Continue?9876543210

Emogame and Emogame 2 were staples of my adolescent experience. They turned me on to a slew of music that I wouldn't have appreciated otherwise and managed to be both hilarious and thoughtful throughout. When I saw that the creator of those flash games, Jason Oda, had developed this odd-looking title, I was intrigued. So, I'll lay out the negatives first: unskippable intro (that you will have to sit through many many times), boring and awkward combat, unintuitive gameplay mechanics. With that in mind, the game is a remarkably beautiful meditation on mortality explored by proxy through slain video game characters facing deletion and finally oblivion. If you go into this expecting a hack and slash dungeon crawl, you will be sorely disappointed. This is more of an interactive poem than a game, and it excels in that respect.

Before I start an important disclaimer: If you are prone to epileptic seizures or in any way sensitive to strobe lights, DO NOT ABSOLUTELY DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. This game spams strobe lights like it's Christmas, from beginning of the game to finish. If you play this game and you're an epileptic, you will be as dead as this game's protagonist, before even the intro ends. But yeah, this game. It's pretty flawed. As I said before, this game spams strobe lights. It also has it's hard to pronounce name, as well as this 3d pixel style that to be perfectly honest, looks kinda ugly. The gameplay is the weakest part of Continue, because you are so reliant on rng to not screw you over it's ridiculous. See, in each stage, with gc stages being the only exceptions, your goal is to escape the stage with lightning, while building shelters for gc stages with your prayers. However, lightning strikes at random, so it's entirely possible to have your run ruined all because lightning struck the same already cleared location three times. This is tolerable on large in length levels, but if you get bad lightning strikes on somewhere like the Riverbanks, your run is pretty much over, because you cannot escape in time. The plot? This game does seem to have a story, but it's a jumbled unconnected mess. Each stage has its own story, its own history, but its all disconnected from the protagonist, which are shuffled everytime you restart the game anyway. The only thing we know for sure is what's on the cover. And yet, despite all that, despite all these problems, I still love this game. A lot. The music and the atmosphere are some of the places where this game shines. I don't remember the last time I felt so peaceful when playing a video game. I would download the whole OST if I could. The filters and the sound effects, give the game a weird broken console dream simulator quality that I can't really explain. That, combined with some really touching scenes and you have yourself a game that made me cry at several times. There's also the message itself. As someone who had troubles accepting the idea of dying herself, I was completely repelled by this game when I first saw it. It seemed to me like just as a game so dark and so obsessed with its own darkness, that it would be completely unenjoyable. It wasn't. It was a journey, complete with thoughts and feelings people may have when they confront their own mortality. And it ended up being one of the most serene games I have ever played in my entire life. I haven't expected to be so pleasantly surprised at all. So final verdict? I dunno. I can see why people can be turned off by the message and the gameplay and other things. The dev himself said that he made this game this way SPECIFICALLY to repel CoD brogamer dudes. From the name itself, to pretty generic gameplay, I get it. Still, I'd say give it a chance. If you love these cerebral, borderline-walking simulator type games that are very emotional and sad, maybe this game will give you something. If you are like me and are struggling with accepting your own demise, maybe this game will help you not worry about your own mortality as much and even accept it like it did for me. If you are looking for some neat gameplay or a story heavy game, pass. This game will not satisfy you. And if you're prone to epileptic seizures, dear god stay away.

Философская притча о жизни и смерти, воплощенная в виде этого игрового шедевра. Игра сложна и самобытна, чего только стоит возможность после предложения объяснить правила этого мира - ответить: "keep it mysterious". Я бы не стал советовать эту игру именно в качестве игры. Это произведение, к которому нужно подойти с определенным настроем и извлечь из него что-то для себя. Это определенно меланхоличный и невероятно притягательный мир, в который можно окунуться на час или два, помочь главному герою вспомнить и рассказать свою последнюю историю, очутившись в самых отдаленных задворках Random Access Memory. Хотите узнать что такое радуга? - спросите об этом Великого Стирателя

This game is not for the "average" game player. I love this game, however!!!

The usual pretentious ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that aims for depth but hasn't got the substance to do so. Incredibly boring.

It might have been 9 years before my first and second attempts to play this game, but I finally made it, and you know what, yeah. This is good. Not sure if it is $10 good, but I actually had a few moments of quiet introspection as a result of the minimalist and mournful narrative, and that is probably more than I can say for some games I definitely spent more on over the years. Oh, and the hook, which is admittedly great, is that you are the protagonist in some other unnamed? game who just lost his last life, and you are trying to stretch the nanoseconds before game over into infinity to avoid death, even though it is inevitable.

Fantastic. Love it.

This game is the most mixed-up 'mixed bag' i've ever played. The good stuff- the idea is amazing, and the game captures the sense of hopelessness that wandering lost around the recesses of RAM might entail. I really like the dialogue too, which has a kind of meaningful meaningless quality, like haikus written by a gifted chimp. The music is quite good, and the basic organisation of the game (wandering around talking to people, finding clues, collecting game resources and then battling to save yourself) is well organised and a good idea for how to conduct this kind of game. So based on originality and thoughtfulness, it would be a 10/10. However, the execution of the above gameplay is a solid 0/10, and since the gameplay is most of the game, it hurts the overall experience really badly. Generally, the game well captures the futility of trying to escape deletion because it is nigh impossible not to fail over and over and over again, based on flaws in the game mechanics rather than your skill. The combat is incredibly bad, making safe zones suddenly kill you, murdered enemies spring back to instantly and unavoidably shave off half your health (every enemy can do this), and enemies spawn teleported right on top of you to instantly initiate punishing combat with no chance to evade. The punishment for failure also increase geometrically- every time you make a mistake, the punishment gets worse by 1. For reference, you need to build shelters towards surviving a storm every few levels, and each shelter takes a couple of conversations or minigames to build, with bigger (more effective) shelters taking more. Then when you fail, you lose a shelter. Fail twice, lose 2. Fail 5 times (throughout the whole playthrough), and you lose 5, then 6, then 7 shelters each time. Given how arbitrarily you fail, and that the game actively selects your biggest and most valuable shelters for deletion (i've played it enough to be sure this isn't random chance), the possiblity of getting past level 3 or 4 is extremely low for any given playthrough. Add in poor collision detection with environments (falling off parts of maps to your death), continue screens which also delete between 1 and 7 shelters every time, and randomised puzzles and level order, and you have a recipe for extremly consistent frustration. So I give the gameplay 0/10, with the developer either being really lazy on this element (doing no playtesting to realise what a piece of junk his game is to actually 'play') or really hostile to people who pay for his work (taking the 'avoiding deletion is really hard' story element as an excuse to ruin the gameplay element of the game). I still really enjoyed Continue?, finding it artsy and thoughtful without being too pretentious. But being almost impossible to finish due to game design unfortunately takes it down quite a few notches.

