Father´s Island

[h1]Introduction[/h1] Father’s Island is an exploitation video game and you better keep that in mind while you’re playing it. In recent years, more and more Steam games have tried to exaggerate certain features found in our society and thus, the exploitation genre has its well deserved niche in gaming, as it does in the film industry. The indie scene makes good use of over-the-top “B-movie” style topics and the game I’m reviewing today was created by Homegrown Games, whose previous projects were Painkiller: Ressurection and Into the Dark: Ultimate Trash Edition. What I found particularly interesting, was the hands-on approach of Homegrown’s CEO and founder, who is taking an active role in his creations, like a video gaming’s equivalent of Ed Wood. [h1]Story [/h1] Back to our game now. Father’s Island starts off in an ambiguous manner yet we are introduced to our vocal protagonist, John Richards. A high school teacher who wants to prove his innocence despite mounting evidence of a robbery commited by him. He travels to an unnamed island that is apparently the last known location of his father and brothers. The place looks deserted, with only a few rabbits and some sheep grazing while being oblivious to our hero's presence. You must explore a fairly vast territory, look for clues about your family’s whereabouts and try to find some peace of mind at last. It won’t be as easy as it might seem at first glance and once again, this being somewhat abstract as well, I feel compelled to warn you that Father’s Island may not contain the amount of action or adventure you’re used to. It is first and foremost, a walking simulator which uses the relatively lengthy journey across the island from one place of interest to another, as the story’s exposition. The intrigue and conclusion will surely upset some players who will be left wanting for more. Keep that in mind, before purchasing this title. [h1]Graphics[/h1] For a game that’s been made entirely with GameGuru assets, Father’s Island doesn’t look too shabby. Sure, it can’t be compared to more complex game engines, but if I didn’t look close enough, I might have mistaken the assets for an early Unity Engine build. Still, it has plenty of custom objects and textures that weren't just copy-pasted from GameGuru's standard package. My biggest gripe is not with the loading times (about 3 minutes of waiting even on a high-end PC) or the textures (which feature a mix of low and high res elements), but with the unstable frame rate. It would fluctuate from 60 to 25 on 4K resolution (it runs in your monitor’s native one, so can’t even lower it through settings) and I find that unacceptable. So I understand where the mixed ratings and reviews are coming from, but the game has redeeming points as well. [h1]Audio[/h1] The soundtrack and voice acting is one such positive note, which tips the scales in favor for Father’s Island. I’ll start with the OST. You can listen to anything from relaxing music that reminded me of Buddha Bar, piano tracks and even a military march. And the voice acting? None other than John J. D1ck (thanks for the censorship, Valve) of Serious Sam fame, among other titles. His deep voice impersonation is just as funny in Father’s Island as in his previous projects. The icing on the cake comes in the form of live action cutscenes featuring the game’s developer himself. Intentionally awkward cinematics which reminded me of Ed Wood starring in his own exploitation movies. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] As for the gameplay, you’ll spend a lot of time going back and forth from one island location to another. No map has been implemented in the final version of the game, so you better keep a close eye on your surroundings and memorize certain landmarks in order to navigate smoothly through this creepy place. Luckly, the annoying loading screen when you’re starting a new game or going back to a previous save file, is the only time you’re gonna encounter it while you’re playing. The relatively large map has no other sections that need separate loading screens, so you’re free to roam in a seemless manner. You will hunt for both clues and keys to access new buildings. The backtracking involved in this title may deter the players lacking sufficient patience. Fortunately for me, years of gameplay grinding in some games have allowed me to view backtracking as a necessary evil, in order to extend an otherwise short trip from point A to B. Nobody likes predictable outcomes though. They shouldn’t, even if they do. Plenty of notes to read and you can always pause and admire the nearly apocalyptic vistas offered by the island’s permanent state of dawn/dusk. Red skies always have a hidden beauty of their own and if the game’s also Cold War-themed, then the scenery could remind players of a sky after a nuclear test. One thing that I really appreciated in Father’s Island, is the inclusion of propaganda material in a tasteful way that offered some much needed insight into the convoluted storyline. Propaganda posters, predominantly from the Cold War era, but also a few from Nazi Germany as well, thrown in for “good measure”. It all screamed of Operation Paperclip. Formerly registered members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party which became “upstanding American citizens” after WW2 since their skills were needed in the upcoming Space & Arms races against the USSR. Yeah, I’m a history buff and proud of it. I go crazy for high-res posters of printed brainwashing, since I shall always find the darker side of advertising (as if the rest is any better) to be fascinating. Sadly, this kind of carefully packaged bulls**t was actually convincing people into hating and killing each other, against all logic or common sense. But that’s the definition of “war” in a nutshell, for you. [h1]Verdict[/h1] It’s a polarizing game to say the least. At the same time, you need to understand that it’s intentionally ambiguous, so it was never intended to be a conventional adventure or walking simulator. It’s affordable, has Trading Cards and you can enjoy it for over three hours. Why so many negative reviews? Sometimes Steam users are a bigger mystery to me than some of the games I get to write about. Nobody’s forcing you to buy this at its full retail price or even during a Sale, but random hate is always free, right? I strongly recommend Father’s Island for fans of the exploitation genre and its many colorful subgenres. [h1]Strong Points[/h1] + Pleasant graphics. + Steam Trading Cards. + Original and twisted storyline. + Great soundtrack and voice acting. [h1]Weak Points[/h1] - No game map or clearly explained set of objectives. - No Steam Achievements. - Major frame rate issues. [b]Rating 65/100[/b] [quote]This review was submitted for [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ImperialReviews]Imperial Reviews[/url] and [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Cubbes]Cubbes[/url].[/quote]

