Massira

Massira is an adventure with a heart… one that tells a story to build awareness of the plight of those fleeing from war torn countries. You control the character of Numi – a young Syrian girl whose village is invaded by war and whose life changes in a day. She and her grandmother, Yara, attempt to escape. The game creates a sense of tension in the first scenes as you are forced to find an exit from the village without being spotted by soldiers. There are collectibles and some physical mechanics involved in your escape. Upon reaching the border, you are captured and jailed. So far, so good. I navigated the jail while evading the guards and finding the grandmother. Then, the camera angle shifted so that the character, her grandmother, and the guards were no longer visible. This makes a stealthy escape impossible. After many attempts to change my location or camera angle, it became clear that this was a game-breaking situation. I posted a request on the discussion forum for developer or player assistance. I looked on the web and found only one video of gameplay but it did not include a successful escape from this scene. After almost a month, it feels as if Frost Monkey has abandoned both the game and the forum. This is a sad state of affairs, as I would have liked to continue the story of Numi and Yara. Although the game has potential and was engaging, I cannot recommend it. I made it only to the end of the second leg and have barely scratched the surface of the story. However, this is as far as I can travel. If the game is fixed or a solution is received, I will revisit Massira. In the meantime, I’d suggest skipping this title. [quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]Follow [b]IndieGems[/b] if you enjoyed this review and want to see more like it.[/url][/quote]

It may be overlooked due to the low-poly graphics, but this is a decent adventure game with some light puzzles and platforming. The game is an adventure puzzle, which means you’re moving forward while solving environmental puzzles. These involve a mix of platforming and interacting with stuff that help you reach a new place or overcome an obstacle. You mostly control the girl, but some situations force you to play with both characters at the same time. This isn’t that complicated because you simply need to give orders to your grandma. Controls are a bit wonky, but these situations don’t overstay their welcome. Especially because puzzles aren’t hard. Stealth plays a small part at the beginning. Enemies are fair and won’t spot you from across a room, so you need to get closer. However, once within range, they spot you immediately and start coming straight at you. A beating heart sound lets you know that you’ve been spotted. You can’t outrun them because they’re faster than you. Fortunately, you can duck behind a corner or some other hiding spot that will quickly make them forget about you. What I like is that the game doesn’t make you waste time. This means objects stay where you placed them and you won’t have to re-watch cutscenes if you get caught, fall in water, or do something else the will respawn you at a checkpoint. Stages have checkpoints, but there’s no saving during a stage. If you want to save progress, you need to beat an entire stage. Each stage might have a few collectibles, newspapers, and letters. There’s no guessing how many are hidden because the exact number can be seen. Some are rewarded for doing a special action, but most are simply hidden around a corner or somewhere along the main path. They’re not that hard to spot because they are big hovering objects. Each collectible reveals information on the culture and real war events. Nothing can be missed because a stage can be replayed from the main menu. Graphics may be low-poly, but they are still quite good. It looks unique, so it would be a mistake to compare it with the usual asset flips that constantly use the same models. Although stages can feel a bit empty, there are plenty of lovely elements that bring them to life. Some stages even have friendly people. Most don’t have any texture or purpose, but important people are marked with yellow instead of the usual white color. There’s a nice number of stages that take you from Syria to Germany, and at a certain point the game moves down two different paths that lead to two exclusive stages. They soon connect, but it’s still a nice touch. The game can be a bit frustrating due to bugs from the environment. There are some unfortunate places where you may become stuck, such as the sewing room or behind the tall rock you need to climb, although this should not occur if you try anything out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, it punishes those who look for every collectible. You might thing there’s something behind a rock, and get stuck. The game could use an option to respawn at the last checkpoint.

I still remember those days when everyone in my country was afraid of 2015 European Migrant Crisis and It being the start of WW3 and to be honest there was nothing to be worry about after It ended. And I still remember watching trailer for this game on Official Playstation YouTube Channel, I hated this game because I was dumb and kid at the time and I even saw the reviews for this game on Playstation Store. They weren't really good but You shouldn't judge a book by It's cover. It's actually really good game which has pretty wonky controls on controller and since this was Playstation Exclusive There is no Xbox Controller support changing the button icons and sometimes It was pretty hard to control the characters with Xbox Controller, so I used mouse and keyboard instead and I had much better experience. The Story has pretty sad and funny moments at the same. There are multiple endings how you can finish the game. You can either finish the game with grandmother or without her. It depends on player and their choices. A lot of pretty easy puzzles and platforming action with mix of being able to find collectibles, newspapers and letters which spice the game more. I'm really glad I was able to play this game and It was worth it.