What Happened

SO MEGA STRANGE WOW

polecam

Well I just finished the Game in 4.5 Hours playing in the dark with headphone on Ultra 4K settings. This wont be an experience i will forget anytime soon. What a seizure inducing psychosis driven LSD trip. Awesome game if you can get through getting punched, stabbed, and sweared at for 4 hours straight, with strobe light LSD visuals, and a character in the game contemplating suicide constantly. Thats really what the game is like Im not embellishing it. All in all tho its very well made with an original atmosphere and an experience you will never forget, IF IF IF you can get through it first.

It's quite a shame that this has so few reviews and not the highest score either when it's clearly a labor of love and has been expertly crafted. I did balk at the price to be fair but the steam winter sale made it affordable. I'll start with the positives. The world looks great. It really does. The fidelity and realisticness of the school setup you start in was fantastic. Granted the characters animate a bit stiffly but still much much better than most indies and not too far behind some triple A stuff. And the story in general is executed well. Basically the whole aim of the game is to tell a story of regret and sorrow and self-pity through the lens of a grief-strucken teenager going on a drug-fuelled bender. Quite a unique premise, and the environments and scenes you pass through reflect that. I won't elaborate much more than saying this game takes you to some dark places and some trippy places, often at the same time. Where I do have complaint is that I feel that this game was put together by far too many artistic designers rather than game designers. I'm struggling to think back now even though I've just completed it, as to what gameplay mechanics and activities I engaged with beyond switching on and off lightbulbs, and moving lightbulbs around. Now that's not the biggest critique as some walking simulators have even less gameplay. But in addition, for the length of the game I sure felt I spent a serious portion of that trapped in cutscenes, with these edging more towards a movie at times than a game. And speaking of length, sometimes I felt some points were overlabored and scenes. Granted likely this is part of the artistic vision of this game, they want to show how being stuck in the head of somewhere where their brain hates them and constantly reminds them of awful things, is certainly not a nice place to be. And that there is no break to this spiraling repetition of awfulness. But when you do that to the extent where the player is actively being put off your game is to the game's detriment. Honestly I think they could have trimmed it a bit more to allow you to complete the game in a single sitting. As I found going back to it the second night I wasn't overly relishing going back to that same negativity over again. But I'll allow it given what the story is trying to convey, and also because the game had sunk enough of a hook in me that I was able to grit my teeth and sink back into the grim and bleak murkiness of it all. And speaking of story, I thought it was an odd choice to focus on a love-sick teenager to tell a story about depression. I'm sure most people go through teenage blues, some worse than others. But I'm not sure how relevant this would be to most players who play this who will likely be adults and will have left this part of their life far behind. I think they could have taken even a similar story and worked it in to an adult's telling and I think that would have found more common ground with players. As there were at times when the character was being a bit over melodramatic, and like a typical teenager and my reaction in my head was more or less "grow up". I think I would have been more able to empathise with someone who has reached emotional maturity but is still cripplingly depressed and is having a hard time. But those critiques aside, it's clear there was so so much effort put in to this, and it is quite a treat for the senses altogether, so I strongly recommend you to pick this up.

I really wanted to enjoy this game. It looks good. It's just too buggy. A little more time and effort to fix the issues and it could be great. Developer play your game, see the flaws and you will have a great game here and get better reviews. This does deserve more, the story has potential etc. I have bought this game twice and refunded twice, I wanted it to be great!

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