Father's Island is a comedic horror game brought to us by Homegrown Games, the same developer responsible for Into the Dark: Ultimate Trash Edition and Painkiller: Resurrection; don't let the latter fool you due to the franchise name. Before you go any further, be aware that this game is made in GameGuru, and the company's prior two titles are a mangled mess of problems. You play as a man named John Richards, who was framed for armed robbery and assault at a convenience store on Christmas Eve of 2009. He was imprisoned for 5 years after refusing to plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit, despite his face appearing on an evidence tape and his DNA being found all over the crime scene. Right before his release, a priest directed him toward an island off the coast of New England, and said that he'd find all his answers there. To start things off, let me relay that I love B-Grade horror films; the cheesier the script and the more low budget the better, I say. While Father's Island has that corny B-Grade quality and style to it, its attrocious optimization and performance problems are its biggest hindrance. As of writing, the most recent "optimization update" was on September 27, 2016, but the game still runs between 30-45 FPS at best on a GTX 1080 and i7 6700k combo; for non-techies, that's extremely top-o-the-line gear. Also with 16GB of DDR4-3000 RAM and a decent SSD, the title still takes forever to load. These problems could be avoided entirely if the game didn't load its complete, rather large, map all at once in full detail. On top of sub-par performance, I could not get a save file to load properly for me at all. Every time I attempted to load one, I'd wait the 2-3 minutes for the ENTIRE GAME to load again, only to be met with a green screen and subsequently a crash. The music within the title is also jarring, as it splices in and out of different tracks depending on where you're positioned. As well, the overall look of the game has a very dark, high contrast level that just makes it harder to see... and not in a pleasant, scary way. Many of the mechanics can simply be bypassed by climbing hills or skirting around awkwardly placed fences and trees, and generally you'll just be set out to find keys anyway. Weirdly enough it seems that one key fits all in this game, so you'll spend most of your time exploring a rather bland landscape and being taken aback by sudden cutscenes that feature a "live" video of a guy laid over a scene from the game. The voice acting is pretty good in a B-Grade kinda way, and it's reminiscent of POSTAL. I did manage to make it to one ending (out of four) within the half-hour that I spent with Father's Island, but upon loading my save for the third time only to be met with another green screen of doom, I gave up. I thought about revisiting it to try to make it through the story, but quite honestly the performance and technical issues are a complete put-off. No matter how compelling that the story may end up becoming, in good conscience I cannot recommend this game based off of its functionality... or lack thereof. I sincerely doubt we will see it fixed, given the state of Homegrown's prior two titles. [h1]Rating: [b]1.0/5.0[/b] - It's Bad.[/h1] The Horror Network [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/28221963/]Curator[/url] | [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/thehorrornetwork]Group[/url] Click for Gore

