Mirages of Winter

Mirages of Winter is a slow-paced point-and-click game incorporating Chinese scenery and Chinese mythology. You explore four islands, each associated with a particular element, season and mythical creature. There is little in terms of a story or goal; the game is more about the experience. PROS: I’m honestly quite torn about this game. On the one hand, the art is gorgeous. Everything is made of Chinese watercolours that are minimalist yet vivid. The game uses elements of Chinese mythology creatively. Every object reacts with visual and sound effects when you click on it. Some of the puzzles are very cute and enjoyable. CONS: On the other hand, you have to be in the right mood and have the right amount of patience to enjoy this game. It takes a long time to do anything, and you often have to repeat the same actions over and over. Every little action triggers a cutscene or line of dialogue, adding extra time onto everything you do. You have to be relaxed and willing to take things slow. It frustrated me after a while, so I didn't finish it. During normal gameplay, you will have to move the entire camera to click on things. During cutscenes and dialogue, you will have to use your cursor. The constant switching between these two modes can make you lose track of your cursor. It is also not always clear what you have to click on and in what sequence, which can be frustrating.

I thought I liked slow-paced games, but holy mother of unskippable cutscenes this one is for the very, very patient. It's certainly something special, so there's some bonus points from me. It looks quite pleasant, and for some of the time that whole "Zen" thing worked for me. The 2.5D effects are really cool. The language felt more or less like a very oversized haiku or something. The puzzles... I think most of them made some kind of sense in retrospect, but often I only got through them by randomly clicking around. A lot of elements of Chinese mythology are used but not explained, so players with previous knowledge might appreciate the game much more. I wanted to adjust mouse sensitivity after starting, but apparently the (few) settings aren't available mid-game. No settings for adjusting volume. There's no manual save, but at least the auto-save seemed decent. You can quit before finishing a chapter without losing progress. You can't quit (or pause) during cutscenes though, and there's a lot of them. Basically a lot of the game is watching things happen very slowly. I bought this game because I was looking for something with spring vibes and that turned out to be rare in games. Most of this one takes place in winter, though spring is a theme throughout. During the second half I felt a bit like a kid going "are we there yet" tbh. Recommended for patient fans of poetry and mythology? * * * If you like chill and story-driven games, check out my curator [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35872486]Peaceful Adventures and Stories[/url]. You're also welcome to join the [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/chilladventures]group[/url].

동양의 겨울 정취를 듬뿍 느낄 수 있는 게임입니다. 프랑스 회사에서 만들었던데 요즘 어린 동양인도 잘 모를 것 같은 먹 갈기나 다도 등을 퍼즐 요소로 활용하는 데서 적잖이 놀랐습니다. 다양한 동양적 문화와 관념을 기본으로, 한시를 연상케 하는 게임 텍스트에, 잘 어우러지는 사운드를 사용한 것도 자연스럽고 좋았습니다. 대금 연주는 한국인이 하셨던데 정말 듣기 좋았어요. 맞춤법이 틀린 부분도 있지만 전반적인 번역도 괜찮습니다. 다만, 이런 훌륭한 알맹이들을 게임으로 풀어내는 데에서는 아쉬움이 너무 컸습니다. 우선 여유가 플레이를 망칠 정도로 과합니다. 차분하고 느긋한 플레이를 추구한다는 건 이해할 수 있지만 정도가 지나치게 느립니다. 일부 연출을 느리게 보여주는 것은 적절할 수 있지만, 상호작용 할 것도 없는 뻔한 과정을 느린 화면으로 보고 있어야 하는 건 고역이었어요. 컷씬과 플레이 영역을 구분 짓지 않거나, 레터박스가 있는데도 플레이가 필요한 식으로 경계가 명확하지 않은 것도 더 답답하게 했습니다. 상호작용에 대한 반응도 굉장히 굼뜨고요. 주요 플레이 방식인 퍼즐도 마음에 들지 않았습니다. 한 화면에서 상호작용 할 요소가 많지는 않아서 금방 해결할 수는 있지만, 어쩌라는 건지 이해하기 힘들게 퍼즐과 독대하는 경우가 많았습니다. 해결한다고 해도 왜 이렇게 해야하는 건지 설득력이 부족합니다. 상식을 기반으로 하지 않는 결과도 많고, 연타하다가 뜬금없는 풀이 과정을 해결해버리는 경우도 많습니다. 퍼즐 풀이는 재미없고 억지스럽지만 시청각 예술의 도움으로 견딜 수 있는 수준이었습니다. 엔딩을 보고 이렇게 반가웠던 적이 없을 만큼, 비추천을 할 정도의 게임 플레이 경험이었습니다. 하지만 그럼에도 엔딩을 보았을 만큼, 한 폭의 수묵화 같은 장면을 연이어 볼 수 있는 것 역시 이 게임에서 얻은 경험이었습니다. 아주아주 느리고 답답하며 퍼즐의 직관성이 떨어진다는 걸 감안하고 플레이 하신다면, 추천하고 싶습니다.

