Who is Abby

“‘Cos for twenty-four years I’ve been living next door to Abby Abby, who the f… is Abby?” Forgive me for ripping off some lyrics to an almost 50 year old song by Smokie, but it felt kind of fitting. It’s also the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the game title. I blame the Boomer brain. In any case, there’s more emotional impactfulness in those three lines up there, even if you don’t know the song, than in the entire running time of this Unreal asset flip simulator. Heck, you’d probably get more emotionally invested in a smudged cardboard box slowly wasting away in the rain. Why is this so, you ask? Well, apart from sharing many similarities with other half-baked Unreal attempts, like say Fabled Woods, and The Uncertain: Light at the End, this one also has the privilege of using quite a few AI generated art assets. What a brave new world we live in. They’re most easily spotted by insipid and soulless paintings plastered, and repeating, all over the walls everywhere. And I apologize to all the real artists by calling those travesties paintings. The vapid, expressionless, stilted mannequin animations with a few frames missing, that sometimes look like they’re having an epilepsy attack, are another hallmark of the Unreal asset flips. They perfectly serve their purpose of further catapulting your emotions into a brick wall. If you accidentally have any leftovers, the acting school dropout voiceovers, and spectacularly unfitting music will make sure to scrub them out with vigor. And probably battery acid. I can even barrel through the voiceovers, barely though, but the oddly unfitting music deserves some extra mention. It’s incredible how out of place it is in most cases, nowhere near complementing the context of the scenes. And there’s just something wrong, and off beat with it, that my mind immediately starts yelling AI. And one still learning at that. I’ve also experienced some choice bugs and glitches. You can often pick up items through closed boxes if you manage to highlight them, and there’s some awkward clipping issues. A mobile phone clipping through a wall is just one example. Perhaps that’s why the main character has signal problems. Strange audio positioning, like it’s not coming from where it’s supposed to, and weirdly disappearing footsteps just magnificently round out the entire egregious game soundscapes fiasco. Optimization also seems to be on the burner, with noticeable stuttering, and slow loading, even on a Ryzen 9, 4070, 32GB of RAM, and an SSD. Perhaps the shoving of RTX where it doesn’t really belong and barebones graphics options are to blame? No? I don’t really know what the 15th April 1.4 update was supposed to polish. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3467991724 Oh, and the cutscenes are unskippable. Why? Why in all the gods and commandments of Unreal asset flip walking simulators is that the one you decided to keep as well? Yes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, but even the aficionados replaying the game will want to skip your homage to Denis Villeneuve’s sweeping cinematography. My personal favorite though, is the technical implementation of the out of whack depth of field. Get close to any object, and your eyes get so funky they heavily blur out everything but the said object. Talk about a severe case of tunnel vision. Maybe it’s just the main character’s befuddled mind playing tricks on him. Or someone spent too much time modding Bethesda games with third party depth of field mods. Stock Unreal game menu from the marketplace is my close second. If you’ve managed to get this far, you might be wondering why I haven’t said anything about the story. Can you imagine any semblance of a story with all the issues I’ve mentioned? Do you honestly think the story could be so powerful, so gut wrenching, that it could eliminate all the shortcomings in a medium that requires interactivity to flourish? Yes, yes, creativity as well, but we all know Ubisoft still exists. It’s jumbled, crudely copied from a certain movie, and completely unimmersive due to all the technical issues. If you pay even a smidgen of attention, and kudos for that, it’s even rather predictable very fast. It’s a great companion to the rest of the game though. As this is a walking simulator, paths are predefined, with very little deviation. Puzzles can’t really be called puzzles, more like trekking quests around the scenery looking for items you need. Even in the more complex tasks, everything is used for you in the proper order when you find the items. Collectibles are usually straight on your path and hard to miss. If you’re so inclined, you can replay chapters for the missing ones. Shame the game still seems to have a few bugs that make it impossible to finish them, and also get the achievements. Surprisingly, there are brief glimpses of some potential and ideas. The game does feature a funny collection of books spoofed from real life pop culture references. It even includes a great joke about talking to yourself and narrating too much, which is usually the case with walking simulator protagonists. All are big fans of their voice. Another, perhaps stand out feature of the game, is a museum that you can enter either through chapters or on the main menu. It’s sad that it doesn’t really serve a purpose in a game such as this. But, in case you’re not enamored enough with the AI art, and other assorted assets, you can easily go marvel at them again. And if you’re a fan of that shabby Unreal store look embellished with ray tracing, you’ll find some enjoyment from the visuals. You could also just go start some of the RTX demos on the Steam store. This ended up turning into an “Unreal Asset Flip Rant”, but there’s too many of these kinds of quick flips with repetitive art, bland story, and Unreal marketplace assets. It might be more bearable if only they weren’t marketing themselves as the next What Remains of Edith Finch, or SOMA. In the end, most of them end up as advertisements for the Unreal engine, and an interactive catalogue for the marketplace assets. Who is Abby doesn’t fall far from that branch. [quote]We don’t do Unreal marketplace asset flips over at [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41449676/][b]Summit Reviews[/b][/url].[/quote] [quote]More off the beaten path games, wonders and failures at the [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/37838664/][b]Cabinet of Curiosities[/b][/url].[/quote]

Obvious AI art used all over the place. From portraits for characters to paintings in their museum. The story is trope-y and badly written dialogue is performed by an awkward main character voice actor. The other VAs are good, but the main character definitely drags me out of the immersion. But again, AI art. It looks bad, robs artists, and makes your game look worse. It would have been better if they didn't have any art for the character portraits and paintings at all. The bones of the game are okay, but walking sims rely heavily on their writing. If you don't have a good story and dialogue, the gameplay better make up for those aspects, which it doesn't.

