Sephonie

team tasty fish forever

i had a lot of fun going for 100%! Always love when games hide collectables in out of bounds areas.

Honestly not sure who this game is for. Its basically a game where you go around these large environments platforming to do puzzles and scan local creatures. So kind of a ripoff of no mans sky but in a single area. I honestly don't have much positive to say about this game. The story is 10 min long dialogues and still frames that go off about random tangents about places like Bloomington IL and Taiwain, with no way to skip it, so I just tuned out almost immediately. The scanning is a tetris-like, because who doesn't want to play tetris in a platformer......... The platforming is some of the worst I've ever seen in a game, with the single worst wallrunning in history that almost never works how you want it to. Thank god they included accessibility like infinite dashes which eliminate a lot of the frustration from the platforming. Something tells me they included it once they realized how bad the platforming systems were, and this comes from a guy who has basically played almost all major 2d/3d platformers of the last 30 years. The sprinting is awful too, as it jerks the camera and makes you run straight forward and control like a boat with limited ability to turn or move. The camera can be super finnicky and annoying. Most of the game you have no idea where to go as theres no direction, just large caverns with instant death pits and you trying to figure out how to get across. The objective info gives nothing and theres no waypoints. The game is also super ugly in the worst PS1 way possible. Thats about it. Its a platformer with a tedious story, awful platforming mechanics, ugly visuals, and monotonous shoehorned in puzzles. 4/10.

If you're a fan of their other games, yes, but the parkour is a bit wonky.

O primeiro plataforma existencial.

Peak fiction, peak game. Team Tasty Fish for life.

This game makes an effort to do things in a different way to other games. The movement is unique among 3D platformers, focussing less on jumping and more on the unique dash mechanic (or rather set of mechanics). In the hands of a lesser designer, these mechanics could fail to achieve anything interesting, but Sephonie pulls it off with aplomb. All of the platforming mechanics get used in interesting and unexpected ways. Nothing overstays its welcome; every area feels full of fresh and interesting challenges, and every mechanic feels like it is explored to the full, along with its interactions with other mechanics. If you take the time to adjust to the game's unconvential movement, I think you'll find it's refreshing and extremely satisfying. The story is different to anything else I've played, and not just the information explicitly relayed to you. Many games implicitly (and often unintentionally) tell you something by their choice of mechanics, namely combat. Sephonie makes the intentional choice to replace combat with "linking", where you connect with different creatures of the island in order to gain the knowledge to progress. Where an implication of including a combat mechanic might be "violence is necessary for progress and you shouldn't think twice about slaughtering hordes of enemies", the implicit message of the linking mechanic is "making connections is necessary for progress". The explicit story is mostly told through heavy character exposition. We see sequences of images and memories from the characters, building up their internal worlds, thought processes, and feelings very believably. On the levels of prose, concept, and theme, the writing is excellent. The plot (that is, the sequence of events as experienced by the player) is much less satisfying. You can come away with the impression that the bulk of the story happened before the game began, and the whole world-saving escapade you're on is just a little footnote at the end. All that is to say, if you enjoy excellent writing that expresses really cool concepts in really weird and interesting ways, and trusts the audience to piece together meaning from sparse and vague imagery, then you'll certainly like the story. If, on the other hand, you only care about the things that you, the player, do, then you should probably spam through the text boxes. The last thing worth noting is the music, which is similarly unique. I won't go into detail, but it blends countless musical styles excellently, overall pulling off a soundtrack that feels wistful, nostalgic, and sentimental. There's not really anything else like Sephonie. It feels like what you'd get if you mixed a 3D platformer you saw in a dream with the feeling you might get after binge-reading blog posts from oversharing strangers, with a dash of existential dread peppered throughout. If you enjoy 3D platformers, play Sephonie, it's excellent. If you are interested in the future of multimedia storytelling, play Sephonie; you may not agree with everything it does, but you will certainly see something fresh and incredibly creative.

Loved this game. The platform is solid and interesting, if a bit stiff. But the story, music and imagery are awesome.

Really quite fun, and a good length! I liked the minigame more than the parkour platforming, but both are very solid. The final stretch of platforming is quite tough, but doable with enough patience! Music, visuals, and vibe is perfect. I'd say possibly the most writing in any platformer, so if you are looking for a complex story to unpack alongside running and jumping, grab this one!

Unique gameplay that kind of feels like a blend of cinematic platformer with something more traditional. The world and story are exceptional standouts and just being in the world of Sephonie is a delight. Vibes are off the charts, must play for platformer or surreal game fans