Well, I've played through it now, and overall i'm pleased with my purchase. It's not perfect, but then again what game ever is perfect? Are there things I don't like about it? Sure, the lighting isn't what I would choose, it's far too "orangey" and makes many of the entities look grainy to me. It's a little too "open" in parts, there's quite a few areas where you can bye-pass mechanics completely, "oh I need a key do I?" .. "nah i'll climb this hill here instead" .. etc. To me in a story driven game your character needs to be directed by the story and the map a little more, sometimes it's not clear where to go and you can end up going around in circles. The voice acting is a little over acted for my liking, and the Chroma key work just doesn't blend with the game, a video of a real person just seems out of place with the art style of the game in my opinion. My biggest bug-bear is the keys, keys, keys scenario, I see it a lot with indie games, the developers get it stuck in their head that every door needs a key that you have to find, many of the keys could be replaced with a variety of simple puzzles, the "key" here is variation, nobody likes doing the same thing over and over and to be honest I found myself saying "oh don't tell me, I need another key!". But none of that detracts from the fact that it is a good game, and when you factor in the software used to make it, a very good game indeed. You can tell that Ertlov has put his heart into the work behind the scenes, the story is very creative, the placement of objects and terrain is very well done, and it's obvious a lot of care and attention to detail has been made here. So, in short: While I feel that the lighting downgrades the look a little, and it could do with a few invisible walls and such to guide the players around, as well as more variation to the puzzles (ie less keys), I still find it a very pleasant, and to be frank impressive game, it's a thumbs up from me!

Fancy getting terribly, hopelessly lost in a semi-open world GameGuru map? In a "horror" game with virtually no horror in it? Come on, you know you want it... Not that long ago I actually found myself giving a [i]positive[/i] review to a game made with the infamous GameGuru engine; a game entitled Hunted: One Step Too Far. This was a momentous occasion, as every other GG product I'd endured up to that point was utterly effortless, bottom-of-the-barrel dreck. This game - as well as my own tentative dabblings in the engine since - convinced me that halfway-decent products [i]could[/i] be developed on this engine, after all. I heard rumours of [i]another[/i] GameGuru game that wasn't so bad. That game was Father's Island. It is with a slightly heavy heart, then, that I announce that I cannot, in all good conscience, give this game a thumb-up also; but I do want to commend the dev for making what is easily the [i]second[/i]-best GameGuru product I have ever played. Alas, all that effort may have been in vain, as it's a misguided effort at best... Thrift store Snake Plissken gets released from prison and returns to the island where he grew up, to slowly regain memories of what happened there so long ago. So what [i]did[/i] happen in that murky past? Well...not that much, really. And what's on the island now? Just some buildings, a whole lot of trees, and the occasional spot of pretty scenery. That's right: it's a WALKING SIMULATOR. Made with GAMEGURU. Again, my hat's off to the dev for the sheer, crazy [i]ambition[/i] of trying to pull off such a feat. Ultimately, this is a game of interest only to those who are fascinated by GameGuru and its dubious legacy...which is probably myself and about six other people. Taken as a "tech demo" of a much-maligned gaming engine, this is quite the accomplishment. But as a video game, it's teeth-grittingly painful. I came very, very close to the end, then gave up and watched the not-so-epic climax on YouTube. I deserve a medal, really. Curiously enough, a Father's Island 2.0 version has just been announced, so I can't deny that I'm intrigued. Will Homegrown Games pull off the impossible and make this a [i]passable[/i] open world-ish GameGuru game, after all? Stay tuned, fight fans... Verdict: 4/10 (close, but no cigar I'm afraid)! (PS If you enjoyed this review, feel free to check out my two Curator pages: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9284586-ReviewsJustfortheHELLofit/ http://store.steampowered.com/curator/10868048-Truly-Horrible-Horror-Games/?appid=398210 Cheers!)

