The Bench

Пожалуй самое необычное что я видел за последнее время в играх. Простая механика, но в тоже время необычная. И самое главное игра затягивает.

A fun escape room style adventure with an intersting mechanic of pigeon-mancy.

[h1]Retraité et prêt à investiguer sur un énorme complot grâce à son armée de pigeons[/h1] The Bench de Voxel Studios pose une question qu'on s'était jamais posée : c'est quoi, la vie d'un vieux monsieur sur un banc public toute la journée ? Eh bah... C'est beaucoup plus mouvementée que prévu, entre puzzles, objets cachés, une armée de pigeons à ses ordres, et une histoire qui semble dire que ce retraité n'a peut-être pas toujours été un... simple retraité. Ce jeu, c'est une petite pépite. Parcourir les différents bancs à la recherche d'énigmes et d'objectifs à accomplir est un vrai plaisir (j'pensais vraiment pas dire ça un jour tbh), le contenu est fourni, et surtout l'humour marche de zinzin sur moi. Entre faire voler des passants, perturber des pique-niques ou envoyer ses pigeons voler des objets utiles, le jeu ne manque jamais d'idées pour vous faire sourire. L'intégration Twitch mérite une mention à part : elle crée de vraies interactions avec le chat et ajoute une couche de fun supplémentaire, ce qui est toujours appréciable pour ce genre d'expérience. Franchement, rien à redire, c'est le genre de jeu qui vous met de bonne humeur du début à la fin. [b]+ Points positifs :[/b] [list] [*] Univers mignon et attachant, humour qui fonctionne à tous les coups (en tout cas sur moi) [*] Contenu fourni - puzzles, mini-jeux, objets cachés à foison [*] Les pigeons customisables ajoutent une vraie dimension comique, notamment grâce à l'intégration Twitch bien pensée [*] Narration surprenante derrière l'aspect casual [*] Rythme parfait entre relaxation et défi léger [/list] [b]- Points négatifs :[/b] [list] [*] Absolument rien à signaler pour l'instant, expérience sans accroc [/list] [hr] 👉 [b][url=https://www.twitch.tv/NacaratTV]Nacarat[/url][/b] | [b][url=https://indiestogether.carrd.co]Indies Together[/url][/b]

I really, really wanted to love this game after playing the demo. The bugs are frustrating (yes, I've reported them), but even worse is the inconsistency in the in-game logic. What works for one puzzle doesn't work for another. If this game had a hint section for when you're really stuck, I could probably enjoy it but being stuck for hours is frustrating and demoralising. I like the concept of the game, bhttps://store.steampowered.com/app/3183410/The_Bench/#ut so far (just got to the city), the story is very light and the puzzles are too punishing (seriously, why won't the box go down the hole in the 4-bench sewer puzzle??? There just isn't enough of the good parts to outweigh the negatives. Sorry!

Pros: + Beautiful aesthetics + Adorable, highly customizable pigeons + Fun puzzles that never become too cryptic + Light but intriguing narrative + Side activities (newspaper minigames, photographs...) Cons: - Many bugs and glitches - Lacking QoL features (pigeon name toggles, bench directions... ) - Controls often conflict with each other - Flashback scenes can be a bit confusing and hard to follow The Bench is a game I genuinely enjoyed. Its strongest points are the lovely aesthetics and the light yet intriguing narrative. The pigeons are absolutely delightful, and being able to customize them with cosmetics makes each of them feel unique. The puzzles are fun and grow in complexity without ever becoming cryptic. The side activities (like the light puzzles in the newspaper) are also really charming. Unfortunately, the game suffers from a noticeable lack of polish and several bugs. Some QoL improvements would help a lot: for instance, showing the benches’ facing direction on the map to make navigation easier. Towards the end of the game, the screen gets so cluttered with pigeon name tags that I sometimes couldn’t even see a bench, which actually blocked my progress. A toggle for name visibility would be extremely useful. The controls also conflict quite often: more than once I picked up a pigeon while I was trying to throw another one, and one time I even threw a pigeon at an NPC instead of talking to them, sending it past a railing and forcing me to reset the map. Other issues include: - “!” subquest icons reappearing when reloading the game even after the quests are completed. - Flashback scenes being very confusing, with text boxes fixed on models that move between each “slide”, making the story hard to follow. - In the last level, some benches started already unlocked, which misled me into thinking I had to interact with those areas sooner than intended, long before obtaining the B-Link. All in all, the game is a very charming and enjoyable, but it's riddled with small bugs and glitches that undermine the overall experience and may cause some players to lose focus or motivation. It also features Twitch integrations that look fantastic on paper (though I couldn’t try them), and it has huge meme/community potential. If you don't mind minor glitches and bugs, you will love this game. I hope the devs will polish it, though.

Interesting at first, but soon you realize how bad the game really is. Performing acts in the game is just not intuitive. Once you get a feel for it, it's still awkward. And 0MG don't get me started on the pigeon sounds and animations, as well as a very limited sound track that really grate on your nerves after a while. Plenty of bugs throughout this game, even 8 months after launch. Characters and objects can get stuck, forcing you to exit to menu to reset things. Then when you do continue your game, other items you wanted to remain changed (such as hedges trimmed/cut) respawn again. You could perform this to knock the same character down the steps over and over again for all eternity. Not to mention the connect-the-dots games that have rules but then somehow fail to adhere to those rules if you don't proceed the way the developers expected. Also, some stamps are missed permanently, meaning you have to start over if you're trying to get Steam achievements. But that's not the worst aspect of this game... The puzzles are just guessing games to find out what the game wants in order to proceed. Just like rolling dice or throwing darts in the dark, hoping to hit something. They are only casually strung together for their logic, and many seem out of place for the overarching theme. They're not interesting or challenging puzzles, just boring ones without much thought that went into their design. They are relatively easy, but more importantly they're just tedious. Most of the puzzles hold your hand when you hover over things with your cursor to perform actions to continue your progression. What makes me cringe the most about the puzzles is that they don't really have much purpose at all. They're just strung together to make content. And the cutscenes you encounter by clicking on red post boxes (yes, it's a British developer) are lame... really, really lame. No animation, actual series of low quality art along with a poorly written dialog that will make you groan. Not even cute or cozy. It starts with a pair of spies talking to each other. Yeah, the connection will be made later, but it's just so out of place. Throughout the game you'll also encounter spies dressed all in black and some sort of conspiracy wannabe narrative that doesn't even try to be mildly interesting. I'm all for cozy games and indie developers, but The Bench doesn't deliver much at all beyond tedious gameplay. I didn't stop playing because I got bored (although I got bored quickly), but rather I stopped playing because it was just an annoying, tedious romp. Low quality graphics for a game that tries too hard to be cute, cozy, and edgy at the same time, while failing at becoming any of those things.