Pill Baby

Not visually appealing, but don't let that dissuade you. A good indie game with a very sad story of a girl with mental problems who migrates abroad. Feeling alone in a world full of people. A short and not too challenging gaming experience. It certainly deserves more visibility but a slightly lower price. Rating 7/10

If you are under the age of 20, or you are emotionally / mentally stunted, the writing and imagery in this game will seem deep and masterfully presented. If you're an actual adult who has read a book in your life, the writing and conceptual presentation will be hackneyed, immature, and almost painfully unsubtle. If you cry every time you play a generic JRPG or visual novel where the teenage protagonists with stupid hair use the power of friendship to kill god, you will enjoy the story here. All that being said, underneath the bad writing, there is a surprisingly good Beat 'em Up / Platformer here. The enemies are decently varied, the combat controls are responsive, and the upgrades offer a nice variety and sense of progression, all while allowing the player to customize their abilities to better fit their play style. It also isn't very long, so it doesn't overstay its welcome and it isn't a chore for a chronic non-completer like me to finish. Overall, a solid recommend. Well, only of you can get it on sale. Pseudo-emotional drivel like this isn't worth $15 USD. $5 - $8 would be alright.

Pill Baby is a treat. Hiding behind the lo-fi, trashy, Flash aesthetic is a pretty remarkable emotional story that deals with some heavy themes. This hits particularly hard if you, like me, is an immigrant in a country where you feel you don't belong and you're always eager to go back home, despite the lack of opportunities. Combat is regular beat-em-up throroughfare, not super complex. It presents some basic combos but to a certain extent it's button mashing, strategic positioning on the screen and managing your special gauge. There is a nice progression system outside of combat where you have to spend the coins you collect in battle, and you can craft how you want to customize your character - either investing in gear, passives, or skills useful outside battles. Given how limited is your coin arsenal, NG+ becomes a must if you want to 100% the game. It's never too hard but always satisfying. Story-wise is where it hits its punches, aided by some short clips that are visually striking. I thought dialogue was mostly excellent (except for the couples fight), and it's a game that respects your time before getting boring. Considering it was mostly made by two people, it's a testament to what devs with a consistent vision can achieve.

pretty fun beat-em-up, just one quick question about the plot: wtf

A hyper-bizarre, surreal brawler that feels like a fever dream. The combat loop is relatively simple, heavy emphasis on timing your dodges and parries against some incredibly weird enemy designs, but it’s the disturbing, abstract visuals and intense atmosphere that carry the experience. It’s short, experimental, and perfectly captures that niche, late-night indie vibe.

Pill Baby is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. This extraordinarily badly made game is a platformer/brawler/action game that tries (so, so badly) to blend crap gameplay with a "socially important" message about immigration and drug use, because, you know, if you know your game sucks so bad and you don't know how to make games properly, maybe you can win by going edgy and doing social issues??? Right? Please buy my crappy game because I can't get a job as a real game dev? Social issues! Trying to address social issues through the medium of video games is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good. Game developers are not professionals in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this can cause far more harm than good. It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to push political or social agendas. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers. People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware video games attempting to get sales by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here. On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers. The artwork here is terrible, it's all just amateurish "My First Wacom Tablet" style drawings used instead professional looking game assets. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget to arrange someone who can create graphical assets properly, or lack of talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low, enough on its own to deter gamers. While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals. The controls and game handling are notably very clunky and unsmooth here. It's janky and unsatisfying to play... and any experienced gamer will tell you, the handling, responsiveness and general gameplay feel of the control scheme must be well polished for this kind of game to succeed. Unfortunately, this is something the developer seems to have phoned in, with little to no apparent gameplay testing. They dropped the ball on this one. This looks a lot like it was designed for consoles, but released on Steam instead by mistake. While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this never made it to the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 10 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? Pill Baby has the ridiculous, laughable price of $10 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $10 asking price for this game could get you games like "Disco Elysium", "Cities: Skylines" or "Wolfenstein - The New Order". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. This game features a number of suspicious, likely fake positive reviews. The reviews all appear at almost exactly the same time, very shortly after the game launched on Steam, all have a direct Steam purchase of the game, and all have very similar wording and writing style. Immediately after this huge peak of reviews, reviews (and player counts) for the game dropped incredibly sharply. This is highly unusual given the very low quality of the game and poor player counts. The "Positive" review score on this game should be taken with a large grain of salt. This might have been done to deceive/mislead gamers into paying for a bad product. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]

2D Beat 'Em Up style fightin' game where you play as Anna, an immigrant from elsewhere come here to take a job fighting the town's monster menace. Story lines and allegories abound about immigration, addiction, mental health, relationships, etc wrapped up in some pretty competent monster punching action with a good array of power-ups, new moves and new equipment to help you through the action sequences. Between fights is some town exploration and plot but no active choices to make (aside from perhaps ignoring some NPCs). Although the story is told in a single play through, you'll need to New Game+ to finish all the NPC stories and get one or two new scenes. Luckily the game itself isn't very long. Finally there's an Arcade mode to just focus on the monster punching. Artwork is crude but works; I found it somewhat charming but your opinion may vary. Soundtrack is instrumental tracks from a few artists (each represented numerous times). I could see hesitating to spend $10 on a 3-5hr game (inc NG+) but could be a fun time when on sale.