First the game really need an extra minute to load the world but the world is so big, there has bin a lot of hours of work to map this if you like to just to explore and look around then this is not a bad game for it the acting in the videos in game gives it some extra curiousity to explore the island a bit further https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3bx_EKuqZ4

Things you can do with $5. You can enjoy a Big Mac and still have enough money left for a small soda. You can rent a couple of movies from Redbox. You can go to the dollar store and buy 5 items. You can go to Goodwill and buy some underwear and socks, or you can light $5 on fire. All of which will be more fun than playing Father's Island. Without a doubt, Father's Island is one of the worse games of all time. I'd rather play Atari 2600's E.T. I've played some bad games in my time but this one takes the cake. Pros: “I'll let you know if I ever come up with one” Cons: Poorly optimized Extremely buggy Transparent story-line Incredibly long load times Missing textures Overlapping textures There are (at times) two narrators speaking at the same time The summary lies about the game The lack of polishing There were several times where the ground just disappeared, making it impossible to proceed. Even the water was gone. The only two things that were left were the trees and the buildings, and the buildings are carbon copies of each other. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=858089322 The write up said that there are “hundreds of buildings, structures and relics, wildlife and strange machinery.“ More like 3 or 4 buildings, structures. etc. everything else is cut and paste. Even if all of the buildings were different and unique, there are at tops, 3 or 4 dozen in all. Wildlife? Bunnies, sheep, and birds... that's it and they move like robots. More than once, I loaded a game and waited and waited and waited until... a green screen. I had to shut down my computer and restart. If you load the same saved game... green screen again. You have to load a different saved game, if you don't have one, you'll have to start over. When the game did run, the graphics were unimpressive. You can see the mountains, and other items, being built in the background as you walk (Poorly optimized). If you go up into the mountain, (which you'll have to do at some point) there must some magically curse on this area because the vegetation floats in mid air... or is it the amateur that made this crappy game? I vote for the latter. Also, what the hell is up with the blood red sky? It's hard to look at after awhile. You must find several keys in order to proceed through the game, but there is no indication where they are so you'll be pixel hunting too, oh joy. “Seriously, are there any good points to this game?” (*Theme to Jeopardy starts playing*) WAIT! There are 4 different endings... all of them suck. [spoiler]You can either commit suicide, abduct a woman and force her to be your wife, find your brother and build an army of monsters, or... I didn't find the last one, I've had enough of this game.[/spoiler] Even if this game were free, it's a waste of time. It really needs to be thrown into the toilet and flushed down to where it belongs, floating around with the rest of the raw sewage.

[h1] Genre [/h1] Ein Story Driven First Person Adventure mit leichten FMV Einlagen [h1] Story [/h1] Wir spielen einen Mann namens John und wir wurden für ein Verbrechen verurteil was wir nicht begangen haben. Die Beweise sprechen aber komplett gegen uns. Es gibt eine Videoaufnahme von uns und auch DNA Spuren am Tatort. Nachdem wir unsere Strafe abgesessen haben, kehren wir aufgrund eines Priesters zu einer uns bekannten Insel zurück und wollen dort Antworten finden und unsere Unschuld beweisen [h1] Gameplay [/h1] Wir laufen frei durch die Open World und erkunden verschiedene Orte. Meist sind es Häuser die wir betreten und dort finden wir entweder einen Gegenstand den wir brauchen (überwiegend Schlüssel) oder Notizen die wir lesen können um mehr Story zu bekommen. Wenn wir an bestimmte Orte eintreffen wird eine FMV Sequenz abgespielt wo ein Mann genannte Vater uns etwas über den jeweiligen Ort und der Vergangenheit erzählt. Was mich gestört hat war, das man keine Map hat, dadurch läuft man teilweise Planlos durch die Gegend und weiß nicht wo man hin läuft. Es gibt insgesamt 4 Endings die man erreichen kann. Die Story ist an sich völlig OK und wird auch gut wieder gegeben. Das Voice Acting ist noch im OK Bereich. Musik ist auch OK [h1] Pro/Contra [/h1] + Story ist völlig OK + Voice Acting ist OK + Musik ist OK + Sammelkarten +/- Leider keine Achievements - Es gibt keine Map also läuft man teilweise Planlos durch die Open World um den nächsten Ort zu finden wo man was machen kann [h1] Fazit [/h1] Ein OK Story Driven First Person Adventure mit einer Open World. Es ist aber auch eben nur das, nicht mehr und nicht weniger. Man muss es nicht gespielt haben aber Negativ würde ich es jetzt auch nicht bewerten. Die Story an sich ist ordentlich aber das man bei der Open World keine Karte zur Verfügung hat ist wiederum sehr nervig. Wenn man es im Sale super Günstig mitnehmen kann, dann ist es völlig OK würde ich sagen 👑 Powered by HoI 4 Deu Curators group in German / English 👑⠀⠀⠀[list][*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/30388691/] Follow Main group [/url][*] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40282064/] Follow Second group [/url][*] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44688798/] Follow third group [/url][/list]

