Novice developers from Hong Kong were very kind to submit the game to my curator page https://store.steampowered.com/curator/26168615-Video-Games-Art-International/ and ask for my opinion.
I would thank developers with a positive review, but this is more kinda mixed review.
The game is in first person view and allows for free exploration of 3D environments. Incipit of story is very intriguing and original. You're a young girl on probation for a new weird job at MindJob corporation. You're a "forgetter". Your mission is to clear the minds of famous deceased artists! Yes, at MindJob they recycle the minds of geniuses and artists and implant them in children brains! Families pay for their children to be next generation geniuses and artists! But artists and geniuses minds are affected by traumatic memories and deviant behavior, so you have to erase and clean them before the new implant! Do you want your son to be the next Van Gogh but with both the ears, without deviant behavior? Mindjob has the solution for you! :-)
Well, we have a cliché about artists and geniuses here. If you have not some trauma or sufference or deviant behavior, you're not a real artist or genius! However I think developers know very well it is a cliché. This is just a funny and ironic way to approach art and artists in a video game. At MindJob they show you a gallery of artists and geniuses affected by traumatic memories, deviant behavior or which committed sucide, e.g. Alan Turing, Virginia Woolf, Marylin Monroe, etc. “They have a point here” says your avatar! :-) So you accept to clear the messed minds of two Chines artists, a male musician and a female painter. I don't know wether they are real or fictional artists. In the game you can see real artworks from the DSL Collection of real contemporary Chinese artists, but I think the two protagonists are fictional.
You cannot see the body of the characters, you can just listen to the voice of your young female avatar and of the two artists; Chinese or English language, it's your choice. Voice acting and localization are big efforts for an indie production! They deserve appreciation even if the result is not professional; however voices are not bad, the voice of the female artist is quite good. I'm obviously referring to English voices. The young girl receives SMS from her mother you can answer with your smartphone. She is worried that her daughter wants to be an artist and can't find a “real job”! Here we have another funny cliché: artists tend to go hungry, doing art is not a “real job”, you cannot live by art if you're not very successful! The girl tries to reassure her mother that she has now found a “real job”. And her job is to destroy the artistic soul of the artists! Paradoxical and kinda ironic, isn't it? Funny!
When you wear a special headset and enter a weird cabin, you can enter the minds of the artists. They are a real mess! You have to destroy traumatic memories for real! Memories looks like real 3D items and human figures (but not living humans) that you can destroy with your axe! They break in hundreds pieces that you have to collect with a vacuum cleaner! The mechanics are quite good and satisfying. The more you collect, the more the dollars, and the more the chance to get the job!
You can listen to the voices of the artists telling you their dramatic memories. You can understand that they became artists because of such traumatic experiences. So when you destroy their memories, you feel like you're destroying their art! But there is no alternative. If you want to proceed, you have to destroy the memories. I would like the option to proceed even if you don't destroy the memories; artists would thank you and obviously you would lose your job.
Despite this fresh, funny, ironic premise, the game takes itself too seriously. Dialogues are dramatic, serious, monotonous, didactic, boring. They are well written and meaningful, but I would have expected something more sparkling, ironic, funny, in line with the premises; something like the funny dialogues in Portal 2. Even ambient or dramatic music seems to be detached from the premises.
I can respect the developers choice; however, even accepting the more serious and dramatic approach, you're not so much engaged in the story. Artists complain only once about your mission to destroy their memories. You just listen to their plain stories and do always the same actions: destroying and cleaning. It would need flashbacks, visions, cut scenes and animations to underline the most meningful memories; just listen to voices is not compelling at all.
You can admire a few artworks and items once belonged to the artists, but graphics and aesthetics of assets, meshes and environments are too poor.
Many meshes have too few polygons and no or poor textures. Reflections of light, light effects, aerial effects, shapes and colors are not there or not satisfying. You can see that developers are beginners in computer graphics. You have a lot of lagging, tearing, hiccups, glitches (even audio) and low frames rate despite the poor graphics. There are too many penetration bugs, you can see through walls and rocks. The game would need V-Sync option. There are no or too few animations, transient effects are too abrupt. When you clean a zone, it becomes a ugly white rectangle. You can appreciate some textures and environments, e.g. the desert sand, the cave, but they are basic, just acceptable, probably standard free assets. All in all it seems an unfinished product. A game tackling art needs better aesthetics and graphics, a more refined work. It would need even better design and direction.
Even story seems unfinished. The intriguing premises are not brought to maturity. The relationship with your mother remains halfway, suspended, interrupted. You have erased two artistic souls, discovered their traumatic experiences and then? Nothing. There is no real end. Just an abrupt ending text informing that you got the job and made a career in MindJob, or, on the contrary, you have done a bad job and you are destined to live as a poor artist. Depending on wether you use or don't use the vacuum cleaner.
In conclusion, premises and ideas are very good but realization is poor and unfinished. There is too much gap between ambitions and realization, premises and conclusion. All in all it's not bad, I appreciate such initiative, I appreciate developers who dare to go beyond usual ludic approach and try to propose new and alternative experiences. They promote artists of the DSL Collection, this is praiseworthy. I like the topic about art and artists. There is a lot of smartness in this work, but it needs further polishing and job to bring story, graphics, aesthetics and content to maturation, to appropriate realization and ending. Don't give up!
Steam has just thumb up or thumb down, no intermediate choice! So I give thumb up
