Pendula Swing Episode 1 - Tired and Retired

Einfach wunderschön, kreativ, liebevoll in Szene gesetzt. Es verbindet das traditionelle Rollenspielsetting mit modernen Elementen, wie Homosexualität und interracial marriage, ohne aufgesetzt zu wirken. Vieles ist humorvoll, gleichzeitig kann man auch mit den Charakteren mitfühlen. Technisch ist einiges noch nicht ausgereift, trotzdem habe ich mich aufgrund der zauberhaften Geschichte entschieden, die nächsten Episoden auszuprobieren, ich freue mich drauf!

The setting is very cute and I like the main character a lot... but there's some problems with this game. (I have only played episode 1 though.) First and worst is bugs. Sometimes dialogue boxes will simply appear blank, starting a conversation will skip straight to the end of the conversation and close the dialogue, it's easy to get stuck on terrain, and changes to the inventory sometimes don't happen properly. Other than that, the game was just a little slow and offers FAR more useless lore and dialogue than anyone needs. This isn't that bad though if you like that though, I just made it feel tedious to me.

I really wanted to like Pendula Swing. I bought and played through four episodes, but it just keeps on not quite getting there for me. The setting is nifty. The idea is brilliant. You are a cranky, old and (depending on your dialog choices) racist adventurer who has spent the last couple hundred years holed up in your island home like a hermit. You venture back into society only to find it's advanced a long way without you. Running round with an axe cleaving goblin skulls isn't considered as heroic as it once was. Society is becoming aware of the fact that there is something very wrong with old folk sitting on a mountain of treasure while the young and underprivileged starve in the streets. Great concept! When it was first released the dialog was a bit stilted and didn't come out sounding very natural, but the devs have improved on that a lot. Although the dialog still feels a bit formal and unnecessarily expository at times, i did get the sense that all of the characters are fully developed and have distinct personalities and realistic motivations. It feels like you are walking around in a believable world. However! The game is very, very buggy. I know it's a small team and it's a labor of love, but it's so frustrating to play through. It feels like the developers shot too high by trying to give every character not only dialog but also side quests. You can stack up dozens of side quests, which is cool, but solving some side quests (and advancing the main quest) can block off other side quests, then you get in these weird situations where you promised characters things that the game won't let you deliver on. I suppose it doesn't really matter to leave a bunch of quests dangling, but somehow it affects my enjoyment of the game. It undermines my suspension of disbelief when a character is standing right there but i can't talk to them to let them know that i completed their request (or not). The developers are continually trying to fix these corner cases, but i think they walked themselves in a corner by trying to make it play more like an RPG than an adventure. There might have been more time to make the final product more polished if the focus had been just to build a tightly plotted story with no fail states. On the other hand, i think the intent was to build something more like an RPG, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Anyway, it is a cool idea, and if you would like to have a walk round in an interesting world i'd suggest playing an episode or two. But for the whole thing as a game, i can't really recommend it. There are too many annoying little quirks to make it fun for me. Keen to see what the developers get up to next, though.

I really like this game as a point n click adventure game. The graphics and the music are good, no complaints. But there's a couple issues that stop me from playing a game I desperately want to. First, the loading screens, especially to load a saved game, is way too long. Like up to 10 mins long. I like this enough to try to look past it but there's a bug in the game where the character is stuck in place and the options to look around or move turns into 'walk away' but nothing happens. I would love to recommend this game but I need to be able to actually play it

Edit to add: I love this game but it's still currently very buggy. The devs are onto it with regular patches This is a great game. I'm struck by how inclusive it is - women in leadership positions, people with disabilities and transgender/non-binary people are seamlessly part of the narrative. It's also gently political and provides an important commentary on race. I like how the protagonist slowly comes to the realisation that her great deeds from centuries ago no longer stack up as being so great. I'm having a few issues with bugs and the game crashing - the devs seem on top of fixing things. I'm looking forward to the remaining chapters coming out.