Playing this, I am reminded how much I love combat-centric games where you can press any button in any order and it does something different even if you don't intend for it to. The difference here is you would have to be a bit more up close and personal but that doesn't take away how fun it is to beat up some of my mental problems or the type of people I dislike, like 'antisocial creep'. It may be me but I can never get tired of this type of game, as long as I can see what I'm doing and the enemies aren't too sponging to defeat. This isn't the case here at least on normal difficulty. I'm not one to challenge myself with harder difficulty but if you want there's an option for it if you want to compete with yourself. As for the story, I like how this game discusses problems like awkward relationships, friend betrayal and the survival of keeping your job. All of this is extended especially when our character is an immigrant trying to adapt to another country, learning its language and culture which is an issue you don't commonly see in video games. I'm thankful this game showcases problems people may not think twice about so they can witness the struggles people may have to face with these challenges. When it comes to the gameplay you'll find you would have to make decisions on whether you want to spend your currency earned on completing missions on new stuff that will enable you in combat capability like no combat button press or attack enhancement like adding freeze or damage number to your attacks. Or stuff outside of battles, like taking language classes so you'll be able to understand other NPCs or you won't be able to have a full conversation with them. If you're someone who mostly cares about the combat or you are a story-driven person both of those are possibilities you can take away from this game and feel pleased with the experience to conclude from.

[h1] Pill Baby: A Unique Artistic Representation of Mental Health towards Immigrant Life [/h1] Imagine stepping into the shoes of an immigrant, moving to a small town with its unsettling secrets and strange monsters lurking in the shadows. This is the intriguing premise of "Pill Baby," a game that beautifully entwines the challenges of immigration with a unique, action-packed experience. As Anna, you'll navigate the intricacies of starting anew in a foreign land. The game captures the stresses of making new friends, the pangs of loneliness from leaving your old life behind, and the complexities posed by a language barrier. But Anna's struggles go deeper, delving into the complexities of her job and the medication she relies on, making her journey a captivating, personal one. Reality in "Pill Baby" feels uncertain, as Anna not only faces her daily life challenges but also combats nightmarish creatures in live-action battles. Anna's combat abilities are diverse, allowing you to string together powerful combos and employ elemental attacks with unique gloves. However, the monsters she confronts aren't just random foes; they reflect her inner turmoil and life's challenges, creating a profound connection between gameplay and storytelling. "Pill Baby" is a stylish hack-and-slash game that offers an immersive experience of an immigrant's life. Play as Anna, a newcomer searching for a job in a foreign country. Explore her world, navigate the hurdles she faces, form relationships, and wrestle with the language barrier. The game boasts deep action mechanics with a wide range of movements, combo-based combat, and helpful drone units to assist you in your battles. Custom gloves add extra flair, from freezing foes to poisoning parasites. Upgrades enhance your abilities, and epic boss fights against massive parasites await. As you accompany Anna on her journey, the game masterfully balances storytelling and gameplay. You'll find moments of wit and humor that catch you off guard, and the unexpected twists keep you engaged. The polished sounds and music contribute to the immersive experience, and you'll quickly discover that "Pill Baby" is far more entertaining than trailers may suggest. Without diving into spoilers, the core concept is that you're an immigrant hired to battle monsters. Your work uniform is a pair of powerful gloves, and you take a peculiar pill that unleashes your inner strength. Moments of tension and paranoia are woven into the narrative as you work alongside colleagues who occasionally forget you don't understand their language, creating wonderfully awkward moments. The combat gameplay is engaging, requiring you to observe and adapt to each monster's behavior. Button-mashing won't cut it; you'll need to strategize. The game elegantly handles difficulty, offering bonuses when you face defeat. An array of upgrades allows you to customize your combat style. One minor wish? A bestiary to revisit the amusing names and descriptions of the enemies you encounter. "Pill Baby" is an unexpected gem that defies expectations, delivering an experience that is both thought-provoking and thrilling.

Enteresan bir oyun. İyi anlamda. Oynarken keyif aldım, henüz bitiremedim ama sıkılmadım da. Vakit bulduğumda tekrar oynayacağım. İlginç gelen şey, oyunu oynarken sürekli bir oyun oynamayı bırakıp dönüp bir Hakan Günday romanını tekrar okuma hissi yarattı bende. Sanat tasarımıyla, atmosferiyle, hikayesiyle yada diyaloglarıyla alakalı olabilir, emin değilim. Ama direk olarak bir yazarı anımsatan bir oyun oynamamıştım sanırım daha önce. Yani bir hikayeyi bir romanı değil, direk olarak yazarı. İlginç. Nasıl açıklayacağımı bilemedim.