[h1]　ワクワクするゲームがあります。幸せな気分になるゲームがあります。そして、体に自然に反応してしまうような激しいゲームがあります。 　膝の震えの話です。手のひらの汗の話です。恐怖が原因の事故の話です。息をすることを思い出させてくれる友達の話です。 　エミネムのママのスパゲッティの話です。 [/h1] [b]Steamアワード2017『ママのスパゲッティで賞』に関する説明文[/b] これは、コンテニューされずゲームオーバーになったキャラクターの話です。 だけど……………… 　あるキャラクターが、死んだ。 　物語の途上で倒れ伏し、何の成果も残せず死んだ。 　彼の直上で慰めにもならない言葉が冷たく浮かぶ。 　[CONTINUE?] 　答える者は無い。彼はランダムアクセスメモリの煉獄へ沈んで消えた。 　灰が舞い、不気味な雷鳴が遠くで響く。死の雷はシステムによる消去の光だ。 　いずれ死の雷が彼の元にも到来し、全てを破壊し虚無へと消し去るだろう。 　世の理から逃れることは出来ない。耐え難い現実、暴力的な現実。それらが死の雷となって彼に迫る。 　彼は死を受け入れられず煉獄を旅し、同じように煉獄で死を待つ多くのキャラクター達と出会う。 　彼は兵士と出会った。その兵士は、あれほどカジュアルに享受していたリスポーンがもう出来なくなった事に悪態をついていた。もしかしたらその中に、いずれかのFPSで僕が撃ち殺した誰かが居たかもしれない。嗚呼、あのキルを思い出す度に僕は誇りを取り戻す+2 　彼はヒロインと出会った。彼女らは忘れ去られ死を待つだけの亡者だった。僕はストアページでこのゲームの説明文を見た瞬間に連想した『かなた』という名前のヒロインのことを再び思い出した+2 　彼ら彼女らとの記憶は『我が雷』となって彼を阻む障害を打ち砕き逃避の旅を続けさせる。 　彼ら彼女らとの記憶は『我が祈り』となって、ついに雷が彼を捕らえた際、シェルターとなって一時しのぎを続ける猶予を伸ばしてくれる。 　そうやって彼は更に旅を続けようとする。 　システムの力は彼のあがきを潰そうと加速し続ける。 　オインゴボインゴの歌と違って彼は死を前に華麗に踊り明かしたりはしない。 　必死で逃げ回り隠れる場所を探す姿は、どう贔屓目に見たって惨めそのものだ。 　彼は愛する人の影が彷徨う世界で潮風を浴びた。僕は、かつて「お前は他人を愛せない冷血漢だ」と暴言を浴びせられた事を思い出した。+1 (その半年後、ラブホテルで血を垂れ流し苦しみながら必死に謝罪の言葉を繰り返し述べる醜態を晒したのは僕の性質が原因でないと信じたい) 　彼は焚き火に当たりながら「ペットを飼っていた事があるか」と僕に聞いた。 「あるよ、猫だ」僕はそう答えた。近頃はしょっちゅうそいつらの夢を見る。夢の中で僕は僕自身を、そいつらの事を忘れ去った冷血漢と蔑み自傷行為に及んでいた。だけど目覚めた後にそいつらとの記憶を探る度に+が胸の中に在ると確信できた。+2 　彼は煉獄を旅をしながら多くの出会いを重ねてその胸のフォルダに+を集める。 　……で？だからどうだというのだ？ 　そんなモノが何か奇跡をしでかしてくれるのか？ 　その+とやらを集めたら1UPでもするのか？クレジットが投入されるのか？ 　彼は死ぬ。結局は死ぬ。受け取った想いを『我が雷』とし突き進もうが、『我が祈り』としシステムの雷から一時避難しようが結局は死ぬ。1ピクセルも残さず消え去る。 　だけど、困難な旅に立ち向かう力を貸してくれた『我が雷』があった。 　最後の時を迎えようとする心の準備を許してくれた『我が祈り』あった。 　それは決して、無駄なモノなんかじゃなかったハズだ。 　なぁ、そうだろう？ これは、コンテニューされずゲームオーバーになったキャラクターの話です。 だけど………… これは耐え難い現実に立ち向かう力を僕にくれた何かについての話。かもしれない。 これは暴力的な現実から僕を守り逃避させてくれた何かについての話。かもしれない。 …………あるいは、エミネムのママのスパゲッティの話。かもしれない。

I don't really know what this game is about. I feel like the message underneath the game is a serious one, and certainly existential at that, but it's honestly lost on me. I want to like it for being different and interesting, but I'm having a hard time doing just that in the face of obscurity. At the end of the day...I like it? I guess?