Dr Livingstone, I Presume? Reversed Escape Room

Based on the 1939 film Stanley and Livingstone, Dr Livingstone, I presume? is a puzzle game immersed in the scenery of an African house, in which a whole series of puzzles try to prevent you from finding your missing friend. The difficulty level of the puzzles increases as the game progresses - the last room in the game is already quite demanding. Great music, it's very nice to listen to it even after playing the game. The graphics are very atmospheric - I have not seen any other production in a similar style, so it stands out from other games of this type. Walking as in a standard FPP is pleasant, you can immerse yourself in the game more.

The game has good puzzles, and a fun theme, but the controls are SO finicky and janky that it's just not worth playing, even if it were free. It would've been easy for the developers to fix, just let rotation be controlled with the keyboard instead of the mouse. As it is, this game is 25% solving puzzles, and 75% fighting the controls. Turning a key is half the game and this mechanic is completely broken.

The music & environment in this game are good and makes it very immersive. Unfortunately, that's about it for the good points. The game takes it a bit too far when 99% of the shelves and drawers you can open are filled with things that look like you could interact with, but can't. However, you do have to scan like crazy in the 1% of times to find a missing object, which makes the overall experience extremely frustrating. The story is also very boring and I could not care for either character, especially when I had to complete the game twice when I missed examining a single item on my first playthrough.

There are some fun puzzles here and there, but generally I found myself underwhelmed and annoyed. I especially found the controls to be frustrating--I've played plenty of escape room type games using a trackpad just fine, but it felt very tedious here. Performance is not great for how the game looks, and there were persistent issues with texture filtering that made things quite ugly at random (perhaps related to alt-tabbing in and out of the game?) unless I went and switched texture quality in the settings. Honestly don't think I can recommend even at the $1 price point I got it at. Just go replay The Room or something.

Poor controls, bad audio and visuals. It just isn't an enjoyable puzzle game. Controls are just a pain to deal with and involve the same mundane exaggerated mouse movements over and over again like cranking a wheel by moving your mouse from one side of your screen to the other a few dozen times because looks like it should work on screen doesn't, or you'll be sliding your mouse pointlessly in one direction several times to undo one of multiple screws. Really could have used some better control mechanics. The visual design isn't great with dust needlessly in your face constantly during the game and everything blending in with no good indicator that something can be picked up. There's puzzles like book shelfs with numbered books to pull in a specific order...but also more than a dozen books also numbered that are just there for decoration and just happen to also be numbered the same way, poor visual design choices like that hinder the game. Lastly the audio design isn't great, but you'll be forced to stick with it anyways, there's tone based puzzles on a non-linear scale with the bird chirping and having to pluck an instrument to it. They sound nothing alike and there's just no feedback or anything to work off of which really put this game in the do not finish list.

i want to like this game more than i do. the writing is good. the visuals are gorgeous. the music is amazing. there's passion poured into every nook and cranny, and it shows. which is why it's such a shame that the gameplay features some of the most frustratingly obtuse puzzles i've ever seen in an escape room game. it's not that they're difficult-- most of them aren't. it's just that finding the items you need to complete them is nearly impossible, because there is little to no distinguishing between an object you can add to your inventory and a background prop. some things are placed so that they clearly contrast with the environment, but most are obscured by either their lighting or their similarity to surrounding props. on a few occasions, a few key objects don't even spawn until you complete an entirely unrelated task, which i found out the hard way in an early area that had me convinced i was losing my mind for twenty minutes. this doesn't just apply to items, though. there's a particular puzzle towards the middle of the game that involves you [spoiler]activating a sequence of books on a bookshelf[/spoiler] to access something you need to progress. [b]there is no way of knowing this puzzle exists[/b] unless you have the eyesight of a hawk and notice by chance that [spoiler]five specific books among the hundreds have tiny roman numerals on their spines[/spoiler]. the game gives you hints after each puzzle, but they're either incredibly vague or just telling you what you already know. i get the appeal to player immersion, but if you want your puzzle game to be engaging, you need your players to know where the puzzles are in the first place. and even when you find the item you need and the puzzle it goes to, the game gives you no indication of which parts you actually need to interact with. you'll find yourself running the mouse across the entire screen just to find where to place an item, and then rearranging things endlessly-- not realizing you already had the solution the first time, and just needed to confirm it by clicking the tiny button you mistook for a dead pixel. if they just did a patch that added highlights to items and objectives, i would vouch for this game in a heartbeat. but as it stands, it's an experience that's pretty tedious at best and completely sanity-draining at worst. with that said, i'm still giving it a thumbs up because of how close it is to being genuinely good. hopefully, those who read this can go into it with these things in mind, and maybe enjoy their time with it more than i did.

