Albatroz

It’s a nice-looking game on the surface, but unfortunately, it feels extremely unpolished, even borderline unplayable at times. Visually, it does look a bit dated. Still, you can tell the developer tried to make the most of the limited resources. There are a few genuinely beautiful moments scattered throughout, which I appreciated. The story, however, didn’t grab me at all. I found myself clicking through the dialogue pretty quickly just to keep things moving. The biggest reason I can't recommend this game is because some of the mechanics are just plain annoying. The map? Almost useless, lacking detail, features, and basic usability. Orientation can be tough, especially in darker areas where visibility is poor. Loading times when entering or exiting buildings are much longer than expected. The menus are clunky and the controls feel awkward, which definitely tested my patience. That said, the soundtrack is a definite highlight. It’s calming and suits the overall atmosphere well. One thing that really bugged me: for a game about backpacking and exploration, you’re not allowed to backtrack. If you try to return down a trail or take a different turn on a road you've already traveled, the game just stops you and says something like "that's against the rules"... Really? That completely kills the sense of freedom the game is trying to offer. [h2]Overall, it’s a decent title for taking a few nice screenshots, but when it comes to gameplay and controls, it’s lacking and feels unfinished. At its current price of €29.99, I don’t think it’s worth it. If the dev eventually adds a proper map, fixes some of the bugs, and removes the silly no-backtracking rule, then maybe it’d be worth picking up on sale for €4.99–9.99. Until then, I’d pass. [/h2]

I'm giving this a 'thumbs up" because I personally enjoyed it. However, there are some very big caveats. The story starts out pretty simple but adds depth as you progress. Isla is searching for her long-lost brother and gathers some companions. Obviously, as a backpacking sim, it has themes of leaving the city to head outdoors. The three main characters are interesting and I enjoyed their interactions. The core survival-like mechanics are interesting. There's plenty of optional content to explore. Needing to appease the survival mechanics sort of discourages you from too much exploring, though. I often got the feeling that, "I get what they're going for", even when things didn't gel together just right. At the time I played this, early to mid January 2025, it had been out for a couple months but was still very glitchy. It seems that loading from a saved game was related to most of the glitches I encountered. The controls were fine, most of the time, but any time any precision was needed, like climbing, jumping, etc, the controlled character often had problems. I often would accidentally jump off cliffs, climb a ledge then immediately slide back off the ledge and have to climb again, run back and forth on a slope trying to find the one magical place I could walk up, etc. Simple sticks on the ground seem like landmines of janky climbing. The car controls were okay about 80% of the time. The rest, you were flying off narrow roads, destroying the car on seemingly invisible obstacles, or drifting harder than Vin Diesel on ice. The character faces look halfway between western and anime style, but you get used to them. It all feels very 'indie', but, like I said, I get what they were going for and I enjoyed it. I was prepared to forgive a lot of these problems. Overall, I think with a bit more polish, this type of game could be great. I hope this is successful enough to get a sequel. I'd like to see this game style evolve and smooth out the biggest annoyances.

They nailed the artistic, vibrant, nature aesthetic while driving, but when you start hiking and paying attention to details the game feels poorly polished. Everything else including control, input layouts, camera movements, physics, mechanics, and story can be inconvenient, annoying, or straight up frustrating

(Updated Review) Since I never seen a developer answering and implementing fixes or player feedback as quick as I've seen this small team do, it's only fair I update my review to an absolute recommendation, now the game features an Exploration Mode; completely removing RPG mechanics like hunger and thirst and letting you simply enjoy the wonderful world created by a team as small as you can imagine. The game is absolutely gorgeous to look at it, and the Exploration Mode will let you just marvel at the scenery with no bars hold. (1st Review) This is one of the saddest negative reviews I’ve ever written. Let me explain: this game is everything I’ve ever wanted; an open-world backpacking experience with gorgeous graphics. Even the story, while not award-winning, is solid and engaging. And that’s exactly why I feel both sad and angry. The developers created something unique, something rarely seen in games, only to ruin it with mechanics that strip away all enjoyment. The RPG systems feel pointless, stamina is meaningless, the save system is atrocious, and the camping mechanics are more frustrating than immersive. The game even includes an Easy mode, which makes it all the more baffling that the developers didn’t remove these systems for players who simply want to explore. Instead, we’re forced to endure mechanics that actively undermine the very experience the game seems built to offer. Adding to the frustration is the developer’s stubborn refusal to listen to feedback. Simple, highly requested improvements: like disabling stamina, hunger, and thirst in Easy mode, have been ignored. This could have been the perfect walking simulator. Instead, by trying to do too much and refusing to adapt, the developers turned a brilliant idea into a one-of-a-kind experiment that will probably never be repeated. By overloading it with pointless mechanics, the developers didn’t just ruin Albatroz: they may have destroyed the chance for a true backpacking simulator to ever exist and that is something I cannot forgive.

I took a bit of a break after about an hour of play in my first session, after reaching the mist village and unlocking the second playable character. I loaded up the game today in order to get something out of it, but unfortunately there is just too much jank in the controls and technical issues (the world loading for half a minute while my character "flies" in place after leaving a building). I feel that games like this, where the goal is to relax and just recharge mental batteries, really need to be extra careful in ensuring that the experience is as care-free as possible -- not to say anything about the default difficulty being a bit too annoying in terms of resources that you need to gather and use every few seconds. At least that part can be customized. While the game is quite beautiful in spots, the graphics are also weirdly subpar for the performance hog it turns out to be on your GPU and overall system. You can customize a lot of the settings, but this is another case of the game requiring you to put some effort into making it work right, where the whole premise of cozy games is that you should just be able to pick them up and play. [i]Albatroz[/i] demands a hefty price tag of 20 € (granted, I paid less on a sale), but it does not offer the smooth and pain-free gameplay experience that the price promises -- at least not for me. I don't really care about the story, but the idea of hiking around and have some form of adventure sounds great to me. It just does not feel that way when actually trying to play it. Not sure if it's the first game of the developers or not, but overall I think they have potential. At this point in time, however, [i]Albatroz[/i] is not quite there yet for me, sorry.

