RedBackLoggd
2020
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
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
2020
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
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
2016
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
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
2019
Based on a review originally published on Flickering Myth: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/11/video-game-review-bouncer-story/
Review code received for free
Playing through Bouncer Story, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Lucas Pope’s Papers Please, which didn’t bold well for the former. Developed by Helmi Games and published by Plug In Digital, Bouncer Story apparently seeks to take the former’s template and apply it to an urban setting. Yet in implementing role-playing systems, it ends up overstaying its welcome. That’s the short answer; for the longer one read on.
If the title didn’t give it away, Bouncer Story has a tale to tell- you play as big guy trying to pay off a massive gambling debt to the local mafia. To do this, he works shifts as a security guard at various night clubs in the city associated with this mob. While this is going on, a series of killings dubbed the “Blackjack Murders” occur in the background, sending the police into a frenzy. What’s going on and what’s your part in all this? That’s something you’re going to have to figure out for yourself should you choose to stay in for the long haul. And I say the long haul because the reality is there are significant pacing issues here not helped by heavy gameplay grind (more on that below).
To talk about the pacing, I should first explain why I made a comparison to Papers, Please in the introductory paragraph: during my playthrough of Bouncer Story, I noticed many similarities between the two, beginning with the premise of an average worker trying to earn enough cash to make it out of a tight situation. But it goes deeper than that. There were a lot of investigative authorities and interesting individuals who popped up throughout your journey in Papers, Please: characters who spruced up the narrative by way of their antics, requests, or general personality. They tied into the overarching issues plaguing Arstotzka, and helped shape your own views accordingly, whether it was sex traffickers trying to bribe you, managing officials implementing strict rules, or the wonderfully bizarre Jorji Costava.
Bouncer Story has those same archetypes, but their appearances with you are so spaced out that they don’t build-up the way the travelers in Papers, Please did. They are much more haphazard in nature- I’m not lying when I say 1-2 weeks can go by before you meet them again. And it’s a shame because the writers here are as talented as Pope- when you trigger these conversations, they build-up tension, raise heads, and make you question your role in this downtown conurbation. You know these mobsters are scumbags, but what difference does it make when they’ve had a history of holding sway over every citizen? It’s too bad I wasn’t consistently hooked on to care in the end.
That being said, though those encounters are limited, when they do happen they often come with choices. You’re offered to do tasks or oblige requests by one or more parties, and the best thing about them is that they’re morally-ambiguous. Something that may seem straight forward always has a caveat related to your character- you want to make a difference, yet you’re already in a hot mess and can’t risk angering your creditors, especially with an apparent hitman running loose. It’s a nice balance that opens the door to multiple endings depending on what you choose to do. Again, though, they are few and far between.
Outside of those direct scenes, you’re given a daily newspaper to read every night, with each entry being a single paragraph detailing some extraneous detail: maybe you’ll get a hot tip about a special event at a bar or an update on the Blackjack investigation. Unfortunately, just like with my previous complaints, it’s very sparse- these periodicals could have gone a long way towards fleshing out the backdrop of the area you’re in or at the very least covered more than a single topic. Compare this to the current events app in VA-11 HALL-A, which often had multiple feeds giving you information. Is there really nothing else beguiling going on in this sad sack of a place?
On that note of sadness, the graphics are up next, and they falter noticeably. As you can imagine, the role of an usher entails greeting a diversity of individuals. Yet Helmi Games decided that the best way to render those individuals was to take 3-4 basic templates, put their clothing and names through an RNG, and then spam them en masse in a single location and expect everyone to accept it.
I guess on the one hand I can’t really blame them- triple A titles like the Elder Scrolls or Arkham series have rehashed the same limited number of models for all their NPCs and received universal acclaim (it’s only the memeists that remind us otherwise!). My counterargument here, though, is that those games offer a lot more content and activities, and having a sprawling world with things to do offsets the clones galore.
Granted, Bethesda and Rocksteady were of course operating with bigger budgets, but when you choose to base your enterprise purely around the notion of NPC interaction, you are more obligated to commit resources towards at least making them seem like unique folks with different motivations. But no, not only is their dialogue painfully repeated, their clothing is, 50 percent of the time, flat-out ugly. The algorithm used to procedurally create the textiles doesn’t try to make color coding sense- you’ll see neons matched with secondary hues, like hot pink and brown, while crazy hair colors are outshined by weirder looking shoes. Procedural generation has been a great tool in video game productions, but here it feels like a lazy excuse by the developers to not do any extensive work. The sole exception to this are the special supporting characters. From Detective Samuel Gittes to the Don of the family, these beings were clearly given a dedicated makeover because they look amazing: their apparel is detailed, fits the setting, and makes them stand-out in a good way.
The generic character designs themselves aren’t inherently bad- they evoke a kind of late-90s/early-2000s feel with their realistic proportions and skin tones. However, they’re offset by a couple of additional factors: jagged edges outline the bodies and don’t feel natural, and their walking animations take limited to the next level- you will see moving legs better conveyed in flash animation productions from Newgrounds nearly 20 years ago. On top of this, shadows are reduced to small dark circles at the base of everyone’s feet.
If I can end on a positive note, it’s the backgrounds. You gain access to seven bars, and considerable effort was put into giving them a unique spin, and I don’t just mean thematic. Yes, the Irish Pub has shamrocks and the sports bar a giant soccer ball, but the decor, lighting, and general feel is specifically crafted. The Twelve Blues nightclub that caters to more economically-depressed clientele operates in a rundown area with cracked walls and graffiti. The aforestated Gaelic saloon has middle-class citizens on its mind, but it’s still financially hampered, as indicated by rats roaming nearby and its flickering fluorescents. Meanwhile, the fancy Delice has a cozier patio with soft yellow lights indicating a welcoming environment. These are static images conveying pure atmosphere, and it’s a testament to the color graders and designers for successfully doing so.
Sound is up next, and there isn’t much. Voice acting is constrained to grunts that don’t deviate based on gender, and is unimportant regardless. You get some SFX in the form of punching noises when a fight breaks out between you and an NPC, but it’s deliberately cartoonish. Other actions that produce an audible response, like throwing cash or calling people, produce a miniscule response that isn’t worth going in-depth.
That leaves the score, which is actually good. I was unable to find the composer’s name, but they have given each of the locales distinct harmonies that are as catchy as they are befitting: Twelve Blues is more low-key and moody in contrast with Goal 27’s lively leitmotifs. Because work days are short, these tunes don’t ever feel as looped as they are, and that goes a long way towards making the stints enjoyable. The composer even throws in a nice heavy beat that plays whenever the Mafia presence gets in your face, avoiding any fears of it being a Nino Rota ripoff.
Finally, we come to the gameplay, which, as I said beforehand, is very grindy. I hate to keep drawing comparisons to Paper, Please, but you do, do a very similar job as the inspector from it- deciding whether or not to let someone inside an establishment, in this case drinkeries. Much like Tinder, this is done via swiping left or right when presented with a new customer. It starts off simple, but things get complicated quickly with the introduction of IDs- evidently these bistros used to employ idiot security guards because you will have all sorts of morons trying to get in: bozos with fake IDs, underage kids, drunkards, and Mafia-banned boozers all blend in with the crowd Assassin’s Creed style, and the only way you can catch them is through their manner of speech and photo identification. For each legitimate patron approved, you get a small gratuity that makes up the majority of your daily income.
You could take it slow and avoid making any mistakes, but more people = more tips, and allowing certain demographics inside increases the “happy hour” meter: get it all the way up and you’ll get extra money from the casuals when they exit for the night.
As you can imagine, this positive feedback loop gets tiring very fast due to how repetitive it is. Yes, the shifts go by quickly as I mentioned above, however that doesn’t matter when you’re working consecutive days at a time without any change in the general situation. Special events trigger increased crowds at specific venues, yet you’re still doing the same thing, and because the story beats are spread so thin, you lack a compelling reason to trudge through this monotony.
Still, I would have been able to tolerate it were it not for the reskinned models hurting the ID examinations. See, because there is no differentiation between NPCs of the same prototype, you genuinely can’t tell what someone’s age is: a character who is 14 is a mirror image of a character who is 70. As a result, it genuinely makes no sense for the game to dock you over authorizing someone with phony credentials when the basis for that phoniness is being “too old.” Apparently there is some arbitrary age cut-off that the designers haphazardly decided designated someone as being a pretender.
Names are another annoying kink in the identification field. Once again that RNG factor is limited to the same 10 or so prosoponyms that are mixed and matched for everyone, and once again you’ll get docked for excusing a fake ID on the basis of it being the opposite gender. Not only is it frustrating, but considering all the advances that have been made on the subject of gender identity and naming conventions in the western world, it feels outdated and regressive. A simple solution to this would’ve been putting a “sex” label on the licenses much like, you guessed it, Papers, Please did!
The negative aspects of the procedural generation continue to the personalities of the crowds. The people who spawn in an area aren’t as divergent in their attitudes as they should be- you can enter a location only for it to mostly consist of posers, drunks or, worse, violent offenders, who will fight you if you refuse them service. There were many times where I had to relaunch my game because the crowd that was selected for me was either full of imposters that would have significantly hurt my income for the day, or ill-tempered hoodlums who knocked me out because I didn’t expect to take on three in one instance.
I know readers may criticize me for “gaming the game,” if it were, but I make it clear that the only reason I did this is because there is no deciding factor that determines the makeup of the alcoholic congregation. If the newspapers, for example, gave some indication that one place would be more prone to petty acts than another (and provided some reward to make it worth the risk), then I would have been fine with this, but no, you don’t get that. The closest that ever comes is one instance wherein a piece that tells you auditors are cracking down on a general increase in forged IDs, however I didn’t see this have any noticeable impact on the game at large.
I noted that you can get into fights- these are completely random and the outcome is automatically decided after a brief “cutscene” of the two of you duking it out. Whether or not you come out on top is determined by a trait called “strength,” which falls along three other skills: Energy, Charisma, and Intelligence. Their presence lends Bouncer Story a bit of an RPG feel since they are used for the sake of progression- charisma gets you access to more bars, intelligence gives you new abilities, and strength determines how much energy you survive with after a brawl. You increase each of them by way of buying their next level, with each upgrade costing more than its predecessor. While the investments are worth it so far as their effects are concerned, it is a heavy monetary sink that leads to a time sink by way of you having to grind for those greenbacks, bringing back painful memories of early JRPGs like the original Final Fantasy. In other words, it’s an outdated mechanic, no matter the fresh coat of paint.
If that weren’t bad enough, Bouncer Story also makes the oddball decision to throw in roguelike elements via permadeath. If your choices lead to you succumbing to a fatal end, you do not have the option to go back to any point in time and try something different. Some people may appreciate this, but when you consider the fact that you will have to go through that same grind all-over again, it significantly diminishes the forced replay value brought about by it, which unfortunately happened to me.
A couple of gambles are thrown in for good measure- blackjack and random events. Blackjack is literally the casino game Twenty-one wherein you can potentially earn $50.00 multiple times a day depending on the cards you and your opponent draw. Random events, on the other hand, involve clicking on a temporary icon on the map with a range of effects from winning money to losing a skill level. Personally, I found both of these too risky, but your mileage will vary.
Overall, Bouncer Story is a rare example of mediocre gameplay being brought down by direct problems with the graphics and narrative. If either of the latter categories had been amped up in terms of pacing, heterogeneity, or laid-out blueprints, we could have had a solid indie title. As it stands, Bouncer Story is another case of beautiful artistic endeavors like music and scenery being wasted on a product that does not live up to its potential.
It took me about 5 hours to “beat,” the game, but I put quotation marks around the term because I suffered from an untimely finale and didn’t have the motivation to start a new file. I was about two weeks away from the deadline to pay off the debt, so I imagine it would have taken no more than another 30 minutes to complete the game, putting my total playthrough at an estimate of 5.5 hours.
However, even if it was just the five, Bouncer Story’s pricing of $7.99 more than covers the $1.00 to 30 minute of gameplay ratio I require. However, I will openly admit I did not have as much fun with it as I should have. If you’re fine with an interesting storyline being unnecessarily dragged out alongside tedious clicking gameplay, you will find enjoyment, but otherwise I would just recommend playing Papers, Please.
Pros:
+ Neo-noir terrain
+ Gritty story
+ Good OST
Cons:
– Pacing
– Grindy
– Lazy character skins that hurt the gameplay
– Permanent death
Rating – 4/10
Review code received for free
Playing through Bouncer Story, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Lucas Pope’s Papers Please, which didn’t bold well for the former. Developed by Helmi Games and published by Plug In Digital, Bouncer Story apparently seeks to take the former’s template and apply it to an urban setting. Yet in implementing role-playing systems, it ends up overstaying its welcome. That’s the short answer; for the longer one read on.
If the title didn’t give it away, Bouncer Story has a tale to tell- you play as big guy trying to pay off a massive gambling debt to the local mafia. To do this, he works shifts as a security guard at various night clubs in the city associated with this mob. While this is going on, a series of killings dubbed the “Blackjack Murders” occur in the background, sending the police into a frenzy. What’s going on and what’s your part in all this? That’s something you’re going to have to figure out for yourself should you choose to stay in for the long haul. And I say the long haul because the reality is there are significant pacing issues here not helped by heavy gameplay grind (more on that below).
To talk about the pacing, I should first explain why I made a comparison to Papers, Please in the introductory paragraph: during my playthrough of Bouncer Story, I noticed many similarities between the two, beginning with the premise of an average worker trying to earn enough cash to make it out of a tight situation. But it goes deeper than that. There were a lot of investigative authorities and interesting individuals who popped up throughout your journey in Papers, Please: characters who spruced up the narrative by way of their antics, requests, or general personality. They tied into the overarching issues plaguing Arstotzka, and helped shape your own views accordingly, whether it was sex traffickers trying to bribe you, managing officials implementing strict rules, or the wonderfully bizarre Jorji Costava.
