titular character herself is mostly silent until the very end, so there’s not much to say there. Besides loving animals and boasting a cap that looks eerily reminiscent of Ash’s from the first few seasons of Pokémon, she’s pretty much a blank slate. Unfortunately, I can’t say the others fared much better- the Island is home to an assortment of generic individuals, and while some were memorable from a kooky POV, no one besides Alba’s aforestated granddad were fleshed out. NPCs here tend to be one-note, defined solely by a singular personality rather than their conscientiousness or sapience.

When it comes to open world games without a centralized cast, this tends to be the case, so it wasn’t disappointing to see the writers falter overall. What was disappointing were the sprinkles of potential that were never expanded upon: the local veterinarian is revealed to be a secret graffiti artist- is this a satirical commentary on the artistic constraints of small town suburbia or just a silly plot twist? A little boy rapidly alternates between states of anger and quietness- is this a take on bipolar disorder/childhood regression or simply a gimmicky emotion to exploit for dialogue variation? A resident’s husband is shown to be constantly exhausted by the work he has to put into his acreage despite the support of his wife- do we take this as a jab at gender roles or simply a farmer’s dilemma? An ice cream maker requests you help out one of her friends who has become depressed for some reason- is this an attempt at showing how children can comfort people deal with mental illness or just a random side activity?

You will never know the answer to any of these because they are self-contained without any kind of follow-up. There will be those who criticize me for critiquing this, saying that the game isn’t a Shakespeare play and doesn’t need lines of monologue dedicated to expanding minor characters. I agree, but that’s not what I’m saying- what I’m saying is that these narrative aspects exist in Alba’s game world but don’t serve any purpose- they don’t expand on an NPC’s disposition, they don’t add lore to ustwo’s fictional setting. At best they make bland parts semi-memorable by way of a quirk, but that’s faint praise at best and wasted potential at worst.

If I can end on a positive note, it’s that Alba beautifully embraces its Hispanic and Latino roots. This is a game set somewhere evidently adjacent to Latin America, and the incorporation of those fundamentals into its reality, whether it’s the food, music, or occasional bits of Spanish in the script, were delightful, and showcase how to introduce new cultures without it feeling forced.

Graphics are up next, and the results are mixed. To put it bluntly, Alba is a very plain-looking game. It utilizes an art style that deemphasizes the need for texturing: objects in the environ, ranging from flora to architecture, appear like they’ve been filled in by the fill tool from MS paint- there’s no patterns, no fine details, no differentiation in material usage. It’s clear this was a deliberate decision, yet it’s also clear that this was done for budgetary reasons. The bright hues do make everything palatable aesthetically, and there are times where it does evoke an old-school children’s picture book. However, at the end of the day, I couldn’t help but feel that there was something lacking in the overall presentation. I hate using luddite language, yet “simple” is the first word that pops up into my head. Nearly all the elements are rendered with a single color, and the majority of the shapes and sizes are atypical of what you’d expect from a 90s educational video game.

In addition to this, Pinar del Mar does not display its heritage well. I complimented the Latino influence on the writing earlier, but in terms of visuals, it is almost non-existent here. This could have been a place in any other western country and you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference (outside of some flat rooftops maybe resembling Havana).

That being said, there are a couple of major savings graces in the graphical department. The first are the animals- they look amazing. As I said above, there are 61 different species, and while most of them are birds, that didn’t stop the artisans from crafting unique models for each of them. You can view close-ups in your biota atlas, but even out in the wild they are stunning, especially upon closer inspection with your lens. In addition to this (and the second commendable artistic feat), you have excellent shadow mapping on nearly everything and everyone: man, creatures, plants, etc…are all joined with a silhouette twin that moves and shivers alongside its identical. Which is great because the AI for the animals is specifically programmed to mimic real-life motions: a bird will hop a few steps before fluttering away if you try to approach it; cats and dogs will run up and around you should you enter their sensorial vicinity, and a fox will retreat into its den should you attempt to get it. The sole exception to the otherwise superb umbras are some miscellaneous aspects in the city, like cloths lines, which feel pre-rendered and pre-inserted.

With regards to the people, though, I’m afraid they will take some getting used to. Whenever Alba spoke to one, I was reminded of the animation from the Clifford the Big Red Dog TV series from back in the day, albeit applied to a 3D format….only for me to then realize that there was a reason Fairly Odd Parents looked jarring in 3D during the Jimmy Timmy Power Hour crossovers- some things just don’t translate well.

Alba is far from that level of grotesqueness, but the negative connotations are present nonetheless. Facial expressions are conveyed properly, yet those beady black eyes seem disconcerting. The folks around you look humanoid, but there’s something off about their perfect contours and blocky bodies. At the end of the day, this will all be subjective, but for this reviewer it veered a little on the uncanny valley side.

Sound is next. As there is no real voice acting beyond some generalized groans, we will begin with the SFX, which is phenomenal. Alba more than makes up for those small GFX flaws I pointed out above with an excellent SFX schematic, and yes, the bulk of that credit goes to the noises generated by the various beasts and critters you’ll encounter. Every single one of them, let me repeat, every single one of them has 2-5 exclusive cries that some talented audio designer invested time into producing, and Alba luckily gives you the option to listen to them via your field guide. These are not slightly different warbles from one passerine to another; they are completely different modulations that I would not be surprised reflected their real-life counterparts. This is particularly helpful when you begin looking for specific species who are concealed sightwise, but visible aurally (though that part leads to a problem that will be talked about in the gameplay section).

Other signature sound traits, like the flapping of wings, stomping of footsteps on different surfaces, and crashing of waves, don’t quite have that same dedication put to them- I noticed a lot of synchronization issues wherein it would take a second or two for the sound change to completely register. But these are ultimately minor and don’t break the immersion.

