Waiting for the Loop

As somebody fascinated with AI and hoping we'll actually get something that feels like talking to a human, I had to go and try out this game. It definitely keeps the promises the developers make in the description and it's actually cool that everything is voiced. Although short, the story definitely hurt my feels. In my opinion, it's easy to get into the characters and 'feel' them. As a heads up, if you are having issues with the resolution, the dev team put a TXT file into the game's install folder, that helps you out. Or if you're a bit of a dummie like me and didn't see it, you could just use 'Borderless Gaming', a small program you can get here on Steam for about 3 bucks. Both do the job. Curious to see what else the team is going to release

Ein kurzes Spiel über die Entwicklung eines Roboters, wobei deine Entscheidungen das Leben seiner Schöpferin bestimmen. Ich liebe solche Spiele :D

Short visual novel which asks the player for choices about half a dozen times. Based on the choices you get different endings. One loop takes about 10-15 minutes. The game has complete voiceover dialogue. There's no saving feature, so you have to take it in one go. One novel feature is that before starting a new game the program asks if you want "auto play" or "click play" experience. The difference is that click play requires you to press a key or mouse button to move forward the dialogue, while auto play makes no pauses during the dialogues. The developer argues that "auto play" is more immersive. I myself disagree, but it depends on the individual I guess. All in all, cool little branching story, although I think the character art and animations is quite horrible.

Waiting for the Loop is a short, interesting story game about the relationship between an AI and its creator. The player is given choices throughout the story that can alter the availability of certain scenes, which adds a good amount of replayability. It's well worth the price of entry to scratch that scifi itch.

A tale of AI. Story: Waiting for the Loop follows on IAC, an AI system. As the game game begins two men in black enter the room and it's clear IAC is corrupted and as they keep asking it questions, it goes through it's humble beginnings and where we are now. I'll keep this section brief as it's an insanely short game. The story of Waiting for the Loop is pretty decent, although I can't say I truly loved it. I like overall story and there's definitely some interesting things the game tries to cover, but overall I felt like it winds up being incredibly lackluster in certain areas. It more feels like a test game instead of a fully fleshed out one. Graphics: I have a massive soft spot for games that go for this art style, just in general I absolutely adore the adventure game engine. Something about it's pixel art style is just unmatched. I will say however that the game does feel a lot more barren considering it's not really a point and click adventure. The two men in black characters barely have any differences between their models and the others aren't that great either. Character models are just incredibly generic and although there isn't any reason to make them look interesting, I wish a bit more detail was added into it. Audio: This by far the weakest aspect of the game. I will begin with the voice acting, which is impressive that this game is fully voice acted, even though overall it's not very good. A good chunk of the voice acting is rather bland and the mic quality isn't the greatest which makes certain sound a bit awkward, especially the secret agents. The music on the other hand is downright awful. I get that there's not much you can do with this sort of engine and it's very much in style with other games I've played, but even then the music is just not very good across the board. If there was a track I liked, I certainly do not remember it. Gameplay: Waiting for the Loop might look like a point and click adventure game on the surfaced, but trust me it's actually a visual novel. There's basically no gameplay in this game whatsoever. All you do is watch character interactions unfold and once in a blue moon you pick a choice which slightly impacts how the rest of the game plays out. I honestly found this rather disappointing, cause there's a very good foundation for an actual point and click adventure game, but they decided to do a sort of visual novel, where you don't read. At least the story, while a bit weak does excuse the lack of gameplay. Verdict: Waiting for the Loop is a decent little adventure, however overall I found the experience rather weak. There's at least something interesting with the story which is worth checking out if you think this looks interesting, however for everyone else, I'd say this is a skip. Final Rating: 6/10 Pros: + Pretty interesting story + Voice acting is pretty decent at times + Visually art style is pretty decent Cons: - Calling it a game is stretching it - Horrible soundtrack - Audio mixing for dialogue is pretty rough at times - Some environments are pretty bland If you liked this review please consider joining https://steamcommunity.com/groups/completingthebacklog and https://steamcommunity.com/groups/ImperialReviews

Waiting for the Loop is a short interactive sci-fi novel ripping off the visual style of Scumm(tm) system games like Monkey Island, but featuring really badly hand drawn art. There's something important that needs to be said when reviewing interactive novels. When someone is a talented writer, they will write a novel and it will be published and make a lot of money. When someone is a talented game developer, they will write a video game and it will be published and make a lot of money. Interactive novels never make as much money as real video games, and they never make as much money as published novels. From this, you can kind of infer from the very existence of any interactive novel that you're dealing with a product made by someone not capable of writing an acceptable novel or an acceptable video game. Waiting for the Loop is a perfect example of this. Bad story, terrible retro pixel art... the highest point of acclaim is that they ripped off Scumm(tm) video games a little bit, but not well. Despite releasing their "game" in 2018, they couldn't even work out how to make 16:9 resolution work. How could anyone recommend this non-game to a PC gamer?

This is a neat little project, and there's more to it than meets the eye! The story is a short yet introspective look at what it means to be a person, and the choices that come along with it. The music is well arranged, the voice work solid, and the graphics harken back to the days of old point and clicks. There is a degree of replayability, I've already played it three seperate times and could definitely go back again to find another branch. I'm looking forward to seeing what Side Group does in the future!

Nice little Game with a nice little Story. I hope you make more Games like this.

En premier lieu, il faut savoir que ce jeu est un jeu narratif en anglais. Un peu du même genre que life is strange mais en beaucoup plus cours, et qui peut malgré ça être un peu ennuyant au bout d'un moment. Il y a un peu près 15m de jeu pour une boucle, il vous est par contre possible de refaire le jeu en changeant de choix/ (une autre boucle). Un des défauts du jeu est son paramètrage, qu'il faut modifier dans les fichiers du jeu pour que celui ci soit compatible avec Windows 10 et 7 (taille de la fenêtre de jeu reglé par défaut à 320x200 >_< ; un tuto est disponible dans les fichiers du jeu pour le corriger) Deux trois petites erreurs de désynchronisations des dialogues sont aussi présentes dans le jeu. Bref, malgré celà, les personnages sont très attachants, et on a envie de connaitre la suite. Le jeu est à un prix plus qu'abordable. Je vous conseille donc de l'acheter pour sa qualité, son scénario, son ost.