So before I jump into this review, I want to give a little bit of context because when I go out of my way to play games with questionable design, I don't expect them to be good in terms of mechanics, but I do want to see the artist execute on his vision without feeling like parts of the game were neglected, rushed, and overlooked. Furthermore, I do feel like the assessment of his 3 games was very polarizing, people that hate his games barely say anything to show their perspective, and people that praise them seemingly ignore a ton of very obvious problems that would ruin any other game. The point of this negative review is not to discourage the developer from trying new things, but I want to see the developer understand his strength and weaknesses, he overshadows the few goods parts of the experience with bloated ideas. For comparison, take another unique game developer like the Rail_Slave, he also does his own thing and makes unorthodox design decisions, and in both cases, these devs face a lot of criticism for making flawed games, but at least with the developer like that I think he knows what he is doing and does it anyway, where in a game like this, you shoved a poor mechanic into a game that did not need it, and then you also implemented it poorly.
Now here is the issue, in my head, I imagine this exact same game as a static adventure where you point&click your way through the scenes, and it works just fine (something like Cotton Game or Rusty Lake adventure, if you get the reference). Instead, what the developer did is feed me a ton of information for a short scene, just to make me do trial and error hotspot puzzles in like 2 seconds - and I know you can get the clues, but most of the time it feels random. So what could have been a beautiful game with unique art, narrative, and escapism, ends up being a game with redundant puzzles that anyone can solve with enough clicks. First of all, I do think you have a bad habit of spamming too many text walls for the scene, you don't need 3 pages to explain something that is already visually obvious, and if you really need to add some lore, make sure it's not a waste of my time. I understand that music is subjective, but why are you using so many upbeat tracks for scenes that have nothing to complement it, this seems like an atmospheric game, use something more appropriate, it's hard to take the text-based narrative seriously when there is a pumping OST almost the entire time.
Don't overthink the design of the game, you have interesting ideas and a unique art style, it would be a lot more enjoyable as a regular static/adventure with point&click puzzles, what is up with 2 seconds scenes that feel so random, what is the point, it's not hard, and they are not exactly intuitive. Also, keep the integrity of the experience by not shoving the tutorial right across the middle of the screen. You should not have to explain to people how point&click mechanics work, if you do, maybe there is something wrong with the design of the puzzles and it needs to be consistent across the game.
[h1] Pros: [/h1]
(+) How do I say it, I find the art style, stimulating. It's unique, it's cool, all the characters are very unusual. As for the story, I would enjoy it more if you were more careful with how much information is given, you giving me too much, too fast.
[h1] Feedback: [/h1]
[u] UI Template [/u] - I really wish you would just stick with the traditional gameplay, just simple point&click puzzles with no weird twists on them. Especially if you do the narrative, having these strange segments with junky interactions feels kinda unnecessary. I mean it's okay to try something different, but if you can't do it properly, do something that works, don't let the story suffer because of that. Also, I don't like that you feel the need to explain the tutorial several times for different puzzles, like why do you even put yourself into that situation, you think the game is better with a wall of text with no connection to the story.
[u] Music [/u] - I am not really giving critique to the music, it's the context in which the music is used. Upbeat songs with nothing to really justify it, like, you really need to work on that immersion, they are so distracting to the mystery that is in front of me.
[u] Story [/u] - you have a tendency to add too much information for the short scene, after I read a huge wall of text it often would not add anything of value. It’s okay to do it during cutscene but when you do puzzles, keep information to the point.
[b] Overall Thoughts: 5/10 [/b]
Like with previous games from this developer, there is something there, I can see it, I can feel it, but for whatever reason, those parts are not given the chance to shine, you add other things that take away from it. You should put more care into the atmosphere and the interactive elements in the game. This is not the lack of effort, you created these problems, and the narrative is not given the chance to be at the center because you pull the attention from it by having clunky puzzle ideas. Don't take it personally, I just like diving into these things. The simple parts of your game work on their own, you don't need to dilute them with strange ideas.
[code]Review by: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]