Lastly in this trifecta, we have the score, credited to a composer named Lorena Alvarez. Interestingly enough, Alba doesn’t really rely on music. For most of my playthrough, I don’t recall hearing any distinct compositions in the background: the only times they were noticeable were during the opening of each new day, and pivotal story beats. That’s not a dock on Alvarez’s work as what I did hear was lovely. Like I mentioned before, there is a Latino culture present in the game, and the music reflects that through its choice of instruments and inherently lowkey approach. It may not stand-out, but I blame that more on the mixers as it appears to have been a deliberate decision.

Now, we come to gameplay. Alba is built on free-roaming around an open world, helping out villagers, doing side activities, and, yes, taking pictures. The game is a bit more modernized in the latter category as Alba utilizes a touchscreen smartphone to conduct her photography, though, from a technical standpoint, it still serves the same purpose as a Polaroid (who remembers those babies?).

I wish I could say that running around this tropical paradise snapping up images is good fun, but there are significant problems with the systems in place here that limit its scope, and the best way to convey the extent of those problems it to draw comparisons to Pokémon Snap– another title that was similar in concept. In Alba, there is no quality meter to your camerawork: as long as an animal is close enough and centered, you can successfully upload it to the database. Doesn’t matter if the image is blurry, obscured, or smeared, if it fits the above requisites, it will be good. This ends up significantly watering-down an already watered-down concept, and feels condescending to its target audience; was there a belief that kids could not handle more complex gameplay? In Pokémon Snap you had to make an effort to get a good shot of whatever pocket monster you were documenting. Points were awarded based on attributes like pose, size, technique, as well as bonus factors such as whether there were multiple subjects in the frame or something extraordinary was happening. Failure to adhere to higher standards would result in Professor Oak either docking points or outright dismissing a submission.

It wasn’t foolproof by any means- sometimes you would get marked down for arbitrary reasons. However, it still represented an intriguing endeavor that Alba severely lacks. All photos you snag are automatically rendered as perfect stills, and this hurts the game in a few ways: one, it motivates players to not actually pay attention to roaming wildlife, making the efforts of the AI programmers null and void; two, it makes the gameplay about guerilla snapping over genuine photography, and three, it ironically has the thematic effect of encouraging kids to constantly look at the outside world through their phone over their own eyes- after all, if all you need is a quick glimpse to snap a full-body shot, why bother trying to find the animal optically when a hazy lens will suffice?

Not helping this is the atoll itself. Pokémon Snap was also set on an island, but it was divided into compartmentalized levels that were beautifully crafted, allowing the designers to flesh out specialized homes for their inhabitants. The isle in Alba is wide and spacious from the get-go, allowing you to explore almost every part of it immediately over waiting for things to open up like so many other nonlinear games, but the catch is that most of it is empty space: space that extends upwards to the stars and outwards to the sea. What this means is that it can be a pain to find all the animals in your directory because a number of them will take advantage of this expanse to evade your reach: flying skyward, hopping into the mountains, or crawling along the shoreline. To be fair, filling your index isn’t required to beat the game (and I admittedly was unable to get two of the species), but for a title predicated on wildlife photography, the world should have been built to make it easier to find said wildlife.

Side content is thrown in, and it’s pretty non-memorable. Most of it comes down to cleaning-up Pinar del Mar, meaning you will be doing Chibi-Robo!-esque activities like picking up trash, putting away laundry, and fixing broken items. Advancing through the story leads to Alba gaining tools that allow to her to complete more tasks, like healing animals and building constructs, as well as enabling her to create alternate routes between areas. Very very occasionally you’ll get something in the way of “side quests” like the aforestated ice cream girl request, however it’s few and far between.

Alba, to its credit, never feels monotonous (perhaps because it’s so charming), but there’s no denying that there is a severe lack of interesting things to do in its open world. I honestly think the game would’ve been better off following the first Witcher’s model: have each day be a chapter dedicated to a specific part of Pinar del Mar. It would have allowed more details to be implemented, as well as made it easier to input a greater diversity of external activities.

But we can’t rate a game by what it could have been, only what it is. Even there, though, Alba could have resolved all of the above issues with a simple solution- implement an RPG experience metric. Make pictures have an appraisal measurement based on their virtuosity- the better the image, the more cash Alba gets that she can then use to purchase new filmic equipment or new textiles if you want to stick to pure esthetics. Have completing extra projects and jobs garner recognition that will allow Alba to progress more easily through the town, via giving her equipment, tools, or even vehicles (a bike of some sort would’ve been nice). If that would have been too much to do, then make it a mere reward system compensating her with goodies from the citizenry ala some kind of stamp or medallion.

The basis for these changes already exists in two ways- during the main story, you have to complete all these ventures in order to get signatures for your petition, and aiding animals leads to you receiving hearts that don’t do anything. If ustwo had thrown in some prize along the John Hancocks or even just given those hearts a tangible aspect, then the side content might have been more palatable. Alas, that isn’t the case.

All that aside, I will say that the HUD is ergonomic, the phone controls swell, and swapping between different things is relatively swift (infrequent FPS drops aside). Alba is also well-optimized, with me never encountering bugs, glitches, screen tears, or any other error. However, shortcuts were taken in the base coding, notably when it comes to Alba’s movement. Using the mouse to direct her looks fine, but try and change directions with just the arrow keys and you’ll see her practically teleport to the cardinal point: there’s no transition animation showing her turn. This extends to climbing up on surfaces: stairs are fair, but skip onto a rock or bench and it’s like she gained Sasuke’s super speed from Naruto.

So overall, what do you get with Alba: A Wildlife Adventure? You get an indie title that doesn’t quite live up to its grand name. A fabulous assortment of animals were handcrafted to look and sound distinct from one another, but that same effort was not quite extended to the rest of the island. Pinar del Mar itself is pretty enough to look at, but upon closer inspection you will notice timesavers were utilized in development to avoid adding external grain onto anything. The concept of walking around a balmy holm to spot fauna seems pleasant until you come to the realization that, without a faster method of traveling or intriguing labors to do, there isn’t much to hold you. And while the story is surprisingly deep and even-handed in its approach to bioecology and environmentalism, it isn’t strong enough to outweigh these other flaws.

