At the time of this writing, there is only one review. It’s a negative one, and since many people read reviews before making a decision on a game, I suspect it's deferred at least a few purchases. Which, in my opinion, is a shame: I think that The Hour of the Rat is a great game, and I’d like lots of people to experience it. So I’ll try to counterbalance constantcompile’s review with a rebuttal and show a more full picture of the game.
I think the summary of the game and your feelings about it show what a thoughtful reviewer you are. I’d like to say, while I disagree with what you say, I’m impressed with how you’re saying it. I don't mean to devalue any of your points, just provide a second opinion:
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[*] The skid jumping. With this one, I’m at least partially in the same boat as you. Skid jumping is hard. I can’t reliably hit skid jumps, which can be frustrating since they’re an integral part of the progression of the game. But, to me, they feel fair. It’s a tight timing window, but not an unpredictable one.
[*] The double jump item makes the regular jump feel inadequate because the regular jump is inadequate, but that’s by design. The fact that it’s required to get to many areas and that there’s only one of them (and that it can only be used by a few of them) makes routing your run more difficult, which is one of the keys to what makes this game so good. But I’ll cover that later.
[*] Yeah, the platforming is really tough. But falling and recovering just adds to the overall time pressure that keeps the action flowing. If a single run could go on forever, then I’d want to have less punishment for failing a jump, but as it is it amplifies the role that the timer plays in making drastic decisions.
[*] Wait, you can block? Seriously, though, I just thought that you had to evade all of your enemies, ninja style. Which goes to show, I guess, what a minor part of the game it is.
The delay on the sword swing requires you to predict your opponents rather than react to them, which seems to be a big theme with the combat. It’s tough to gauge when to attack. But when you start a swing a few moments before an enemy jumps at you, and it hits, you feel like a psychic.
[*] I assume that you’re talking about the ninja characters, who do move really unpredictably. And it does undercut what feels like a really interesting combat system. I agree with you on this. While these enemies are tough, they are by no means uncounterable, especially by someone who knows what they’re doing. If you time it right, you can turn around and swing your sword as they teleport behind you and slash, letting you kill them.
[*] I can’t really comment on the bugs you’ve mentioned, because they’ve never occurred with me. But that’s to be expected, I guess, because these look like issues with how it interacts with Steam and the majority of my playtime is on the Itch release.[/list]
The game is rough. You’ve acknowledged why (it being developed so quickly and by a single person) but you still compare it to The Messenger, a game with 2 years of development time and a team of 16 people. But, more than miscalculating how good a game of this scope should be, you miss the point of what it tries to accomplish.
Sokpop’s games are weird, rough, and experimental. They exist almost as toys, a short idea explored fully. Just like you wouldn’t criticize a jam game for being unfinished, you shouldn’t criticize a Sokpop game for being a little rough around the edges. They fulfill their purpose as a small entry in a large anthology.
Before I end my rebuttal, I’d like to tack on what I have to say about the game independently from your opinion. After this, I’m not going to have enough material to write a full review of my own, so this seemed like the best way to say what I wanted to say. The combat in Hour of the Rat is, like, okay. The platforming is solid, but it can feel fiddly at times. Where it really shines isn’t in the skill, but the strategy. Each of your 3 ninjas has distinct abilities that allow (or prevent) them from reaching certain places and doing certain things, so much of the game is figuring out how you need to use your ninjas to clear a path for your other ninjas to clear a path for - well, I think you get my point.
At its best, it feels like a huge puzzle box, waiting for you to get your grubby fingers all over it, to turn it around and upside down and figure out how it works before finally cracking it open. It’s an interesting side of games that’s rarely explored so concisely, and for simply doing that, I would 100% recommend Hour of the Rat for the three dollars that it’s priced at