Bouncer Story has those same archetypes, but their appearances with you are so spaced out that they don’t build-up the way the travelers in Papers, Please did. They are much more haphazard in nature- I’m not lying when I say 1-2 weeks can go by before you meet them again. And it’s a shame because the writers here are as talented as Pope- when you trigger these conversations, they build-up tension, raise heads, and make you question your role in this downtown conurbation. You know these mobsters are scumbags, but what difference does it make when they’ve had a history of holding sway over every citizen? It’s too bad I wasn’t consistently hooked on to care in the end.
That being said, though those encounters are limited, when they do happen they often come with choices. You’re offered to do tasks or oblige requests by one or more parties, and the best thing about them is that they’re morally-ambiguous. Something that may seem straight forward always has a caveat related to your character- you want to make a difference, yet you’re already in a hot mess and can’t risk angering your creditors, especially with an apparent hitman running loose. It’s a nice balance that opens the door to multiple endings depending on what you choose to do. Again, though, they are few and far between.
Outside of those direct scenes, you’re given a daily newspaper to read every night, with each entry being a single paragraph detailing some extraneous detail: maybe you’ll get a hot tip about a special event at a bar or an update on the Blackjack investigation. Unfortunately, just like with my previous complaints, it’s very sparse- these periodicals could have gone a long way towards fleshing out the backdrop of the area you’re in or at the very least covered more than a single topic. Compare this to the current events app in VA-11 HALL-A, which often had multiple feeds giving you information. Is there really nothing else beguiling going on in this sad sack of a place?
On that note of sadness, the graphics are up next, and they falter noticeably. As you can imagine, the role of an usher entails greeting a diversity of individuals. Yet Helmi Games decided that the best way to render those individuals was to take 3-4 basic templates, put their clothing and names through an RNG, and then spam them en masse in a single location and expect everyone to accept it.
I guess on the one hand I can’t really blame them- triple A titles like the Elder Scrolls or Arkham series have rehashed the same limited number of models for all their NPCs and received universal acclaim (it’s only the memeists that remind us otherwise!). My counterargument here, though, is that those games offer a lot more content and activities, and having a sprawling world with things to do offsets the clones galore.
Granted, Bethesda and Rocksteady were of course operating with bigger budgets, but when you choose to base your enterprise purely around the notion of NPC interaction, you are more obligated to commit resources towards at least making them seem like unique folks with different motivations. But no, not only is their dialogue painfully repeated, their clothing is, 50 percent of the time, flat-out ugly. The algorithm used to procedurally create the textiles doesn’t try to make color coding sense- you’ll see neons matched with secondary hues, like hot pink and brown, while crazy hair colors are outshined by weirder looking shoes. Procedural generation has been a great tool in video game productions, but here it feels like a lazy excuse by the developers to not do any extensive work. The sole exception to this are the special supporting characters. From Detective Samuel Gittes to the Don of the family, these beings were clearly given a dedicated makeover because they look amazing: their apparel is detailed, fits the setting, and makes them stand-out in a good way.
The generic character designs themselves aren’t inherently bad- they evoke a kind of late-90s/early-2000s feel with their realistic proportions and skin tones. However, they’re offset by a couple of additional factors: jagged edges outline the bodies and don’t feel natural, and their walking animations take limited to the next level- you will see moving legs better conveyed in flash animation productions from Newgrounds nearly 20 years ago. On top of this, shadows are reduced to small dark circles at the base of everyone’s feet.
If I can end on a positive note, it’s the backgrounds. You gain access to seven bars, and considerable effort was put into giving them a unique spin, and I don’t just mean thematic. Yes, the Irish Pub has shamrocks and the sports bar a giant soccer ball, but the decor, lighting, and general feel is specifically crafted. The Twelve Blues nightclub that caters to more economically-depressed clientele operates in a rundown area with cracked walls and graffiti. The aforestated Gaelic saloon has middle-class citizens on its mind, but it’s still financially hampered, as indicated by rats roaming nearby and its flickering fluorescents. Meanwhile, the fancy Delice has a cozier patio with soft yellow lights indicating a welcoming environment. These are static images conveying pure atmosphere, and it’s a testament to the color graders and designers for successfully doing so.
Sound is up next, and there isn’t much. Voice acting is constrained to grunts that don’t deviate based on gender, and is unimportant regardless. You get some SFX in the form of punching noises when a fight breaks out between you and an NPC, but it’s deliberately cartoonish. Other actions that produce an audible response, like throwing cash or calling people, produce a miniscule response that isn’t worth going in-depth.
That leaves the score, which is actually good. I was unable to find the composer’s name, but they have given each of the locales distinct harmonies that are as catchy as they are befitting: Twelve Blues is more low-key and moody in contrast with Goal 27’s lively leitmotifs. Because work days are short, these tunes don’t ever feel as looped as they are, and that goes a long way towards making the stints enjoyable. The composer even throws in a nice heavy beat that plays whenever the Mafia presence gets in your face, avoiding any fears of it being a Nino Rota ripoff.
Finally, we come to the gameplay, which, as I said beforehand, is very grindy. I hate to keep drawing comparisons to Paper, Please, but you do, do a very similar job as the inspector from it- deciding whether or not to let someone inside an establishment, in this case drinkeries. Much like Tinder, this is done via swiping left or right when presented with a new customer. It starts off simple, but things get complicated quickly with the introduction of IDs- evidently these bistros used to employ idiot security guards because you will have all sorts of morons trying to get in: bozos with fake IDs, underage kids, drunkards, and Mafia-banned boozers all blend in with the crowd Assassin’s Creed style, and the only way you can catch them is through their manner of speech and photo identification. For each legitimate patron approved, you get a small gratuity that makes up the majority of your daily income.
You could take it slow and avoid making any mistakes, but more people = more tips, and allowing certain demographics inside increases the “happy hour” meter: get it all the way up and you’ll get extra money from the casuals when they exit for the night.
As you can imagine, this positive feedback loop gets tiring very fast due to how repetitive it is. Yes, the shifts go by quickly as I mentioned above, however that doesn’t matter when you’re working consecutive days at a time without any change in the general situation. Special events trigger increased crowds at specific venues, yet you’re still doing the same thing, and because the story beats are spread so thin, you lack a compelling reason to trudge through this monotony.
Still, I would have been able to tolerate it were it not for the reskinned models hurting the ID examinations. See, because there is no differentiation between NPCs of the same prototype, you genuinely can’t tell what someone’s age is: a character who is 14 is a mirror image of a character who is 70. As a result, it genuinely makes no sense for the game to dock you over authorizing someone with phony credentials when the basis for that phoniness is being “too old.” Apparently there is some arbitrary age cut-off that the designers haphazardly decided designated someone as being a pretender.
Names are another annoying kink in the identification field. Once again that RNG factor is limited to the same 10 or so prosoponyms that are mixed and matched for everyone, and once again you’ll get docked for excusing a fake ID on the basis of it being the opposite gender. Not only is it frustrating, but considering all the advances that have been made on the subject of gender identity and naming conventions in the western world, it feels outdated and regressive. A simple solution to this would’ve been putting a “sex” label on the licenses much like, you guessed it, Papers, Please did!
The negative aspects of the procedural generation continue to the personalities of the crowds. The people who spawn in an area aren’t as divergent in their attitudes as they should be- you can enter a location only for it to mostly consist of posers, drunks or, worse, violent offenders, who will fight you if you refuse them service. There were many times where I had to relaunch my game because the crowd that was selected for me was either full of imposters that would have significantly hurt my income for the day, or ill-tempered hoodlums who knocked me out because I didn’t expect to take on three in one instance.
I know readers may criticize me for “gaming the game,” if it were, but I make it clear that the only reason I did this is because there is no deciding factor that determines the makeup of the alcoholic congregation. If the newspapers, for example, gave some indication that one place would be more prone to petty acts than another (and provided some reward to make it worth the risk), then I would have been fine with this, but no, you don’t get that. The closest that ever comes is one instance wherein a piece that tells you auditors are cracking down on a general increase in forged IDs, however I didn’t see this have any noticeable impact on the game at large.
I noted that you can get into fights- these are completely random and the outcome is automatically decided after a brief “cutscene” of the two of you duking it out. Whether or not you come out on top is determined by a trait called “strength,” which falls along three other skills: Energy, Charisma, and Intelligence. Their presence lends Bouncer Story a bit of an RPG feel since they are used for the sake of progression- charisma gets you access to more bars, intelligence gives you new abilities, and strength determines how much energy you survive with after a brawl. You increase each of them by way of buying their next level, with each upgrade costing more than its predecessor. While the investments are worth it so far as their effects are concerned, it is a heavy monetary sink that leads to a time sink by way of you having to grind for those greenbacks, bringing back painful memories of early JRPGs like the original Final Fantasy. In other words, it’s an outdated mechanic, no matter the fresh coat of paint.
If that weren’t bad enough, Bouncer Story also makes the oddball decision to throw in roguelike elements via permadeath. If your choices lead to you succumbing to a fatal end, you do not have the option to go back to any point in time and try something different. Some people may appreciate this, but when you consider the fact that you will have to go through that same grind all-over again, it significantly diminishes the forced replay value brought about by it, which unfortunately happened to me.
A couple of gambles are thrown in for good measure- blackjack and random events. Blackjack is literally the casino game Twenty-one wherein you can potentially earn $50.00 multiple times a day depending on the cards you and your opponent draw. Random events, on the other hand, involve clicking on a temporary icon on the map with a range of effects from winning money to losing a skill level. Personally, I found both of these too risky, but your mileage will vary.
Overall, Bouncer Story is a rare example of mediocre gameplay being brought down by direct problems with the graphics and narrative. If either of the latter categories had been amped up in terms of pacing, heterogeneity, or laid-out blueprints, we could have had a solid indie title. As it stands, Bouncer Story is another case of beautiful artistic endeavors like music and scenery being wasted on a product that does not live up to its potential.
It took me about 5 hours to “beat,” the game, but I put quotation marks around the term because I suffered from an untimely finale and didn’t have the motivation to start a new file. I was about two weeks away from the deadline to pay off the debt, so I imagine it would have taken no more than another 30 minutes to complete the game, putting my total playthrough at an estimate of 5.5 hours.
However, even if it was just the five, Bouncer Story’s pricing of $7.99 more than covers the $1.00 to 30 minute of gameplay ratio I require. However, I will openly admit I did not have as much fun with it as I should have. If you’re fine with an interesting storyline being unnecessarily dragged out alongside tedious clicking gameplay, you will find enjoyment, but otherwise I would just recommend playing Papers, Please.
Pros:
+ Neo-noir terrain
+ Gritty story
+ Good OST
Cons:
– Pacing
– Grindy
– Lazy character skins that hurt the gameplay
– Permanent death
Rating – 4/10
2020
Original review published on: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/10/video-game-review-evergate/
Developed by Stone Lantern Games LLC and published by PQube Limited, Evergate is one of the best puzzle platformers I have played in a while. I know I usually begin these reviews with an extravagant introduction talking about the antiquity of a genre or a personal experience I had that relates to the current game, but the thing is I’ve already spoken extensively about puzzle platformers in the past- that they are about fresh mechanics. And Evergate left such a strong impression on me that I feel the need to immediately get into the review!
As always we’ll start with the story, of which there actually is one. Fans of puzzle games know that, since the days of Tetris and Super Mario Bros., narratives have often been pushed to the side in favor of focusing on the gameplay. In Evergate, though, a surprisingly large mythos has been created by Stone Lantern to support their world- spirits of recently deceased humans are sent to an afterlife called the Phyrgia Realm to be reincarnated through a device known as the, you guessed it, Evergate.
One of these spirits is Ki, whose appearance in Phyrgia triggers an astral storm that unleashes dark faeries and scorches the Evergate, the latter having the effect of providing Ki with access to past memories: something that should not be possible for souls. Why is this happening and what is Ki’s role in all this? You’re going to have to play the game to find out, though I will say don’t expect anything extravagant. Evergate’s biggest issues in the storytelling department are that it’s conflicted in its presentation and wrapped in surface-level sentimentality. You’re not getting much in the way of character development or even character depth- heck, for the vast majority of its runtime, Ki acts like a silent protagonist.
By conflicted presentation I mean it genuinely feels like there was a split in the fictive direction: half the team wanted a straightforward mnemonic tale while the other half was more in favor of subtly conveying a generational drama through limited dialogue and illustrations, and unfortunately a couple of problems arose from the clash: not only do the two parts not mesh well together, but the direct yarn is noticeably inferior to the elusive one as the aforestated sentimental tone diminishes its quality. Thankfully, it never approaches tearjerker territory, however I’ll be danged if this wasn’t one of the cheesiest scripts I’ve read in an indie game. I’m sure people will criticize me for being too harsh on this front, but considering how beautiful some of the pictorial storytelling could get, I feel justified. These images appear whenever you reach the midway point of a chapter or close it out altogether, and are rendered with simple shapes, striking hues, and dynamic character poses: telling a quick story in a small number of panels, much like a Peanuts yonkoma strip.
That makes a good transition to the graphics. Right from the get-go, one of the things you’ll notice about Evergate are the seamless transitions. Seriously, from the title page to the main game there isn’t a single loading screen, which is a damn impressive feat considering next generation consoles are marketing themselves on providing this aspect.
