Sydney and the Cicadas in "Immanentize"

I want to recommend this. I do. I spent SO much time playing point and clicks back in the flash game days. But it just doesn't feel there. Pros: -Love the flash game vibe -The forest puzzle is very straightforward. Great for a first taste. Cons: -There's no intro into the guitar. Like, it's a bit confusing how it's meant to be used. I think it would have been good during the intro to have a little "Hey, play "this" to make sure you're in tune quick" or something just to cement it into your mind. Cause I got to a point where I had solved pretty much all the puzzles mentally, but for the life of me I had no clue how or where to enter the answers. -Volume. It's on or off. I like the ambiance but the volume itself is too high. If nothing else I'd just like a slider of off, medium, full. -there is no in game/pause menu. So, Alt+F4 it is. -full screen you can see the cut off on the left side of the screen -At the big fretboard looking wall, the bit you uncover goes back to covered if you leave the screen or bring the guitar up -Some spots seem hard to tell where you'll go. The stairs especially. Maybe adding some arrows or cleaning up how they look would help. Maybe just adding a tiny bit of brightness when you hover over the spots? -The main menu lets you just jump to any point in the game without playing them. -B-side is has loud static going through the background noise the entire time and is just frustrating to listen to. I muted before starting it too, but it still played. So yeah. Lots of issues but the biggest one is going to be the guitar. How do you use to to solve anything? I dunno. all of the other puzzles make sense. I can solve them just fine. The moment the guitar is needed, I'm lost. It's like I said above, it would be great if there was some moment at the start where Syd wanted to make sure she was in tune or something. Just so the player knows "Ah, This is how the game has this set up." I'm not expecting hand-holding. But I do wish that for a mechanic you'll use through the whole game, that it had SOME sort of explanation on it's use.

I really liked it, the story and the puzzles are interesting and it has an intriguing mysterious atmosphere. Being a Flash-like point and click with hand-drawn graphics and surreal elements reminded me of the Rusty Lake series, so if you're into that I really recommend trying this game. The one thing I didn't love (other than some technical issues, but nothing major) is that the first chapter imho makes the guitar mechanic look more complicated/difficult than it actually is. I actually opted to skip the chapter (from the menu you can play them in any order) because I couldn't figure out its logic, but then I found out that the guitar puzzles in the rest of the game are much easier and more straightforward. On the developer's Itch page there is more (free) content about the game: a short comic book-like experience and another p&c game, both set after the end of Sydney and the Cicadas. They are both great and give more insight about the plot and characters, so be sure to play them as well.

I spent about 5 minutes and asked for refund