Widower's Sky

OK, guess I'm gonna be the one English guy to give this a thumbs up! I watched 'YourfavoriteSon' on Youtube as he attempted to wade through 10 negatively reviewed Steam games and guess what? He actually enjoyed this one. It's beautiful, well narrated, has a calming soundtrack and is very challenging. The puzzles are sometimes baffling. What do I do? Where do I go? Why's everything that moves trying to kill me? This to me is the beauty of it all. You'll have to figure it out/interpret it all yourself. There are no guides, no walkthroughs, no videos to help you, which makes it all the more satisfying knowing you're one of the very few people in the world to have figured out the solution. There seems to be a fair number of separate puzzle lands to figure out. 5 hours in and I'm only up to the 5th land, but I've enjoyed myself so far and certainly got my money's worth. I feel more determined to finish this than most other games in my collection! Tips -Turn off survival mode. That's one headache you can do without -Don't be put off by the blurry graphics at first. Just turn all fancy settings off, stick it in 4K then leave it alone. Looks great! -Can't quite get the right camera angle? Just press down on the right stick to zoom in/out -Enemies too fast? Just press down on the left stick to go slow mo and shoot multiple arrows in quick succession -Don't forget the rewind time mechanic (LT). I was kicking myself over this one in level 4 -Evade some of the nastier enemies by repeatedly dashing away. I think dash was intended as an attack, but to me works better as a retreat. Give this game a try, honestly you can see how much love has gone into this, despite the occasional jank.

This has a lot of potential, but it needs some work. The preview made me very interested in this game. Got it day of release. My first suggestion is an actual tutorial covering ALL the controls. Slowly and without every function enabled at start. Fix the resolution options. There are two 1920x1080 settings and they are not the same thing. It's LOUD. Had to drop my volume to 1/3 the normal level before my ears stopped bleeding. The controls are very confusing to figure out. I'm a fan of games that make you think and figure things out on your own, but this is just frustrating. I have to resort to button mashing to figure out how to deactivate the "mode" I accidentally entered that is suddenly preventing me from moving which has no explanation of what it is or what it's used for or that it even existed in the first place. The camera is just bad with terrain constantly obstructing your view. You constantly have no idea what you are doing. Dropped into an area with no tips or hints and suddenly your son is dying from food. You only get a 3 second, half explanation of how food works. Still don't know if I can store what food you make. "Are those enemies? They are shooting at me. I guess they are enemies." Time to attempt to aim what I think is a ray gun or something. Which has another mode to toggle in order to aim and shoot. I want to like it. I want to play it, but I can't get into it at the current state. It's pretty. It's atmospheric. Just needs to be functional.

I found this game on Reddit and bought it on the day of release as it seemed very appealing and the creator was very enthusiastic about it, which makes me kind of not want to write this review, but I feel I have to be honest here. I can't recommend this game as it is. Visually it's very appealing, the soundtrack is good, it seems like this could be a very engaging game, but honestly it's just not done. The controls are just bad. It's barely controllable with a gamepad, but absolutely unplayable with keyboard and mouse. Even with a gamepad it's very hard to control your character. There's a severe lack of any explanation. There's no way to know what you're doing, where you're supposed to go, or even what the controls are other than just trial and error. There's no way to know what's an enemy or not. UPDATE: the last update has improved explanations and the tutorial area overall, but it's not quite there yet. Noticeable improvement, however, so kudos for that! In the short time I played I stumbled upon the "tutorial" (if you can call it such), ended up in what I assume is some sort of level select area, got past some enemies by sheer luck (am I supposed to fight them somehow?), left my son behind because while moving it's impossible to tell if he's on your back or not, ended up chased by sentient bombs, ended up in a camp swarmed by enemies, my son ended up in an egg somehow and became very hard to control (with no way to get out of it, as far as I've found), and died while controlling my son, repeatedly, because enemies will still find and kill you. All the while I still have no idea what to do and I can't make it more than a few steps away from the checkpoint because there are enemies everywhere. I really want to like this game, but honestly, as it is now, I don't. I just hope the feedback on here doesn't demotivate the creator, and instead leads to fixes and updates.

