I was really disappointed by this game's writing. :(
First, some positives:
The art is great; no complaints. It's a rough-around-the-edges style which is expressive, funny, and animates well. The character design in particular is strong. Murphy is an incredibly charming design, and on a visual level, I can totally see why he steals the show.
I also have no issue with the game having little interactivity -- I like visual novels.
The music also slaps, being catchy and nailing the sound of retro RPGs.
Finally, there are some great visual gags, like the opening song (notice the little sign from the title screen visible--that made me LOL!) There are also a few funny things you can see depending on the choices you make, which is a great touch. (Try backtracking all the way to the main tree after the first battle.)
SPOILERS below!
[spoiler]
My main issues are that the game's story feels underdeveloped, it fails to "show, don't tell", and it ends very poorly.
Based on the trailer and promo material, I thought this was going to be a fun, light-hearted adventure with Potential Man and Murphy as they explore different environments and confront wacky characters together, all while Potential Man learns valuable things about himself and his place in the world.
It seems to take inspiration from games like Undertale, but in practice, it fails to offer meaningful choices even though the mechanics are begging for them.
The game I got felt like it was all skin and bones. I'm ALL for developers making short, un-padded games with limited scope! But the few characters and ideas we saw could have been used better. Murphy's friends are hardly anywhere to be found, and we never get to see most of his friend conflicts be resolved or even witness the whole truth ourselves. Murphy just *tells* us everything, and we're never sure exactly how much of an unreliable narrator he is. I wanted to SEE his friends interact for myself, see his world, see something--instead of just hearing Murphy mention them in between paragraphs of often boring small talk.
That said, dialogue feels natural and the characters have consistent, distinct voices and strong personalities, which is great. It does tend to be a bit long-winded even when nothing interesting is happening. For instance, Murphy takes his sweet time talking about giving PM a quiz before he actually does it.
Another issue I had was Murphy himself. He's got a strong personality, but the way he's written is a bit weird. When we first meet him, he's an ordinary squirrel gathering nuts for his mate, contrasted against the big, scary humans. Until he starts ranting about social media, college, and animated cartoons, and suddenly...he basically IS a human, on the inside?
Murphy initially plays the role of a squirrel, until the writers want to talk about social media, then that goes out the window. Because the game doesn't take time to explore this in a way that makes sense of it, it feels sloppy.
(Like, do they all have tiny phones? Do they use "big" phones humans drop? Is Murphy the ONLY animal who uses the internet? As is, these questions don't matter, but if the story had more to it, they'd make a difference.)
Murphy's rants also felt preachy and out of place. For example, he gives a long speech about how all cartoons suck now. That one left a bad taste in my mouth, but the problem isn't really the *content* of what he says, it's how unrelated it is to the main story. It's like: what is the theme here? How does this stuff relate to what the game's trying to say...WHAT IS the game even trying to say? I did like some of his rants, but when a game drops (what seems to be) author's opinions into the story so blatantly, it just takes me out of the experience, lending an amateur vibe to the writing that never goes away.
Other times, the game hints that Murphy's worldview may be myopic, sad, and lonely. He's a scared squirrel who lies and criticizes others because he needs to grow as a person. This is interesting, but it's never expanded upon.
The worst moment by far is the game's ending, where PM suddenly becomes incredibly cold toward Murphy, revealing how utterly brainwashed he is by his own "fulfill your potential" mindset. You, as PM, are forced to beat Murphy to death, even as Murphy begs you to give him a second to move out of the way and let PM pass. The battle interface still works, but you're only given one choice: Fight. I scrambled to see if there was a secret button I was missing (the game only tells you the controls once, and I couldn't get a pause menu to appear when pressing Esc). Of course, I found nothing.
I understand the irony of "Potential Man" squandering his potential, but that message just falls flat for me and doesn't feel worth the trouble. The game feels like it's sorely missing an ending where things work out differently, even if not everything turns out happily. As is, the ending battle feels like a bad parody of Undertale except played completely straight. It's a miserable feeling when a game has the appearance of choice but refuses to give players agency. It punishes the player for choices they didn't make with a gloomy, grisly ending, and its reason for doing so is just not good enough for me.
The first time I completed this game, I was upset, but I begrudgingly started it up again, figuring that there must have been some dialogue choice I did "wrong" to receive the bad ending. Now, that would still have been tedious game design if that were the case; the dialogue choices don't feel clear or significant enough to "punish" the player, and the game doesn't seem to have a Skip button or other visual novel comfort features. But the game only has one ending, and I'm not a fan of it.
And that was my experience with Potential Man. I don't want this review to come off as hateful; I think it's very cool the creators decided to make a game and wish them the best on their future games. Also, it's very good to see a small narrative game like this achieve some success on Steam.
There is so much potential here. The story just doesn't fulfill it. That's the point, but if you ask me, that still doesn't make it a good story.
[/spoiler]
One last issue: I played this on Steam Deck running Bazzite using Proton 11.0-2, and the game seemed to consistently stutter throughout. It made dialogue appear choppily but didn't affect the gameplay in a significant way.