I want to be clear that this was a very relaxing video game to play, and ustwo did give it a lot of magic. At a $17.00 asking price, though, I only got 6 hours worth of game time, and that was attempting to 100 percent it. I don’t know if everyone will want to do that, but even if they do, it falls below my $1:00 to 30 minutes ratio. Still, I always say support indie companies if you can.

Pros:
+ Biodiversity design
+ Well-balanced story/Latino influence
+ SFX
+ Calming atmosphere

Cons:
– Superfluous open world
– Repetitious side activities
– Simple art style
– Unsatisfying gameplay

How do I even begin talking about this game? In his review of the film "A Ghost Story", film critic Matt Zoller Seitz opened with the following proclamation:

"I rarely see a movie so original that I want to tell people to just see it without reading any reviews beforehand, including my own. David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story” is one of those movies. So I’m urging you in the first paragraph of this review to just see it and save this review for later. If you want more information, read on. There are no spoiler warnings after this because as far as I’m concerned, everything I could say about this film would constitute a spoiler."

I won't go so far as to say that "There is No Game" is as unique and rift with spoilers as that movie allegedly is solely by virtue of its content, but it is such a distinctly different title from your usual puzzle games or even self-aware titles like Pony Island. The best way I can describe it is it's a pastiche of the themes/persona of such media as The LEGO Movie, Undertale, Animator vs. Animation, and even The Fountainhead. A lot of comparisons have been made to The Stanley Parable, and though I have not played that title as of the time of writing this review, I have a feeling I would either way reject the notion. TING begins one way, but quickly transmogrifies into something different, changing forms with each chapter till it hardly resembles what it started off as.

You play as unnamed user trying to play a new indie release on the market, only to be consistently stopped by the AI overseeing the project, appropriately referred to as “Game”. What begins as a humorous back-and-forth between the two of you quickly escalates into a serious narrative wrapped with a strong helping of black humor. Things get dramatic, meta, and satirical, culminating in a climax that is as bizarre as it is entertaining to witness. That’s the most I can say without spoiling anything serious- you may think you have an idea as to who Game is, but as the story progresses and revelations are made, you’ll find your earlier assumptions to be wrong.

Graphically, TING is a genuine feat due to it being self-funded by creator Pascal Cammisotto. The way he has not only established his own unique art scheme, but successfully replicated the aesthetic of older titles like classic DOS graphic adventures and The Legend of Zelda is very commendable. He tries to go for something resembling a cartoony computer interface, yet avoids falling for a depressing grading that you would expect to be associated with a semi-rogue artificial intelligence. There are a lot of bright reds, greens, and browns that make it warm and accentuate the self-awareness.

Sound and score are good, if only adequate. Nothing stood out for me personally, but then again this isn’t a title that you will be caring about for specific dins. A lot of the music is homaging/emulating the usual OSTs you’d hear from the games being parodied, but they stand on their own and I never found it distracting.
In terms of the puzzles/general gameplay, I’m a bit more mixed. I do think the vast majority of the solutions were clever, and often incorporated a meta-facet to achieve them, but there were a number of others peppered throughout that were contrived. Regardless, there is a hint system available that will alleviate any frustrations you should have (and I don’t believe there is an achievement for beating the game w/o using a hint!).

My bigger issues are the following: one is that, I do not think it’s good satire to have a character or characters criticize an issue or trope with the gaming industry, only to then have your title require you to engage with said trope/issue. That’s not spoofing, that’s simply engaging in these acts with a different coat of paint. It’d be like if that tile puzzle from Undertale was actually mandatory to beat AFTER hearing Undine’s speech about the complicated mechanics.

Second is that you have to complete the game in chapter spurts- there’s an autosave function, but every time I tried to reload my game file, it said I would have to restart from the beginning of that section. What? What was the point in even having that icon present as an indicator?

Third is that the ending is a big disappointment. It doesn’t live up to all the shenanigans you had to go through before, and doesn’t even end on a note that will make you laugh out loud courtesy of ending a long-running gag the way Naruto’s sexy no jutsu did in the final arc of Naruto. I have a feeling that Cammisotto ran low on budget at this point and had to put something together to get the product ready for shipping. In fact, I feel budgetary limitations, in general, prevented the title from being as zany as it wanted to be ala Rick and Morty-style.

But overall, I did enjoy my time with There is No Game: Wrong Dimension (an unnecessary subtitle by all standards). I can’t say I loved it or that it held as strong an appeal to me (I did not grow up with 90s PNC releases, which is what TING primarily parodies), but it is so distinct from everything being released in the AAA and even indie markets that I can only recommend you play it for yourself.

It took me little more than 6 hours to beat (ignore the Steam record- I was AFK for at least 1.5 hours while the game ran, and since I chose to complete it in one sitting I consequently had to balance breaks/other things), and at a $12.99 cost, it is perfectly priced.

Originally published on Flickering Myth: (https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/04/video-game-review-half-past-fate/)

When I was in college, I took a journalism class that frequently had group discussions. During one of these meetings, we got to talking about how difficult it was to interview or even speak to our neighbors these days. One of my fellow students was a young woman who had immigrated from Iraq, and she noted how surprised she was about the level of isolation in America- back in her hometown, it was commonplace, she claimed, to know everything about everyone in one’s neighborhood within the first year.

