I'm afraid that as much as I would like to, I cannot give this game a good review. The first problem was the language. The English felt like an incomplete translation and was riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes as well as occasionally being outright nonsense in various places. What few in character directions were given were vague, and most of the time there was no indication of what to do, where to go, or how to proceed.
I found myself trapped several times due to an inability to perceive a boundary I was able to cross (mostly in the snow of the mountain top). And no less than seven times found myself entirely unable to proceed due to glitches in the game. Inability to break barrels from behind, spawning magically outside a house while the game was inside the house meaning I was unable to move, frozen in the middle of a room for a long inexplicable period of time, trapped by what I can only assume was an invisible barrel or tree of some kind, and several more variations along this theme.
The controls, while simple enough once I got used to using them, were clunky and didn't always work. I found some doors I had to move over multiple times before they would allow me to press E and enter through them. The stick didn't always function to remove a barrel or to shoot my weapon unless I was in a very specific place or facing the right direction, and sometimes did not even work then.
Also the main character moves unbelievably slow. Despite being able to press shift and move him slightly faster in certain parts of the overworld (never inside buildings or certain challenge areas) he was still so slow moving that it made exploring a chore and incredibly painful, especially when I was already having difficulty figuring out where to go next.
There were some good aspects. I found some of the puzzles rather clever. Having to move the multiple shadow Freeks and maneuver them in order to get Freek or Claire into the proper position was a well done puzzle strategy, and I enjoyed that each incarnation of the puzzle made it slightly more challenging and different despite it pretty much all being the same puzzle again and again.
The world itself was interesting to look at. From a design standpoint the town and surrounding areas were fascinating and hinted at many more mysteries and possible puzzles or actions than actually showed up in the game. I found myself searching the landscape hoping for more worldbuilding information that would give me insight to the story because of the interesting way it was set up. The graphics and character design of the game are quite lovely and I enjoyed watching the character interactions.
The Story itself was vastly intriguing, but incredibly difficult to follow do to the problems of what I can only assume is linguistic translation. I finished the relatively short game after several hours wishing that I understood more of what was happening or the fate of my protagonist, or even the nature of the enemies which I had just faced.
I bought this game on sale for a total of $0.50, and it was maybe worth that price. But I'm afraid that It is definitely not worth the full sale price of $2.99, as low as that is. A truly valiant and heroic effort considering the creator made it at no budget, but it falls far too short of a satisfying game.
