So this, uh, this Foxus game? It's not good.
I didn't have the highest expectations going in, I was mainly just excited by the thought of getting a game where I could play as a fox. That's something I like a lot, and normally I could overlook flaws in fox-based games because, uh, I really like foxes
Alas, not the case here. Foxus is a very brief, featureless game that purportedly sells itself on "atmosphere". Don't be fooled, though - this is not anywhere up to the level of Abzu or Proteus.
The game's aesthetic is a mixed bag. On the face of it, it's something I really love: bright, blocky colours and less focus on realism. Indeed, the promotional screenshots look pretty appealing. However, once you actually hop into the game (and after it finally loads) you'll realise that there's quite a few inconsistencies. The fox playermodel is the only thing in the game that is expressed in those low-poly blocks, every other character just looks like abandoned assets from some Wii shovelware title. There's a weird contrast between the cartoonish fantasy of the enemies (which don't actually hurt you) and the more realistically designed player model and landscape. This kind of jarring difference isn't really the worst thing, mind you.
That would be the camera and controls. These are awful. The fox does, I suppose, move in a realistic way - with almost tank controls that makes you feel like you're driving it around. This might have been acceptable if it weren't for how loose and inaccurate the keyboard controls are, with each button press twisting you round a solid 45 degrees. You charge randomly around this grassy field, using a fixed-distance jump to try and land on moving targets and it's painful. The pain is only exacerbated by the abysmal camera, which isn't connected to your motion at all. Instead you can freely rotate independent of movement, which means you have to actively follow your fox with the mouse if you want to see where you're going. The camera also stutters awfully, even with mouse smoothing enabled, meaning that you'll want to try and move in a straight line as much as possible to avoid having to turn and look around.
These control issues are Foxus' fundamental flaws. The rest of the game is mediocre Unity gameplay that you might expect from a solo developer, but that could be forgivable if the core of the game, i.e. walking around and looking at things, wasn't such an uncomfortable experience. The dialogue and story (because yes, this game actually has some of that for some reason) is not paticularly important or interesting, with most conversations with the pink Pikachu thing boiling down to: "walk here and get this thing and talk to me again." There's really nothing fulfilling here, folks.
There are a couple of things I can praise, mind you. The soundtrack is nice, borrowing from the Breath Of The Wild school of gentle piano melodies interspersed between nature sound effects. When you're stood still and not looking around, it's almost atmopheric. The fox's animations are also really nice, looking really smooth and realistic; and it feels like more time was spent on animating the player model than was spent on making the rest of the game. It feels like such a waste.
And that brings me back to what ruins this game for me. All the finer details missing, like an interesting story or deeper gameplay, would be completely fine by me if it were just enjoyable to walk around a landscape, being a fox and soaking up the atmosphere. Sadly what little charm this game has is occluded by its clumsy controls and almost-nauseating camera. 2/10
