Waking

Waking asks for a lot of player investment; their real first name, their most significant desires and difficulties. In return, it offers an experience low on interactivity, with poorly polished gameplay (for example some of the worst object hitboxes I've experienced in a 3D game).

For real, the ♥♥♥♥ is this? The most mysterious game on the earth, no idea what it was meant to be. I have heard that the 3 people who managed to finish it are in a coma now. After all, the game lets you experience your dying mind, and to keep up with its promise it first needs you to die. If only it was not done by torture. I believe, Waking is the pure example of those games in which the finest ideas cannot see sunshine if you do not know how to execute them. (it's over 20 hours btw)

Can't remember how this got into my library. Reviews are surprisingly on point, there is not much to add. What started with a good premise and showed strong dev's commitment atleast in some aspects turned out to actually be purgatory. What an irony, given the narrative of the game, and it only gets worse after an hour of playing, when a voice, absense of any subtitles, forbids you to walk "towards the light", putting the lamest invisible wall I've ever bumped my head against in the way, offering the suffering instead. Even the very base of the movement controls clearly was not playtested, and then there was an attempt to build a whole 3rdperson roguelike action on it. "Meditation sessions" are trying so hard to evoke memories only to slap those those precious names of yours on yet another hold-x-to-charge cube or pyramid that you already hate at this point. Graphics cool. What a trainwreck of a game.

I didn't want to write this. I enjoyed the concept and could forgive the rough controls, but the ended up walking away after the second "Close your eyes" scene which forces you to wait through a faux meditation session. The reality is it would be forgivable as a $7 game, but for $20 and no way to skip past the screen being black for two minutes, it's just not there.

This game is a tragedy. Good concept with trash controls which hold it back severely. Not Worth $20, barely worth 5.

trying to be some deep meta game about yourself just ends up being more like META the facebook rebrand that we all hate its got a sub par combat system if you can make it past hours of walking sim and waiting for the game to finish talking ive got about 2 more hours of gameplay offline

Waking is an adventure game where the developer tries to be edgy, deep and psychological, and this is why art school dropouts should never be involved in the game industry. The idea is that you answer personal questions then the game throws that back up at you try make you feel guilty because you're in purgatory and can't leave. Whatever. This is a bad premise implemented with fantastic graphics and weak gameplay. I know most of the time I'll find that a game isn't up to a high quality standard because the visuals are poor. Here, the visuals get a pass. It's the rest of the game that's a letdown. Trying to address social issues through the medium of video games is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good. Game developers are not professionals in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this can cause far more harm than good. It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to push political or social agendas. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers. People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware video games attempting to get sales by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 19 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? Waking has the pathetically optimistic price of $20 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $20 asking price for this game could get you games like "Stray", "Age of Empires IV" or "Factorio". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. [b]Note:[/b] The developer has colluded with Tencent backed interests to withhold some of their games from Steam in a brazen act of anticompetitive behaviour. It's vital that our gaming industry remains an open and competitive marketplace, and direct actions by this developer were intended to destroy that. This is harmful to gamers and to the gaming industry, and is completely unethical behaviour intended to cause this harm for short term profit. While games absolutely should be considered on their own merits, as I have in my review above, gamers must be cautious when buying games from unethical developers like this. There's no telling when they will accept more bribes and pull their games off Steam again... they've done it once, they can't be trusted. Gamers have a right to know about this. If you buy this game you may be putting your money at risk.