Here's a link to the trailer for this game. By watching it, you have effectively played the entire game.
I have a little bit of a reputation in my main friend group for buying a lot of shovelware on the Switch eShop, thanks to the early days of the eShop's lifespan showcasing games on sale for like, what, ten cents? It was hard for me to pass up. I look back on that time with fondness and laugh, having gained Astro Bears as a staple of parties and hangouts. Every so often I still find myself browsing the eShop in hopes of finding something weird or out-of-the-ordinary that might leave some kind of lasting impression, or at the very least entertain me for a few minutes before I decide that it's not worth getting to the end of some low-effort quick-buck schlock just to say that I finished it. Life is short. My backlog of games I have easy or immediate access to is enormous.
This ain't my first rodeo.
I bring this up because it should be clear that I gave Tyd wag vir Niemand a genuine chance. I watched the trailer, thought "wow it sure would be neat to play a game where the levels are kinda like the weird inter-dimensional sequences in the Doctor Strange movies," saw it was on sale for a couple bucks, and said why not. It's in a language I don't understand, it's eerie enough, it's got realistic monoliths moving in ways that they should not be moving. Maybe this could be secretly peak.
I played it for a few hours.
It's not.
Tyd wag vir Niemand is not peak.
I'd still vouch for the cool imagery going on in this game, but between the bland writing and the uninteresting level design I was pretty thoroughly let-down. This is one of those "just watch a playthrough of it on YouTube" situations, if anything.
Personal note though, I'm 99% sure my actual glaring issues with this game are only felt because I played the Switch version, which runs at a consistent well-below 30-frames-per-second. This makes sense, given that it was very obviously made in the Unity engine with a clear emphasis on the graphics present in the imagery, but the game wasn't released on Switch with this fully in-mind. Level 4 is this auto-move level where you have to watch this sailboat float around through the air in a cave, and you complete it by stopping time for these moving monoliths that would otherwise crush the sailboat with their momentum alone. This specific bullshit end section took me god knows how many tries to complete because the speed of your boat and the speed of the sailboat aren't properly synced to the framerate of the Switch version, resulting in the sailboat being left behind inside the end part of the cave that you still need to stop time for at specific moments to make sure it completes its journey to the end so that you can trigger the actual end of the level, none of which you can fucking see because of the draw distance obscuring everything in the cave once you exit it before you're supposed to. (Not pictured in video clip: the fucking sailboat TURNING AROUND TO GO BACK INSIDE OF THE CAVE to wander around in there for a bit before finally reaching the end of the level on its own)
I wish no ill will upon Skobbejak Games, as I think they have some very cool ideas going on here that I'd love to experience in an actually well-constructed game, but I think as it currently stands with me having played the Switch version of this game, for putting me through that Sailboat level, you are cordially invited to eat my shorts.
I have a little bit of a reputation in my main friend group for buying a lot of shovelware on the Switch eShop, thanks to the early days of the eShop's lifespan showcasing games on sale for like, what, ten cents? It was hard for me to pass up. I look back on that time with fondness and laugh, having gained Astro Bears as a staple of parties and hangouts. Every so often I still find myself browsing the eShop in hopes of finding something weird or out-of-the-ordinary that might leave some kind of lasting impression, or at the very least entertain me for a few minutes before I decide that it's not worth getting to the end of some low-effort quick-buck schlock just to say that I finished it. Life is short. My backlog of games I have easy or immediate access to is enormous.
This ain't my first rodeo.
I bring this up because it should be clear that I gave Tyd wag vir Niemand a genuine chance. I watched the trailer, thought "wow it sure would be neat to play a game where the levels are kinda like the weird inter-dimensional sequences in the Doctor Strange movies," saw it was on sale for a couple bucks, and said why not. It's in a language I don't understand, it's eerie enough, it's got realistic monoliths moving in ways that they should not be moving. Maybe this could be secretly peak.
I played it for a few hours.
It's not.
Tyd wag vir Niemand is not peak.
I'd still vouch for the cool imagery going on in this game, but between the bland writing and the uninteresting level design I was pretty thoroughly let-down. This is one of those "just watch a playthrough of it on YouTube" situations, if anything.
Personal note though, I'm 99% sure my actual glaring issues with this game are only felt because I played the Switch version, which runs at a consistent well-below 30-frames-per-second. This makes sense, given that it was very obviously made in the Unity engine with a clear emphasis on the graphics present in the imagery, but the game wasn't released on Switch with this fully in-mind. Level 4 is this auto-move level where you have to watch this sailboat float around through the air in a cave, and you complete it by stopping time for these moving monoliths that would otherwise crush the sailboat with their momentum alone. This specific bullshit end section took me god knows how many tries to complete because the speed of your boat and the speed of the sailboat aren't properly synced to the framerate of the Switch version, resulting in the sailboat being left behind inside the end part of the cave that you still need to stop time for at specific moments to make sure it completes its journey to the end so that you can trigger the actual end of the level, none of which you can fucking see because of the draw distance obscuring everything in the cave once you exit it before you're supposed to. (Not pictured in video clip: the fucking sailboat TURNING AROUND TO GO BACK INSIDE OF THE CAVE to wander around in there for a bit before finally reaching the end of the level on its own)
I wish no ill will upon Skobbejak Games, as I think they have some very cool ideas going on here that I'd love to experience in an actually well-constructed game, but I think as it currently stands with me having played the Switch version of this game, for putting me through that Sailboat level, you are cordially invited to eat my shorts.
Reviewed on Jun 04, 2023
2 Comments
@DeemonAndGames Thanks! This is one of my longer ones, and I admittedly only wrote this in the first place to share in my weird specific suffering, so I appreciate the read. :)
It's such a bummer, because even after watching parts of a full playthrough of it, it doesn't look like that miserable an experience on other platforms. It just looks...playable. Like, not amazing or anything, just playable. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given the Switch generally does have an optimization problem with a ton of games ported to it, and I usually just expect the usual graphical downgrades and framerate drops (see Sonic Frontiers). This is the first game I've run into that actively was not adjusted accordingly at all to make up for the performance issues lmao
I gotta stop buying 3rd-party Switch games. 🙃
It's such a bummer, because even after watching parts of a full playthrough of it, it doesn't look like that miserable an experience on other platforms. It just looks...playable. Like, not amazing or anything, just playable. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given the Switch generally does have an optimization problem with a ton of games ported to it, and I usually just expect the usual graphical downgrades and framerate drops (see Sonic Frontiers). This is the first game I've run into that actively was not adjusted accordingly at all to make up for the performance issues lmao
I gotta stop buying 3rd-party Switch games. 🙃
DeemonAndGames
10 months ago
But no yeah that boat level sounds like absolute hell, I would have gone completely insane triying to beat it, it looks like it was designed for some kind of torture.
Great review!