The Spy Who Shrunk Me

"The Spy Who Shrunk Me" ist ein Stealth-Spiel in First-Person Perspektive. Wir schreiben das Jahr 1981. Wir sind Audrey Smoothspy. Unsere Agenten-Organisation COMMAND schickt uns in die Sowjetunion, um den erzbösen General Boris B. Bolscotchkovich zu stellen, der ein geheimes Geheimwaffen-Programm leitet und dafür den wahnsinnigen Wissenschaftler und ehemaligen Na*i Ernst E. Eierkopf rekrutiert hat. Was lernen wir daraus? Neben der Tatsache, daß bolschewistische Bösewichte zu Alliterationen neigen, vor allem, daß dieses Spiel sich nicht ernst nimmt. Die Welt wirkt wie eine noch absurdere Version von "No One Lives Forever". Alles ist überzeichnet, klischeebeladen und comichaft. Passenderweise sind Grafik und Animationen auch comichaft, klischeebeladen und überzeichnet. Auch Musik und Sprecher befeuern den stets recht britisch ironischen Humor. Spielmechanisch müssen wir in den recht kleinen Leveln bestimmte Aufgaben erfüllen wie Schlüssel finden und Schalter umlegen und zum Ausgang gelangen ohne von den überall patroullierenden Wachen entdeckt zu werden. Dafür stehen uns spezielle Spezial-Gegenstände zur Verfügung wie etwa eine Bananenschale. Die können wir in den den Laufweg einer Wache werfen, woraufhin sie erstaunlicherweise ausrutscht und erstmal ausgeschaltet ist. Aber auch andere Gadgets wie ein Teleporter oder eine 80er-Jahre Papier 3D-Brille mit roter und blauer Folie, mit der wir überraschenderweise durch Wände sehen können, stehen uns zur Verfügung. Das wohl wichtigste Gerät ist aber die Schrumpfkanone, mit der wir Gegner auf Action-Figur-Größe eindampfen können. Aber nicht nur die. Richten wir die Waffe auf uns, können wir uns auch selber schrumpfen. Dadurch können wir uns viel besser verstecken, aber auch Wege wie Kabelschächte oder Rohre nutzen. Besonders stark ist, neben dem treffenden Humor, die Kreativität, mit der einige Level gebaut sind. So müssen wir zum Beispiel auch geschrumpft Geschicklichkeits-Passagen überleben. Die Idee ist großartig, die Ausführung mechanisch aber nicht perfekt, denn die Steuerung unserer Spielfigur ist merklich primär für die Stealth-Passagen ausgelegt und nicht für Hüpf-Abschnitte. An sich ist das Spiel sehr unterhaltsam und funktioniert auch gut. Allerdings ist es ziemlich einfach und, unter anderem auch durch den niedrigen Schwierigkeitsgrad, ziemlich kurz. Man würde gerne noch einige weitere Level durchspielen dürfen und länger in dieser verrückt absurden Spionagewelt verweilen. [h1]Wertung:[/h1] 7/10 Atmosphäre 8/10 Story 7/10 Grafik 7/10 Sound 6/10 Spielmechanik 5/10 Balancing 7/10 Spielspass [h1]Fazit:[/h1] Gerührt, nicht geschüttelt. [h1][b]7/10 Gesamtwertung

The game begins with a message that looks like an awkward attempt at self-deprecating humour. One minute later, you discover how matter-of-fact it actually is, when the very first thing you check and confirm is the asinine absence of manual saves. More devs who hate players... Yay ! Perfectly equipped for a corporate career. Now, an incompetent save system is a serious blunder, but not automatically a thumb down; it could be compensated by great gameplay. Let see... - No checkpoints. Ouch ! Getting tired really fast of restarting levels from scratch. Great gameplay isn't gonna be enough, it will have to be exceptional. - Knockouts are only available through consumables. - Knockouts are not permanent. So not so, they last a whopping 3 seconds. Not helping the case. - The traversal gadget has a cooldown. - The shrinking tool has limited ammo and a cooldown. - No shadows, no footsteps, only unknowable lines of sight. - The level design is bland, lifeless, unfit for the mechanics, has no safe observation spots, no worthy teleport destinations, no miniature escape routes... Heretic's ovum did it better in 1994. Well, gameplay isn't exceptional then, is it ? Anything that could have been fun has been nerfed or neutered. Generic indie art not to the rescue. Not a nanosecond of entertainment.

I've only played the first mission of this game, and holy.. The opening title card for the game where they lay it out for you stating basically: we're untalented, brain dead, terrible sense of humor on a short dev cycle with low budget. They tell you it's gonna be a poorly done game, so you should set your expectations VERY low. Which i did. That short few minutes i spent on the first mission made me love what they were selling even more. Reminds me of parody games such as Pyst, or Deer Avenger; You didn't buy those games expecting an AAA experience, you bought them for a good laugh. Not sure how any one expected a serious AAA polished game based on the screenshots on show on the steam page, step into this game with LOW expectations, and a sense of humor on par with like Austin Powers. WILL be playing more, and completely recommend picking it up, doubly so on sale.

The Spy Who Shrunk Me is an indie stealth game inspired by No One Lives Forever. You play as Audrey Smoothspy, a British agent trying to stop a Soviet nuke attack during the Cold War. You are equipped with cool gadgets such as a shrink ray, short-range teleporter, time-stop watch, and others as well as... a banana peel. It's not a very long game, and can be beat around an hour if you're fast enough. I really liked NOLF, and this game is like a love letter, being a spy-themed game with similar atmosphere, humor, and a colorful aesthetic which strong colors that sometimes reminds me of Mirror's Edge. The shrink ray is definitely a unique gameplay mechanic which allows you to dispose of enemies or make yourself more hidden and able to move under/around objects. The gadgets are also Dishonored-inspired, and it being one of my favorite games definitely means a good thing. Being a short indie game, don't expect the length and polish of the aforementioned titles. Stealth seems to rely on vision-only since I can run behind enemies and they don't notice. You cannot knockout enemies (except temporarily with the banana peel), and the levels doesn't have secret alternate paths that stealth games usually have. But overall I still think The Spy Who Shrunk Me is a great indie stealth game with unique aesthetics and gameplay mechanics, surely worth a try.