Enteresan bir konsepti harcadıklarını düşünüyorum. Malum zamandageçen bir fantezi hikayesi olarak o dönemin sosyal sıkıntılarını, ırkçılık ve işsizlik krizlerini, karakterimizin yüzlerce yıldır dünyadan uzak yaşamasına istinaden bürokrasiyi kavrayamayışını ve devlet yapısının uydurukluğunu vs. vermeye girişmişler. Ama bunu o kadar çok karakter ve gereksiz etkileşim/diyalog ile yapmışlar ki oyun oynamaktan ziyade sağa sola tıklayıp zaman öldürüyorsunuz gibi görünüyor. Evet, her boku tek tek sorabilmemiz güzel bir özellik ama ben birisinden bir konuda bilgi istediğimde yalnızca gerek hayatta araya sorular serpmek isterim. Bir oyunda soru soruyorsam, cevabın mümkün olan en hızlı ve geniş şekilde bana verilmesidir derdim. Yani, birkaç yüz yıldır kapı komşuluğunu yapan insanın bu özelliğini ona "sen kimdin yaa? Söyler misin?" diyerek öğrenmek nedir arkadaş? Tamam. Etkileşimlerin büyük bir çoğunluğu hikayeyi birkaç ayrı yoldan bitirebilmemiz için eklenmiş. Ama ben zaten şehre girmek için gerekli olabilecek belgeleri yanıma almışken bir de gidip yeni belge çıkartmalı sekansı neden yapayım? O belgeler yanımdaysa, diğer seçeneği kapat ki o yolun başındayken "acaba ucu farklı bir şeye mi çıkacak?" diye düşünerek girip de aynı yere ulaştığını görünce buraya gelip "tavsiye etmiyorum" demeyeyim. İlk episode'yi bitirdim. Fikri sevsem de ne bulmacalarını ne de diğer şeylerini sevdim. Belki bi çocuk olsam zamanımı harcardım buna ama şu şartlar altında ne size ne de kendime önerebiliyorum. Yolları açık olsun. EDİT: Oyun zaten "basit eğlence" diye sınıflandırılmış. Bulmacaların basitliği ve gez-dolaşlı kısmın bu kadar bol keseden olmasını kötü bir özellik olarak göstermemem gerekirdi sanırım. Ama, dediğim gibi. Oyun kötü değil. Sadece ne seveceğim ne de önereceğim bir formda. NOT: Müzikler fişek fişek \m/

Excited about this. It has those Arcanum aesthetics and sorta Shadowrun graphics, But! 1. Dialogue windows are sometimes going far off-screen. 2. Level design is sometimes chaotic - doors to kitchen are hidden and barely findable for example. 3. There is this nonsensical mechanic that when you walk trhrough a rubble of some unpickable objects, such as jars, they will be plunged away from you. But game wise or story wise it has no meaning. 4. The level is super short. which is not bad at all if the next episode wouldnt cost so much (5€ in my region) and the ammount of episodes is quite talling me that it will be no more longer than the prologue. I hate the time spend / price comparisons but in this case the quests were just fetching of items and making dialogs that didnt really required much brain. (But I will give more opinion on the pros later on). So if the developer of this game is still looking for a beta-testers and is willing to hear criticism I really want to be part of it, and help. Just contact me. Now for the pros. 1. The feeling and the music, also the worldbuilding looks really good. 2. Grey situations, if I understood them correctly. Most propably, I gave money to hobo that tricked me into pytiing him. 3. Little detective minigame was a fresh breath of new air on this genre, I wish Shadowrun would have this. 4. The main character is lesbian widow dwarf. Finally something new!

Very delightful game! If you wanted an Ankh-Morpork game, this is it. Funny characters with interesting twists to them. Story is not particularly fanciful, but it's very enjoyable to talk to the different NPCs with their quirks. I had been often surprised by their stories and was never disappointed for taking my time to talk to them. My only big problem with the game are the bugs when skipping dialogue. Some of them do not allow you to take this dialogue option again if you accidentally walk away & one unfortunate bug stuck me in dialogue. Since there is only one save I would just reload into this scene with no option of leaving it. I had to restart the game because of it.