But that wouldn’t matter if the game itself wasn’t visually up-to-par, and thankfully that isn’t the case here. Evergate might very well contain my favorite depiction of the Great Beyond aesthetically- the hub Ki returns to after every adventure is a library full of misty clouds and contrasting light and dark hues, showcasing the blend of Heaven and Hell influences. An enchanting starry sky protrudes in the background, while the Evergate itself is two gnarled trunks wrapped around one another; simple yet alluring.
That amalgamation of nature and the metaphysical extends to every single world you enter, of which there are many. In having to revisit these memories, Ki travels through a diversity of locales, ranging from Ancient China to a techno-future, and the artistry never fades. Blocks and platforms may float and exude a sense of spacetime displacement, but they’re visibly made of a tangible Earthen material, whether rock, brick, or metal. Walls may be lined with glowing white lights or strange flora, but they’re clearly composed of everyday ice, stone, or grass. This was a good decision because it both helps ground Evergate in a realistic schema, and gives it an alien-enough look that is inherently enthralling. Too often you see renditions of eternity go in one direction or the other, being either a mirror reflection of the real-world or a completely altered plane of existence, and both extremes end up feeling lackluster and improbable. By striking a balance, Evergate avoids those pitfalls and crafts an ideal theoretical model of the hereafter.
In terms of the art style itself, that’s a bit harder to describe. I’m admittedly limited in my descriptors due to not being a drawer or painter, but what Stone Lantern has gone for here resembles something I’d expect out of a modernized Sega classic. The environments are obviously not photorealistic, but they are CGI constructions that are desperately trying TO replicate the physical world. A look at the old Sonic games or Nights into Dreams perfectly encapsulates what I mean. Note that, in spite of my use of the word “desperately,” I am not degrading the efforts- the game looks gorgeous.
One of the more interesting design choices is the implementation of 2D elements amidst a 2.5D world. If anyone has ever played the Paper Mario series, you are more than familiar with the flat characters who look like they are literally flipping when they turn from side-to-side, and that’s the case here. Everyone besides Ki is literally a wafer-thin product that seems like they were made of colored stationery, and that partly extends to the ecological and manmade environs of the area: some of the aforementioned obstacles appear three-dimensional, others (like the collectables) are more papery, yet what’s fascinating is that none of them look out of place. There was real effort put into ensuring that these different stylistic choices polymorphed well with one another, and the end result is a sight to behold.
Lighting, on the other hand, is pretty limited. At first Evergate starts off very well through Ki herself. She has an in-built luminescence that literally lights up her surroundings wherever you go, and what’s amazing is how authentic the radiance is- it only extends to her immediate vicinity, nothing greater and nothing less, which is how lamp-like bodies actually work. The same applies to Ki’s laser and the power-up boxes, but more on that later.
In spite of this, most of the main illumination is prerendered for each level, though that isn’t inherently bad. It means everything is appropriately lit beforehand, and so you will never have to worry about adjusting your brightness- a sunny vista is just as pleasant to gaze at as a war-torn city. My quandary is I do feel that, given the mystic standards set-up by the Phrygia Realm itself, more could have been done with the lighting systems to provide an overarching arcane atmosphere.
Some other graphical feats that I want to mention yet can’t organically fit into the paragraphs above are the following: whenever Ki moves, she causes a kinetic chain reaction on anything in her terrestrial proximity, causing things like flowers or the robes of the other spirits to flutter. Very impressive, as is the motion of the little feather-like hairs on her head. The backdrops of every place are also magnificently crafted, and worthy of being wallpapers on their own.
If there is any complaint I have about the graphics, it would be the rehashed animations used to depict progress from location to location and the Evergate to produce a new book of memories.
Next up is sound. You do get some grunts and laughter during the storyboard sections, but for the most part there is no voice acting, meaning we are going to begin with the SFX. What you get here is pretty standard for an indie game- you have a lot of pre-programmed noises for actions, that do not deviate no matter the external factors: shattering barriers, triggering boosters, jumping, and more all contain the same sound regardless of whether you hit it at a different angle or land with a different velocity. That being said, I did not consider it a big issue here due to the stages being relatively short, and you thus not having to spend an inordinate amount of time listening to them to the point of annoyance.
The music, credited to a composer named M. R. Miller, is….a tough thing to talk about. Miller is very talented, able to adjust his OST to fit whatever era the Evergate takes you to, and he’s able to do that adjustment without it feeling stereotypical or in-your-face. For example, talking about the first area in China, there are those traditional strings associated with classical Oriental melodies incorporated into the track, but they never come off as a western impression you would hear in some hack’s studio. Likewise, the music of the future sections features electronic beats thumping throughout, yet they never takeover to turn it into a synthwave-esque harmony.
For all these feats, though, the issue I have is that there is an optimism present in the vast majority of the score that is at odds with the increasingly-dark direction the story takes. As Ki advances further and learns more, the plot turns grimmer with tragic truths and revelations. And when your encompassing story is heading towards that tone, it feels a bit jarring to get interrupted with happy orchestral leitmotifs that parade along. This isn’t on Miller as it is a direction issue, but his compositions do unfortunately suffer as a result. When the tone of Evergate aligns with the music, it works wonders, but when it doesn’t, it took me a out of the game at times. But that could very well just be me.
Finally, we get to the section I have been waiting to talk about, and that is of course the gameplay. Evergate is built around a mechanic called the “Soulflame,” a targeting system that Ki uses to manipulate objects around her. Most of the time, it comes down setting-off preplaced “power-ups,” resembling gems, that cause a variety of effects. Gold ovals, for example, blast you into the air, orange stars turn you into a fiery wisp, and hourglasses instantly teleport you amongst a plethora of others.
When I said in the beginning of this review that Evergate was one of the best platformers I have experienced, it was primarily derived from the implementation of these chargers, and their relationship with the level layout. A lot of effort was evidently put into the design of each part, with supplements placed at specific points to ensure that they aren’t wasted- every single one of them serves a purpose, and using them for the wrong one or to trigger a cheap shortcut will cost you something unless you are aiming to just speed through to the end (in which case, why are you even playing a puzzler?).
See, all the arenas contain three specific goals that you have the option of completing: one, beat the level in a set amount of time; two, activate all the power-ups, and three, collect all these moon shards. Successfully accomplishing any of them will earn you essence, which in turn unlocks bonus levels, as well as charms that you can equip to Ki in order to give you an extra ability: a higher leap, faster movement, bigger portal creation, stealth from enemy ships, etc….there are many of them that you can experiment with, and you will definitely need them for the higher levels should you want to finish those additional targets.
The best part about these targets is that they don’t work like the full-sync objectives from the Assassin’s Creed series- complete one of them and it will be saved, allowing you to focus on the others on additional replays. At first I thought this was done to avoid inducing frustration, but I immediately realized that it was actually a deliberate choice- it would be impossible for the player to successful attain all three in a single playthrough due to each having their own mini-navigation challenges. Absolutely amazing, and a natural way of creating replay value.
That being said, I will say that some of the timing required to trigger the motes can be a little irritating and lead to extensive trial and error. I also wasn’t a huge fan of certain charms being necessary for beating certain objectives as it sometimes made them too reliant on gimmicks over player skill, though opinions will vary.
So, what do you get with Evergate? You get a damn good platformer, that’s for sure. A unique esthetic, dazzling visuals, and well-arranged stages keep things constantly entertaining. And though there are flaws with the sound design and even power set-ups, I think you will be pleased with everything.
It took me a little over 6 hours to beat Evergate, and, at a $20.00 asking price, this would normally be at odds with my $1 : 30 minutes ratio. However, you will get further mileage from 100 percenting all the levels, as well as completing the bonus areas (both of which I did not have time to do).
Still, if I am being honest, those will probably only net you two hours more, keeping the total at 8 and still below 10. However, given that Stone Lantern Games is an indie company, and given the sheer amount of creativity on display here, I am inclined to make an exception to my rule.
Pros:
+ Mesmerizing art
+ Seamless transitions
+ Replay value
+ Creativity
Cons:
– Mediocre story
– Music at odds with the narrative
Developed by Stone Lantern Games LLC and published by PQube Limited, Evergate is one of the best puzzle platformers I have played in a while. I know I usually begin these reviews with an extravagant introduction talking about the antiquity of a genre or a personal experience I had that relates to the current game, but the thing is I’ve already spoken extensively about puzzle platformers in the past- that they are about fresh mechanics. And Evergate left such a strong impression on me that I feel the need to immediately get into the review!
As always we’ll start with the story, of which there actually is one. Fans of puzzle games know that, since the days of Tetris and Super Mario Bros., narratives have often been pushed to the side in favor of focusing on the gameplay. In Evergate, though, a surprisingly large mythos has been created by Stone Lantern to support their world- spirits of recently deceased humans are sent to an afterlife called the Phyrgia Realm to be reincarnated through a device known as the, you guessed it, Evergate.
One of these spirits is Ki, whose appearance in Phyrgia triggers an astral storm that unleashes dark faeries and scorches the Evergate, the latter having the effect of providing Ki with access to past memories: something that should not be possible for souls. Why is this happening and what is Ki’s role in all this? You’re going to have to play the game to find out, though I will say don’t expect anything extravagant. Evergate’s biggest issues in the storytelling department are that it’s conflicted in its presentation and wrapped in surface-level sentimentality. You’re not getting much in the way of character development or even character depth- heck, for the vast majority of its runtime, Ki acts like a silent protagonist.
By conflicted presentation I mean it genuinely feels like there was a split in the fictive direction: half the team wanted a straightforward mnemonic tale while the other half was more in favor of subtly conveying a generational drama through limited dialogue and illustrations, and unfortunately a couple of problems arose from the clash: not only do the two parts not mesh well together, but the direct yarn is noticeably inferior to the elusive one as the aforestated sentimental tone diminishes its quality. Thankfully, it never approaches tearjerker territory, however I’ll be danged if this wasn’t one of the cheesiest scripts I’ve read in an indie game. I’m sure people will criticize me for being too harsh on this front, but considering how beautiful some of the pictorial storytelling could get, I feel justified. These images appear whenever you reach the midway point of a chapter or close it out altogether, and are rendered with simple shapes, striking hues, and dynamic character poses: telling a quick story in a small number of panels, much like a Peanuts yonkoma strip.
That makes a good transition to the graphics. Right from the get-go, one of the things you’ll notice about Evergate are the seamless transitions. Seriously, from the title page to the main game there isn’t a single loading screen, which is a damn impressive feat considering next generation consoles are marketing themselves on providing this aspect.
But that wouldn’t matter if the game itself wasn’t visually up-to-par, and thankfully that isn’t the case here. Evergate might very well contain my favorite depiction of the Great Beyond aesthetically- the hub Ki returns to after every adventure is a library full of misty clouds and contrasting light and dark hues, showcasing the blend of Heaven and Hell influences. An enchanting starry sky protrudes in the background, while the Evergate itself is two gnarled trunks wrapped around one another; simple yet alluring.
That amalgamation of nature and the metaphysical extends to every single world you enter, of which there are many. In having to revisit these memories, Ki travels through a diversity of locales, ranging from Ancient China to a techno-future, and the artistry never fades. Blocks and platforms may float and exude a sense of spacetime displacement, but they’re visibly made of a tangible Earthen material, whether rock, brick, or metal. Walls may be lined with glowing white lights or strange flora, but they’re clearly composed of everyday ice, stone, or grass. This was a good decision because it both helps ground Evergate in a realistic schema, and gives it an alien-enough look that is inherently enthralling. Too often you see renditions of eternity go in one direction or the other, being either a mirror reflection of the real-world or a completely altered plane of existence, and both extremes end up feeling lackluster and improbable. By striking a balance, Evergate avoids those pitfalls and crafts an ideal theoretical model of the hereafter.
In terms of the art style itself, that’s a bit harder to describe. I’m admittedly limited in my descriptors due to not being a drawer or painter, but what Stone Lantern has gone for here resembles something I’d expect out of a modernized Sega classic. The environments are obviously not photorealistic, but they are CGI constructions that are desperately trying TO replicate the physical world. A look at the old Sonic games or Nights into Dreams perfectly encapsulates what I mean. Note that, in spite of my use of the word “desperately,” I am not degrading the efforts- the game looks gorgeous.
One of the more interesting design choices is the implementation of 2D elements amidst a 2.5D world. If anyone has ever played the Paper Mario series, you are more than familiar with the flat characters who look like they are literally flipping when they turn from side-to-side, and that’s the case here. Everyone besides Ki is literally a wafer-thin product that seems like they were made of colored stationery, and that partly extends to the ecological and manmade environs of the area: some of the aforementioned obstacles appear three-dimensional, others (like the collectables) are more papery, yet what’s fascinating is that none of them look out of place. There was real effort put into ensuring that these different stylistic choices polymorphed well with one another, and the end result is a sight to behold.
Lighting, on the other hand, is pretty limited. At first Evergate starts off very well through Ki herself. She has an in-built luminescence that literally lights up her surroundings wherever you go, and what’s amazing is how authentic the radiance is- it only extends to her immediate vicinity, nothing greater and nothing less, which is how lamp-like bodies actually work. The same applies to Ki’s laser and the power-up boxes, but more on that later.
In spite of this, most of the main illumination is prerendered for each level, though that isn’t inherently bad. It means everything is appropriately lit beforehand, and so you will never have to worry about adjusting your brightness- a sunny vista is just as pleasant to gaze at as a war-torn city. My quandary is I do feel that, given the mystic standards set-up by the Phrygia Realm itself, more could have been done with the lighting systems to provide an overarching arcane atmosphere.
Some other graphical feats that I want to mention yet can’t organically fit into the paragraphs above are the following: whenever Ki moves, she causes a kinetic chain reaction on anything in her terrestrial proximity, causing things like flowers or the robes of the other spirits to flutter. Very impressive, as is the motion of the little feather-like hairs on her head. The backdrops of every place are also magnificently crafted, and worthy of being wallpapers on their own.