Perfectly simple and simply perfect! You can play this game with only one hand manipulating mouse so you can hold a cup of tea in another.

I wanted to appreciate this game, but I can't. Visually it's beautiful, the chinese ink style is almost unique in video games and it works perfectly. But the gameplay is a disaster. The game seems to hesitate between exploration game and point-and-click, to finish in the second option. Using the 5 chinese elements is a good idea, but really badly used, giving so absurd riddles. Example: I clik on a shellfish, it gives me the metal element, I put this element on the otter, it dives under the water and takes the emerald, which lights the dark cave. It seems the creators didn't playtest a lot the game.

J'ai fait le prologue et le chapitre un au moment de rédiger ce message. Le jeu offre un moment d'évasion, on se croirait dans un archipel plongé dans un rêve à l'ère d'Edo. Les énigmes sont logiques et assez intuitives, l'ambiance sonore est superbe, et le dessin à la main impose vite son style, et on ne peut que s'incliner devant la proposition de voyage que nous offrent les développeurs. Le jeu est doux, on prend son temps, alors ne vous attendez pas à un rythme frénétique, mais le fait de prendre ainsi son temps renforce d'autant plus l'immersion en ce qui me concerne. Je recommande donc ce jeu.

The beauty of the conception is the reason to get the game. Elements of Chinese/Japanese brush art in the scenery, but little action. It's always difficult to figure out what the player is supposed to do to advance the story, however taken an hour or so at a time the game can be rewarding. Sometimes it's not easy to interpret what is being depicted in a somewhat abstract way.

很禅意的游戏，解谜不难，但是没有什么提示，需要自己狠狠点击来摸索 不过整体美术非常艺术、超脱、禅、诗意——不愧是髪国人做的游戏哈 居然未完待续，现在才做完一个岛屿，还有三个岛屿！！ 20多块的话可入。高于30块感觉没必要了。

本来以为这个题材会是国内制作组的作品，没想到是来自法国的工作室，还挺惊喜的。美术风格独特，属于更现代的水墨风，存在一些会影响游玩体验的瑕疵，从解谜难度上来说，并不难，如果脑回路没和制作组对上玩的就会磕绊，根据序章的引导，所有解谜应该是围绕五行相生相克法则进行的，然而某些谜题的设计和五行的关系也没多少。。。官方中文翻译某些表述方式和语序也有点怪。但是总体上来说，瑕不掩瑜，视听观感很好，有中式美学和意境的内核。

[h3]Bring Airsickness Pills[/h3] It's a game ported from iPad where it "might" have worked better in terms of game mechanics as a point and click, but not on PC. Knowing what to click on when some things do not properly fit on screen and are frankly hidden by watercolour smudges, destroys much of an otherwise beautiful looking game. The soundtrack is built using a beautiful instrument the name of which I cannot pronounce, less spell; but it's a Korean daegeum. It does sound very cool. The game is a tad long, because the character moves everywhere with cutscenes, it gets a "lot" boring if you do backtrack. There are very few points where you do have to backtrack luckily. The final cutscene-heavy chapter for example, can take as much as 20 minutes to get through. [h3]Watercolours and Chalk are Fresh[/h3] Unfortunately, as much as I do love watercolour and chalk, the art style fails in a game because when the paper is mostly white there is no backdrop to support the characters and scenery. So everything floats and you find yourself feeling ill with a vertigo like feeling, much like that first time ever you went in an aircraft and looked out of the window. For 2 hours. At one point you across a bridge, which is literally, thin washed out charcoal stripes in mid-air. It's fine until everything moves. You have to find and collect as many scrolls as possible to progress, I think I found enough of them, and they are pretty to look at, although, a bit sparse. [h3]Chinese Culture?[/h3] You can spot some Chinese culture in the art, but I'm not even convinced it is any attempt to share Chinese culture because it's just presented in such an unflattering way. Would love to hear from a native what they thought about the game. Too much weird stuff, with a butterfly the glows brightly and guides a fisherman, and the turtle is just perplexing. [h3]Good Puzzles[/h3] Audio related puzzles abound, so if you are slightly tone deaf, give this game a skip. OK a few of the puzzles are interesting to solve, in fact once you spot the almost invisible clues in the washed-out almost monochrome watercolours, the puzzles themselves are great. A few are easy, so it's hard to tell what audience the game developer was going for originally. But it's all blown away by and I'm going to spoil it here: [spoiler]the aim of the game is to rescue a turtle trapped in a dark cave who repays the favour by flying you to the next island. [/spoiler] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3690212984 As per screenshot you might notice that the game was supposed to have 4 main parts, thankfully the developers only completed one of the parts. Not enough of this game was worth my time, so I would imagine it's not worth yours either. Rather grab one of the pretty looking easy games in amongst these : https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41773079-EmpathyGames/list/90741/