The Nothing

Note: I am going to continue to play The Nothing because I only got the upwards ending in red. I wielded the katana. I plan on doing a few more and even a vanilla run. Now on to the actual review; Double-note; I did not realize that there was obvious intent into naming the Tesseract in the product description. My bad, I am a dongus and got excited. Oh DDD, with your lo-fi monotone deathblare of what I can only assume is the devil turning on his TV, you hardly disappoint. From the beginning, your trailer was a downright sell to me. It reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Motivational Growth. A movie I feel that The Nothing carries a great deal in common with regarding subject matter & the overall tone. So I want to get my interpretation right out of the way. I think The Nothing is a tale of Limbo. I think that what we see between our character jumping into the void than stick around in their day job shows the perfect tone. Death or their Humanity. Do or Die. Humanity, as it is slapped on the side of the tape you will come to know. So with nothing more than a blank expression, a length of pipe & the will to win; it begins. As you enter into this concrete madhouse I have to say it reminds me a lot of Cube. Obvious, I know but the idea of torture, in a cube as we can only progress further into this place and our own psyche is a fun comparison. Right from the start, right from the trailer there is a very key object that keeps getting brought up: The Cube. Within a Cube. A tessarect last I checked. 4th dimensional & ever-changing I think that it makes a very clear statement. At first I thought the obvious interpretation was "We are a drug addict and this is all our horrible trip". The reason I believe that is due to the very nature of the enemies and the environments. Dirty needles, bloody weapons, masks of faces we are familiar with but can't quite place (except the hockey mask obviously). It appears that this VHS has been replayed over and over and over again. Much like how you will die, and die and die again it shows almost a flippant disregard for human life. It shows your struggle in the Nothing is as much as the one the character faces in the day-to-day life they had so they have taken in things and it alters the Realm. You have entered a state of near-Videodrome like aesthetics. The droning, the midi, the ambient clangs, the monsters; all of the design displays a manic fever-dream like quality of life. To me, it all makes perfect sense. So with that let's move on. I want to talk about the gameplay. The Nothing is a sidescrolling whack-em-up. You Have to fight. You cannot escape conflict every time, but you can escape plenty of times with a well-placed dash. This is the core mechanic of the game. You must pick your path, weapon & mask. What you do then affects your playthrough. You can, on occasion, just dodge right out of a room but I will warn you of some stuff later. So it is a little dry as far as gameplay goes, but this is about the journey more than the depth. So it's alright to me. I understand if people get disappointed. Seeing as I have talked about the plot, the gameplay & the aesthetics, I will now talk about the sound. It is what it needs to be. Low dirges of technodeath, midi-chiptunes- This is a very well-made, well-crafted experience of "Lo-Fi Techno-Crunch Hellscape" is what you will be enduring mostly. I myself prefer listening to out of game soundtracks but the music is good & it didn't drive me crazy but I wouldn't mind of having paid .99 for an add on folder to support the devs and use it for campaign ambience. The game also did very well for itself in the visuals. Much like my review on Dead End Road, it hits the feeling of an antiquated, creepy style of game like Silent Hill but DDD Wares's landscapes are entirely their own. It's just the most obvious comparison I can immediately draw aside from Resident Evil. It does well to defy any gripes I have. But the few will be placed below. It accomplishes what it needs to do wholly. Now I will talk about what I do and don't like. I understand I am not entirely objective but I'm not about to lie to you and act like I don't have preference. Visual problems: When killing an enemy on the jump rails, your leg sometimes clips through the bar or railing. When you dash, despite what mask you are currently wearing you will always see the default on your silhouette. Whether that is symbolic or simply an error is unknown to me at this time. Gameplay Problems: This is where the dash problem kicks in. When I finish off a boss in a room, the door at the end does not give me the option to progress. If I enter a certain point by accident, It's done and over in that room whether you get the prize or not. I can understand it, but it felt frustrating to me to be denied my reward so often by accident. I wish I understood what causes Interference to show up at random. Strange phrase that can literally be taken at face value. Interference is interference but I understand that there must be something that is done to activate it in a fight. I died more to it than I did the actual bosses surprisingly. This is partly due, to the fact it is hard to dodge past him. I feel that is a double entendre. Now I will talk about the things I like; *THIS SECTION WILL HAVE SOME TIPS IN IT.* The Everything of it. The whole thing oozes an atmosphere that I genuinely appreciate and will come to love more and more as DDD Wares improves its' craft. I think the trailer was great, I hardly noticed the character was a girl (I think) and I can't tell if that speaks more about the design or how little it impacted the game. I liked the Eyeball Controller in the options menu. It was a good sight gag. Another double entendre. I liked almost all of the mask designs. I liked that the bosses were simple and sometimes the same but not completely. I like the fact that if I blow up any machine or treasure chest (aside from the locker chest) I can get stuff even if I empty it out. I like that there are so many gags like the TV rooms, or the tape rooms or the totally random doodles & fun things you can just see. It adds a touch to the drab world we enter until you get to the later levels. Overall, I severely recommend The Nothing. I really love it and I can't wait to see where DDD goes from here. Is this game for everybody? No. But do I like it? Absolutely.

