Pneuma: Breath of Life

Projet modeste et bien fini, mais voix du narrateur trop agaçante, peu inspirée ; influences palpables et ensemble trop peu travaillé

Lovely visuals counter-balanced by a rather forced meta-narrative

At first, Pneuma is interesting because it's in the category of something like Stanley Parable or Beginner's Guide, but with door puzzles based on perspective. Other than a few buttons, almost everything is controlled by the direction you are facing, which is a clever mechanic. The narration is an assortment of philosophical musings, well-voiced, and the world shifts around in some surprising ways. The game is okay, but I can see why reviews are mixed. It runs like crap and it's maybe a couple of hours long if you don't see every solution immediately. It's not very difficult and the end isn't satisfying. Apparently you can find some spots on the floor ("secrets"?) for an achievement and solve a couple of secret puzzles on the way to the end. I suppose looking out for those would have added an hour to my play time, but I doubt I'll go back to check. I finished the first half years ago and got distracted. I just came back to it and finished the second half in about an hour.

The best thing you can say about Pneuma: Breath of Life is that it's functional. It's pretty and some of the puzzles are pretty good, playing with the camera controls to make a few interesting challenges. If you're really, really into this kind of game, I might even give the go-ahead to play it. Sadly, as a whole it doesn't quite hold up and mostly turns into an slightly annoying experience. There are a couple of problems that stick out, the most abrasive one being the narrator. The developers clearly went for a Thomas Was Alone or Stanley Parable vibe with it, but what made those games work was cleaver, well-paced writing. Pneuma doesn't have that. Instead, the narrator comes off as an irritating, narcissistic, rambling douche. [spoiler]He talks unendedly about how sentient he is and how it's totally his first time being alive and how the world was just created and HOW DARE YOU CONTROL ME PLAYER OF THIS GAME and...[/spoiler] The game is just not as clever as it thinks it is. Player character agency is an interesting topic, but there are plenty of games that discusses or hints at the same thing without actually yelling at you about it. When what was supposed to be the emotional climax hit I was totally tuned out, and while there were some interesting mechanics in there, the game had lost me long before that point. Another thing was the puzzle design itself. I did say that some puzzles were clever, but they're just so hit and miss. The main mechanics in the game revolves around sight (not perspective), with some gates opening only when you look at something specific for instance. The thing is, the way that it's used is highly questionable sometimes. There are puzzles where you have to manipulate puzzles with the sides of your screen, because of something changing when you look away/look at it again, which sounds good on paper but is finicky in practice. There are puzzles where you have to look up at the roof or down at the floor because you don't want to trigger the sight-mechanic, making you functionally blind. There are puzzles where you might come across the right solution, only for you to run around five more laps because the game vaguely expected you to do something very specific at the tail end of the puzzle. And yet, all of this is not what makes me mad (or most mad, at least). What makes me mad is how the last couple of chapters have the easiest puzzles. It's not even a competition, it's straight up "walk here, look there, now do that another five times", like they ran out of puzzle ideas and just cobbled something together. It made the last section of the game tedious. It has you just looking at a spinning sun dial for 30 seconds, for crying out loud! That's the "solution"! How is that a logical progression of the game? I'm not happy that I played this game. In fact, I knew within a couple of minutes that it would be bad if the narrator kept talking. He did, and it's bad. If you're going to play Pneuma, you might as well play it muted, because the sound design overall isn't exactly stellar either. I wouldn't recommend it, though.

I love it when games aim to enlighten the player, even in the slightest. Instead of throwing them in a pit of levels/worlds, weapons, objectives, competitions, monsters and meaningless stories and creative impressions (implies to most AAA games as well). A game might be a great work of art, but it has so much more value when it makes the player think deeply about the real life, existence, God, reality etc. It makes it so much more meaningful. I liked this game. Even though it was, short, small or simple, It had a satisfying narrative depth, it was seamless and captivating. It reminded me about Talos Principal, which I played just for the sake of its philosophy, but this game is doable without giving you puzzle related OCD/Autism. Puzzles are not that important, certainly not more important than the context in which they appear, but I'm not going to bash too much on Talos Principal since its a favorite. However, in my opinion this game had a better balance between puzzle-solving and story telling. I would like to see more games like this with the aim of enlightening the player, having a go at philosophies such as Advaita Vedanta, Qabalah, Egyptian or even Islamic mysticism etc. Why spend more time doing what we are doing in everyday world? Why not use gaming as a means to elevate our consciousness or to encourage us to seek higher purpose? The only con beside the game feeling a little too short, small or simple, would be that it ran a little slow at times, I've played bigger games on my pc without lagging, maybe engine related? idk

Yıllar sonra hatırlayıp sinirlendiğim ve kendi bulduğum Yani-inşallah-Talos oyun kategorisinin ilk ve yegane oyunudur. Uzak durun anacığım.

This game is enjoyable. I played a majority of this game on LSD however I still had a fun time and completed it all. The secret collectibles and puzzles were a nice touch, it's a relaxing game with a nice vibe, sort of like playing peaceful survival on Minecraft. Very nice :)