I’m completely enamored by the visual artist on display here. Everything from the spirits to the background are just gorgeous to look at and really show the commitment and love the lead artist was able to put in. The surreal world and characters that are littered throughout the game gave me huge Neverhood vibs and that’s something that I’ve seen very few games reach, hell even the spiritual successor to Neverhood ‘Armikrog’ never got close to matching that game’s strange humor and nonsensical logic.
As a point and click game it’s pretty fun if not a little too easy and the game barely clocks in under an hour in total game time but for what kind of animation you're getting here I can look past the short length and simple puzzles. This game took nearly 5 years to make and considering how it was mostly a one man show besides the development team that the lead artist hired so I can understand all that, what I unfortunately can't look past however is the bugs.
For the first half the game was pretty much perfect and I had no issues, then the second half started and for some reason buttons used to travel around the area would instead pause the game for no reason so I had to slowly move through the area and do the puzzle without using half of my controller, (oh also the game wouldn’t recognize my mouse only my controller, I didn’t know how to fix it and by the time I closed the game and reopened it with my controller unplugged I had already finished the game :T) the third area however is where I got most bugs. I had audio cutting out, repeated sprites playing when nothing was happening, sprites layering issues, no audio playing when it probably should be playing, Mr Coo not going where I clicked on him to go, and a few others.
Normally I’d be a little understanding towards indie games releasing in a buggy state since they normally have pretty small teams and less resources compared to AAA devs, but the bugs here made the last 20 minutes of the game a little frustrating to deal with at times. I will not blame it on the lead artist who orchestrated the overall development since according to a twitter post me released, after finishing most of the art and animation for the game the lead artist who hired to devs to help with the game cut him out of the decision making process for the game and after asking for the game to be delayed to put in bug fixes and added in content that had been cut without his consent the devs released the game regardless. Bumps down the road of development is one thing but actively ignoring the creative lead that hired you is disrespectful and disingenuous. I’m not saying you shouldn't buy the game, this isn’t a Disco Elysium ZA/UM situation as far as I'm aware, but it still sucks to see someone's artistic passion being mishandled and fumbled with without his go ahead.
Awful management and short playtime aside this was a marvel to play though. I love point and click games and I’m a sucker for imaginative and fluid animation. If the lead artist ever gets control over the project again I’d love to see what the game was supposed to turn out and will absolutely support his artistic vision. But until then this is still one of the best looking games I’ve seen in awhile and if you're a fan of animation in general I’d say check it out.
As a point and click game it’s pretty fun if not a little too easy and the game barely clocks in under an hour in total game time but for what kind of animation you're getting here I can look past the short length and simple puzzles. This game took nearly 5 years to make and considering how it was mostly a one man show besides the development team that the lead artist hired so I can understand all that, what I unfortunately can't look past however is the bugs.
For the first half the game was pretty much perfect and I had no issues, then the second half started and for some reason buttons used to travel around the area would instead pause the game for no reason so I had to slowly move through the area and do the puzzle without using half of my controller, (oh also the game wouldn’t recognize my mouse only my controller, I didn’t know how to fix it and by the time I closed the game and reopened it with my controller unplugged I had already finished the game :T) the third area however is where I got most bugs. I had audio cutting out, repeated sprites playing when nothing was happening, sprites layering issues, no audio playing when it probably should be playing, Mr Coo not going where I clicked on him to go, and a few others.
Normally I’d be a little understanding towards indie games releasing in a buggy state since they normally have pretty small teams and less resources compared to AAA devs, but the bugs here made the last 20 minutes of the game a little frustrating to deal with at times. I will not blame it on the lead artist who orchestrated the overall development since according to a twitter post me released, after finishing most of the art and animation for the game the lead artist who hired to devs to help with the game cut him out of the decision making process for the game and after asking for the game to be delayed to put in bug fixes and added in content that had been cut without his consent the devs released the game regardless. Bumps down the road of development is one thing but actively ignoring the creative lead that hired you is disrespectful and disingenuous. I’m not saying you shouldn't buy the game, this isn’t a Disco Elysium ZA/UM situation as far as I'm aware, but it still sucks to see someone's artistic passion being mishandled and fumbled with without his go ahead.
Awful management and short playtime aside this was a marvel to play though. I love point and click games and I’m a sucker for imaginative and fluid animation. If the lead artist ever gets control over the project again I’d love to see what the game was supposed to turn out and will absolutely support his artistic vision. But until then this is still one of the best looking games I’ve seen in awhile and if you're a fan of animation in general I’d say check it out.