It wasn’t always this way though. People born to the 2000s generations may believe this to be the norm, but my fellow millennials will no doubt remember the early days of our childhood: when we weren’t afraid to go trick-or-treating alone; when entire communities gathered together to greet newcomers or mourn the passing of existing members; when it wasn’t unusual to meet someone down the street for the first time and immediately invite them over to your house. I’m talking, of course, about the time before the tragic September 11 attacks: the day that started the end of the ’90s and the beginning of increased seclusion, caution, and general weariness of those around you.

I know it seems strange to open this review on a bleak nostalgic tangent, but playing Half Past Fate, the latest release from developer Serenity Forge and publisher Way Down Deep, I felt like I was entering an anachronistic echo chamber; a regressive time-capsule if you will. It’s a video game that is so desperate to hearken back to that era of innocence, but can’t help coming off as a Gen Y kid jumping up-and-down with his fingers plugging his ears. But even with these narrative flaws, an irate gameplay loops prevents it from being enjoyable- that’s the short answer. If you want the longer answer, read on.

Given that I began by talking about the story, I should expand my thoughts on why I feel it was a mistake. See, Half Past Fate follows six seemingly random people who come together over the course of eight years. I say seemingly because the degrees of separation between them are so minimal that you can almost call them an alternate version of Modern Family.

As far as slice-of-life tales go, this isn’t a bad concept, but where it falters is in its dialogue and character interactions. For most of its playthrough, Half Past Fate treats the world you live in as this paradise of civility, where the majority of the populace is either happy, willing to help you, open-to-be-preached to, or in a slam-bang mood for conversation.

In the first level, for example, you’re trying to get ahead of several people in line at a coffee shop, and wouldn’t you know it, all of them are willing to step aside without much resistance- try and do that in the real world, I dare you. In another scene, you’re asking random people in a district about this girl you’re looking for- who, in their right mind, would give two hoots about some random guy’s quest for love? And yet another part has you, the boss of a company on the verge of a major meeting, politely dealing with a set of incompetent employees: one has abandoned his barking dog in the hallway, another has come in sick and selfishly sabotaged the thermostat, and another mistakes a complete stranger for the clientele- yeah, you try doing any of that at your workplace and see if you’re not immediately reprimanded or outright canned.

Now, I stop myself short of making an absolute statement because, in the last third of Half Past Fate, the story finally starts to take on a more realistic front. We get a greater diversity of NPC personalities who resemble the type of humans you would expect to find in any given location. However, considering you have to spend a significant amount of time arriving at that point, it makes it a little moot. The fact is, of the twelve chapters, all but three of them are so drenched in this type of syrupy wholesomeness that it doesn’t feel natural.

And I know people will tell me that video games are meant to be escapist forms of art, which I wouldn’t disagree with, but when the cloying factor is this much in your face it can’t help but be criticized. I’m not saying the writers needed to inject a vial of cynicism into the plot, but what I am saying is that, when you set a title in a semi-real world setting, you have to have a balance. Even in Animal Crossing, one of the most relaxing franchises of all time, you have hardship-facets like paying taxes, spreading of contagions, handling debt, and dealing with bothersome fellows. In Half Past Fate, someone can get coffee and wine spilled on them multiple times and still be willing to apologize to the perpetrator.

Maybe I wouldn’t have minded most of this had the verbal exchanges been outstanding, but unfortunately the end result is a mixed bag. Half Past Fate is a 2D walking-sim, meaning the core of its enjoyment rests on good writing. However, the conversations you get into with other NPCs don’t feel like natural confabs. I noted above that the folks you encounter are willing to help or just chat with your character, and that inherently lends their words an overly-optimistic cover. Despite hitting up an individual for the very first time, they’ll divulge you secrets, answer your out-of-place inquiries, or even explain something about the particular locale they reside in. It rarely feels naturalistic, instead pandering to the notion that cheeriness exists wherever you look.

There are times when the script actually gets tongue-in-cheek: wherein it acknowledges that what you, or someone else is, doing is out of the ordinary. For example, one section has a sales clerk giving you cash to buy him a burrito from the food truck nearby, prompting your avatar to question why he would trust a complete unco with his money. There are a number of moments like these sprinkled throughout the narrative, but they’re too sparse to make it the intent of the developers (i.e. it being a self-aware title).

It doesn’t help that the cast of protagonists aren’t three-dimensional beings either. I said before that there are six of them, though it should be noted that two of them are only playable in one level each. First up is Rinden, a hopeless romantic who tries to see the good in every day moments; next is Jaren, a happy-go-lucky weab gamer; then there’s Bia, a nice college student hoping to become a photographer; Mara the workaholic founder of an energy company; Ana, an independent-minded young woman who doesn’t know what she wants to do in life, and finally Milo, a quiet yet deep-thinking fellow aspiring to be a documentarian.

As you can tell, these are all archetypes we’ve seen in some form or another in various media, like Rinden being the pathetic idealist popularized by Frank Capra movies or Jaren the pop culture-loving nerd you’ll find in any Shounen school anime. Of course, originality these days doesn’t come from the invention of new ideas but the reinvention of existing ones. The writers evidently wanted to take the Love Actually premise and combine it with the time-moving scheme of When Harry Met Sally…– show various couples destined for each other having multiple encounters before ultimately fulfilling their fate. In Half Past Fate’s case, it’s Rinden x Mara, Jaren x Ana, and Bia x Milo.

This type of storytelling is hard to pull this off in a movie given the short run time, but video games theoretically have more leeway since you are dedicating extra hours to the endeavor at hand. However, in spite of Half Past Fate taking me over seven hours to complete, no one was given extra attributes. The issue here isn’t that there is no room in this narrative to flesh out anyone, it’s that the format isn’t used very well. So much effort was put into making all the protagonists likable that the writing team forgot to give them flavor: they’re bland.

