Void And Meddler

[i]Note: I only played the first episode, it was what I had in my library and I didn't feel incentivised to buy the second. Take that into account.[/i] I'm very mixed about Void & Meddler. On one hand, it's pretty harmless, with some really nice effects and interesting environments. I've certainly played much worse games in my backlog journey. On the other hand, it just doesn't feel well designed to be a game. While I do think there is a lot of thought and effort in there, other parts are simply baffling, and I found myself asking several times: "Why did they make it like this?" Let me give you a few examples. Firstly, you start the game in the protagonist's apartment, and yet, you have nothing to do there aside from collecting a couple of random items in the typical P&C fashion. Why start her in the apartment, instead of a location she actually has reason to be in? Instead you will have to slow-walk to another place to get the objective-train going. Secondly, you have a situation where you're supposed to notice a certain sign, which has some important symbols on it – but the sign is so bright that you can barely see that it has symbols at all. Thirdly, there is a scene where you're directed to talk to people on a dance floor. There are many named NPCs there, and yet when you inspect them, the game tells you "I'm not going to describe all of them" directly, in a fourth-wall-breaking kind of way. So why were we told to interact with them? Why did they put the important characters in the background, so you have to go past all the other NPCs? It's all so awkward to actually play, like the game is speaking a different language where only bits and pieces make sense. This extends to the puzzle solving, but there it's not necessarily a bad thing. Your character is clearly aimless in this world, she's supposed to be directionless and because of that, so are you. The game does not communicate clear objectives, and instead have you walk around from place to place, looking for a sign of what to do. It's pretty confusing and quite frustrating, but I think that's at least part of the point. It's a bit of ludonarrative harmony, to use a fancy term, a connection between you and the protagonist. It's a part I really liked about the game. But that's only if you're not using a walkthrough. If you are, you will know exactly what to do and where, which breaks the above stated experience. I ended up with a mix, where I had a guide but purposefully put myself through the experience I would have had if I didn't, at least to some extent. And that's not a problem of the game, right? You have the choice to not use a walkthrough. The problem is, the game fails to keep you in when it leans so hard on obscurity, without communicating that it's part of the experience and the story. When you have a dictionary, a rubber duck and an octaver in your inventory, it becomes all the more tempting to use a guide to make sense of it all, even when you don't need all the items to get to an ending (something you, of course, wouldn't know). Add to that the lackluster writing, with its tendency to overdescribe and paint everything in black, and you get something that is easy to just blast through and then forget. And that's a shame, because there is a glimpse of something better in there somewhere. As it is, the game isn't finished, with no ending episode in sight. It's not quite thought-provoking nor entertaining enough to be worth checking out despite that, at least if you haven't already bought it. If it's already sitting in your library, like it did mine, then I would say that it's worth at least a playthrough. Otherwise, I'm afraid it's a pass.

Short, vapid, edgy, insuferable. Waste of money, but thankfuly short enough so that if you bought it not also a waste of too much time. Avoid.

Hallucinogenic neon city nights, smooth synths and wry nihilistic goth/emo quips and artistic statements can't cover up for a cyberpunk world as thin as a pop-up book. The excellent visual artists do all the heavy lifting in this game, because for 90% of the first two acts of the same, most conversations in the game are limited to two or three stilted lines - partly because of lead character Fyn's depressed and drug-addled ex band-member world view, but mostly because not enough dialogue was written. This is a problem when the whole joy of cyberpunk storytelling is to listen to people's tales of how they have been affected by the messed up way of the world - without that, you feel no connection with the game world or its characters, and it's a matter of trudging aimlessly from one location to another to progress the action - I avoid saying story, as there largely isn't one. Making the aimlessness problem even worse, the game relies on actions that are split between several arbitrarily named locations with equally arbitrary actions that need to be completed in a set order. This despite the fact it's usually immediately clear to the player what to do - leading to a playstyle involving repeatedly revisiting locations until an interaction or passage of time triggers the game to progress by revealing a new, equally superficial character or path, allowing them to take the action they had already worked out, or even tried before with a failure response. If you were to write out the actions needed to progress the game from start to finish (Episodes 1 & 2) without the circling it demands, I am fairly sure this could be summed up on a single page. Somewhere in here, there is the germ of a story about how lack of access to gender-affirming care is limited by a cold corporate system accessible only to elites, but this is largely implicit until the very end of the second episode (the end of the game at the time of review). At that point, the game's final area which actually features perhaps four coherent conversations in a row, and does not require any pointless backtracking to other zones to complete its story, makes you wonder why the rest of the 20-odd locations in the game weren't designed like that - it would have made a passable if brief visual novel. If this game is going to continue development, I would suggest the developers first revist the first two episodes and write out full conversation trees for all character interactions, allowing the player to question the characters properly to flesh out the world and story far more. This would make a world the player would want to spend more time in - and also would allow clues on where to go next to be hidden there. Secondly, and on a related note, if the game is going to spontaneously generate a solution to a puzzle somewhere else in the game world, either provide a clue to the new location, or simply tell the player to go there. There is no joy in making the player randomly revisit locations in the hope of finding the change. Finally, on a basic technical/accessibility level: please place a brightly coloured (neon?) outline around the black mouse pointer, which regularly gets lost on black backgrounds, and include a keyboard button that reveals the text of all interactive items within a scene. The art got me through this game - I hope that one day this skeleton will have the flesh added on.

Лайк если купил сезон пасс на игру в 2016ом, а разработчики забросили её и не выпустили третий эпизд. Кривая поделка получается, не спавнятся определенные персонажи и один предмет не отдается бомжу, класс, что сказать.

Great point & click adventure game with strong cyberpunk vibes, but an incomplete story. Seemingly abandoned by the developer due to the main artist no longer being available. However, it's still worth playing through for the content that is available! 100% in 8 hours.

There is some interesting story ideas and puzzle design, if your a fan of cyberpunk point and clicks then you might get something out of it but be aware that is incredibly surreal to the point of frustration. Think Kentucky Route Zero turned up to 11. Overall while I liked the artstyle and some of the world building its a difficult one to recommend since we won't ever see the conclusion.

fantastic art direction, decent soundtrack for the purpose the writing is atrocious tho, and it seems to have been jankily translated. often incoherent, regularly tries really really hard (unsuccessfully) for poetic angst and general edginess this ends up being amusing sometimes because although Fyn is an edgelord who gives zero ♥♥♥♥♥ (alledgedly) the action block of attempting to play a guitar is "the neighbors wouldn't like that" ?????? okay so she gives one ♥♥♥♥ and it's about her neighbors? I guess?? the puzzles are similarly incoherent and frequently arbitrary. [spoiler]like combining a rubber duck with some hobo liquor to make a macguffin which so far has been indicated as an intimate item that belonged to a celebrity??? that's like gabriel knight use tape to get cat hair for a fake mustache levels of bullshittery.[/spoiler] anyway i still somehow had fun through act 1 and i'll probably go back for act 2 later... so yea sure I'll recommend it [u][i][b]on discount[/b][/i][/u]