Jacob

Checked out the game because it was named after me Was boring, repetitive and not fun at all 5/7 would play me simulator again In all seriousness though, I get the impression that the dev was too focused on the whole concept of 'showing how social inequalities affect the difficulty of your life' and the statistics that back that up. As a result the gameplay itself was terrible. It's an incredibly generic puzzle with no end goal to it other than 'get a big number'. Incidentally in the 2 playthroughs I did I got further on the higher of the difficulty settings and saw very very little difference between the difficulty of the 2, I got 2 and then 6 for the setting, so not right next to each other which kind of negates the point you're trying to get across in the game.

I have a degree in Sociology and I still thought this was an awful concept. The idea is silly, the research is not incorporated in a logical or interesting way and the music and landscapes aren't that great. It's also not fun. So I guess in that sense, it's a bit like Sociology.

I'm gonna put this in short. So yeah, here goes. Pros: - Simple Puzzling - The idea of a game being based on a study is interesting Cons: - The visuals of the game are meant to go for a set theme but it just doesn't look good - The gameplay feels very awkward - Finding pieces can be difficult - The way pieces go together is unintuitive - All of the game's text is a bit word spaghetti-ish to me - The music isn't really very fitting - Has that gross obnoxious art game vibe - The gameplay is repetitive and dull - There's little reason to play repeatedly - The turn time limit makes the gameplay far too conservative - Gameplay is simple but it doesn't benefit from it - Wasted potential (As in the idea of using real life statistics in a game goes to waste) - I can't believe tripe like this gets on the Steam store, free or not - Colour palette looks weird - UI is ♥♥♥♥ Overall rating: 200/5000 Not necessarily offensively bad just completely pointless.

Jacob tries to unite gameplay with a sociologic message: Starting difficulty is randomly picked to match the real-life "starting difficulty" of financially/socially/educationally weak people. Long review short: Without the message, the educational part, Jacob would have been a easy puzzle game. Are you into easy puzzle games? Give it a try. It's not that bad. You get some time to pick randomly arranged ladder pieces, build a ladder and climb it. If you don't manage to get to the end of your construction by the end of the countdown, the part of the ladder you didn't reach will disappear. One such action (pick, build, climb) is a turn, and you have several turns to get as high up as possible. Pros: It's free Once you figure it out, it's not that hard Sound is okay Visuals could be better, but could be worse, too Cons: No tutorial Once you figure it out, it's no longer challenging No replay-value Overall it's not a remarkable game The sociologic message is projected right into your face, however you don't feel it in your heart while playing The prologue deserves its own paragraph The prologue consists of a giant wall of text on a yellow background, explaining the idea behind Jacob (social injustice, privilege, the relation between wealth and more wealth, what kind of studies you can look up if this topic interests you...) It's basically a bunch of information and numbers. I'm fine with that. But why does it have to scroll down on it's own? I tried to scroll up because I wanted to reread something. Tried to scroll down because I'm a fast reader. Takes an eternity to scroll two lines up or down. You can click it away anytime. But if you want people to read your sociologic message and view your game from a sociologic point of view, let them scroll through the text on their own. Also, why is this game called Jacob? Is it a wordplay based on Jacob's ladders? Or is it because poverty could happen to anyone, even to guys called Jacob? Or is it empirically proven that Jacobs are poorer than the average Michael? That's the real mystery here.

No, don't get it. A waste of time and electricity (my laptop doesnt run on air you know?!). I can credit Steam user Raptorok4 for that bit of wisdom. In all seriousness, Jacob does have a nice story with simple yet appealing graphics. It's just a shame that an acid-burnt ramen noodle on hunger strike is thicker than this sorry excuse for entertainment's "gameplay". The whole "ludo" consists mainly of building ladders and avoiding clouds. You can't physically move the character and there isn't a "point B" so it essensially comes down to going as high as you can. The game feigns challange by adding an extremely unforgiving time limit and moving the different ladder parts after using them which is simply an unnecessary inconvenience. On top of that, the forced in challange doesn't compliment the real challange; I tried to build a ladder up to a cloud but the time limit ran out before I had a chance to finish it. It is a free game so I can't accuse it of being bad but I don't exactly recommend it. This game isn't worth getting for even a joke. It's boring and repetitive and not even laughably bad. I stopped playing after a couple of minutes because I found it so uninteresting. Jacob gets a 2/10.

damn i hate this jacob guy awful

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Jacob. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Jacob's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realise that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Jacob truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Jacob's existential catchphrase "Jacob," which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Duck Duck Zeus's genius wit unfolds itself on their computer screens. What fools.. how I pity them. 😂 And yes, by the way, i DO have a Jacob tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid 😎