[h1]The Spy Who Shrunk Me is a fun, funny, short experience that has tinges of No One Lives Forever, James Bond / Austin Powers, and the Dishonored series. For its small asking price of $9.99 retail (I got it on sale for half off..) the game offers a fair bit of variety in its 10 or so levels, however other elements of the game feel somewhat unfinished, particularly the audio design and an underdeveloped concept of performing contextual executions on the shrunken enemies. [/h1] [u]This review is for the Non-VR version of The Spy Who Shrunk Me[/u] The Spy Who Shrunk Me's gameplay is most reminiscent of the Dishonored series, with various equipment the player can equip, such as traps one can place on the walls or floor that will launch enemies that knock them unconscious for a brief amount of time, 3D glasses that the lead character can wear to see through walls, a pocketwatch they can whip out to stop time, a teleporter that mimics Dishonored's "Blink" ability, and the shrink ray seen in most of the game's promotional material. The initial concept of the shrink ray is a great mechanic, allowing the user to shrink themselves to evade enemies' line of sight, go under laser barricades, through vents, etc... Unfortunately, the game has only a scant few ways to dispatch of the enemies when you use the shrink ray on them. Beyond throwing a shrunken enemy into a paper shredder, into a toilet and flushing them down, or into a recycling bin or just chucking them through the air to have them explode, there are not as many ways to kill the shrunken enemies as I had initially hoped when purchasing the game. Also, a visual glitch where the shrunken enemies limbs on their character model stretch and distort when you throw them is an unfortunate visual effect that seemed to happen every time I threw them. (You can see this happening if you watch closely in the trailers where they are thrown into the paper shredder...) The game has great voice-acting for the main protagonist, her handler, and the villain you encounter here and there. While what audio design IS present in the game is well-done, other sections of the game just feel flatly empty by comparison. For example, the stopwatch equipment you use to stop time makes no noise whatsoever as it's activated, nor any whooshing sound as it remains active so you're left to just watch for a visual cue of when the effect is going to end, while other areas of certain levels feel very quiet and empty, lacking any ambient sound. The Spy Who Shrunk Me's artstyle is quite charming in an illustrative, sleek, Pixar-esque presentation and when later levels begin to show off its nice lighting with alarms pulsing in the background illuminating your surroundings it's quite a nice-looking game. That being said, the UI could perhaps use some more effects, such as when you are being shot by enemies after being detected, there is no visual indicator aside from a slight jolt of the camera, nor any sound effect that you are being hit, so you're left to wonder if you're actually about to die and before you know it the view is fading to black. Though a short game, I thought The Spy Who Shrunk Me was the right length for what was on offer. Add an additional bonus level taking place in a bar setting in Germany, and the game is fairly fleshed-out for its asking price. I enjoyed the full amount of time I played, I just think the game could use more refinement in the audio department and found myself disappointed with the somewhat slim ways to kill enemies. Still- I give the small development studio credit for making a unique stealth title, and saw in the credits that they cited both No One Lives Forever and Dishonored as inspirations, which are both quite evident and replicated pretty well (particularly Dishonored) [h1] + GOOD + [/h1] Artstyle is on-point Humor Voice-acting Good variety of levels Replicates the feel of Dishonored style movement well Fun [h1]-BAD-[/h1] Audio design seems absent on some elements More ways to kill shrunken enemies would be nice Some levels you can beat in like 30 seconds with the stopwatch Visual glitch when throwing shrunken enemies

Although the concept is cute, the controls are wacky, the gameplay is inconsistent and the dialogues are painfully slow it's worth noting that I bought it to play in VR

- Competent, basic line of sight based stealth with a good shrinking gimmick. Being able to hide in corners felt original, though I think the shrink ray's ammo system could've used some more rethinking. - The AI pathing was very rough, but at least you could work around it by listening for sounds and hiding behind almost anything - Checkpoints were pretty poorly placed at times - Has the NOLF-like charm to it, especially with the (repetitive) enemy banter

yes.

"The Spy Who Shrunk Me was created by an untalented team comprised of multiple brain dead team members of various states of drunkedness," is the first message you see when launching the game. After playing 20 minutes, I was extremely disappointed to realize that it wasn't a joke. :-/ This is an extremely buggy mess. I lost the ability to crouch less than a minute into the game. I had a showstopping bug in level 2, so I reloaded the last checkpoint (no manual saves), and that caused the gadget I was holding to disappear and I couldn't get it back. Clipping and poor physics are rampant, and some models appear to be unfinished. You can't re-map keys, which I think is an unforgivable sin for any developer. And why is this 20GB?? This game is much smaller and less detailed than NOLF, which was 1GB. This is a total flaming wreck, is virtually unplayable, and shouldn't have been released. It's a shame, because this game has some clever ideas. But they are executed poorly. When you "knock out" an enemy, they stay down for like 2 seconds. Shrinking an enemy and putting them in a trash bin or shredder is a fun concept, but it turns out that dropping a shrunken enemy anywhere at all causes them to blow up, which makes the bin and shredder feel completely pointless. I wish I didn't wait 5 years to play this after I bought it, otherwise I'd get a refund. I really don't like to leave bad reviews, but I hate to say that this game really deserves it.

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