If there is any complaint I have about the graphics, it would be the rehashed animations used to depict progress from location to location and the Evergate to produce a new book of memories.
Next up is sound. You do get some grunts and laughter during the storyboard sections, but for the most part there is no voice acting, meaning we are going to begin with the SFX. What you get here is pretty standard for an indie game- you have a lot of pre-programmed noises for actions, that do not deviate no matter the external factors: shattering barriers, triggering boosters, jumping, and more all contain the same sound regardless of whether you hit it at a different angle or land with a different velocity. That being said, I did not consider it a big issue here due to the stages being relatively short, and you thus not having to spend an inordinate amount of time listening to them to the point of annoyance.
The music, credited to a composer named M. R. Miller, is….a tough thing to talk about. Miller is very talented, able to adjust his OST to fit whatever era the Evergate takes you to, and he’s able to do that adjustment without it feeling stereotypical or in-your-face. For example, talking about the first area in China, there are those traditional strings associated with classical Oriental melodies incorporated into the track, but they never come off as a western impression you would hear in some hack’s studio. Likewise, the music of the future sections features electronic beats thumping throughout, yet they never takeover to turn it into a synthwave-esque harmony.
For all these feats, though, the issue I have is that there is an optimism present in the vast majority of the score that is at odds with the increasingly-dark direction the story takes. As Ki advances further and learns more, the plot turns grimmer with tragic truths and revelations. And when your encompassing story is heading towards that tone, it feels a bit jarring to get interrupted with happy orchestral leitmotifs that parade along. This isn’t on Miller as it is a direction issue, but his compositions do unfortunately suffer as a result. When the tone of Evergate aligns with the music, it works wonders, but when it doesn’t, it took me a out of the game at times. But that could very well just be me.
Finally, we get to the section I have been waiting to talk about, and that is of course the gameplay. Evergate is built around a mechanic called the “Soulflame,” a targeting system that Ki uses to manipulate objects around her. Most of the time, it comes down setting-off preplaced “power-ups,” resembling gems, that cause a variety of effects. Gold ovals, for example, blast you into the air, orange stars turn you into a fiery wisp, and hourglasses instantly teleport you amongst a plethora of others.
When I said in the beginning of this review that Evergate was one of the best platformers I have experienced, it was primarily derived from the implementation of these chargers, and their relationship with the level layout. A lot of effort was evidently put into the design of each part, with supplements placed at specific points to ensure that they aren’t wasted- every single one of them serves a purpose, and using them for the wrong one or to trigger a cheap shortcut will cost you something unless you are aiming to just speed through to the end (in which case, why are you even playing a puzzler?).
See, all the arenas contain three specific goals that you have the option of completing: one, beat the level in a set amount of time; two, activate all the power-ups, and three, collect all these moon shards. Successfully accomplishing any of them will earn you essence, which in turn unlocks bonus levels, as well as charms that you can equip to Ki in order to give you an extra ability: a higher leap, faster movement, bigger portal creation, stealth from enemy ships, etc….there are many of them that you can experiment with, and you will definitely need them for the higher levels should you want to finish those additional targets.
The best part about these targets is that they don’t work like the full-sync objectives from the Assassin’s Creed series- complete one of them and it will be saved, allowing you to focus on the others on additional replays. At first I thought this was done to avoid inducing frustration, but I immediately realized that it was actually a deliberate choice- it would be impossible for the player to successful attain all three in a single playthrough due to each having their own mini-navigation challenges. Absolutely amazing, and a natural way of creating replay value.
That being said, I will say that some of the timing required to trigger the motes can be a little irritating and lead to extensive trial and error. I also wasn’t a huge fan of certain charms being necessary for beating certain objectives as it sometimes made them too reliant on gimmicks over player skill, though opinions will vary.
So, what do you get with Evergate? You get a damn good platformer, that’s for sure. A unique esthetic, dazzling visuals, and well-arranged stages keep things constantly entertaining. And though there are flaws with the sound design and even power set-ups, I think you will be pleased with everything.
It took me a little over 6 hours to beat Evergate, and, at a $20.00 asking price, this would normally be at odds with my $1 : 30 minutes ratio. However, you will get further mileage from 100 percenting all the levels, as well as completing the bonus areas (both of which I did not have time to do).
Still, if I am being honest, those will probably only net you two hours more, keeping the total at 8 and still below 10. However, given that Stone Lantern Games is an indie company, and given the sheer amount of creativity on display here, I am inclined to make an exception to my rule.
Pros:
+ Mesmerizing art
+ Seamless transitions
+ Replay value
+ Creativity
Cons:
– Mediocre story
– Music at odds with the narrative
2020
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
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
2013
In his review of the anime film Roujin-Z, the late great film critic Roger Ebert said: "I cannot imagine this story being told in a conventional movie. Not only would the machine be impossibly expensive and complex to create with special effects, but the social criticism would be immediately blue-penciled by Hollywood executives."
I know it's bitterly ironic to quote Ebert when talking about a video game (his adamant defense that they could not be high art has significantly soured popular opinion of him from the gaming community), but I bring up this paragraph because I I cannot think of a more accurate way to describe the very nature of Antichamber. This is a title that I cannot imagine being told in a conventional movie. Antichamber is a prime example of the kind of visual and creative storytelling that can only be conveyed through video games and player interaction, and another example of how developers can create intriguing game environments without needing AAA budgets.
Antichamber doesn't have much of a story going for it, instead presenting players with the task of moving through an intricate series of interconnected rooms, collecting the wall diagrams located in each space. I really liked the motivational quotes on each diagram as they gave genuine bite-size advice and didn't come off as pretentious. They were also, for the most part, themed well with the respective puzzles in each chamber.
That being said, part of me feels like the game shouldn't have included gameplay elements involving the cube guns. I know this will seem like a strange criticism given that they form a huge backbone of Antichamber's content, but I was really enjoying the more logic/perspective based puzzles that made up the beginning of Antichamber before you gain access to the first gun. There were times with the guns where I felt their puzzle-solving aspect was a bit contrived, like setting off reactions or having to create more cubes by "painting" a square outline to be auto-filled in. Yes it was all a part of the gameworld's rules but it was still dumb compared to those earlier gems.
The ending also unfortunately falls to the dumb "over the top" nonsense of a creator who doesn't have a clear idea of their finale and consequently decides to throw in some metaphysical, holier-than-thou nonsense. All I'll say on this part is that it makes The Witness's ending look good.
You don't have to complete every chamber to beat the game, but there is all of that available as extra content if you will. That being said, because there wasn't a strong narrative aspect that capitalized on the surreal atmosphere of the world to keep me motivated to keep pushing forward the way there was in The Talos Principle, I have to admit that I didn't 100% the game and don't intend on doing so for the conceivable future.
Graphics are simple but effective, taking advantage of color and vectors to create some geometrically beautiful environments. Everything looks like it was drawn by a pencil and filled in with markers, so there's a kind of endearing child-like quality to it.
Sound design is good. Maybe not as top-notch as I would have liked it to have been, but everything sounds solid and has a unique sonority to it. I would've given footsteps more "oomph" since you do a lot of walking in the game.
Music was good, but too subtle for me to acutely gauge.
The timer pay-off is really stupid.
Overall, even though I didn't get hooked on Antichamber the way many other people have, I still would recommend people play the game. I got 6-7 hours worth of enjoyment from it, and even if I had done all the extra content I doubt it would get to 10 hours, which would justify it from my $1 : 30 minutes aspect ratio I generally require from games. But Antichamber provides such a unique experience that I believe it is worth the full $20.00.
But if the lower playtime bothers you, you can always wait for it to go on sale as it tends to be one of the bigger titles to frequently do so (alongside Limbo).
I know it's bitterly ironic to quote Ebert when talking about a video game (his adamant defense that they could not be high art has significantly soured popular opinion of him from the gaming community), but I bring up this paragraph because I I cannot think of a more accurate way to describe the very nature of Antichamber. This is a title that I cannot imagine being told in a conventional movie. Antichamber is a prime example of the kind of visual and creative storytelling that can only be conveyed through video games and player interaction, and another example of how developers can create intriguing game environments without needing AAA budgets.
Antichamber doesn't have much of a story going for it, instead presenting players with the task of moving through an intricate series of interconnected rooms, collecting the wall diagrams located in each space. I really liked the motivational quotes on each diagram as they gave genuine bite-size advice and didn't come off as pretentious. They were also, for the most part, themed well with the respective puzzles in each chamber.
That being said, part of me feels like the game shouldn't have included gameplay elements involving the cube guns. I know this will seem like a strange criticism given that they form a huge backbone of Antichamber's content, but I was really enjoying the more logic/perspective based puzzles that made up the beginning of Antichamber before you gain access to the first gun. There were times with the guns where I felt their puzzle-solving aspect was a bit contrived, like setting off reactions or having to create more cubes by "painting" a square outline to be auto-filled in. Yes it was all a part of the gameworld's rules but it was still dumb compared to those earlier gems.
The ending also unfortunately falls to the dumb "over the top" nonsense of a creator who doesn't have a clear idea of their finale and consequently decides to throw in some metaphysical, holier-than-thou nonsense. All I'll say on this part is that it makes The Witness's ending look good.
You don't have to complete every chamber to beat the game, but there is all of that available as extra content if you will. That being said, because there wasn't a strong narrative aspect that capitalized on the surreal atmosphere of the world to keep me motivated to keep pushing forward the way there was in The Talos Principle, I have to admit that I didn't 100% the game and don't intend on doing so for the conceivable future.
Graphics are simple but effective, taking advantage of color and vectors to create some geometrically beautiful environments. Everything looks like it was drawn by a pencil and filled in with markers, so there's a kind of endearing child-like quality to it.
Sound design is good. Maybe not as top-notch as I would have liked it to have been, but everything sounds solid and has a unique sonority to it. I would've given footsteps more "oomph" since you do a lot of walking in the game.
Music was good, but too subtle for me to acutely gauge.
The timer pay-off is really stupid.
Overall, even though I didn't get hooked on Antichamber the way many other people have, I still would recommend people play the game. I got 6-7 hours worth of enjoyment from it, and even if I had done all the extra content I doubt it would get to 10 hours, which would justify it from my $1 : 30 minutes aspect ratio I generally require from games. But Antichamber provides such a unique experience that I believe it is worth the full $20.00.
But if the lower playtime bothers you, you can always wait for it to go on sale as it tends to be one of the bigger titles to frequently do so (alongside Limbo).
2005
Honestly, not much has changed from the first CoD and UO to the second. The story is basically the same, with you playing as different Allied nations during various stages of World War II. This time around the tutorial is much quicker, giving it more replay value.
Texturing is inconsistent. Marble/tile/bricks don't look as good as wood and stone. Was admittedly surprised by how good skin and clothing looked on soldiers, even if NPC models were reused. Overall things are consistent enough that you won't notice anything off.
Gun sound design is terrible. Bullets only have two impact noises- steel or ground, no matter what you shoot at (lanterns, windows, trees, etc...), the exception being prerendered glass bottles that you can shoot. Guns themselves sound pretty standard despite there technically being variety among the different types.
That being said, there is a nice echo effect that occurs when you are in a contained space like a pipe or lower floor.
Love the display of muzzle flashes when you're shooting in darkened environment. Very well done. Also love the gun metal texturing and the sunlight sheen on the gun that changes as you move the weapon.
A lot more particle effects render realistic looking snowfall around you (Soviet campaign only). Can't say the same for rain, which looks way too pre-animated.
Russian voice acting terrible. Sounds stereotypical, like Americans doing Russian accents. British and American VA is better, but there are still times where the VAs sound like they're trying too hard to be in a combat situation (bad ADR direction).
Soundscape for USSR campaign is well done. You get a sense that you really are in a war zone with people screaming, bullets flying everywhere, explosions nearby, and soldiers/vehicles moving around you. The game designers also did a good job giving the closequarters, city street combat feel that encompassed the majority of the Battle of Stalingrad. Having to go through individual houses, clearing out soldiers, or destroying individual tanks rolling around on the streets was well done. Particularly the former, where it could even get tense having to check rooms for remaining Nazis.
Unfortunately, this gets very repetitive as the majority of the other campaign missions (British and American) consist of the same cityscape fighting where you trudge through an environment, clear it out, and then hold the base until reinforcements arrive. The exception being a couple of tank missions in the British campaign.
Love that grenades send enemy bodies, dead and alive, flying. The particle effects that accompany an impact (whether bullet or grenade) look nice, but it is a reskinned model that is repeated, no matter if you're in snow or dirt.
Did enjoy smoke grenades. They actually help hurt enemy accuracy and provide good escape/movement cover. Welcome addition to the series that I'm sad was removed in the sequels (replaced with flashbangs).
Ally AI is a mixed bag. They do a good job of fighting enemies by shooting them, throwing grenades, and meleeing when in close quarters. But they seem to have two modes- either run out to the enemy in the open, not taking cover. Or taking complete cover and refusing to advance until YOU go out there and clear enough enemies that they are seemingly programmed to go ahead.
Game continues boring documentary intros and diary entries for beginnings of each mission, though at least the docos here seemed realistic to the kinds of movies you would see back in the day, compared to the lame briefings from the first CoD.
Shooting at animal carcasses just creates dirt explosions.
Overall though, I found myself not enjoying Call of Duty 2 due to the aforementioned repetition of the mission structure. Despite playing as the same character, you don't really bond with anyone the way UO at least somewhat succeeded at doing. The campaigns are just war cliches, like a bad attempt at recreating the narratives of Saving Private Ryan and Das Boot without the strong characterization and set pieces those films had.
