Virus Brain

Glad to see this release so soon following the itch.io demo. A pretty neat, surreal experience that can be short if you blitz your way through and brute force a few puzzles. With multiple endings and uncovering more as you discover environmental secrets, well worth the $6 for me taking my time to find what's hidden. The music in particular is standout point.

[b]"a perfect girl is evil"[/b] 🖤🖤🖤 🟩 good music 🔷 interesting vibes 🔴 weak puzzles and platforming [b]vibes:[/b] moody [b]loops:[/b] linear first person adventure with some puzzles and platforming [b]states:[/b] finished 2 out of 2? endings [b]ramblings:[/b] i enjoyed it for its surreal unsettling ambience, good atmospheric music, and snowman jokes. but everything else is just sort of eh. the game feels like it has an identity crisis.  · it classifies itself as a "postmodern edutainment" game, but the kanji concept is very underutilized, many of the puzzles that use it you can even just ignore the kanji. there are doors that require picking the correct word, english words, why not kanji? there's cipher puzzles, which were actually sort of interesting, and they also don't incorporate kanji.  · it has some platformer elements. there are random pits and spikes, but they're never a challenge, just a minor obstacle to break up the hallways. there are sections with more, moving platforms and such, nothing terribly difficult. though i'm glad it wasn't more because it's first person and there's zero air control so it all just feels clunky.  · there's a moment with what is essentially a boss battle (in a [spoiler]lesbian void dimension[/spoiler]?) but it's so short, comes out of nowhere in the middle of the game, and ends without any fanfare. that could have been really interesting with just a bit more something, it feels very abrupt and underdeveloped. [b]verdicts:[/b] rather mixed feelings. the game doesn't seem to really commit to any of its own ideas, leaving it falling kind of flat and sorta run of the mill. but i did enjoy the vibes, the soundtrack, and the weird obsession the rabbit has with snowmen. [b]scores:[/b] ☃️ out of ㊗️ on 🖥️ https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3766931743

A solid first game from the solo dev. The story is teased through haunting imagery and allegories on your journey. Multiple endings (I got the medium one) with secrets needed for the true ending; I found 2 of 4. Puzzles use simple Kanji/Chinese characters, though the secret ones also use encryption puzzles that had me racking my brain a little. Music and sound design are haunting and atmospheric. The graphics are well suited for the genre. You are rewarded for poking around. My only complaint is the platforming felt off due to the motion controls being a bit too floaty. I was able to work around this, though.