ALASKA

ALASKA is a short interactive story. It is made pretty much by one developer and a lot of love has been put into the game. I say interactive story and not walking sim because a walking sim at least allows you to explore and pick up objects and fiddle around with them. ALASKA is on a railroad and will only allow you to experience the story as intended by the creator. And I am fine with that. You will find yourself even being told by the narrator that your character did such and such and while in The Stanley Parable it was a lot of fun to do the opposite of what you are told, in ALASKA rebellion will get you nowhere. ____________________________ PROS + the sky at night. ALASKA really went all in on the sky. It is so beautiful to look at. Crystal clear blue in the day and starry by night with a side helping of auroras. + sing-a-long. I am a sucker for music and lyrics written specifically for a game. + tragedy. This game, once you play through, is tragic and quite horrific when you think about it. It is very dark and the latter half of the game contrasts very well with the happy neighbours let’s all be friends first part of the game. + is that you Jerry? I mean...it totally isn’t Jerry from Rick and Morty but at times there is one guy that really sounds like him. The voice acting is decent enough for an indie game of this budget but doesn't really shine either. ____________________________ CONS -What the mini-game? The fishing mini-game was ok. But that ice skating one was just…..weird. I didn’t have the sensitivity problems others had playing on k+m but the whole thing was just out of place. Why are there suddenly huge holes in the ice rink? Why are there circular saws coming up through the ice from the water at regular intervals? Why am I only controlling a pair of skates with no human attached to them? Why does a robotic voice from the 80s say "START" at the beginning of the race? So many questions about this mini-game. -It was a decent enough mystery but I really didn’t need the Sherlock Holmes ending where you removed me from the game and retold the entire story again as the developer seems to pace around the room with a pipe in his mouth in exposition overdrive. I had already pieced it together. Granted some of these parts explanations did add a level of horror to the story when we watch it as a fly on the wall. But we didn’t need to be force fed every detail. _____________________________ ALASKA is a passion project and it shows. Some parts are really well done and then some parts have been overthought and overcooked. I would recommend this to people that don’t care about playing something that is very rough around the edges and has some glaring issues. It is far from perfect but at the same time this is part of ALASKA’s charm. 5 bucks is still a bit steep in my opinion for this title and I would hold out for a sale but if you can’t wait to play a remote-controlled pair of skates dodging sawblades, or the even more hilarious “Shoot 10 mystery men” mini-game that appears after you complete the game. Let’s just take a second to address this one. The shoot 10 mystery men game involves you sniping guys in plaid shirts jumping out of a river like Shamu at Sea World. If this tickles your fancy then you go right ahead and buy in now.

Hello, everyone who is thinking of buying this game. I was in your shoes just a week ago when I bought the game. Just kind of leaped in. Alaska is a stunning place that I would love to visit and this game does an okay job of recreating it. Ill be honest though the game has a few weird things about it. The graphics are not next gen or anything but sometimes the background and the lighting does catch your eye. Player models look like xbox 360 or something. So no real innovation or anything. The gameplay is pretty much none existent with the exception of some hard mini games. There is a fishing one where you have to press a button within a split second to catch a fish. I was not fast enough so I just spammed the button. There is also a skating one where you go around a track and avoid obstructions. I actually liked this mini game. The game is pretty much walking around to different locations on the map. The character interactions are where this game shine. Some of the dialogue and twists really grabbed hold of me. This game gets really dark and with pretty depressing stuff. It is by no means a perfect game but it surely has character. I think I spent my money well. If you guys want to see some gameplay for this game and are okay with a little adult humor check out this stupid video. https://youtu.be/_7OAHfmpEQc

You mingle with bald guys in the snow and almost cuck a gamer.