Update: I saw a youtube video saying the game is actually decent now. I probably won't get back in it but I'm changing my review because good on the dev for fixing it. I found this game on a social media post and it's my understanding that this game was developed on someones kitchen counter for the majority of it over quite some time. I'm impressed by the amount of language support which is not something you see from games like this. First the positives: Very visually stunning game, I like the amount of lights and even though I don't really have any idea what's going on there is a definitely mood and aura to this game that is picked up immediately and that is really difficult for even big budget games to pull off. The negatives: There is so CLEARLY a great little puzzle/adventure/survival game here. It's just so hard to break into due to not necessarily wonky, but not clearly explained controls and mechanics. I love what's going on with the dog/kid situation I think and I enjoy survival elements in games as well. I'm thinking that the root of the controls issue is the fact it was designed on a kitchen table and over such a long period of time that when you're (the developer) playing a game for so long and actually putting in the controls yourself what seems intuitive after being with the game so much is foreign to a newcomer (all of us). I think that even just a combo of more detailed controller maps/explanation and decreasing the food timer for the boy to give people time to just mess around and figure stuff out would be a great start. I haven't been following this game long but I won't be returning the game with hope that these issues which don't seem insurmountable will be overcome and I can really break into this neat game. I wish steam would give the option under do you recommend this game of "put it in your follow list" instead of just yes or no. Unfortunately I can't recommend this game at this time.

The camera is incredibly difficult to control whether on mouse and keyboard or with a controller. There is no tutorial of the sorts so it doesn't tell you how to survive. I figured out how to use the bow, and even 'killed' a few things (when they die they run away for a bit then come back and walk around). But I couldn't figure out how to set up a camp, which the kid started complaining about after a few minutes of gameplay. I also couldn't figure out how to setup a fire, or how to swap any of the other actions you're supposed to be able to do. The only thing I could manage to accomplish was swapping to and from the bow, shooting it, and dashing which is supposed to be the attack action according to the controls... The game still needs some work and should definitely improve on the camera and menu controls. I couldn't see my mouse during most of the menu stuff, and using the arrow keys or wasd wasn't helping since it only listens to left and right buttons.

Dieses Spiel ist einfach scheiße. bye.

I really hate leaving a negative review, but let me open by saying "how on earth can I quickly get a refund on this truly not ready game. It isn't even about the low dollar amount so much as paying for something that isn't even playable (unless your into game interface survival). I was pulled in by the beautiful appearance of the game and anxiously purchased it as soon as it came out earlier today. And as for my whopping 0.3 hours of game time--well, this "game time" was primarily spent pressing and pressing and pressing the mapped keys only to have them not work. I even remapped, and nada... And even before getting to the controls mapping, I spent significant time just trying to activate "new game" given that your mouse cursor vanishes--eventually you discover that if you hit your RMB, the cursor appears, but only for a one-click usage. As soon as you click on one thing, it vanishes again. I finally get in, run down and pick up the son, carry to the first marker and it tells me to press the "switch player" key--so I did... and again... and again... and again... remapped and tried again... and again... nothing. So basically I can play running through the first field over and over and over, but my instance won;t get me past that point. What an utter disappointment. PLEASE RETURN MY FUNDS and delete this incomplete teaser from my library.

I was able to figure out most of the controls... I use a PS4 controller and DS4Windows. Circle to bring up bow, R1 to shoot. Square to switch between Father and Child. Triangle to pick up Child. X to interact (grab deer, light fire). I managed to feed the kid and rest in the tent, made it to the next area. There was a green orb, so I walked over to it. It teleported me and I was surrounded by enemies that shoot projectiles and killed me repeatedly. Eventually the kid started starving and crying... I couldn't find a campfire until it was too late, the screen went dark and I could still hear him crying. I guess the game glitched, cause at that point it was stuck. So I turned it off. Seems like it has potential, I look forward to future updates.

I was hyped by the trailer, but got completely lost once I played the game. The concept of spawning in a world without really understanding anything about it is cool, but this games goes way too far in this direction. The controls are not intuitive at all and the camera's pretty glitchy. You're often put in a situation where the world's against you and you have 3 seconds to deal with it before it kills you. The game is also super loud. I think the volume resets between each levels, which is a bit annoying. Beautiful graphics, cool ideas, poor execution. Hope you'll get some perspective from the reviews and turn it around for the better.

Sadly, as other have already pointed out, the game is nigh unplayable.