Game took me about 8-8.5 hours to beat, so at $20.00 it doesn't provide enough content to justify the price. But even if it did, I would recommend getting it on sale or avoiding altogether because I just didn't find it fun at all to play compared to the first one + UO. Combined with the lack of major graphical/sound upgrades from its predecessors + a rehashed story and you have the first cashgrab in the CoD franchise.
Texturing is inconsistent. Marble/tile/bricks don't look as good as wood and stone. Was admittedly surprised by how good skin and clothing looked on soldiers, even if NPC models were reused. Overall things are consistent enough that you won't notice anything off.
Gun sound design is terrible. Bullets only have two impact noises- steel or ground, no matter what you shoot at (lanterns, windows, trees, etc...), the exception being prerendered glass bottles that you can shoot. Guns themselves sound pretty standard despite there technically being variety among the different types.
That being said, there is a nice echo effect that occurs when you are in a contained space like a pipe or lower floor.
Love the display of muzzle flashes when you're shooting in darkened environment. Very well done. Also love the gun metal texturing and the sunlight sheen on the gun that changes as you move the weapon.
A lot more particle effects render realistic looking snowfall around you (Soviet campaign only). Can't say the same for rain, which looks way too pre-animated.
Russian voice acting terrible. Sounds stereotypical, like Americans doing Russian accents. British and American VA is better, but there are still times where the VAs sound like they're trying too hard to be in a combat situation (bad ADR direction).
Soundscape for USSR campaign is well done. You get a sense that you really are in a war zone with people screaming, bullets flying everywhere, explosions nearby, and soldiers/vehicles moving around you. The game designers also did a good job giving the closequarters, city street combat feel that encompassed the majority of the Battle of Stalingrad. Having to go through individual houses, clearing out soldiers, or destroying individual tanks rolling around on the streets was well done. Particularly the former, where it could even get tense having to check rooms for remaining Nazis.
Unfortunately, this gets very repetitive as the majority of the other campaign missions (British and American) consist of the same cityscape fighting where you trudge through an environment, clear it out, and then hold the base until reinforcements arrive. The exception being a couple of tank missions in the British campaign.
Love that grenades send enemy bodies, dead and alive, flying. The particle effects that accompany an impact (whether bullet or grenade) look nice, but it is a reskinned model that is repeated, no matter if you're in snow or dirt.
Did enjoy smoke grenades. They actually help hurt enemy accuracy and provide good escape/movement cover. Welcome addition to the series that I'm sad was removed in the sequels (replaced with flashbangs).
Ally AI is a mixed bag. They do a good job of fighting enemies by shooting them, throwing grenades, and meleeing when in close quarters. But they seem to have two modes- either run out to the enemy in the open, not taking cover. Or taking complete cover and refusing to advance until YOU go out there and clear enough enemies that they are seemingly programmed to go ahead.
Game continues boring documentary intros and diary entries for beginnings of each mission, though at least the docos here seemed realistic to the kinds of movies you would see back in the day, compared to the lame briefings from the first CoD.
Shooting at animal carcasses just creates dirt explosions.
Overall though, I found myself not enjoying Call of Duty 2 due to the aforementioned repetition of the mission structure. Despite playing as the same character, you don't really bond with anyone the way UO at least somewhat succeeded at doing. The campaigns are just war cliches, like a bad attempt at recreating the narratives of Saving Private Ryan and Das Boot without the strong characterization and set pieces those films had.
Game took me about 8-8.5 hours to beat, so at $20.00 it doesn't provide enough content to justify the price. But even if it did, I would recommend getting it on sale or avoiding altogether because I just didn't find it fun at all to play compared to the first one + UO. Combined with the lack of major graphical/sound upgrades from its predecessors + a rehashed story and you have the first cashgrab in the CoD franchise.
2016
Oh what a marvelous misfire Virginia is! Having lived in the state at one point, and being a fan of mystery-driven titles, I was sure this would be the game for me. Alas, such was not to be. Virginia uses a generic, made-up setting that in no way ties it to its namesake. And its very structure is so inherently cinematic, it abandons the hard roots of gaming to turn into something resembling an animated movie- to call it a video game would be to remove the very parameters of what it means to be a video game. Heck, to even call it a walking simulator would be an insult to a genre that, at the very least, provides you with the ability to explore environments to your heart's content.
See, Virginia isn't interested in having you run around its uniquely-crafted world the way other indie titles do. In an evident attempt to stand apart from its competitors, developer Variable State made the decision to abandon conventional gaming elements in favor of an arthousey, filmic vision. There is no dialogue, and while you are technically able to move your character, you're left following a path that is not only linear, but set with timestamps that trigger literal scene cuts. This could be caused by either doing a certain action or just waiting around a few seconds. Half the time you're not even given a chance to settle into the atmosphere of an area because the devs want to shove you to the next scene as soon as possible. Why is that? Well, I'm glad you asked- you see, these writers clearly had no clue what video game pacing entails and instead opted to rely on moviemaking techniques.
Then again, it's not like exploration would've mattered since most of the environments in Virginia are sparse. Some places like your partner's room in the police department, are adorned with nice details, but for the most part things are very barren, a facet not helped by the ugly choice of aesthetic. While I've always been a champion of unique art styles over photorealism, Virginia's designers drifted into uncanny valley territory: characters resemble blocky N64 polygon models, their skin a disturbing smoothness that devoids them of any features. They look weird, like they were geometric proposals rejected from the fifth generation of video game consoles. Nature environs like stone and grass fare better with this flare since they aren't trying to be humanoid, but that aforementioned problem of minimalism hurts even them.
Sound design is good for what it is. I don't recall anything in particular standing out, but nothing hindered the experience so quid pro quo.
Music is a mixed bag. On the one hand, the score is great- majestic, sweeping, gloomy, and overall wonderful to listen to. But on the other, it's clearly more of a movie score, and because Virginia is trying to go for some awkward in-between, the music editing ends up putting it into a poorly-designed loop that only breaks when you move forward.
The story is outright trash. I'm sure there will be people who claim that it was too smart or above me, and maybe they're right, but for a developer that refused to waste even a penny on decent voice acting, they had to be wise with their visual editing, and I can only say they failed miserably. I can't tell you what the narrative is- hell, I would have an easier time describing the plot of The Big Sleep. Virginia starts off with a basic premise of you trying to discover what happened to a missing boy, but it turns into a jumbled mess when it combines an FBI internal affairs subplot with some supernatural nonsense that would make David Lynch cringe. Honestly, did no one tell the writers and director that there was something inherently stupid with the execution of this game?
I don't mean to be rude as the developers seem like genuinely nice people. But Virginia, at least from my experience, was such a misfire that I can't believe no one provided secondary thoughts. I've always said that if watching a playthrough of a game on YouTube provides you the same experience as playing it, it's probably not worth touching. To be honest, I can't even say Virginia is worth the watch.
It took me around 2 hours to beat, which is far below the $10.00 price tag the game regularly sells for. If you really want to ignore me and experience it yourself, then I recommend at least waiting for a sale. But honestly, Virginia is truly more of an animated movie than a video game.
See, Virginia isn't interested in having you run around its uniquely-crafted world the way other indie titles do. In an evident attempt to stand apart from its competitors, developer Variable State made the decision to abandon conventional gaming elements in favor of an arthousey, filmic vision. There is no dialogue, and while you are technically able to move your character, you're left following a path that is not only linear, but set with timestamps that trigger literal scene cuts. This could be caused by either doing a certain action or just waiting around a few seconds. Half the time you're not even given a chance to settle into the atmosphere of an area because the devs want to shove you to the next scene as soon as possible. Why is that? Well, I'm glad you asked- you see, these writers clearly had no clue what video game pacing entails and instead opted to rely on moviemaking techniques.
Then again, it's not like exploration would've mattered since most of the environments in Virginia are sparse. Some places like your partner's room in the police department, are adorned with nice details, but for the most part things are very barren, a facet not helped by the ugly choice of aesthetic. While I've always been a champion of unique art styles over photorealism, Virginia's designers drifted into uncanny valley territory: characters resemble blocky N64 polygon models, their skin a disturbing smoothness that devoids them of any features. They look weird, like they were geometric proposals rejected from the fifth generation of video game consoles. Nature environs like stone and grass fare better with this flare since they aren't trying to be humanoid, but that aforementioned problem of minimalism hurts even them.
Sound design is good for what it is. I don't recall anything in particular standing out, but nothing hindered the experience so quid pro quo.
Music is a mixed bag. On the one hand, the score is great- majestic, sweeping, gloomy, and overall wonderful to listen to. But on the other, it's clearly more of a movie score, and because Virginia is trying to go for some awkward in-between, the music editing ends up putting it into a poorly-designed loop that only breaks when you move forward.
The story is outright trash. I'm sure there will be people who claim that it was too smart or above me, and maybe they're right, but for a developer that refused to waste even a penny on decent voice acting, they had to be wise with their visual editing, and I can only say they failed miserably. I can't tell you what the narrative is- hell, I would have an easier time describing the plot of The Big Sleep. Virginia starts off with a basic premise of you trying to discover what happened to a missing boy, but it turns into a jumbled mess when it combines an FBI internal affairs subplot with some supernatural nonsense that would make David Lynch cringe. Honestly, did no one tell the writers and director that there was something inherently stupid with the execution of this game?
I don't mean to be rude as the developers seem like genuinely nice people. But Virginia, at least from my experience, was such a misfire that I can't believe no one provided secondary thoughts. I've always said that if watching a playthrough of a game on YouTube provides you the same experience as playing it, it's probably not worth touching. To be honest, I can't even say Virginia is worth the watch.
It took me around 2 hours to beat, which is far below the $10.00 price tag the game regularly sells for. If you really want to ignore me and experience it yourself, then I recommend at least waiting for a sale. But honestly, Virginia is truly more of an animated movie than a video game.
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
“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
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
2016
A silhouetted city lit up by a bolt of lighting against a neon teal night sky. To the casual viewer, this would suggest a dark, neo-noir world, brimming with crime, decay, and civil rot. It's no place for any sane human being, let alone a young woman wanting to make it as a private eye. She calls herself Kathy Rain, a catchy name for a hardboiled detective set on trying to make her town a better place, one small step at a time.
Alas, that's nothing close to the actual result. Kathy Rain is a point-and-click adventure title rendered in the same old-school, early-PC style as other games like Clock Tower, King's Quest, and early-Lucas Arts' products. Our protagonist is no hardened veteran, instead being a journalism major still attending colllege at Conwell Springs. Springs is a bright place, full of a shrewd vibrancy in spite of its small population. Or so one would think.
Despite my disappointment at this sharp contrast between the title graphic and the actual game, I wasn't entirely disappointed with Kathy Rain. For starters, I've always been a fan of unconventional detectives- people who seemed to sort of fall into the line of work, despite being in that general career path. Easy Rawlins, Matt Scudder, and even Nate the Great. And Kathy joins that line-up quite well. While I did feel her interest in finding out what happened to her grandfather was a bit sudden, her characterization more than makes up for it. She has that sardonic style of humor typical of the "bad girl" archetype, but there's enough depth to her revealed over the course of the game that expands her beyond those parameters.
Visually, the game looks good enough. It's hard not to perceive the whole set-up as low budget given the 16-bit graphics, but developer Raw Fury packs every setting with lots of props and details, providing plenty of eye candy and showcasing the artists were far from lazy. There is no set color pallete either, meaning you get a surprising amount of variety from the different locales. I also liked how there were several character boxes per a character when speaking that showed different emotional states. There wasn't much there, but it was a nice touch.
Voice acting was mostly positive. I wasn't a big fan of Arielle Siegel's Kathy at first, as I felt she was trying too hard to do a Daria/Raven impression. But you get used to her voice, and her performance overall was good. All the supporting performances were top notch, showing that the developers were committed to providing a quality experience for prospective buyers (and proving a point I made about To the Moon losing something without having any actual voice acting). There was one exception, however, and that was Shelly Shenoy's Eileen. It was clear she was trying to go for "cute badass," but ended up coming off as borderline sociopathic ala Lily Aldrin in Karma.
I liked the diversity of dialogue options, especially when examing stuff or trying to combine stuff. It shows the developers were prepared for the crazy things players would try to do (like drinking booze in front of Kathy's grandma, or tasering someone, or smoking in front of someone).
Sound/music not particularly memorable. Seemed like there was only one tune that played for each area.
The story is where the game gets a mixed rep from me. As I said, was admittedly expecting something grounded ala Se7en or those classic noir movies, but Kathy Rain is much more in the vain of Twin Peaks. There are a lot of subtle supernatural elements that go on behind-the-scenes, and to me it hurt the potential this game had. There could have been a deep tale about drug abuse, cults, small town cover-ups, and so forth, but by having these fantasy facets, it makes it more akin to the X-Files. Some people will like this regardless, and it was overall enjoyable, but be warned it's not grounded.
I didn't feel Kathy really got proper character development either. There are two narratives at play here- Kathy becoming more into her journalism career and letting go of her morbid past. The first one doesn't really work because, outside of skipping classes, we never get a sense that she's reluctant to pursue journalism, meaning her ultimate decision to go through with it is blatantly expected. The second doesn't work because we don't get enough on her backstory or her inner feelings, only glimpses. And that would have been fine for an introduction into her, but a big part of the final act is about Kathy confronting her past actions, and it doesn't have much weight to it because we weren't given enough info about it and how they affected her. But the game never gets tear jerky, and it has a nice maturity to it, never caving into the bad young adult writing tropes that, at times, hit Life is Strange.