Отправляйтесь разгадывать тайны Тома через исследование окружения и решения простых головоломок. Легкий такой детективчик на вечер. Сюжет достаточно распространенный, банальный и простой, но это не портит игру. Если кто-то расстраивается, что раньше времени все понял и не видит смысла продолжать игру - не берите. Хождение по лесу напомнило Бист Инсайд. Непонятным остается момент оптимизации. Если вы знаете, что не будете над ней работать и улучшать игру, зачем 33гб ультров, которые будут биться в эпилептическом припадке и только средние настройки предоставят комфортный опыт? Ко всему прочему, наличие шикарной картинки и невероятных видов не предоставят возможность делать скриншоты. Ну зачем этот противный интерфейс с указанием клавиш инвентаря и карты???? Испортили мне кучу шедевро-работ. По поводу головоломок все до жути просто. Стоит механизм - сделай так, чтобы он заработал. Где найти для этого все необходимое? Прямо здесь, в локейшн поинте. Мозг включать не потребуется ни разу(может только в случае с трубами). Английский. Если нет базового разговорного, то даже не знаю что вам предложить, разве что отложить игру. Одно дело возможность переводить записки и документы, и совсем другое - разговорные диалоги. Проблема в том, что субтитры ОЧЕНЬ быстро исчезают и те кто не воспринимают язык на слух, упустят под конец много важного. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3414315002 Это прекрасный инди-продукт, который подарит вам исследовательский опыт и возможность прогуляться по невероятного вида лесу, параллельно раскрывая секреты Тома и Эбби.

Who is Abby is a mystery driven, adventure, walking simulator. In this game you explore various environments while trying to find out what happened to your sister Abby. The game involves several minor puzzles, but most of the gameplay involves collecting items and using the items on certain aspects of the environment to move onto the next. The game takes approximately 6 hours to complete. + The environments are immersive and the game looks great. However, the game is not optimized well and you will need a stong video card to run the high settings properly. Note: Many of the environments are straight asset flips bought from the Unreal store inserted into the game. + Strong story with twists. + There is an excellent extra museum mode where you can walk through a beautiful area and view all the collectibles you have obtained, and read various trivia. +/- The music and sound effects are done well enough. However, some of the song choices can feel out of place. - The voice acting is average at best, at times various characters sound poor. - The gameplay feels like a modern version of a 1980s "Pixel Hunting" adventure game. Most items are hidden very well and it always feels like you're trying to find a needle in a haystack. Often this can be extremely frustrating, looking over a small room for 30 minutes trying to find a certain item. Most items to pick up blend in perfectly with the environment, and they are small, making it very hard to tell what is available to pick up. - There is a chapter select at the end of the game, but it is not exactly intuitive or user friendly. Choosing a chapter erases your total progress in later chapters. - The animations of the characters feel a bit stiff and dated. The game looks beautiful, but it is often a super frustrating experience without a guide. Also, the game feels as if the developer bought a bunch of large Unreal assets, made a game out of what was bought, then used AI heavily to decorate the environments and create the voice acting. I would have appreciated a more "From the ground up" approach, and have the developer actually "Develop" most of the game, to make it more original. Overall: 6/10

After trying out the game the first time I just managed 20 minutes until I turned it off. I went back to it a few days later and gave it another try for a bit longer but I am sorry to say it just did not click. [u]This is not a comprehensive review but my personal opinion and there will be spoilers for the first 20 min ahead in the next paragraph![/u] So I can forgive a lack of gameplay in a walking simulator if the atmosphere is right, Dear Esther for example has no gameplay whatsoever and still is an emotional journey to experience. So is this game, just in the wrong way. Below is my personal experience of the first few minutes of the game. You are looking for Abby who you heard nothing from when she went to a camping trip to write more about lost places and so you start out at a gas station where you ran out of fuel but even though it is still in service there is noone there. So being in possession of a mobile phone you do the only sensible thing, you solve some really inane puzzles to break into the station just to find out the tanks are empty and then siphon some fuel from a damaged truck that is located at this gasstation. I began to question the decision making process of the protagonist right there. After your first foray into criminality (that you know of at this point at least) you continue on the street until you have the most undynamic accident with one of the worst animated deers I have ever seen. You wake up outside of your car, which is lying on its side below the 20 meter cliff you just went over. You walk a few steps and your phone rings: a friend of yours is asking where you are and you, who just fell down 20m in a car, tell him "I'm looking for Abby and I just had a car accident, but don't worry about it" like you just had a fenderbender on the parking lot. Then the connection cuts out. You walk a bit more and then you are getting shot at. To wich, judging from the tone of his voice, the protagonist reacts like to his car accident: with the mildest surprise imaginable. A few steps further there is a blue tarp lying which is promptly commented on with "I always thought there was something sinister about a lonely tarp lying in a wood." This is sixty seconds and 15 m removed from where you were just shot at in the woods at night. Any semblance of immersion went out of the window right there. I tried to play some more but the completely unreasonable decisions of the protagonist who is prattling on in a slightly bored and musing voice while bein unreasonably calm and the arbitrary puzzles (of course you can only break a window in a certain way, nothing else will work) killed any sort of atmosphere that the game might have had. [h3]Conclusion[/h3] If you want an emotional experience I would recommend Dear Esther or Firewatch, if you enjoy puzzles play Return of Obra Djin, Painscreek Killings or Blue Prince instead. If you want horror go with Kholat or Amnesia. The only part of this game that stands out is how terrible the atmosphere is. Props for the stupid pop-culture reference book titles though, some made me smirk.