The game itself seems kinda bit difficult (at least I reach over 3 levels as for now), but I do enjoy the style for the 2D/3D graphic and the way how the game's surrealism look. Awesomely well-done of making a great "1990's-style" game like this one!

Trent Resnor would be proud

I'm surprised to see there is that much positive reviews to be honest and I'm a big fan of Dead End Road. I love The Nothing, it is a visual morbid piece of art, the music is nice and the gameplay is pretty cool too. You kill mobs, loot, manage your inventory, sell the sh*t you don't need, get to the boss and kick his as*. [spoiler] You can even burglarize the store owner and steal his stuff. [/spoiler] That being said the dash is terrible, half the time I use it it won't actually work like it's supposed to even tough I mash the button like a mongoloid. The boss are either way too easy or absolute bullsh*t and I won't even talk about [spoiler] the headless dude with a chainsaw that will sometime invade you alway in the middle of a boss fight [/spoiler] ! You need to push a button to use doors except the doors appearing after each boss, these doors only need you to be in proximity, so if you don't pick up your loot and stay to the right the door will appear on you and you will leave on the spot, leaving all the loot on the floor, that's really bad design. Another thing that annoy me, let's say I open a chest and find some heals in it but my inventory is full, why can't I just use the heals in the chest right away ? The game force me to move an item from my inventory to the chest to move the heal in my possession to use it, that's tedious. I swear I LOVE this game a lot, I'd give it a positive easy only if the dev would : -Balance the boss battles. -Make the dash work like it should (it's the only way to reliably protect yourself btw), bonus if I could dash while jumping like any other platformers like Cuphead. -Make it so that I have to push a button to leave after a boss fight so I stop accidentaly leaving my precious loot behind. -Let met use the consumables in the chest without having to move them, bonus if you let me swap my equiped stuff directly with the better stuff in the chest. Knowing this game got released in 2017, I have no doubt nothing will be done about these problems, which is a shame, because it's a diamond ready to be polished. There is also the problem that the game is pretty obscure so knowing how to get the endings is a pain in the as*, you will waste a lot of time just testing what make a difference and what doesn't. Edit : Got 3 different endings but as it is right now I won't even bother to get all the other ones like I did for Dead End Road. if you was good at Dead End Road you could easily do a perfect run except the rare times a car would spawn in your face at a stop, so at least dying to bulls*it was pretty rare, most of the time you would die because of your mistakes. If you are good at The Nothing, success won't be garanteed since the dash is tr*sh and some boss are terribly balanced, so you will die much more often to bullsh*t, which is incredibly unfun.

Great aesthetic, and soundtrack... artful and considered design.

Very bizarre game, unique aesthetics and visuals. With a few quality of life improvements and a bit more responsive controls this would be a real trip. Still quite a bit of fun, very curious to see where it leads and what the "endings" look like.

I got this game for $1.24 during the Summer Sale. To me, it is worth that price. I have only played it for an hour, but I wanted to get a review up before the sale ends just in case anyone comes across the game's store page like I did. This game is unique. The visual aesthetic is interesting and overall pretty good, even if the graphical quality of the game isn't exactly fantastic. The first few runs in this game were frustrating. As I pushed forward, I began to understand it a bit better and found myself enjoying it more than I think I should have. This game doesn't seem huge, nor does it have a fantastic story. It's a strange game with pretty solid gameplay. Most complaints I might have are about how cryptic the game is, as it gives very little direction. This appears intentional, and it makes things feel even more rewarding when I figure it out. It does seem to say just a tiny bit too little at times. It's a shame that it seems not many people have even heard of this game, because I am glad that I did.

Шиза-жиза. P.S. Нужен саундтрек. Категорически.

This review is mostly for the balsy video. That alone was woprth 5 bucks. The game is pretty fun too. Love the asthetic.

If this ain't painfully underrated, I don't know what is.