Didn't like how entering a new area meant repeating the same animations. It was obviously okay when there was no animation for entering, but coming to places like the Cemetery or the Lake House meant seeing Kathy stop her motorcycle, get off it, remove her helmet, and finally enter. It got annoying.
Kathy also moves too slow ala Clock Tower. It's tolerable since the areas themselves are small, but I would have liked for her to move faster than this Morrowind pace.
There are a lot of puzzles in the game with a good amount of variety. None of them are particularly hard, but that isn't a bad thing in the slightest as their variations make up for that. I would have liked for the developers to make environmental interactions a little bigger as there were times where I got stuck because I missed something ala the Water Temple keys in Ocarina of Time (okay, not that bad, but my point stands).
Also didn't like that you had to click twice to interact an object in your inventory with another object. They should've just had left click allow you to drag/drop and right click to open up the other options of examining/thinking about an object.
One of the biggest problems with the game that kills immersion for me is the lack of consequences for making the wrong choices. There are times where you have to give the right dialogue options, and if you fail there is no consequence- you just restart the cycle. Having the deputy fall for the same "hobo is sick" routine or redoing the same conversation with the Air Force guy, for instance, seems strange considering you're talking to authority figures who should be smart.
Priced at $15.00, Kathy Rain took me about 6-7 hours to complete, so it technically falls just under my price:gametime ratio for recommendation. Combined with my reservations about the story, I personally don't think I would recommend this to anyone with my tastes without a small discount. That being said, this is an indie developer, and I always say it is worth supporting them, especially when they do put effort into their craft. Plus, many other people will no doubt enjoy the narrative.
Alas, that's nothing close to the actual result. Kathy Rain is a point-and-click adventure title rendered in the same old-school, early-PC style as other games like Clock Tower, King's Quest, and early-Lucas Arts' products. Our protagonist is no hardened veteran, instead being a journalism major still attending colllege at Conwell Springs. Springs is a bright place, full of a shrewd vibrancy in spite of its small population. Or so one would think.
Despite my disappointment at this sharp contrast between the title graphic and the actual game, I wasn't entirely disappointed with Kathy Rain. For starters, I've always been a fan of unconventional detectives- people who seemed to sort of fall into the line of work, despite being in that general career path. Easy Rawlins, Matt Scudder, and even Nate the Great. And Kathy joins that line-up quite well. While I did feel her interest in finding out what happened to her grandfather was a bit sudden, her characterization more than makes up for it. She has that sardonic style of humor typical of the "bad girl" archetype, but there's enough depth to her revealed over the course of the game that expands her beyond those parameters.
Visually, the game looks good enough. It's hard not to perceive the whole set-up as low budget given the 16-bit graphics, but developer Raw Fury packs every setting with lots of props and details, providing plenty of eye candy and showcasing the artists were far from lazy. There is no set color pallete either, meaning you get a surprising amount of variety from the different locales. I also liked how there were several character boxes per a character when speaking that showed different emotional states. There wasn't much there, but it was a nice touch.
Voice acting was mostly positive. I wasn't a big fan of Arielle Siegel's Kathy at first, as I felt she was trying too hard to do a Daria/Raven impression. But you get used to her voice, and her performance overall was good. All the supporting performances were top notch, showing that the developers were committed to providing a quality experience for prospective buyers (and proving a point I made about To the Moon losing something without having any actual voice acting). There was one exception, however, and that was Shelly Shenoy's Eileen. It was clear she was trying to go for "cute badass," but ended up coming off as borderline sociopathic ala Lily Aldrin in Karma.
I liked the diversity of dialogue options, especially when examing stuff or trying to combine stuff. It shows the developers were prepared for the crazy things players would try to do (like drinking booze in front of Kathy's grandma, or tasering someone, or smoking in front of someone).
Sound/music not particularly memorable. Seemed like there was only one tune that played for each area.
The story is where the game gets a mixed rep from me. As I said, was admittedly expecting something grounded ala Se7en or those classic noir movies, but Kathy Rain is much more in the vain of Twin Peaks. There are a lot of subtle supernatural elements that go on behind-the-scenes, and to me it hurt the potential this game had. There could have been a deep tale about drug abuse, cults, small town cover-ups, and so forth, but by having these fantasy facets, it makes it more akin to the X-Files. Some people will like this regardless, and it was overall enjoyable, but be warned it's not grounded.
I didn't feel Kathy really got proper character development either. There are two narratives at play here- Kathy becoming more into her journalism career and letting go of her morbid past. The first one doesn't really work because, outside of skipping classes, we never get a sense that she's reluctant to pursue journalism, meaning her ultimate decision to go through with it is blatantly expected. The second doesn't work because we don't get enough on her backstory or her inner feelings, only glimpses. And that would have been fine for an introduction into her, but a big part of the final act is about Kathy confronting her past actions, and it doesn't have much weight to it because we weren't given enough info about it and how they affected her. But the game never gets tear jerky, and it has a nice maturity to it, never caving into the bad young adult writing tropes that, at times, hit Life is Strange.
Didn't like how entering a new area meant repeating the same animations. It was obviously okay when there was no animation for entering, but coming to places like the Cemetery or the Lake House meant seeing Kathy stop her motorcycle, get off it, remove her helmet, and finally enter. It got annoying.
Kathy also moves too slow ala Clock Tower. It's tolerable since the areas themselves are small, but I would have liked for her to move faster than this Morrowind pace.
There are a lot of puzzles in the game with a good amount of variety. None of them are particularly hard, but that isn't a bad thing in the slightest as their variations make up for that. I would have liked for the developers to make environmental interactions a little bigger as there were times where I got stuck because I missed something ala the Water Temple keys in Ocarina of Time (okay, not that bad, but my point stands).
Also didn't like that you had to click twice to interact an object in your inventory with another object. They should've just had left click allow you to drag/drop and right click to open up the other options of examining/thinking about an object.
One of the biggest problems with the game that kills immersion for me is the lack of consequences for making the wrong choices. There are times where you have to give the right dialogue options, and if you fail there is no consequence- you just restart the cycle. Having the deputy fall for the same "hobo is sick" routine or redoing the same conversation with the Air Force guy, for instance, seems strange considering you're talking to authority figures who should be smart.
Priced at $15.00, Kathy Rain took me about 6-7 hours to complete, so it technically falls just under my price:gametime ratio for recommendation. Combined with my reservations about the story, I personally don't think I would recommend this to anyone with my tastes without a small discount. That being said, this is an indie developer, and I always say it is worth supporting them, especially when they do put effort into their craft. Plus, many other people will no doubt enjoy the narrative.
2018
Originally review published on Flickering Myth: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2018/11/video-game-review-steel-rats/
After Battletoads debuted in the 90s, I thought I had seen everything. I mean honestly, what could possibly top putting anthropomorphized amphibians in a fantasy, beat-em-up setting? But as the indie market has continued to show well into 2018, creativity seeps everywhere the imagination dares to explore.
Steel Rats, developed and published by Tate Multimedia, seeks to join that field of game creation by combining vehicular combat with evil robots. Does this biker game’s steampunk craziness live up to its potential, or does it falter under the weight of over-ambitiousness? The short answer is it carves its own path, but some repetition holds it back. For the long answer, read on.
Readers who track the motorcycle subgenre of racing video games may recognize Tate Multimedia from their subsidiary Tate Interactive, which was behind the stunt bike series Urban Trial, the latest entry of which, Urban Trial Playgrounds, was released on the Nintendo Switch. Thus, it’s not surprising to see the company use that motocross template for Steel Rats. Set in the urban world of Coast City where technological innovation is brewing under the surface, Steel Rats follows a biker gang of the same name as they face a massive invasion of robotic drones.
Compared to most indie games that focus on gameplay, there is an actual attempt here at telling a story. As you traverse through the game’s five areas, the four characters realistically comment on the nature of what is happening, how things got to be this way, and their proposed solutions for resolving the matter, all of which I enjoyed. Too often fictional projects throw their protagonists into ridiculous scenarios and have them instantly accept their circumstances without a moments thought (looking at you Inuyasha). That being said, Steel Rats isn’t too heavy on dialogue, striking a nice balance between story direction and game direction.
Most of the narrative backstory is, instead, stored in two areas: a single cutscene at the beginning of each chapter and an archive tab in the in-game menu. The cutscenes are rendered in an old-school black-and-white aesthetic, more than likely intended as a homage to the ’50s era of sci-fi B-movies. They were short and cool to watch, but I always experienced a choppy frame rate whenever they played (and I don’t believe that was intentional). The archive tab, however, was where the real meat of the game’s lore was. Much like the city stories in Batman: Arkham City, these newspaper-esque publications feature explanations for the many questions regarding the setting of the game and its inhabitants, like why Coast City is full of convenient steel railways for the player to ride-on. These stories are unlocked through collecting secret tokens hidden in every level, and feature their own narration for those who don’t like to read through texts.
Overall, I’ll give Tate Multimedia credit for trying to create something larger than a cliche robot-takeover tale. It was entertaining and came with a surprising amount of background information. And while not deep, it certainly wasn’t shallow either.
A story’s visual presentation is important, so from there, we move onto the graphics. When it comes to 2.5D games, it’s always hard to properly analyze their graphical styles. Because models and environments are pushed into a strange middle area between the foreground and background, you can’t explore things as well as you want to compared to 2D and 3D titles. That being said, what I did see was mostly satisfying. I previously described Steel Rats as a child of the steampunk era, but perhaps steelpunk would be a better descriptor. Coast City is the epitome of industrialization, with rot iron constructs everywhere you look: pipelines, buttresses, platforms, rails, generators, desolate vehicles, and more occupy the game’s locales. Realism was definitely the end-goal here by the designers at Tate, but there’s also something inherently impressionist about the entire layout. With the exception of a couple of forestry sections, everything is rendered on the same color palette of grey, black, and tan. There’s an emphasis on showing different shades of illumination, and the characters look like regular joes you would see on the street.
Because the game is set at night, lighting is of particular importance here. While you do have some static sources like lanterns in the background, there is a dynamic aspect courtesy of your bike’s headlights and flame wheel, the latter of which made me feel like Ghost Rider. The luminosity isn’t anything to write home about like the flashlight was in The Beast Within, though I do attribute that more to the 2.5D display than any fault on Tate’s part. And it ultimately served its purpose(s), so no complaints here.
When talking about the graphical department as a whole, however, it’s important to note that the real gems were the mechanical menaces you face. Gone are the humanoid automatons championed by Isaac Asimov, instead replaced with machine beings crudely assembled from stannic junk (hence them being referred to as junkyard robots). Though there is possible influence from series like Metroid, Fallout, and Deus Ex, the craft that went into creating these enemies is astounding, and I was very pleased with every new variation that propped up as I progressed further.
Unfortunately, not everything was good with the graphics. The extensive use of shadows came off to me as an excuse by the developers to not put in as much as texture detail, which is something I would have liked to have seen. The surfaces were fine to look at, but lacked that extra sheen you see from the Unreal Engine. Most levels also had a thin mist over their entirety, and while you could claim that this was Tate incorporating air pollution into Coast City, something tells me that it was meant to aid the shadows above, much like the mist did to hide the PS2’s ugly geometry in Silent Hill 2. Overall, though, things looked and ran good. Minus the aforestated noir cutscenes, Steel Rats holds a steady FPS, no matter if you’re in full velocity or taking things slow.
Sound is the next big branch of gaming, and with Steel Rats the best way to describe its sound would be…adequate. I truly feel there was a missed opportunity here to immerse viewers in a world dominated by factory development, sort of like the way Assassin’s Creed II made you feel like you were in the heart of the Renaissance. I know it’s unfair to compare indie games to AAA projects, but my point is that there wasn’t much in the way of ambiance or background noise. For comparison, I think back to the first Donkey Kong Country’s fifth world Kremrock Industries, Inc. While not exactly a bastion of sonority, there was an attempt there at creating something with more atmosphere. Whether it was the hiss of oil barrels burning, the creaking of the mine cart, the grating of the conveyor platform, or the impact of Boss Dumb Drum, I got a sense of the manufacturing changes that were going on in this part of Donkey Kong Island.
Of course, what really helped, above all else, was David Wise, Eveline Fischer, and Robin Beanland’s synthesizer score. Steel Rats, for some reason, doesn’t have much music. There’s a song that’s sung during the menu screens, and some small tunes occasionally play during cutscenes and action beats, but there are no extensive musical compositions.
That’s not to say that Steel Rats is completely absent of sound. Your motorbike roars as it soars across the streets; character abilities have a distinct ring to them, and robot aliens crash as they burst onto the scene in a spark-filled heap. As I said, there’s enough of it that the game doesn’t feel like a silent film, but don’t go in expecting an Ori and the Blind Forest-type symphony of mesmerism.
Lastly, there’s the voice acting, which is good. I don’t think the ADR direction was as astute as it should have been, but the VAs did a good job with what they were given. They certainly didn’t phone in any performance.
Now, it’s the gameplay that people are going to be most concerned with, and with that my enthusiasm is nulled. Steel Rats is a game that the developers insist you need to play with a controller, and having done that I can say that it isn’t as intuitive as they planned. You accelerate by pressing the right trigger, like with most racing titles, but the turning is keyed to a different button while reverse and braking share the same. I don’t quite understand why Tate didn’t leave turning primarily to the joystick. I get that the levels are congested, but there was more than enough space to accomplish this. If their justification was that it would risk the player accidentally driving off course, my counter would be that that either happens because your character doesn’t drive in a straight line if you just hold the trigger- they are constantly fidgeting, like a natural person would, so you either way have to have constant control of the analog stick.