[i]The controls made me sick. The mouse feels hard to handle. And I don't understand which part is defined the Reversed Escape Room?[/i] As for the puzzles, some are pretty straightforward and easy, but others feel clunky or overly complicated. You might even need to take screenshots just to remember patterns or figure out how to assemble puzzles. Again, solving them feels more annoying because of the control issues. That said, the story does have a nice emotional touch at the end. It tells a heartfelt tale about the friendship between two men. [i]I wouldn’t pay full price for this one, but if it’s on sale and you enjoy narrative puzzle games, perhaps you want to give it a try.[/i]

The controls are awful, even when i maxed out the mouse sensitivity it still felt very slow and sluggish.

Krótko - na wyprzedaży, za niecałe 10 zł - brać. W standardowej cenie, około 60 zł, to już trzeba rozważyć, bo w takiej kwocie można kupić przygodówki IMHO znacznie lepsze. Co prawda wystawiam ocenę pozytywną (niestety, nie da się neutralnej), ale gra ma szereg mankamentów, z których najpoważniejszym jest sterowanie. Samo poruszanie się i rozglądanie jest zrealizowane w miarę OK, jednak już otwieranie drzwi, szafek i używanie przedmiotów może przysporzyć nerwów, i to mimo "tutoriala", którego nie da się pominąć. Podobnie z mechaniką zagadek - szczerze mówiąc szereg z nich rozwiązałem przypadkiem, dopiero próbując zrozumieć, co mam właściwie zrobić. System podpowiedzi także mnie nie zachwycił, zwłaszcza że się w jednym rozdziale z automatu aktywował i w dzienniku opisał coś, co się jeszcze nie wydarzyło, a gdy się już "wydarzać" zaczęło - to i tak odbyło się inaczej niż opisano. Ostatnie zastrzeżenie mam do fabuły - wszystko to ciekawie podano, historia jest wciągająca, jednak to fikcja, nie mająca nic wspólnego z rzeczywistością, i mnie akurat to razi w odniesieniu do postaci historycznych.

[h2] Містить спойлер! [/h2] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3644816327 Мій друже, отримав твій лист, І він мене не на жарт стурбував. Колись шукав тебе як авантюрист, А зараз двері в твій дім відмикав. В цьому африканському домі Віє затишком і сонячним теплом. І пилинки кругом невагомі Танцюють в порожніх кімнатах гуртом. Друже мій, чому ти не дома? Чому гармидер такий тут і там? Дивлюсь, що навіть стрілка годинникова Піддалася нашим рокам… У кожній кімнаті спогади, спогади… І на кухні стоїть чан запашний на плиті; Страва за нашим рецептом, як тут устояти? Тобі все хотілося пізнати в цій чужині. Рухаюсь далі, з кімнати в кімнату, Знаходжу ключі до кожних дверей. Це щоб до всього мати такого таланту?.. Та й дім твій немов маленький музей. Нотатки й ключ тримаю в руках тремтячих. Остання кімната, стільки пам’ятних речей… Друже, ти дійсно один з кращих, Кого будь-коли знав я з людей. Зібрав до купи писанину. І серце моє наповнив сум… Штовхаю двері всередину: ⁃ Dr. Livingstone, I presume? [spoiler]https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3644817322 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3644816718 [/spoiler]