As a Gameguru user myself, I was very excited to play Father's Island. First thing I noticed was the very calm and nice atmosphere. Tons of work have been put into this game. You can see that at every corner. As far as the story goes - it was definitely a surprise. I like the voice of the character and the one liners he throws at you. Some scenes are quite disturbing - all I say is "the sheep" There are multipe endings wich are very different. The cutscenes are pretty interesting and I like them! The Performance has been improved now and I can say I got 25+ fps at least. That's okay for me, because I know that most part of it is engine related. On the other hand, we have a huge island, filled with insane amount of detail. What I noticed as well are the awesome hills and mountains. I know how the engine works, and I was really impressed with the way the mountains are made. Overall, the game looks pretty nice! Definitely keeps me motivated to see more and explore further. At the bottom line, I can say that this game has: - Very nice environment and much detail. - A very cool music system wich I never saw before. It switches dynamicly. The music itself is very nice and calm. - Great atmosphere. It really makes me feel that I am on a huge, lost Island, in the middle of nowhere. - surprisingly deep story. I wasn't expecting much at the beginning, and it turned out to be pretty cool story, that even makes sense! - Only bad thing are the performance issues ( wich have been improved since my last session ), and other technical issues like greenscreen after loading, wich forces you to restart the game and wait another couple of minutes to load. Overall, I totally recommend this game. Take a cup of tea, coffee or like me, a nice hot chocolate and enjoy this game.

Ok, I really wanted to like this game, and I'm guessing that most of the reviews here are made by shemps close to the developer and I can't believe so many people would reccomend this game, but here are some general issues I have with it - - Buggy. Not a surprise for an ameturely made game, but being able to pick up objects through walls? Overlapping dialog? Textures that pop in and out? The game dropping to about 2 fps just because you dared to put your face near green glass? - Terrible writing. It's just...bad. Cheesy. Poorly written. Non-sensical. - Bad acting. So the short video clips that are triggered are poorly acted, but they're actually pretty awesome. As somebody who loved 90s adventure games, which heavily used FMV to propell the narrative, I'm definitely a fan of that part. However, the voiceovers are just awful. I think it may have been the same guy in the FMV videos doing all the voice work, just employing an accent for one and "I just ate glass" for the other. - Awful graphics. I mean, they aren't horrible, but the constant red on brown...the whole game looks like a scab. Trying to find brown keys on brown objects - all the while being blasted with red everything else...I mostly found objects just by happening to get near them and seeing the text about picking it up. - The worst sin of all - it's boring. The story is actually somewhat interesting, but...not a lot happens in the game. You wait forever at the intro loading screen, which wouldn't be much of an issue if...you know...it actually loaded things for you to do. All it does, though, is load a wipe open expanse of nothing. There's no reason to explore. There's nothing to do. I found a key in the game, which opened up a building, and except for a brief voiceover explaining that the building smelled like ♥♥♥♥, there was nothing else to do in there. What was the point of making me find a key to a building that housed absolutely nothing?! Like I said, I really, really wanted to like this game. It gave me somewhat of a FPS version of Harvester vibe and I dug that, but there's just a lot going wrong here that I can't recommend it. Full disclosure, I didn't actually finish the game. I think I got near the end where you have to find your fathers house, but I died in the worlds smallest pond (yes, water = instant death) and didn't want to wait for that initial loading screen just to pick up where I left off. There's something good here. There is a right idea somewhere in this game. It just needs more development, more playtesting and a rewrite. As it is now, take that $2.50 and buy a box of pop tarts. You'll get more enjoyment out of them.

Skip this hot mess. It's basically a nonsensical story about cold war paranoia and secret programs in a walking simulator. The audio overlaps. I got stuck in the geometry. Pop-ins galore. I can understand it's amateur hour, and I do like bad movies, but nah moving this to the abandoned pile. You really just walk randomly trying to get random keys to progress to the next audio snippet or bad video overlay. There are much better choices in the genre - I'd suggest Everybody's Gone To The Rapture instead.