It’s not that I hated the insta-turn key (it was quite useful), but I would have liked to have had the option to turn naturally. Also, having the brake be associated with the reverse was dumb because you end up having to press it twice if you are in motion: once to stop, and the other to start moving backwards. I know it sounds like I’m nitpicking here, but understand that when you’re in the heat of a moment, these small annoyances can add up to frustration.
Steel Rats is less frustrating than it is more monotonous. I mentioned in the short summary that repetition holds it back, and that sadly holds true for the majority of the levels. Each area has you to do the same tasks over and over again, whether it’s jump-starting alternators to get an elevator running, destroying multiple enemies to drop energy barriers, escaping from some giant mechanism in a race against time, or combining magnetic tracks and calculated jumps in pseudo-platforming. Every single section included one or more of these templates, and it often lead to me putting down Steel Rats after just an hour of gaming because I was getting bored.
To its credit, the game does make the most out of its layout. And because there are no loading screens, you can cruise back and forth at your pleasure without worrying about screen tear, lagging, or unfair blocks. There was one exception to this fun factor, though, and that was any area that made you go on tiny platforms next to death drops. Because the bike didn’t control the best, there were many times where I found myself falling because my vehicle jerked or didn’t stop when I hit the brake. When you die, the person you’re playing as loses a health bar- lose everything and they are dead for the rest of the level. Lose all your characters, and you have to restart from the beginning, an aspect that I found understandable.
In addition to the secret token, each level contains three “badges” and three mini-goals. Getting the badges unlocks upgrades and skins for any of the four characters, allowing you to make them more powerful and/or customize them. To be fair, I was confused as to how to acquire these badges: whether it was through collecting something in-game, or doing a certain task, I’m not sure, and I would have liked to have seen that clarified. The mini-goals, on the other hand, worked just like the full-sync objectives from the Assassin’s Creed series wherein you have to do some assignment to hit the check box. One thing I really liked here was that, unlike with Assassin’s Creed III, if you finished one of these marks on an initial playthrough, you didn’t have to redo it upon replaying the level.
They, combined with the other two side aspects, add a significant amount of replay value to Steel Rats, though be warned that they do come with their own litany (the amount of times you’ll have to beat a place without using health stations or successfully doing a wheelie for 30 seconds gets dumb).
Outside of this, there were several other minor complaints I had with the gameplay as a whole. For starters, the health stations stated before were unevenly placed- there were some levels that were full of them, yet didn’t contain any significant dangers that would warrant you having to use them, whereas more dangerous places had few of them. If Tate’s intention was to make the game harder, then why put them in easy areas?
Secondly, the fact is you get way too much money. The currency in Steel Rats is junk, and, just like with rupees in The Legend of Zelda, you acquire it through destroying parts of the world around you, as well as enemies. After completing the first world alone, I already had enough junk to buy everyone’s upgrades.
And lastly, because there are bugs and because there are certain mini-goals reliant on you doing level-specific things (like avoiding damage), I would have liked to have had the option to restart at checkpoints. As it stands, your only restart option is to redo the entire area.
Despite my complaints, I did like Steel Rats’s gameplay, if only because of the combat. Boy, was it well done! You have a multitude of tools at your disposal, from a fiery buzzsaw to a flamethrower to a grappling hook to a charge beam to even a reprogrammed drone. Fights against tougher robots were particularly thrilling because of the quick maneuverability and numerous attack options, though the final boss was a disappointment due to you having to rely on guns rather than these powers you have spent time and money enhancing.
With all this taken into consideration, the question is, is Steel Rats worth buying? At $20.00, it needed to offer at least 10 hours worth of content per my cost:playtime ratio, and it took me about 6-7 hours to beat the main campaign. However, if you were to add up the side content, it would more than likely tip the scale over 10 hours, making it technically acceptable.
However, keep in mind my previous reservations. The game does get repetitive, and while I did like the plethora of extra information about the setting, I understand not many gamers want to spend their free-time reading. But I did have fun with the sessions I played, and it is cathartic to take out life’s frustrations on crazy robots. With all that said, make the decision on your own.
Pros:
+Fleshed out setting
+Graphics = Realism and Impressionism merged into one
+Combat
Cons:
-Soundscape isn’t the best it could have been
-Disappointing final boss
-Repetitive gameplay
After Battletoads debuted in the 90s, I thought I had seen everything. I mean honestly, what could possibly top putting anthropomorphized amphibians in a fantasy, beat-em-up setting? But as the indie market has continued to show well into 2018, creativity seeps everywhere the imagination dares to explore.
Steel Rats, developed and published by Tate Multimedia, seeks to join that field of game creation by combining vehicular combat with evil robots. Does this biker game’s steampunk craziness live up to its potential, or does it falter under the weight of over-ambitiousness? The short answer is it carves its own path, but some repetition holds it back. For the long answer, read on.
Readers who track the motorcycle subgenre of racing video games may recognize Tate Multimedia from their subsidiary Tate Interactive, which was behind the stunt bike series Urban Trial, the latest entry of which, Urban Trial Playgrounds, was released on the Nintendo Switch. Thus, it’s not surprising to see the company use that motocross template for Steel Rats. Set in the urban world of Coast City where technological innovation is brewing under the surface, Steel Rats follows a biker gang of the same name as they face a massive invasion of robotic drones.
Compared to most indie games that focus on gameplay, there is an actual attempt here at telling a story. As you traverse through the game’s five areas, the four characters realistically comment on the nature of what is happening, how things got to be this way, and their proposed solutions for resolving the matter, all of which I enjoyed. Too often fictional projects throw their protagonists into ridiculous scenarios and have them instantly accept their circumstances without a moments thought (looking at you Inuyasha). That being said, Steel Rats isn’t too heavy on dialogue, striking a nice balance between story direction and game direction.
Most of the narrative backstory is, instead, stored in two areas: a single cutscene at the beginning of each chapter and an archive tab in the in-game menu. The cutscenes are rendered in an old-school black-and-white aesthetic, more than likely intended as a homage to the ’50s era of sci-fi B-movies. They were short and cool to watch, but I always experienced a choppy frame rate whenever they played (and I don’t believe that was intentional). The archive tab, however, was where the real meat of the game’s lore was. Much like the city stories in Batman: Arkham City, these newspaper-esque publications feature explanations for the many questions regarding the setting of the game and its inhabitants, like why Coast City is full of convenient steel railways for the player to ride-on. These stories are unlocked through collecting secret tokens hidden in every level, and feature their own narration for those who don’t like to read through texts.
Overall, I’ll give Tate Multimedia credit for trying to create something larger than a cliche robot-takeover tale. It was entertaining and came with a surprising amount of background information. And while not deep, it certainly wasn’t shallow either.
A story’s visual presentation is important, so from there, we move onto the graphics. When it comes to 2.5D games, it’s always hard to properly analyze their graphical styles. Because models and environments are pushed into a strange middle area between the foreground and background, you can’t explore things as well as you want to compared to 2D and 3D titles. That being said, what I did see was mostly satisfying. I previously described Steel Rats as a child of the steampunk era, but perhaps steelpunk would be a better descriptor. Coast City is the epitome of industrialization, with rot iron constructs everywhere you look: pipelines, buttresses, platforms, rails, generators, desolate vehicles, and more occupy the game’s locales. Realism was definitely the end-goal here by the designers at Tate, but there’s also something inherently impressionist about the entire layout. With the exception of a couple of forestry sections, everything is rendered on the same color palette of grey, black, and tan. There’s an emphasis on showing different shades of illumination, and the characters look like regular joes you would see on the street.
Because the game is set at night, lighting is of particular importance here. While you do have some static sources like lanterns in the background, there is a dynamic aspect courtesy of your bike’s headlights and flame wheel, the latter of which made me feel like Ghost Rider. The luminosity isn’t anything to write home about like the flashlight was in The Beast Within, though I do attribute that more to the 2.5D display than any fault on Tate’s part. And it ultimately served its purpose(s), so no complaints here.
When talking about the graphical department as a whole, however, it’s important to note that the real gems were the mechanical menaces you face. Gone are the humanoid automatons championed by Isaac Asimov, instead replaced with machine beings crudely assembled from stannic junk (hence them being referred to as junkyard robots). Though there is possible influence from series like Metroid, Fallout, and Deus Ex, the craft that went into creating these enemies is astounding, and I was very pleased with every new variation that propped up as I progressed further.
Unfortunately, not everything was good with the graphics. The extensive use of shadows came off to me as an excuse by the developers to not put in as much as texture detail, which is something I would have liked to have seen. The surfaces were fine to look at, but lacked that extra sheen you see from the Unreal Engine. Most levels also had a thin mist over their entirety, and while you could claim that this was Tate incorporating air pollution into Coast City, something tells me that it was meant to aid the shadows above, much like the mist did to hide the PS2’s ugly geometry in Silent Hill 2. Overall, though, things looked and ran good. Minus the aforestated noir cutscenes, Steel Rats holds a steady FPS, no matter if you’re in full velocity or taking things slow.
Sound is the next big branch of gaming, and with Steel Rats the best way to describe its sound would be…adequate. I truly feel there was a missed opportunity here to immerse viewers in a world dominated by factory development, sort of like the way Assassin’s Creed II made you feel like you were in the heart of the Renaissance. I know it’s unfair to compare indie games to AAA projects, but my point is that there wasn’t much in the way of ambiance or background noise. For comparison, I think back to the first Donkey Kong Country’s fifth world Kremrock Industries, Inc. While not exactly a bastion of sonority, there was an attempt there at creating something with more atmosphere. Whether it was the hiss of oil barrels burning, the creaking of the mine cart, the grating of the conveyor platform, or the impact of Boss Dumb Drum, I got a sense of the manufacturing changes that were going on in this part of Donkey Kong Island.
Of course, what really helped, above all else, was David Wise, Eveline Fischer, and Robin Beanland’s synthesizer score. Steel Rats, for some reason, doesn’t have much music. There’s a song that’s sung during the menu screens, and some small tunes occasionally play during cutscenes and action beats, but there are no extensive musical compositions.
That’s not to say that Steel Rats is completely absent of sound. Your motorbike roars as it soars across the streets; character abilities have a distinct ring to them, and robot aliens crash as they burst onto the scene in a spark-filled heap. As I said, there’s enough of it that the game doesn’t feel like a silent film, but don’t go in expecting an Ori and the Blind Forest-type symphony of mesmerism.
Lastly, there’s the voice acting, which is good. I don’t think the ADR direction was as astute as it should have been, but the VAs did a good job with what they were given. They certainly didn’t phone in any performance.
Now, it’s the gameplay that people are going to be most concerned with, and with that my enthusiasm is nulled. Steel Rats is a game that the developers insist you need to play with a controller, and having done that I can say that it isn’t as intuitive as they planned. You accelerate by pressing the right trigger, like with most racing titles, but the turning is keyed to a different button while reverse and braking share the same. I don’t quite understand why Tate didn’t leave turning primarily to the joystick. I get that the levels are congested, but there was more than enough space to accomplish this. If their justification was that it would risk the player accidentally driving off course, my counter would be that that either happens because your character doesn’t drive in a straight line if you just hold the trigger- they are constantly fidgeting, like a natural person would, so you either way have to have constant control of the analog stick.
It’s not that I hated the insta-turn key (it was quite useful), but I would have liked to have had the option to turn naturally. Also, having the brake be associated with the reverse was dumb because you end up having to press it twice if you are in motion: once to stop, and the other to start moving backwards. I know it sounds like I’m nitpicking here, but understand that when you’re in the heat of a moment, these small annoyances can add up to frustration.
Steel Rats is less frustrating than it is more monotonous. I mentioned in the short summary that repetition holds it back, and that sadly holds true for the majority of the levels. Each area has you to do the same tasks over and over again, whether it’s jump-starting alternators to get an elevator running, destroying multiple enemies to drop energy barriers, escaping from some giant mechanism in a race against time, or combining magnetic tracks and calculated jumps in pseudo-platforming. Every single section included one or more of these templates, and it often lead to me putting down Steel Rats after just an hour of gaming because I was getting bored.
To its credit, the game does make the most out of its layout. And because there are no loading screens, you can cruise back and forth at your pleasure without worrying about screen tear, lagging, or unfair blocks. There was one exception to this fun factor, though, and that was any area that made you go on tiny platforms next to death drops. Because the bike didn’t control the best, there were many times where I found myself falling because my vehicle jerked or didn’t stop when I hit the brake. When you die, the person you’re playing as loses a health bar- lose everything and they are dead for the rest of the level. Lose all your characters, and you have to restart from the beginning, an aspect that I found understandable.
In addition to the secret token, each level contains three “badges” and three mini-goals. Getting the badges unlocks upgrades and skins for any of the four characters, allowing you to make them more powerful and/or customize them. To be fair, I was confused as to how to acquire these badges: whether it was through collecting something in-game, or doing a certain task, I’m not sure, and I would have liked to have seen that clarified. The mini-goals, on the other hand, worked just like the full-sync objectives from the Assassin’s Creed series wherein you have to do some assignment to hit the check box. One thing I really liked here was that, unlike with Assassin’s Creed III, if you finished one of these marks on an initial playthrough, you didn’t have to redo it upon replaying the level.
They, combined with the other two side aspects, add a significant amount of replay value to Steel Rats, though be warned that they do come with their own litany (the amount of times you’ll have to beat a place without using health stations or successfully doing a wheelie for 30 seconds gets dumb).
Outside of this, there were several other minor complaints I had with the gameplay as a whole. For starters, the health stations stated before were unevenly placed- there were some levels that were full of them, yet didn’t contain any significant dangers that would warrant you having to use them, whereas more dangerous places had few of them. If Tate’s intention was to make the game harder, then why put them in easy areas?
