First time player here. I bought this game during the last Halloween sale and tried it before it’s removed. The moment I launched the game, the opening cutscene logo immediately caught my eye: Scholastic.
Wait a second… This looks familiar. Oh no.
Just a few months ago, I was browsing second hand books online and came across the most uncanny/disturbing book covers I’ve ever seen. So disturbing, I can’t forget the publisher's name: Scholastic. It was a vintage series called Animorphs, a kids' series, but each book cover shows a teen gradually transforming into an animal (or back) including a whale, horse, dog, eagle, squid, rat, bat, bumblebee, and even a worm. I was shocked, and curious, but in the end I decided not to buy those $1 books. I never thought I’d end up playing a game tied to this publisher later on.
Honestly, I was worried that a game from 2015 might be hard to play. Surprisingly, it's a friendly game with reasonable puzzles. I didn’t run into any problems until the photo imaging room, which is about 1/3 of the way through. The story is engaging, and the dialogue has some great moments like: “The only thing more permanent than tattoos are stickers. Stick carefully,” and “Having a locker so close to Math is more of a curse than a blessing.” Some lines made me chuckle.
It turns out this game focuses more on telling a solid story than on complex puzzles, avoiding mixing items and trying things on everything when you're stuck. Most of the puzzles are straightforward, one thing that stood out was the sheer number of objects to collect. By the end I had 8 pages of random items I never used after completing the game, and now I think it’s a feature: the game deliberately offers false items. Like in the Mall, you have to create a mannequin with a particular look to attract the evil robot police, allowing you to call the book author. You’ll tend to collect all sorts of women’s dresses, hats and footwear, but only one will actually work. Sure you can just pick the right one, but if you don’t know the answer, you’ll be picking up everything in a new area.
The story is intriguing, with some secrets hidden behind the right item or dialogue choice. The map is just the right size, so backtracking doesn’t feel like a chore. There are a few jump scares, especially around that puppet that escapes from the book, the tree man and gnome got me too, but the best scare comes near the end when you unlock the door in the candy shop. Clicking on the puppet, not knowing it [spoiler]surprises you as you leave the room[/spoiler]? Epic design.
It took me about 4 hours to finish 2 playthroughs, the first one around 3.5 hours, the second to unlock some fun achievements, thanks to the walkthrough guide on PSNProfiles. There were a couple of puzzles that were hard like the one in the photo room requiring a specific waiting time, and the candy shop math problem is annoying, but they weren’t ridiculously hard.
Honestly I wasn’t expecting this game to be this good, I had so much fun.
[u] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43342176-Why-Not-Games/#browse] My curator page[/url][/u]
