FriendShapes

I initially played this on a whim, and after ranting to the friend who shared their library with me I got my own copy. I don't know why this hasn't gained traction, it's so freaking unusual and different. Why isn't this more popular?

A very enjoyable, quite deep. A close friend turned me on to this game. It really deserves more recognition. Plot, style, music, atmosphere are all great. I enjoyed the story. Every time I picked up any papers or notes, they were well worth reading, the characters are unique and well thought out. I enjoyed exploring all dialogue and problem solving what they needed. The only real criticisms I could perhaps mention are the navigation (mostly where the character enters a screen from and the fiddliness of entering some doors) But for such a long, well made game by a single dev, these are very small issues. I can't tell you how much I really loved this game. I highly recommend this to anyone, please give it a try. It is worth it.

[b]"Enjoy this for what it is, don't resent it for what it isn't."[/b] Or something to that effect, is a phrase the game threw at me quite often while I was playing. Almost in defense of itself, as I kept wishing things were handled differently. In spite my failure to enjoy this for what is was, feeling fairly negative during most of my time in the game, I'm still recommending this because there were a handful of superbly crafted moments I feel are worth experiencing. Specially for players who enjoy abstract, surreal, dream-like games full of philosophic ponders about the nature of reality. The highlight of the game was the first run through the 3rd dungeon/digression, SCP (Soft Contained Play). After 2 dungeons all on your own, having a friend to experience the weird encounters with was a breath of fresh air. But what really sold that dungeon was [spoiler]the emotional devastation of losing that friend and the quiet moment you share with their corpse in their memory.[/spoiler] Unfortunately, after that high, you get quite the low. Being told you need to back track through all 3 available dungeons and hope the RNG smiles upon you to find the items you've been requested to seek. I wasn't so lucky and had to back track a dungeon twice for one item. Over all I feel the RNG does nothing to improve the experience, specially as my repeat visits to each dungeon saw me getting a lot of the same text prompts and some repeat encounters instead of pulling from a list of encounters I hadn't seen. Another hitch in the game are the fixed camera angles. While I appreciate the cinema of it and occasionally it's used to great effect, quite often the camera is placed in such a way you can't see yourself or where you need to go. And being at odd angles coupled with camera based movement means that you walk at odd angles, led to a lot of wiggling the DPad around hoping to catch my visage. It also commits the cardinal fixed camera angle sin of flipping the camera 180 degrees, so you walk from left to right, and the next screen you spawn right and need to walk left. Sometimes causing you to wiggle back and forth between locations. That's all annoying enough, but the worst part is probably how difficult it is to line yourself up to an interactable sometimes as the camera based movement causes you to move off grid in these 2D environments. The encounters in the game are hit and miss. Sometimes the text gives you hints about how you should proceed and other times you don't get jack. I really like the encounters that felt like puzzles to solve, and hated the waiting game encounters where it felt like nothing I did was progressing either bar. The lowest low for me was an encounter against multiple enemies in the final dungeon. [spoiler] At this point, the simulation is breaking down, and you've gained a bunch of random commands that don't seem to do anything. Slowly, over many rounds, those commands disappear, which makes you feel like you're progressing. Eventually I was left with no commands and the encounter became a battle between the shapes. I was trapped in a loop for 5-10 minutes where I had no inputs in the encounter. I just had to wait, round after round, line after line, for the enemies to kill themselves.[/spoiler] I almost quit the game to retry thinking the game busted. Minor complaints, but the text is often difficult to read. Sometimes the transparent background wasn't opaque enough to highlight the text. Sometimes it was just a problem of the text being too fine and tiny. Not to mention all the random screen text that comes up. Though even when I could read the text, sometimes it was too fast to get through, and sometimes it was slow and agonizing. There is a setting to change the speed, but I don't feel like it helped the inconsistent text speed. Also curious why the text crawl was automatic sometimes and manual at others. It probably should have just been manual always. Although that led to the issue of sometimes mashing through text I've already read and accidentally making a choice as soon as the choice prompt came up. (But at least that's a common problem in games and not unique to this one.) Also, this might have also been bad RNG, but I felt like when I played the HPS1 demo disc demo, there were a lot more text prompts that led into choices making the digressions more engaging between rooms. In this full version I'd wager I only received 1-2 choices per digression or of the 10 or so stops. All in all, I feel like the game would have been better had it been edited down a bit. Reflecting, out of the 9 hours I spent with the game, I'd say 4 of them were gripping. A lot of my play through felt like I was retreading old ground. The same rooms over and over, samey feeling encounters if not the same encounters, pushing through hoping the pieces will click and the good outweighed the bad for me. [b]That's what frustrates me the most, cause when I was able to enjoy the game for what it was, it was amazing, but I ultimately resent the game for all the moments in between.[/b]

this game is like taking 1000 mg of LSD

It's been a long while since I had played a game that would influence me this much and get me to think about things, whether that would be existential topics that the game brings up or just enjoying the vibe of its world and casually thinking about said world and its characters. It's a type of story that I wouldn't ever believe would have been possible to tell in an engine as simple as RPG Maker. Despite my inexperience with it and what it's capable of when pushed to its limits, I was really impressed to see what it could tell when utilizing its features in such a creative way. For example, the use of abstract 3D environments combined with 2D character sprites, dynamic camera angles of first-person, third-person and even second-person perspectives, the randomized seed feature making every run unique and so much more! Took me a few minutes to get used to the controls but it wasn't too long until I got immersed in the story with its detailed worldbuilding, abstract soundtrack and interesting characters. Highly recommend it

This game is just wow on visuals and sound. The pixelated/psychedelic visuals and haunting soundtrack create an unsettling, dreamlike atmosphere that lingers. It nails the abstract and actually bewilders us in a good way. Experiencing the Digressions I have so far, I never thought I'd enjoy a game based solely on trying to understand my opponent rather than just fight them. So, kudos to the dev for accomplishing that. I was so lost on Huh/Man the first time, I'm surprised I got away from whatever he was. As far as the game itself, it cannot be explained properly and should definitely be experienced. I like the Digressions are procedurally generated. They make playthroughs distinct since different a combination of choices leads to different understandings, and the encounters test our perception and decision-making. The interactions feel like a puzzle, where understanding entities or Shapes is vital for surviving. The fragmented story is nice as it doesn't spoon feed to us an A to B plot. With limited resources and high stakes, it really made me feel like my choices could make or break my character's mental state. There is a minor issue with navigation as camera angles shift, which I assume is to disorient the player, but can make us walk into objects that don't look like they're in the way. Aside from that, there isn't much negative to say about this game. If you don't mind RPG-like, visual novel, roguelike mechanics I highly recommend this game. It's unique games like this that made me interested in indie horror.

this game is so awesome so im making a review now to help the creator PLAY THIS GAME!!!!!!!! its AWESOME

I was recommened this game by a friend and WOW it did not dissapoint I will say the controlls are a bit wacky and i found some areas a bit TOO confusing even for this game (shout out to the one guide for this game) but other than that i enjoyed pretty much everything from the uniqe combat to the wacky characters and the story being told in a way my brain barely comprehends haha I can definately say i am NOT the same person i was 16 hours ago Hope you give it a chance it's SUPER underrated!

Very cool and unique game. Edit: Everything from the basement onward is so crazy. The ending was beautiful.

game is awesome as ♥♥♥♥ but why is Micheart Jinsil so FREAKY? They weren't like that in the demo, caught me so off-guard lmao