Secondly, the fact is you get way too much money. The currency in Steel Rats is junk, and, just like with rupees in The Legend of Zelda, you acquire it through destroying parts of the world around you, as well as enemies. After completing the first world alone, I already had enough junk to buy everyone’s upgrades.
And lastly, because there are bugs and because there are certain mini-goals reliant on you doing level-specific things (like avoiding damage), I would have liked to have had the option to restart at checkpoints. As it stands, your only restart option is to redo the entire area.
Despite my complaints, I did like Steel Rats’s gameplay, if only because of the combat. Boy, was it well done! You have a multitude of tools at your disposal, from a fiery buzzsaw to a flamethrower to a grappling hook to a charge beam to even a reprogrammed drone. Fights against tougher robots were particularly thrilling because of the quick maneuverability and numerous attack options, though the final boss was a disappointment due to you having to rely on guns rather than these powers you have spent time and money enhancing.
With all this taken into consideration, the question is, is Steel Rats worth buying? At $20.00, it needed to offer at least 10 hours worth of content per my cost:playtime ratio, and it took me about 6-7 hours to beat the main campaign. However, if you were to add up the side content, it would more than likely tip the scale over 10 hours, making it technically acceptable.
However, keep in mind my previous reservations. The game does get repetitive, and while I did like the plethora of extra information about the setting, I understand not many gamers want to spend their free-time reading. But I did have fun with the sessions I played, and it is cathartic to take out life’s frustrations on crazy robots. With all that said, make the decision on your own.
Pros:
+Fleshed out setting
+Graphics = Realism and Impressionism merged into one
+Combat
Cons:
-Soundscape isn’t the best it could have been
-Disappointing final boss
-Repetitive gameplay
2018
2018
Original review published on Flickering Myth: https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2018/09/video-game-review-guts-and-glory/
When I was growing up, there was an MMORPG called Toontown that used to be advertised all the time. Every week brought a new version of the same basic commercial, which prided itself on the motto you could “do almost anything.” But even as a kid this always felt strange to me- what exactly did they mean by “almost anything”? Surely you couldn’t pull a GTA and murder others right (even in GTA you technically can’t do that without triggering local law enforcement). This got the imagination cogs turning in my head as to a potential title wherein you actually could commit any action without fear of being reprimanded.
Though far from it, I can’t help but think of Guts and Glory as a prototype for the kind of limitless game I envisioned as a child. Developed by HakJak Productions and published by tinyBuild Games, Guts and Glory might be the strangest video game I have played in a while. It takes the track levels of sports games like the Skate series and combines them with a hyperviolent consequence system. Does this polymerization triumph, or does the game fail as another experimental disaster? The short answer is it works to an extent, but if you want the longer one read on!
To clarify, there is no real story here. The premise is regular folks are invited to participate in a series of violent sporting events called the “Guts and Glory.” There are eight sections, divided into 7-9 levels, and while some of those levels make-up a pseudo-arc for a specific playable character (outlined by a short text blurb in the opening waiting screen), you really are just beating each course for the sake of beating it, and not to progress further in some overarching narrative.
Because of this, I will be tackling graphics first, which are a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s evident that the HakJak team was primarily interested in creating an effective physics engine for their gameplay, and thus focused their budget on that. On the other, it doesn’t excuse the fact that Guts and Glory is bland. Everything, from the houses to the grounds to the NPCs, have minimal texture work done. And look, I wasn’t expecting something out of Unreal Engine, but I was at least hoping for RuneScape-level quality.
Still, the aesthetic would at least be tolerable were it not for the heavy-emphasis on grey. Most of the worlds you’ll explore have so many achromatic areas that it can give the title an unintentional desaturated look, which, personally, strained my eyes after playing for more than an hour.
That being said, this is definitely not a game that people will be playing for the graphics, so we move onto sound. You know, Guts and Glory does feature a lot of stock and repetitive noises, but it actually works here compared to other titles because of how un-serious the game is. It’s like those old Tom and Jerry cartoons from MGM- it doesn’t matter how many times you hear those same pots and pans crashing or Tom emitting his iconic scream: it’s still entertaining as heck. And that’s the situation I find myself in with Guts and Glory. Sure the vehicles sound alike, and every character has their own repetitive yelp, but they're all wrapped in a level of amusement that never quite goes away.
With the score, though, I’m not as enthusiastic. See, HakJak made a seemingly-wise, but actually bad decision with the soundtrack, and that was to make it gleefully cheery. In theory, this would be a good choice since Guts and Glory is a cynically blissful game: happy to throw you into some awful situations. But here’s the thing guys- when you choose to adopt a trial-and-error system wherein players will repeatedly die, the music has to actually be soothing. Because what happens is, when you get inevitably frustrated over the repetitive deaths, the score starts to feel very grating very fast, whereas when you have calming tunes in the background, it makes the entire situation much more bearable. One of the most famous examples of this contrast is “Stickerbush Symphony” from the “Bramble Scramble” level of Donkey Kong Country 2; a tough, yet memorable course where you can maintain your sanity courtesy of David Wise’s glorious synths.
Now, not every track in the Guts and Glory OST follows this template- during the later parts of the game, you actually do get some of those more-leisure melodies in the form of hard Jazz. But unfortunately, the vast majority is the former, so you will want to beat those stages as fast as you can, lest you fall into an irate cycle.
But is the gameplay really that frustrating-inducing? The answer is it depends on who you are as a gamer. The team at HakJak did a great job creating an effective physics engine, which does make each round fun. Sure, there are times where the ground feels a little too slippery, but overall every vehicle controls well, whether you’re riding a bike or driving a motorcycle. Environments are well-realized, and there is a lot of genuine creativity on board here. I mean seriously, who else would have thought up a scheme where you’re dodging jeeps in the desert driven by kangaroos armed with crossbows? Or a theme park equipped with lasers and swinging timber traps? Or a ninja-styled obstacle course full of exploding teddy bears? Yes, there were times where I was literally biting my controller over some of the dumb scenarios or over-spaced checkpoints (or this neglected coding error wherein instantly pressing the boost button upon a bicycle respawn causes you to unintentionally wheelie), but overall I was happy with the game….with two exceptions.
One was a level early on which I just could not beat (I guarantee you you will know what it is when you get to it), and the second was an entire section dedicated to a terrible character named Larry. Larry is a homeless man who you are required to play as for an arc set in the urban cityscape. He navigates through a rocket-propelled chair that is an abomination to control (if you thought the flying mechanics in LEGO Batman 2 were bad, you will be begging to go back to them). The biggest problem is that you can’t turn Larry with the joystick or mouse: he has to be rotated left, right, up or down by four different keys, which, as you can imagine, is a pain in the arse to do when you’re in flight. It honestly reminds me of the control layout for the original System Shock– why make things so complicated by mapping out different functions to different keys when it could all be tied to one place (the mouse)?
Larry was so bad, I admittedly ended up skipping the majority of his part. That being said, if you get the hang of it, at best it’ll just give you another hour of gameplay. It took me about five hours to beat Guts and Glory (make it six if you count the hypothetical extra hour from Larry), which is a hair below the seven hours I require for a title that charges $15.00. That being said, Guts and Glory could be an exception to the rule as there are a lot of community-created levels, similar to Super Mario Maker, in which you can spend a lot more time completing crazy tracks conceived by fans. In addition to this, HakJak appears to be consistently updating their game, showing that they are dedicated to expanding it.
So overall, Guts and Glory could be worth it. If a Dark Souls meets Paperboy meets Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater meets Super Meat Boy mash-up sounds up your ally, I say go for it. For others, you may still get some entertainment value out of the things- just make sure it fits your personal pricing model.
Pros:
+Imaginative level design
+Old school cartoon throwback with the sound and gameplay
Cons:
-Annoying score
-Terrible outlier character (Larry)
-Some difficulty spikes
When I was growing up, there was an MMORPG called Toontown that used to be advertised all the time. Every week brought a new version of the same basic commercial, which prided itself on the motto you could “do almost anything.” But even as a kid this always felt strange to me- what exactly did they mean by “almost anything”? Surely you couldn’t pull a GTA and murder others right (even in GTA you technically can’t do that without triggering local law enforcement). This got the imagination cogs turning in my head as to a potential title wherein you actually could commit any action without fear of being reprimanded.
Though far from it, I can’t help but think of Guts and Glory as a prototype for the kind of limitless game I envisioned as a child. Developed by HakJak Productions and published by tinyBuild Games, Guts and Glory might be the strangest video game I have played in a while. It takes the track levels of sports games like the Skate series and combines them with a hyperviolent consequence system. Does this polymerization triumph, or does the game fail as another experimental disaster? The short answer is it works to an extent, but if you want the longer one read on!
To clarify, there is no real story here. The premise is regular folks are invited to participate in a series of violent sporting events called the “Guts and Glory.” There are eight sections, divided into 7-9 levels, and while some of those levels make-up a pseudo-arc for a specific playable character (outlined by a short text blurb in the opening waiting screen), you really are just beating each course for the sake of beating it, and not to progress further in some overarching narrative.
Because of this, I will be tackling graphics first, which are a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s evident that the HakJak team was primarily interested in creating an effective physics engine for their gameplay, and thus focused their budget on that. On the other, it doesn’t excuse the fact that Guts and Glory is bland. Everything, from the houses to the grounds to the NPCs, have minimal texture work done. And look, I wasn’t expecting something out of Unreal Engine, but I was at least hoping for RuneScape-level quality.
Still, the aesthetic would at least be tolerable were it not for the heavy-emphasis on grey. Most of the worlds you’ll explore have so many achromatic areas that it can give the title an unintentional desaturated look, which, personally, strained my eyes after playing for more than an hour.
That being said, this is definitely not a game that people will be playing for the graphics, so we move onto sound. You know, Guts and Glory does feature a lot of stock and repetitive noises, but it actually works here compared to other titles because of how un-serious the game is. It’s like those old Tom and Jerry cartoons from MGM- it doesn’t matter how many times you hear those same pots and pans crashing or Tom emitting his iconic scream: it’s still entertaining as heck. And that’s the situation I find myself in with Guts and Glory. Sure the vehicles sound alike, and every character has their own repetitive yelp, but they're all wrapped in a level of amusement that never quite goes away.
With the score, though, I’m not as enthusiastic. See, HakJak made a seemingly-wise, but actually bad decision with the soundtrack, and that was to make it gleefully cheery. In theory, this would be a good choice since Guts and Glory is a cynically blissful game: happy to throw you into some awful situations. But here’s the thing guys- when you choose to adopt a trial-and-error system wherein players will repeatedly die, the music has to actually be soothing. Because what happens is, when you get inevitably frustrated over the repetitive deaths, the score starts to feel very grating very fast, whereas when you have calming tunes in the background, it makes the entire situation much more bearable. One of the most famous examples of this contrast is “Stickerbush Symphony” from the “Bramble Scramble” level of Donkey Kong Country 2; a tough, yet memorable course where you can maintain your sanity courtesy of David Wise’s glorious synths.
Now, not every track in the Guts and Glory OST follows this template- during the later parts of the game, you actually do get some of those more-leisure melodies in the form of hard Jazz. But unfortunately, the vast majority is the former, so you will want to beat those stages as fast as you can, lest you fall into an irate cycle.
But is the gameplay really that frustrating-inducing? The answer is it depends on who you are as a gamer. The team at HakJak did a great job creating an effective physics engine, which does make each round fun. Sure, there are times where the ground feels a little too slippery, but overall every vehicle controls well, whether you’re riding a bike or driving a motorcycle. Environments are well-realized, and there is a lot of genuine creativity on board here. I mean seriously, who else would have thought up a scheme where you’re dodging jeeps in the desert driven by kangaroos armed with crossbows? Or a theme park equipped with lasers and swinging timber traps? Or a ninja-styled obstacle course full of exploding teddy bears? Yes, there were times where I was literally biting my controller over some of the dumb scenarios or over-spaced checkpoints (or this neglected coding error wherein instantly pressing the boost button upon a bicycle respawn causes you to unintentionally wheelie), but overall I was happy with the game….with two exceptions.
One was a level early on which I just could not beat (I guarantee you you will know what it is when you get to it), and the second was an entire section dedicated to a terrible character named Larry. Larry is a homeless man who you are required to play as for an arc set in the urban cityscape. He navigates through a rocket-propelled chair that is an abomination to control (if you thought the flying mechanics in LEGO Batman 2 were bad, you will be begging to go back to them). The biggest problem is that you can’t turn Larry with the joystick or mouse: he has to be rotated left, right, up or down by four different keys, which, as you can imagine, is a pain in the arse to do when you’re in flight. It honestly reminds me of the control layout for the original System Shock– why make things so complicated by mapping out different functions to different keys when it could all be tied to one place (the mouse)?
Larry was so bad, I admittedly ended up skipping the majority of his part. That being said, if you get the hang of it, at best it’ll just give you another hour of gameplay. It took me about five hours to beat Guts and Glory (make it six if you count the hypothetical extra hour from Larry), which is a hair below the seven hours I require for a title that charges $15.00. That being said, Guts and Glory could be an exception to the rule as there are a lot of community-created levels, similar to Super Mario Maker, in which you can spend a lot more time completing crazy tracks conceived by fans. In addition to this, HakJak appears to be consistently updating their game, showing that they are dedicated to expanding it.
So overall, Guts and Glory could be worth it. If a Dark Souls meets Paperboy meets Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater meets Super Meat Boy mash-up sounds up your ally, I say go for it. For others, you may still get some entertainment value out of the things- just make sure it fits your personal pricing model.
Pros:
+Imaginative level design
+Old school cartoon throwback with the sound and gameplay
Cons:
-Annoying score
-Terrible outlier character (Larry)
-Some difficulty spikes