Expanding upon Ana’s relationship with her parents, for instance, could have lead to some interesting developments, especially when it’s hinted that she grew up stuck in traditions. Nothing of the sort happens. Of the six people at your disposal, only Milo showed some depth: a conversation Bia has with him down the line reveals that he secretly hates his work because he fears the effects it’s had on impressionable viewers. But because the writers felt it was better to have him mumble and talk in short, withdrawn phrases his whole life, we don’t get enough of those glimpses throughout his various appearances.

What hurts the story, more than anything, though, is that it just fails as a tale of multi-paramours. Rinden and Mara’s relationship flat out sucks- its central focus revolves around Mara pursuing Rinden in the hopes of having a financial partner for her business, which makes her come off as both creepy and desperate at the same time. Bia and Milo’s had the most potential since we would hypothetically see two close friends realize they’re right for each other over the course of years, but because of massive timeskips, we don’t ever see that friendship elaborated on outside of small reflective conversations between the two, making it inherently feel like something is missing. Jaren and Ana come out looking the best courtesy of theirs being a semi-real time, meet-cute, however Jaren turning his search for her into some grand odyssey was just….odd? It has its moments for sure, but your mileage will vary depending on how much you perceive the level of irreverence in the tone of Jaren’s delivery.

I know I’m being a negative nancy, so let me end this section on a positive note- if there is one spot where the writers excel, it would be with the item interplay. When you receive a new item in your inventory, you are able to show it to an NPC: 99 percent of the time, this yields a unique text blob from them, most of them humorous. Occasionally you’ll get a generic, pre-rendered response, but this is the exception not the norm. I honestly found myself backtracking throughout the worlds whenever I got a fresh trinket, just to see how prior characters would react to it. When I kept handing tire-repair parts to a nearby arborist, for example, he would crack car-themed jokes! Without a doubt a sign of true dedication from the staff.

Item interactions make a good segway to the gameplay category. I’ll repeat, Half Past Fate is a walking sim, meaning there isn’t much here. The goal is to progress from the beginning of a level to its end by talking and helping people out. Regrettably, Serenity Forge decided that the best way to set their title apart from other games in this genre was to incorporate a fetch quest format for each section, and I honestly don’t know what they were thinking by doing this. Every single level drags out beyond enjoyment because you’re spending the bulk of your time helping people with the most-contrived tasks you can think of.

Want to find out Ana’s real name? Oh sure, all you got to do is get this chick’s love interest’s boss to leave the building he works in since he conveniently hates HER boss and will only depart if his spicy ramen challenge hosted by the nearby noodle shop is topped (why the two lovebirds don’t just talk outside of work is beyond me). Want to sneak by Mara in the restaurant? Sure, all you got to do is get a fedora from a guy who will only give it if he gets a date with an intellectual woman, and wouldn’t you behold, there’s an art history teacher conveniently dining at the same place who was conveniently stood up by the student she was supposed to tutor there (what kind of disturbing professor would even want to teach a pupil at a fancy restaurant?).

I could go on but I don’t want to give away too many spoilers. The point is the scripts here are really bad. It would at least be tolerable if things were presented in a satirical format, like some lines of dialogue are, but most of it is taken seriously by the protagonists. Now, the situations do temper out in the last third of Half Past Fate, as I said before, where you start to get more sensible circumstances, like Jaren passing the time by helping Milo with a flat tire, but it’s too little too late. When a game makes you yearn for Wind Waker’s (GCN) Triforce quest, you know it’s done something wrong.

Thankfully, the levels themselves are at least beautiful to roam in, and this has to do with the palette. Half Past Fate is, without a doubt, one of the few games I’ve played that has been successful with multi-chroma aesthetic, with color upon color filling the screen. From the streets to the architecture to the nature outside, all the hues blends so well together. And people have to understand that this is not an easy thing to pull off- look outside your window and you’ll see that solids rarely exist in either the floral or manmade worlds: colors inherently mix together so organically that we don’t take a second glance since it’s universal. Green leaves have strands of yellow and red marking the stem veins in them; roads have bits of white and grey strewn inside the asphalt material; wood and bricks on buildings are a weave of brown, maroon, and black, and none of this is even taking into account the precious metals that live inside everything.

I note all this because Half Past Fate manages to feel like a pixelated representation of a photorealistic world; that, despite the sheer number of them filling up the screen, the pigments aren’t distracting. It’s a testament to the craftsmanship of the graphic artists.

The art style itself is an interesting thing. It’s as though a 2D environment was shot with a 3D camera: characters and most objects inside are flat, but the way places open up as you move around or inside them appear whole if that makes sense. Imagine the Paper Mario series, but instead of everything looking wafer-thin or transitioning with folds, there’s a roundness to them, as though they are an entire stereoscopic entity.

One other graphical feat I have to lavish extreme praise on are the shadows. How an indie company pulled off great shadow mapping is beyond me- every singleton on screen, whether it’s the protagonists, an NPC, or even an object in the foreground, has a shadow that moves in-sync with whatever they are doing, right down to even hair flow! And when you enter the silhouette of another body, guess what? Your shadow disappears as simultaneously as you want it to. I was absolutely impressed by this and glad that Serenity Forge took the time to incorporate this aspect.

Unfortunately, the soundscape operates at the other end of the quality spectrum. There’s no voice acting, leaving music and sound effects, and both are not good at all. The score, attributed to a composer named Max Messenger Bouricius in the credits, is banal. Based on the chip quality, it sounds like something you’d hear in an old-school NES game like Harvest Moon with all those high register pitches and notes, which isn’t intrinsically bad, but given the amount of low-price or even free music software out there, I don’t know why anyone would resort to this outdated condition outside of maybe wanting to recreate an older harmony. Regardless, there isn’t much of it- I heard maybe 3-4 tracks during the entire game, one of which only played during specific emotional beats, and all of them were obnoxious. They play too loudly, don’t match up with the atmosphere or mood on-screen, and are ultimately distracting.