I wasn’t quite sure about this game when I bought it, but was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed it. This is a walking sim / adventure game with the puzzles either being inventory based or integrated into the story. There are a ton of collectibles, but even they are integrated into the story and aren’t random items just there for something else to do while playing. I have to say that I got the gist of the story pretty early on, but didn’t know how it was going to play out, so I was okay with it and wanted to see how it all was going to turn out and what details I was missing. I really liked the developer’s sense of humor. His descriptions of items, his odd love of some objects, hatred of others, and random books to find kept me amused as I progressed through the game. The one thing that I was not thrilled with was that if you took a “wrong” turn, you could advance the story and miss triggering a memory sequence or get all the collectibles for a chapter. I had to replay a couple chapters because of that. Replaying a chapter immediately to get them didn’t take too long because I knew what to do and it was better than having to replay the whole game, but I still wish that I didn’t have to. There is one autosave. The checkpoints come fairly quickly so it didn’t bother me. I had a good time with the game and recommend it to those who like story driven adventure/walking sims.

If I can find it in me to finish this someday then maybe I will edit my review (I don't even know if I can edit reviews) but all I can say is that I hate it. The acting sucks, the jokes aren't funny, nothing about it makes me want to progress besides hoping that I'll happen upon something that will make me want to progress. Maybe my expectations were too high. And I'm sorry Collector but even the guide was lackluster. Ugh. I'm still pissed at getting this at a discount.

I'm going to do all of you my fellow gamers a favor, just completely ignore all of the negative reviews! They're completely irreverent and only reflects those people's negative personalities. This game is beyond amazing!! It's like Alan Wake but without the shooting so it's more relaxing. It's not a walking sim but more action adventure with some light puzzles. There's a good amount of item collecting but always fun with almost no backtracking. There are plenty of cutscenes and a cohesive story. It's very well put together, the interface is clean and professional. If I had a bone to pick, the final level is a complete mess. Otherwise, it's super cozy, so grab your coffee, soup n blankie!

I liked the game story-wise and the levels are very linear, but also very impressively built. The core of the game's story is very much like [spoiler]the movie "Shutter Island"[/spoiler] I would recommend it, but if your graphics card doesn't have raytracing the game has some issues that only show a lot of blurred textures even for important pickup items sometimes. I had to watch a YT video to see what the document I picked up actually shows as it was a recipe for something I had to create. So in its current state I can only recommend it if you have a raytracing card. As raytracing is actually an option in the game I currently cannot recommend it. It should work in both cases, albeit with slightly worse graphics of course.

I did not enjoy this game. I figured out the ending in the first hour but I kept going because I bought it and I wanted to finish it to see if I was perhaps wrong, as that has happened before. I was not wrong sadly. The demo was promising, and I enjoyed it, but the small problems I had with the demo only grew later on in the game. The character will come to a fence waist high and be like "I don't do jumping fences, better find a hammer to knock it down" and then later on in the game you see the character easily doing parkour in cutscenes. You are next to a window at one point and have to break it, you are next to a rock, that you can pick up and comment on, and a pile of bricks. Your character won't pick up either. you have to walk all the way across the parking lot to a different pile of bricks, of which only one will work if you highlight your cursor on it. The detail in the enviroments is a detriment as you spend most of the time scanning with your cursor over items the game wants you to use. Need to break something, and there are bricks next to it at another point in the game. Can't use the bricks, search for another hammer. This happens all to often. As a puzzle game this says it took me almost eight hours, but I knew the solutions to all of the puzzles near instantly, it's just you spend most of the time scanning the enviroment for the one specific tool it wants you to use. I like puzzle games and narrative games, but this game falls flat as both, and while I got it for 25% off I believe, I wouldn't get it again for no more than 5 bucks personally. The models and character animations leave a lot to be desired here. I see what the dev was going for and I see the vision, but there are too many inconsistencies and issues for me to give it a thumbs up sadly. The performance is also spotty, playing this on a 3060 I got many frame drops playing it.