Feels like an obscure playstation 2 game, with all the best and worst that implies. The writing is ropey. The general bugginess (at one point I thought I'd soft-locked myself -- never load a save unless it's made at a garage if you ever want to see your car again!) and general imprecision of the platforming, combined with very sensitive fall damage, grate (please, please, please do yourself a favor and play this on the lowest difficulty.) But gosh, does this game just have some heart and some lovely vistas.

This game doesn't feel done. It's buggy, the controls are bad. You can't really go where you want, if you try to go around something it says something about rule 400-something... The game is a good idea extremly poorly implemented... You also have worlds smallest backpack, 8 apples and it's full... I really like what the game says it is, it's just that it's not that.... It feels like a game that just entered early access and are going to be finished...

o jogo tem alguns bugs mas da pra relevar xd eu gostei é bem relaxante, tem uma trilha sonora ótima ;3

仕事に追われる日々と理解のない親に疲れ果てた主人公。ある日遂に仕事をバックレて、バックパッカーとして夢に生きている兄を探すための旅に出る事にしました。 最後に兄が追っていたという伝説の歩く山アルバトロズを探し求めて、南米はボリビア～チリのアンデス高地の雄大な自然の中へ。 とまあそんな感じで始まるストーリーで、ゲームとしては空腹・渇き・寒暖・各種疲労と戦いながらひたすら歩く/車で走るものとなっています。グラフィックの質は正直そんなに良くはないのですが、とにかくロケーションが良い。ちょいファンタジー入った雰囲気も最高です。大筋のストーリーも良くてこの時点では私の好みに合うため+100点！（ただし細かい脚本は文化の違いを感じるというか、翻訳が悪いのか何言ってるのかピンと来ない場面が多かったです） しかし、ゲーム部分はと言うと… ・まず食料や水はあまり持てないので歩いてる最中に現地調達しないといけませんが、そもそもそんな現地調達前提の装備で山に入るなと…。いやまあゲーム性を出そうとしたのは分かるので、そこは大目に見るとしましょうか（ただしもしこれからプレイするという人は難易度はすぐに最低に下げた方がいいです）。 ・大まかな地図しかなく、あとは「○○岩が見えたら崖を下りて川を渡り南を目指せ」的な曖昧な指示がいくつかあるのみで、広いエリア内をある程度自由に動けるのとミニマップもないのとで物凄く迷います。しかしまあ雰囲気は抜群で探索している感は出るのでこれも大目に見ましょうか…（正直勘弁してほしいのを我慢しつつ）。 ・致命的なのが地面にめり込んだり空の彼方へ飛ばされるバグの多さとフラグ管理の酷さと、何よりも次に何をすれば話が進むのかという目的がはっきり示されない事が多いゲーム部分の粗雑な作り。プレイヤーは超能力者じゃないので、製作者さんだけが分かってる妙な進行フラグは探せませんよ…。 特に序盤～中盤に差し掛かるラゴ村は酷い。南に向かえとか曖昧な指示があるのですが、まず東の端に行ってクラヴェレという美人のシャーマンに会わないといけません。しかしクラヴェレに会えとは言われてもどの道を行けとは言われませんしこのゲームにはクエストマーカーもまともなマップもないので、クラヴェレを探してあちこち彷徨う事になります。ようやくクラヴェレに会えて南に行けるようになる…と思ったのですが、今度の指示だと村の顔石の向きに従えみたいに言われて、しかし実際には道がなく直に南に行けないという罠が待ち構えています。実は車でちょっと西へ行ったところにある倒木をつたって崖を登った先に南へのルートがあります…分かるわけねーだろ！さらに南へ行っても行き止まりがあり途方に暮れます。自棄になって湖に飛び込んだら別の場所から復活して先に進めるようになりました…分かるわけねーだろ！この村で5～6時間ぐらいは無駄にしました。 とまあそんな調子がその先もずーっと続くのでゲーム部分は-100点です。 意地になってプレイを続けエンディングを迎えたいま、なんとも素敵なゲームであったという満足感と、ゲーム部分作ったやつふざけんなよ！というイラつきとが同居しており、このゲームを薦めるべきかどうか非常に迷うのですが…他にはあまりないタイプのゲームであったため一応お薦めとしておきます。コンセプトとロケーションはほんと良いんですよこれ…。 ただし、あくまでも無茶な探索に自信があり無理なフラグ管理や無謀な極悪バランスにもめげず、アンデス山地やウユニ塩湖をぶらぶら旅したいという、ごくごく狭い範囲の方にのみお薦めです。それ以外の人は火傷します。

Really janky controls and movement. Not in the sense that it's unpolished, in fact, it feels like the design is very intentional, which perhaps makes it worse. The world looks fine (insane graphics but not a lot of stylistic vision, imo, but that might just be me) but the characters' faces move awkwardly. I admittedly had really high expectations for this game, so that might be why I'm being so harsh with it, but I have played several games with similar gameplay, and none of them left me as disappointed as Albatroz to the point of refunding it.