Personal Space

Игра 'Personal Space' - это забавная и местами неловкая симуляция социальных взаимодействий на работе. Идея проста: нужно избегать навязчивых коллег, жаждущих поделиться личными историями, и при этом не показаться грубым. Механика уклонения реализована забавно, приходится буквально лавировать между персонажами, используя офисную мебель как укрытие. Сначала это весело, но со временем однообразие миссий начинает утомлять. Спасает чувство юмора разработчиков, заложенное в диалоги и ситуации. Персонажи ярко выражены, каждый со своей причудой, что добавляет игре абсурдности. Графика простенькая, но функциональная, а вот музыкальное сопровождение быстро приедается. В целом, это неплохой тайм-киллер на пару часов, особенно если вам близка тема офисной рутины и нежелательного общения. Рекомендую, если хотите скоротать время с улыбкой, но не ждите глубокого геймплея или сложного сюжета.

[h1]Quick Overview[/h1] A very cute game that clearly had a lot of love poured into it. It isn't long and there isn't a ton of stuff, but what it does have oozes with personality. Upgrade items are everyday things, enemies are clearly not [i]trying[/i] to hurt you, and the flickering hand drawn style makes you think of the short animations people usually use to tell a quick personal story. All of this just being a redundant way to say the game has charm. Soundtrack doesn't hurt it either, its quite good. Not particularly hard if you can find the items that make you smaller. Two of the Unpleasant Sodas make you absolutely tiny so id recommend refreshing and shopping to get those early. Took me about 4 runs to get to the end on normal. I'm used to shmups so the game isn't too difficult by those standards. [h1]Story Mode[/h1] Within the story mode you meet a few different people. While their dialogue can be a tad heavy handed at times, most of it feels like it comes from a genuine place. You won't find the answers to why everyone is the way they are but there's enough there to at least get you to think a bit about it. These conversations also offer a little place to rest between gameplay, which I find pretty funny in retrospect since the premise is that we want to avoid interacting with people. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] The game has a few options for difficulty from normal to "What are you doing." I didn't experiment with all the difficulty options but here's what I did try: At its [b]highest difficulty[/b] enemies and projectiles are much larger and much faster. At least by appearance this feels like what might have been intended as it makes everything fairly uniform in size and stroke width. Projectiles shrink until they disappear while in your personal space which offers the interesting option of using your personal space to delete them or just dodge easier. I find at this difficulty the only thing I found really overwhelming were the enemies that directly chase you. As at your base speed you are only barely faster than them. Mixed with the larger projectiles these rooms could be rough. But that's fine as the difficulty is optional and it still seems doable. At [b]normal difficulty[/b] the game still offers a challenge but if you are familiar with Bullet Hells shouldn't pose much issue. If you are new to the genre, this would offer a pretty good entry point! Everything at this difficulty feels fair, the running enemies are manageable and offer a fun challenge as you have some agency over where they run. Projectiles here are fairly sized and don't move too fast or too slow. All in all this difficulty I would recommend for a pretty relaxing experience. For stuff that isn't unique to difficulty we can talk about the upgrades. Some are more underwhelming than others but overall they all feel pretty good and come up pretty equally. The most powerful upgrades to me seem to be the ones that make you smaller or block projectiles for free. One item makes you much smaller at the cost of a slightly smaller personal space but with how small you can get with it you may not even need it most of the time. There are plenty of options to get health back if you get hit so its pretty forgiving. With the number of stages, about 100+ according to the description, you will run into a decent amount of repeats in story but when I did arcade it felt more varied. This is probably due to each stage having a theme and each theme only having so many rooms. There is a boss fight, I won't spoil it. Its cool and is also chock full of personality. [spoiler]It does get rid of your hud which is fine but you do need to remember how much health you have.[/spoiler] [h1]Criticisms[/h1] Good news here is there isn't a whole lot. [list] [*]Controls are a bit strange and you can't change them (I'd rather have middle mouse be spacebar) [*]Can get a little visually noisy if you have more than one follower (especially at higher difficulties) [*]There isn't any kind of system to help along people who may not be good at bullet hells, mostly just for story mode [*]No checkpoints or options for it like skipping to a chapter [/list] [h1]Closing[/h1] I don't normally write reviews but this game struck a chord for some reason. Felt like a little passion project so I wanted to show my support. Way to go Friendly Fire hope you keep it up.

Really enjoyable game. Love the items and enemies.

I love it!

Really fun to play, but hard to finish. The gameplay is super fun, and the mechanics are quite good. The characters and the artstyle are great too. I would recommend, even if I can't beat it...

good