reYal

For a 20-30 minute experience, this was one of the more interesting games I've played of late. It's simple and straightforward, but as I progressed I found myself in a rhythm, in an almost meditative state. It's not earthshaking, but it was definitely worth my time and money to experience this lovingly crafted little piece.

A very interesting fun experimental game that gets your brain working! The music works pretty well and sticks with you throughout the game as you progress. Experimental games are such a gem.

While an interesting idea, the fact that the whole challenge comes from the controls being slow and frustrating makes it slow and frustrating to play, so I can't recommend it.

Very small puzzle game with an original idea. It's difficult to explain it without giving too much away, but the game's description "Play as you playing as you to solve the puzzle" is a good way to explain it. As mentioned, the game is very small. If you don't get stuck, it takes about 20 minutes to complete. It feels more like a small experience than a full game, but if you're interested by this type of small and original experimental games, it's pretty good. [quote]For more small indie puzzle games, follow [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/32020206-Indie-Puzzle-Games/]Indie Puzzle Games Curator Page[/url].[/quote]

On with the game! Normally I would make my reviews a more structured, more “primary body, pros/cons section, my final thoughts”. No this game is getting a rambling of thoughts. So I dunno what exactly to say about this. It was an experience, I played a video game. I think this game is a perfect example of the crux of art itself. You may look at a picture that is literally several lines on a piece of paper and find it to be some profound image, I may look at it and say it’s “loss” or just a bunch of lines. This game is art, it is not a puzzle game as several reviewers have pointed out but instead it is a tedium simulator. Midway through the game throws a new mechanic at you that I ended up having to ask a friend on what to do because it made no sense. The problem is, in a regular video game I could have experimented until I figured out the simple solution but in this game at the latest stage, every “move” I had to make was taking 1-2 minutes. So if I had messed up, it would have taken me already more time in a game that feels like it is designed just to take your time. Along with being a good example of art where some may love it others not so much this is a good example of just watch this on YouTube. You will not only get a better experience watching this on YouTube than playing it, but it will eat less of your time. As of me writing this, this is the only complete play through on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaapnJaJxbQ just make sure you watch it on 2x. Yeah it’s in Japanese but honestly this game is all visual and sound anyway, whatever the anime figure in this video is saying matters very little. I’d like to talk about is the ending, there will be no spoilers here but I will say this; developer person if you are reading this then good job… sort of. It’s a neat idea, a neat ending, but I got one thing to say to you; if you honestly expect me to use up that much black ink with today’s ink prices you’re crazy. I would spend more money on ink printing that [i]thing[/i] out then spent on this game. Art sure is cool. Lastly I get way the trailer is the way it is now. Haha get it, you (the person sitting at the computer) are the first person controlling the “alien” which is the second person and so on. To be honest, developer, the trailer for this game is much more cleaver than the printable thing at the end. So yeah I get the deeper meanings behind this game, I just didn’t enjoy the experience so much it ruined any [i]deepness[/i] I was supposed to get from this. This game is the equivalent of standing in an extremely long line to see a new art piece at a museum, but they also force you to walk through these really stuffy corridors, it’s really hot inside the building, the whole experience is awful and if you tough it out, you eventually DO get to see the picture and yeah it is really cool and you “get it” but that doesn’t matter now because it sucked so much to get there.

the controls are easy, then hard, then easy again. there are some very good snakes involved. very empowering to play, it gives you a lot of control over the various actors involved. except the snakes. 13/10

A neat little Inception-esque puzzle box.

Interesting mechanic and cool story.

[b] Disclaimer: The game was offered for free by the developer through Curator Connect. [/b] I'll be honest here: At first, I didn't want to review this game as I recently have gotten lots of weird/bad games through the curator connect and I thought this might be one of them. But then I remembered that I had a lot of wrong ideas about games like Bleed and Momodora and ended up loving them. There was a chance that this title was actually able to surprise me. So I accepted the offer and what I found, I wasn't expecting. If you want detailed explanation of my experience, continue reading or skip to the end for a brief conclusion in form of a TLDR. The main idea of the game is that you have multiple characters to control in separate areas and each character controls the behavior of the character which is in front of them. For example, if you want to move the character in the third area, you have to use the first character to control the character in the second room and get him to control the third character. Then you have to continue doing this to get to the fifth character and ultimately finish the game. This kind of gameplay is unexpected and innovative, but it paves the way for complication and ultimately places itself next to the game's issues. This complication arises from how you control the characters. This is not a problem at first and you can easily manage it. But when you progress in the game, controlling and positioning the characters becomes a nightmare; because in addition to the complicated controls, you have to make sure that your character is facing a button in order to use it. So, when you later find out that you forgot to press up to make the character face the button before attempting to press it, and you have to go through the whole process of positioning them again... it's just irritating & disheartening rather than being challenging & fun. What makes this worse is the fact that the last two characters do not have clearly understandable designs and you can easily mess up. The second issue is that not just the gameplay itself, but everything else is so confusing. The game does not give any kind of information to you. So, it's not clear how you should start to play, how to progress in the game & complete it or even exit from it. Even when you get to the end and think it's all over, you find out that you have to do more to finish it; but you don't know what to do. At this point, you just need one simple mistake or a bit of frustration to lose all hope and abandon the game; which will happen sooner or later and leads us to the third issue. The third issue is that there are no saves. Every time you open the game, a brand new challenge is offered to you and all the progress from the last playthrough is lost. This actually helps with the replayability of the game, but it eliminates the progression as well. Just imagine when you leave the game to give yourself a rest or do something important and then come back for more, just to see that all your progress in gone and you have to do it from the beginning. It's disheartening, isn't it? I commend the developer's efforts to create a unique title. They have created something that has a unique feature to separate itself from other titles. But the problem here is that the game is so vague and also complex to control, that it's really hard to have fun with. And when you cannot have fun with a game, you cannot enjoy playing it. [h1] TL;DR [/h1] reYal uses an unexpected idea to form the gameplay. But unfortunately, it's too vague & confusing and the controls become overly complex later in the game, making it nearly impossible to have fun with.