4/10 A minimalistic "experience"-like game.
Good:
- it actually felt quite original, so whatever this is, the author is definitely talented
- free
So-so:
- the gfx are minimalistic, sure. But don't look "cool". There are ways for minimalistic games to still look great. E.g. "Thomas Was Alone"
- absence of any music or sfx makes this project feel lazy
Bad:
- I understand that the author had some great idea behind it. The issue is, it's not properly conveyed. It's really a thing that comes with experience: to be able to not just come up with an idea but also to convey it to the audience. To check if the idea is not lost on the way to the audience, one needs to playtest and listen to feedback of users before putting the game out there to get negative reviews..
- a lot of text is repeated during the forced replays from the start. Eventually I started skipping such text and clicking through it fast (since I've already read it in the previous runs) - only to accidentally skip new text! This is a common issue in VNs btw - and it's solved with the "skip" button which stops skipping once you reach text that you haven't seen yet. Since this is not a VN, at least there could be other hints: different text color, font, maybe sound effects, or simply reloading not from the very start but later in the loop, or just dropping the whole repetition mechanic
- I guess it's the dev's intent but there is a constant feeling that the game is bugged - yet eventually it progresses. Which is okay (I guess). But I think that at some point there is actually a bug. The other reviewer described it:
"sample room", REPLACE WITH ACTUAL TEXT, went right (->) from that room, restarted? did the same thing over. The text was buggy, as everything in the textbox was repeated twice. Got to the credits with the blue-red-black box (logo). When I finally restarted with the announcer saying "pity, you had the chance to escape but the chance is long gone... (blah blah, I don't remember)", the game crashed.
<- yes, the game just exits at this point. And you launch it again, it's experiment "45" again (not 47!), so progress is lost. Maybe this was the author's intent, but it's just too confusing, so I gave up.
- movement is clunky. That's because the game is checking for key down events that come from the OS (?). Instead, it should check every frame if a key is held down. Anyways, I'm not sure keyboard control is best here. I'd much more prefer mouse click to set destination. In the maze level with would mean you need pathfinding.
Overall, it's an unusual experiment of a game that may be worth a look simply if you like unusual stuff. And I'm glad that Steam has such projects and not just commercial stuff. But several pitfalls (which can be explained by the dev being a student and not having much experience in real-world publishing) prevent his ideas to properly get delivered.
Btw why the tag "Capitalism"? I mean, that was kinda the reason I downloaded the game (expecting critique of capitalism, especially from a Mormon (?) US state).. Dunno, I'm not from the US, was just interested. Best of luck with your future games.
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