I emphasize the vociferous quality because the sound mixing is terrible- I had to go into the settings and turn the music down past 50 percent just to hear the SFX, though it’s not like you’ll miss anything significant by doing so as the audio is even more generic than the score. Everything you’ll hear, both ambient and marginal, is some stock noise played on a loop, from the wind, dog barks, and bird flutters to beeps and boops, whistling, and guitar strings. The worst offender, however, are the footsteps. Not only does everyone’s walking sound the same (despite everyone wearing different footwear), but the footstep noises aren’t even synchronized with the player movement!

So, in conclusion, I sadly can’t recommend Half Past Fate. The basic idea underlying could have been enjoyable, but hamfisted writing intent on showcasing unrealistic cordiality ruined it from the get-go. Combine that with amiable yet undistinctive characters, a gimmicky timeskip blueprint, and tedious fetch quests galore and you have something that isn’t a fun experience. Though I always say support indie developers, I can’t approve a game I didn’t have fun with. Even if I did, you’ll only get a little over 7 hours worth of enjoyment from a $20 product, which falls under my $1 : 30 minute ratio.

Pros:
+ Elegant and creative looking levels
+ Great shadow effects
+ Likable characters

Cons:
– Faulty story
– Mediocre score
– Horrible SFX
– Fetch quests in EVERY level

Long before I decided to become a game reviewer, I used to jot down brief thoughts on the games I was playing to best capture my feelings at the moment of completion for personal archival purposes. Since then, I’ve of course evolved my craft into full-fledged write-ups, but I do think there is enough merit to some of the earlier critiques to warrant their publication, especially for titles I do not intend on replaying (in the near future at least). I’ve thrown in some updates, but this is one of them.

Barely continues the story from the first game, still having a really annoying vagueness to it wherein none of the other NPCs can take even a minute out of their day to explain basic exposition to you. There's a lot of padding here too, compared to the first game where everything was more straightforward and to the point.

Main character's VA has grown on me, even if I don't think he quite fits the character.

Graphics the same, animations look slightly more fluid, but it honestly feels like this game and the first one were the same title split in half to generate more profits (evidenced by the OST for both being available as a single bundle).

Sound design a little better, but still generic. Music is more varied, but it plays based on area not really on story, which sucks for a story-based game.

Puzzles are better this time around, with you getting more tools. The game could've been clearer regarding how to use some tools, and the double click option is still annoying as ever.

At $5.00, you're getting 2 hours worth of content, which does fall under my ratio.

Originally published on Flickering Myth: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2019/02/video-game-review-macrotis-a-mothers-journey/

“Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter. Rabbits, like most wild animals, suffer hardship.”

So goes one of my favorite quotes from Richard Adams’s Watership Down, not only because of how richly written it is, but because it contains an eternal truth: when it comes to the natural world, humans are pampered. Something as simple as rain and snowfall may seem trivial to us. However, for the creatures that thrive in the woodlands, these climate patterns become harrowing nightmares that literally dictate life and death.

One such weather condition is the basis for Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey’s plot, wherein an anthropomorphic bilby is separated from her joeys during an unnatural torrent, forcing her to go on a long adventure to reunite with them. Developed by Proud Dinosaur and published by Orsam Information Technologies, Macrotis is another stab at the platforming genre, a subset of video games that have been making a comeback this past decade thanks to the prominence of digital distribution mediums across consoles and PCs alike.

The question is does Proud Dinosaur’s debut hit a home-run in this burdened genre, or is it a case of trying and failing? The short answer is it works in spite of some sensorial problems. For the long answer, read on!

Continuing from above, Macrotis follows a mother marsupial’s “journey” after she is washed away from her children as a result of a hurricane. I bring this up again because this isn’t just one of those simple Super Mario Bros. “save the princess” plots which are, more or less, basins meant to provide a basic-level of storytelling to service the gameplay. The narrative here goes beyond just getting back to the surface: Mother Bilby’s odyssey through the subterranean taverns of her world brings her in contact with a wizard, magical items, and an entire mythos that I’m confident the team at Proud Dinosaur wants to expand upon should this game prove a success.

What I can say, without spoiling too much, is that this surface look at the lore is sufficient. The writers don’t try and bite off more than they can chew, and the story is the better for it since it isn’t overstuffed. I feel like too often new IPs are so desperate to stand-out from their contemporaries that they throw a bunch of raw information and mythology at players without taking the time to flesh out a coherent tale. This has the effect of making gamers ultimately not care about what they’re experiencing since they can’t get invested in the characters or drama on their own merits.

That being said, what is shown is your standard fantasy trope of a great forgotten race: in the Elder Scrolls, this was the Dwemer; in The Witcher, these were the Aen Seidhe, and in Macrotis they are simply referred to as the “Little People.” Could more have been done on this front, sure, but at the end of the day this is a platformer, not an action-adventure title, and it therefore didn’t need an extravagant backstory.

The way the story is depicted is important, and so we move onto graphics. Honestly, I’m going to be purely subjective here as I personally was not a fan of Proud Dinosaur’s artistic decision in rendering the game. On the outset, Macrotis follows the example set forth by the Donkey Kong Country series (side note- my personal favorite video game franchise) by having a 3D-character operate in 2D (or in this case 2.5D) environments. The thing is, when Rare was creating Donkey Kong Country, they made the smart decision to have the background match the character model’s style so that the two blended well in spite of their differing geometry.

Proud Dinosaur unfortunately didn’t do the same. Mother Bilby looks like a CG-figure out of the mid-2000s, which wouldn’t be a bad thing were it not for the fact that the aforestated backdrops are of a different aesthetic. They’re gorgeous, aiming for something in-between naturalism and romanticism; you venture through various scenery, from rocks to bricks to crystals to metalworks, that all have the grit of real-life foundations, yet are imbued with a bright hue that always reminds you that you’re in a fantastical place.

