Horace

War is bad and death is sad. I don't think people rip into the story enough. It's sci-fi shaped with nothing to say. This wouldn't matter if it was the usual brisk and lively fare but this is 10 minutes of slow cutscene of the "this is not qualified to tell me anything" variety per two screens of clumsy platforming. I didn't have much fun.

Horace is simply outstanding. A love letter to both the 8 bit era and platform games in general. It's one of those games that is fun from the outset and incredibly addictive - a rare title where you are either playing it or thinking about when you'll be able to play it next. Although the gameplay is essentially a platform puzzle game (with the odd boss fight thrown in), it shows plenty of originality, with some really fiendish room designs to keep you on your toes. The main character, Horace, is highly agile and pleasingly easy to control. You will die lots - but it's always your fault, not that of the game. It can be frustrating at times, with lots of deaths in the same places, but patience and perseverance will see you progress Set against a surprisingly moving story with plenty of humour which will make you both laugh out loud and groan, this is a must-own title both for retro gaming fans and fans of platform games generally. It does lose a little focus in the middle (the endless trudging around the mansion - an obvious nod to Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy) does become a little tedious, but that's really the only time the pacing sags. Once I bought it, Horace quickly established itself not just as one of my favourite games I've played this year, but one of my favourite games ever - and in a gaming "career" that stretches back to the early 80s, that's some feat!

questo platform è veramente particolare. Ha una storia molto articolata e toccante e una marea di filmati , forse un po lenti e prolissi, ma piacevoli. Ha un sacco di citazioni dalla cultura pop anni 80-90. Come platform è discreto e ha una meccanica interessante di rotazione del mondo. Andando avanti diventa anche tosto ma i checkpoints sono cmq abbastanza ravvicinati. può cmq causare un pò di frustrazione , dipende dall'abilità del giocatore, e cmq se vi bloccate c'è un modo per attivare la console sviluppatore con i cheats. Le musiche sono composte da tracce di musica classica e altre originali, nel complesso davvero ben fatte. E' lungo, ci ho messo 15 ore e avrei gradito che fossero state 10, ma nel complesso l'ho adorato e mi lascerà dei bei ricordi.

At it's best, Horace is a cozy, nostalgic adventure from the perspective of a robot that boots up from a blank state discovering the world around him. It's a linear, story driven, and difficult platformer with a touching narrative. There's lots of creative little moments including lots of star wars references and other pop culture nods which added a lot of charm. The music also deserves a shoutout as the 16 bit classical flavour gives some scenes some real magic! Now the caveat... the platforming and boss battles are mostly fine... but near the last 20-30% , the difficulty spikes past "fun challenge" for me. The game does give you extra shields if you fail enough times, but the system can feel awkward. For example, there were moments where I knew I wanted the extra shield before even attempting the room, so I'd intentionally died enough times just to trigger it. This friction is not worth avoiding the game IMO, but a simple accessibility or quality of life tweaks like a default +1 shield would have massively improved the experience without changing what the game is.

Story is cringe, gameplay felt like a chore.

Story-driven 2D platformer. Certainly charming in terms of story and presentation -- with bit-tune renditions of classical music abound -- but the gameplay itself is ultimately lacking and devolves all too often into frustrating platform challenges. 5/10

[b]Horace[/b] outstays its welcome period. The story seems good at first, but it is too unnecessarily stretched. Some parts of the game are hard to follow, and locking story progression behind forced mini-games is absolutely rubbish. I got genuinely enraged at those times. The close-up camera switches are also one of the worst design choices of this game

A highly enjoyable game that I can't help myself from replaying every year or so. The smooth movement and physics system are what really carry this game, and the story, soundtrack, and visuals aren't slouches either. The biggest problems are permanently missable collectibles and occasional movement jankiness; this jankiness being the most obvious when you obtain the swimming ability in the metroidvania segment of the game. I highly recommend buying the infinite swimtime upgrade as soon as you can, saves a lot of headache for sections like the water boss.

I got pretty bored within the first hour because the game design is pretty horrible. There's far too much backtracking, and levels often slow the gameplay down with things like NPC's that you need to carry making you unable to sprint. The introductory levels teach very little while taking a massive amount of time to run through. Movement and jumping feel fine, but considering how much padding there is it gets quite tedious. It simply has too much fluff. Even after you get the boots - which do give the player something interesting to do - it's still bogged down by unskippable cutscenes that accomplish nothing. I understand not wanting the player to skip the narrative in the narrative platformer, but the entire story is told through a voice-over narrative. There is no show, only tell. A text-to-speech robot explains the entire world to you, detail by excruciating detail. There are no voice actors. The plot is never progressed through gameplay. Do your linear objective -> explain the effect of that objective through an unskippable cutscene -> now here's the next thing -> repeat. Having the story glacially listed off to you by a literal TTS algorithm would be bad enough, but it's made far worse by the lackluster writing. Scenes are overexplained and some of them don't even need to exist. Taking the player out of the game to spend 10 seconds stating the obvious is bad for pacing. With all of that being said, it's abundantly clear that a massive amount of love went into this game. But would I recommend playing it? If you have a tremendous amount of patience (more than me), sure. Go for it. It has some really cool ideas, mechanically and narratively. Those good parts are trapped in a mountain of janky filler, but I'm willing to bet that this game was barely able to come out as-is. The story goes to some truly insane places, and after watching it online I think it's easy to see why it resonates with so many people. It's ambitious, to say the least. Many of the problems that I've pointed out could easily be attributed to a lacking budget. Since you ultimately want to ship your game above all else, you're not going to worry about making every single level air-tight. So what if there's some wasted space? Voice actors are expensive, animation is even more expensive, and the writer really wanted to make space for every single part of the story he had because he wanted to tell all of it. I can respect that. I'd give it a thumbs-down, but I'm just too charmed by how much passion they put into this.

Horace is a very nice and interesting platformer. It can be challenging at times, but it's charming and has an interesting story