[b]Tyler Durden Simulator[/b] [h1]Story[/h1] I thought the story, which was really the key element to this game, was pretty heavy handed and very obvious. I won't go into more detail beyond my header, but I didn't find the writing to be very compelling. Mediocre would be the best word I could use to describe it. The story isn't bad, but it also isn't good. It was however interesting enough to see it through to the end. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] [i]Alaska[/i] is a walking simulator at heart masking as lite psychological horror, although it is broken up with some side activities, which I thought were well placed and served to switch up what might otherwise become a monotonous, "run over here and check this out, run back, then head over there again" type game. It does everything adequately, except the ice skating part, which was overly sensitive and led to a lot of do overs. Again, gameplay is pretty mediocre overall. [h1]Graphics[/h1] Even though the graphics engine being used features some dated and washed out textures, the developer did a good job with it, and I felt this was the biggest success in the game. Even though sparse, the imagery was nice, and even beautiful at times. Nice use of color and spacing to help make this even better. However, the character models were alternately a little silly or just plain creepy. So, that bears mention. [h1]Audio[/h1] Well, you can definitely tell that most, if not all the voice actors were untrained. So, you get a lot of wooden lines as they feel their way along as their chosen characters. I believe the dev is the primary voice actor, and if I had to guess (which I am in fact doing now), I'd say the other actors are his/her friends or family. In general, I don't think the voice acting was particularly well done, but again, it wasn't the worst I've ever heard. [h1]Verdict[/h1] In general, I found [i]Alaska[/i] to be a pretty average game with nice graphics but poor voice acting and story. I'm not actually certain how it ended up in my library, but I don't regret giving it a go. I think without the frustration of the skating puzzle, or the bugginess of the second shooting section (which I forgot to mention earlier), this game would have taken right at 2 hours, which was the perfect length in my estimation. This game really feels like someone's first effort, and from that perspective, it was interesting, but overall, I'd personally wait for a nice sale before buying. Giving this a loosely positive recommendation. [code]If you found this review helpful and would be interested in supporting my Curator group, it would be appreciated. Cheers. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32549618/[/code]

A decent low-budget game but very rough around the edges. If you are willing to look past the few imperfections and the general lack of quality that can be found around almost every corner, from the weird movements, the music that goes on and off on a whim, even the static background noises that can be heard when characters start speaking.. I would wager to say, you will definitely enjoy this one! The story is decent enough and will stick with you for a while. The voices are well performed if you don't mind the poor recording mechanisms. Mini-games are fun and there are even a bunch of extra mini-games once you finish the story. Get it on sale and enjoy the approximately 2 hours long journey!

A short but surprisingly good game. Sometimes a bit annoying, because you have to walk a lot from A to B and back. But the game has a really good story to tell...

Okay so this is a technical nightmare with hilarious facial animations; a horribly optimized game and pretty odd voice acting throughout. But for a fiver, this was an absolute blast. It was funny at the right moments (even if not for the reasons intended), had a pretty good plot all things considered, and I ended up getting really invested. Dialogue was good for the most part, only let down by some of the voice acting (the main character sounded like an Australian Videogamedunkey and one guy sounded like he was about to sell me something any minute). Some animations are just... off, but the visuals for the most part were gorgeous and I quickly fell in love with it. It's OST was perfect too, subtle yet striking. By far my biggest problem about this game was the mingames. There were three. All of which got increasingly worse as I played and just took away the atmosphere of the game. The game is a walking simulator at heart but don't let that put you off. Play it with friends if you can, it's some of the most fun I've had in a while and was very compelling all the way to the end. It would be nice if devs with higher budgets would start to do more ambitious games like this. The only thing that let this game was the fact that this was an indie dev working on a hugely ambitious game. But really well done to the dev, this game was impressive in what it set out to do and was refreshing.

Ich hab wirklich eine enorm hohe Toleranz und Resistenz wenn es um low budget, clunky und janky games geht - Ich ertrage den größten technischen trash und Standard-assets, solange die Seele, das Writing und die Atmosphäre sitzen.. aber das ist hier leider nicht wirklich der Fall, und 2h+ langsam durch die Gegend laufen um dann eine basic 10 minuten Indie Horror Story zu bekommen.. yeah, ist einfach nicht die Zeit wert - skip this one

A short interesting game. Just like a true Indie game there is a little bit of everything in here with original music and song. I can appreciate the amount of time that goes into making what appears to us as a simple point and click. As always in these games I look for what is different or surprising. Some unique mini-puzzles which seem tough at first but you learn your way around them. A beautiful night sky in Alaska is here and the other natural vistas although seem sparse, reminded me of my trip to Alaska. Also at the end a great wrap up montage which I thought was well played out and one I had not seen in a game before

really good game with a great twist i would advise people to play it