I really wished I didn’t have to be a bearer of bad news as the developer has obviously put in effort on The Dark Side of the Moon and hasI really wished I didn’t have to be a bearer of bad news as the developer has obviously put in effort on The Dark Side of the Moon and has been active in trying to fix issues brought up. Sadly there are a lot of technical issues as well as some other problems with the game that hampered my enjoyment. I’ll start with the good. The plot is decent and fun enough to follow, even if it goes a bit far fetched at times. It also could use some more back story on motivations as to why Dean’s kids (and others for that matter) were taken. I also will say I adored Rupert Booth as Gedeon; Anarosa Butler who played Alyx as well as the man who played the reporter. Gedeon was a fantastic villain that had the right amount of camp and wouldn’t be out of place in something like Evil Dead. Alyx was a great combo of nerdy and unintentionally funny. The reporter was just a ball of sarcasm that brought me a lot of laughs in his short screen time. As for the bad let’s start with some of the other voice acting. I won’t be too mean because I know outside of those ones I mentioned no one was a “professional” voice actor but that being said the gap in skill was noticeable. Sometimes over emotional, other times under emotional but always a noticeable. gap. I will also say that there was a time where you have to make several trips to a room to find pieces of a puzzle that in all fairness should have been one trip. They all appeared to be on the same table so why Dean didn’t see them all at once I can’t explain. I enjoyed many of the choices and feel that there were a decent amount of them and that they made me feel as in control of the story as I wanted for the most part. I was mixed on the hub aspect of the game where you can choose to travel to different locations at will having to figure out which one is where you need to go. It helps the game from being more linear but other times felt a little confusing. The video quality was decent during light moments but during ones that were darker it felt too dark for some of them.
I played The Dark Side of the Moon on Linux. It never crashed on me. It had an issue where after one scene the screen was black but the developer fixed that recently. It still has several audio issues for me though. I watched a play through online whenever I suspected it to confirm. There are scenes that are silent even with speaking going on; scenes where the sound effects of objects didn’t play; and a scene where there is talking but the characters lips weren’t moving. There is also a subtitles bug where you can’t turn them off but to be honest with the lack of audio in some scenes this was actually a blessing. Alt-Tab didn’t work. There was an auto save system but I could see no indication of when save points happened. You can pause the game almost at any time.
Game Engine: Unity
Graphics API: OpenGL
Disk Space Used: 5.41 GB
Save System: Auto
GPU Usage: 0-100 %
VRAM Usage: 512-646 MB
CPU Usage: 4-30 %
RAM Usage: 2.3-3.5 GB
I respect the effort put forth by the developer. They do a good job of working on a limited budget and interfacing with their customers. I like the game at it’s core. The voice acting of some could be forgiven to a point but the technical issues sink this game for me. I was a Kickstarter backer for this game paying £10 for it. I finished it in 3 hours and 4 minutes. The price and length were fine with me. I will keep an eye out for their future work as I do think they have talent.
My Score: 5/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 21.0.3 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 21.0.3 | Mate 1.24.1 | Kernel 5.12.0-1-MANJARO… Expand