It’s a contrast that unfortunately didn’t work for me because of how out-of-place Mother Bilby appeared. I mean yes, she is technically not in her element, but the rabbit hole she falls through lands her in a place that seems like a completely different video game generation. The idea of putting divergent artstyles together is something that only works if employed for comedic, horror, or surreal purposes (see The Amazing World of Gumball, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Duck Amuck for direct references) due to the bizarre complexion, none of which applies to the serious drama that Macrotis inhabits.

It’s not completely distracting, and you definitely will get over it after the first 20 or so minutes, but I genuinely would like to have known the decorative reasoning behind this decision.

Alongside this, that earlier observation about the colors of the scenery having a luminosity to them is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it makes for some truly beautiful surroundings, but on the other it exposes the game’s use of static lighting. No matter where you go, the lighting is always at the same level of glow, which is fine, however I do believe it took away from some of the atmospheric power that the game could have had by showing dynamic fluorescent changes as the player moves from Terra-settings to a more-industrialized landscape. On top of that, the shadow effect for Mother Bilby is half-baked; you have something there, but the silhouette is so congested that you have to actively concentrate to see the tail swinging animation.

Graphics aside, audio is next, and here we have very good news and very bad news. Let’s get the bad out of the way: sound effects are minimal and the voice acting is terrible. There is programmed SFX in the game, but even with its settings turned all the way up I could barely make it out in my playthrough. Perhaps this was a field that the designers decided to skimp on, and it hurts the game overall because of how integral sound is to platforming: everyone remembers the warbly noise of getting a growth mushroom or the blast of Mega Man’s gun or the spin of Sonic’s spikes or the masterful symphony of sonance that was Limbo. Sound is very important for platformers, and I hope Proud Dinosaur makes note of that next time.

I also hope that they learn to hire better VAs as it has been a while since I’ve heard a performance this bad. Mother Bilby is played by an actress named Mallory Echelmeyer, who seems to be using Stephanie Sheh as the basis for her delivery. It’s high-pitched, which makes it both tonally hard to bear and out-of-touch for a maternal character with three kids. I’m under the impression that the dialogue team figured that, because she was playing a small animal, this was the right take, but in actuality it doesn’t work because of Mother Bilby’s biological age- this is a parental figure who needed to sound mature, not like a stereotypical Japanese schoolgirl. It’s not just that her voice is off, but her inflections rarely live up to the thespian quality Mother Bilby’s lines needed to be delivered at, especially when they veer into emotional territory, though I’m willing to chart this up to mediocre voice direction.

Andy Mack, who portrays the Wizard, is a little better, but it sounded like he was more interested in doing a Gandalf-impression than his own thing. As such, his character, more often than not, comes off as a hackneyed archetype that you could have plucked from any fantasy setting.

The saving grace to all of this is the score. This is one of the few games I’ve played where I have refused to click “start” on the loading screen solely because I wanted to hear the rest of the melodious main theme, and the music continued to maintain that sweeping harmony as I spent hour after hour in this world. It’s therefore bitterly ironic that I could not find the name of the composer anywhere, neither in the game’s credits nor Proud Dinosaur’s press kit. Emin Can Kargi is credited as the audio director, but I can’t say for certain whether they were also responsible for the score. Whoever it was though, I have nothing but praise for you. Listening to Macrotis’s music brought me back to the aural domains created by such maestros as Jeremy Soule, Yasunori Mitsuda, David Wise, and Hiroki Kikuta.

In the end, however, it is the gameplay that will keep players in touch, and with I will say that Macrotis is a damn good platformer. It relies more-so on solving puzzles than conventional platforming, which is made all the more interesting by its use of a spirit mechanic. Basically, your character gains the ability to astral project, creating a weightless avatar that can phase through objects and move obstacles. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of the recorder from The Talos Principle, but much easier to use.

The puzzles are all solid, even though there were times where I felt the programmers indulged in a “Wolf, Goat, Cabbage” style of design of having you do repetitive tasks for the sake of elongating a challenge. But that was luckily kept to minimum. That being said, it would have been nice to have seen more abilities/powers unlocked for the ghostly apparition; however, I understand that budgetary constraints more than likely limited things over a lack of imagination from the development team.

In the end, it took me about 5-6 hours to beat Macrotis: A Mother’s Journey, and that number included gathering the game’s sole collectible of tome pages, which you never have to go out of your way to find. Because of this, I can safely say that the game is rightfully-priced at $10.00 and therefore worth recommending both on its own merits as well as a monetary:playtime ratio. Consider checking it out if you love platformers.

Pros:
+Great puzzles
+Amazing score
+Magnificent backgrounds
+Elegant hand-drawn artwork for the game’s cutscenes

Cons:
-Bad voice acting, particularly from main character
-Minimal SFX
-Lighting could have been better

Original review published at: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2019/02/video-game-review-the-textorcist-the-story-of-ray-bibbia/

The Textorcist was one of those video games I wanted to play solely because of the title. I’ve never been huge into shmups or even 8-bit games, but sometimes a developer comes up with such a unique name for their project that it warrants being experienced just to reward the creators for their prenomenic ingenuity.

Luckily, that imagination on the part of developer Morbidware and publisher Headup Games extends to the gameplay, which combines bullet hell-style fights with text-based inputs. Add to that a surprisingly dark story and you have something that has a chance of attracting newer players to a retro era of gaming. The question is, does The Textorcist live up to my premature expectations and succeed in its polymorphization, or is it a case of good concept, bad execution? The short answer is it works, but lacks enough content to truly expand upon its world. For the long answer, read on!

