Re:Fresh is a short and simple 3D platformer in the vein of A Short Hike, and wow does it really just want to take the ideas from that game without understanding what made them work. I'll say at the top that despite my complaints I still had an okay time with this, it's not truly bad and it's only around an hour to do everything in the game so it's not a big waste of time, but I wanted to talk about why it's disappointing.

You play as a robot after a storm hits a small island town and you're tasked with finding materials to help the NPCs rebuild. The movement is pretty basic with a jump and later a dash, and solar cells that act like A Short Hike's feathers in giving you extra charges for either of these as you collect them. It doesn't feel particularly great though, just passable for the basic unchallenging platforming here. The exploration is also pretty limited, and I feel like the structure of the world really hurts the game. The areas aren't that big, and even then they're split up in a very distinct way, with bridges between small islands that you unlock at different points connecting to the main hub area. There's only 3 of these, even being generous and counting the small starting area. I think even if they were combined together it would be kind of disappointing in size and density, but split up and made so that you have to approach them in a pretty linear order removes a lot of the feeling of exploring a detailed world. The worlds in games like A Short Hike and Lil Gator Game aren't huge by any means, but they're dense and feel made with care in a way that exploring them is a joy, but I can't say anything of the sort here.

Rather than the approach of slowly encountering NPCs as you explore, most of them are dumped on you all at once near the beginning of the game when you walk into the main town. This certainly doesn't help with any of them being memorable, but the simple dialogue also didn't really work for me and I didn't find any of it charming like the other games I've seen or played in this style. The overall story isn't really noteworthy either. It's definitely trying to be charming and cute, but I don't feel like it really hits those goals.

The game also just feels unpolished overall. The menus were weirdly buggy for me while using a controller. The dialogue interface is odd and I didn't even realize there were dialogue choices when I made the first ones because of how it's presented. There's a system for customizing your character but it's extremely limited, and I'm fairly sure there's not enough of the collectible currency in the game to even unlock all of the options available which seems odd. The game also runs shockingly bad for how simple it looks. I was planning to play it on my steam deck, but quickly realized that wasn't going to be a good time after booting it up, but even on my pretty beefy desktop it didn't run great. There were a lot of other small things that were offputting but I've already spent too long complaining about this.

Overall, despite the complaints it was okay, it's a very short game and if you really want more of these and feel like you're out of other options you might get some enjoyment out of it. I mainly wanted to review it to talk about how it completely misses what makes A Short Hike great while being a very similar game.

Reviewed on May 03, 2023


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