The Textorcist is, for all intents and purposes, a child of the cyberpunk genre. It takes place in a dystopian society where the Vatican has grown so powerful to the point of becoming a shadow government, and focuses on a renegade priest with a hardboiled, no-nonsense attitude equipped with divine magic and a hi-tech computer. It’s a backdrop that could have been fleshed out more to rival classics like Deus Ex and Tex Murphy, but one recurring problem you’ll find with Textorcist is it lacks either the confidence or budget to pursue some of its more intriguing ideas. This is a world full of demons, gangs, slavery, and oppression, but none are ever given much of a chance to shine outside of an obligatory mention here and there as befits a particular section of the storyline.

And that’s a big shame because this was a setting I could have easily lost myself in had it all been expanded upon. The potential is there, the lore is good, but the story seemed more interested in just getting to the end than taking the time to stop, breath, and let its characters act natural. Ray, the titular protagonist, is a genuinely cool guy: a 55-year old exorcist who has seen a lot in his day. But he's also full of internal turmoil, and the way it’s disclosed to players over the course of the story is very rushed and blunt. There were times where I genuinely questioned whether he was being serious about his statements, and that’s a sign that the script perhaps needed a second overview before being approved. In addition to this, I felt that Ray’s dialogue, all too often, delved into hipster territory of making him sound like wannabe-suave and hip dude, though that’ll be for players to decide for themselves.

Despite the flaws I had with the narrative, I can at least commend Morbidware for its presentation value. Sprite-based games may have the advantage of aging well compared to their polygon-based counterparts, but their limited display opens them up to the risk of appearing bland, vague, and ultimately unmemorable. Thankfully that isn’t the case here as The Textorcist is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful games I have played this year. With an atmosphere heavily reliant on the supernatural and occult, it truly indulges in the macabre: monsters look like the detailed Hell spawns they are, straight out of a Lovecraft novel; muted reds, browns, and greys adorn the floors and walls of the downtrodden locales you visit; interiors and exteriors alike are full of furniture, creases, and well-textured building materials; blood and gore splatter on the floor whenever you successfully hit a creature with a spell, and even the few bright places in the city like Ray’s office and a strip club are so well constructed, they’re as immersive as some areas I’ve explored in 3D games.

The real graphical feat, however, comes in The Textorcist’s depiction of lighting. Obviously, this wasn’t built on a game engine that could generate actual illumination, but what the geniuses at Morbidware did, instead, was create a wavering field of bits around conventional light sources that are brighter than the space around them. This has the effect of making Ray appear to be in shadows when outside of the lanterns, and, vice-versa, in the light when inside that zone. It may seem simple, however I’ve rarely seen it done well, even in iconic titles like Chrono Trigger, so honestly this is something that Morbidware deserves particular praise for.

Sadly, I can’t be as positive regarding their sound design. Noises are constantly rehashed, whether it’s the demons all growling the same, energy blasts lacking diversity in spite of the different conjurings, or even Ray’s footsteps not differentiating between wood and concrete flooring. Now granted, as someone who is not too familiar with the shoot-em up genre, I can’t say for certain if this is a common trait with other games. However, considering the paranormal world you’re in, I do believe the game, as a whole, would have benefited from a full-fledged soundscape.

There is also no voice acting at all outside of the aforestated grunt of a beast or Ray’s scream whenever he dies, which I thought was a shame because The Textorcist’s dialogue absolutely lent itself to being orally performed. There are a lot of mood changes and emotional conveyances in the soliloquies and conversations that, while easy enough to read, would have been a joy to hear from a talented voice artist. Alas, I definitely understand how the constraints of the budget possibly played a role here.

Music is the final factor in the sound trifecta, and it’s a mixed bag. It suffers from the same problem the original Harvest Moon on SNES had in that it is too narrow in scope. Each location has its own soundtrack, most of it coming from a ominously vibrant electronic motif, but it gets repetitive, particularly if you take the time to explore a place or a fight happens to drag out (which will be the case for fellow newbies to shoot-em ups). What you will hear is very good, and it was refreshing to listen to an electronica score- I just wanted more.

Last is the gameplay, and it is here that The Textorcist shines. As I stated before, this is a bullet hell wherein you have to dodge a barrage of particles thrown your way while also discharging your own Holy bullets or “hollets” as the game itself calls them. You do this through entering long incantations that vary between English and Latin through two different methods depending on the device you have: if you’re using the keyboard and mouse, you obviously type the hexes out, whereas if you’re using a controller, you spell out each word by hitting the left and right bumpers to input each letter. It’s an interesting set-up because both come with their own pros and cons- keyboard typing is quicker to do, yet consequently harder to balance in the heat of a battle, while hitting buttons on a controller is easier to do, yet consequently much slower. The Textorcist, based on the way that it’s set-up, is clearly meant to be played through the former, though it was nice to see the developers create a method for controller users.

This clash of styles might seem strange, but it makes for a very fun game. No matter how frustrated I got at times, I always enjoyed myself as it is truly exhilarating to play mystical dodgeball while working to hit each keystroke. That being said, I fully acknowledge that there is an inherent flaw with this design, and that is that it will only please those who have learned touch typing; having to constantly glance between the keyboard and the screen in order to make sure you’re hitting the write letters will get annoying, especially as you face harder enemies down the line. So keep that in mind.

In the end, do I recommend The Textorcist? It took me about 5-6 hours to complete the game, though the better part of one of those hours was admittedly spent on a single boss. That fluke aside, this is (thankfully) one of the easier bullet hell games, and is definitely open to newcomers to the genre. However, that unfortunately creates the problem of making the game relatively quick to get through. There aren’t too many stages, and considering the problems with the story, this is a game that needed more playtime. As much as I hate to say it, the $15.00 asking price on Steam is just a little too much for my liking.

But that being said, you guys know by now my more lax attitude towards indie games- they always deserves our support, and The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia is fun enough that you won’t feel money was wasted even if you throw a little extra cash the way of Morbidware.

Pros:
+Gorgeously-realized grim aesthetic
+Entertaining gameplay
+Demonic spritework is top-notch

Cons:
-Too short story
-No voice acting