Overall a pretty solid story driven small scale game, most of the issues for me were technical, and the price is a bit too high for what it offers, especially since it is not really an Indie game, given the backing by EA.
The story, focusing on human relations and mental health and effect of one on the other and vice versa, is a bit generic and is definitely no masterpiece, but isOverall a pretty solid story driven small scale game, most of the issues for me were technical, and the price is a bit too high for what it offers, especially since it is not really an Indie game, given the backing by EA.
The story, focusing on human relations and mental health and effect of one on the other and vice versa, is a bit generic and is definitely no masterpiece, but is reasonably well written, and executed, and supported by solid, if at times a bit emotionally bland (given the subject) voice-acting. The movement is well paced and gives enough time to admire the scenery, but is still quick enough to see / feel you are progressing further at a good pace. Platforming is overall decent, but nothing special - it is not very challenging, the game overall is not, although there are some parts which contain either very timing sensitive approach, or precision - the latter of which is not a very good thing and the reason will be explained further down.
The game world is technically open, but the progression is a bit streamlined, but there are parts in the story where you can explore a bit. It also changes throughout the story, so backtracking through some parts of it later into the story is barely noticeable.
The art style of the game, and the interconnection between visuals and audio is top notch - this is the part of the game where it truly hits beyond it "class". The visuals are somewhat simplistic and cartoonish, but not in a childish or over done way, the color palette is wonderful, and while overall the graphic style is on the simpler side, there is just the right amount of detail in the right places.
Sound and music, however, is even better. The ambience is simple, but wonderful and very high quality, helping immersion a lot, but the "star" here is music, and not only in terms of it being very fitting, but the use of it is also exceptionally good in regards to revealing the true mood of the current situation - where the visuals reveal the surface mood of the current situation in the game, it is the music and the sounds which will truly tell you what is going on. With the audio and music being so good, the game also makes a great use of silence - when this game goes silent, it hits you like a hammer, more so than any increase in music volume or tempo ever could.
The game also has a set of collectibles, some of which reveal some pretty interesting information regarding the story, which also kind of provides an explanation to some game systems / mechanics - for example, why you do not really die - more like get knocked out and then wake up - perhaps as if the failure was just a bad dream.
Unfortunately, the good part is over, now onto the not so good - While the game is technically sound in regards to stable FPS, and no crashes, there are a couple things that could use a bit more polish in regards to some in-game mechanics and movement physics.
The movement is very imprecise and especially jumping can be problematic in certain parts of the game, the hit-boxes are very hit and miss - some of them are way too simplistic and do not fit the actual object you see, while others are overly detailed and will cause you to get to stuck on random bits and pieces. There are also some parts where you will slide down a sloped surface, and others where you will not - sometimes next to each other This is a particularly frustrating issue with the platforming sections which require precise jumps - there are not many, fortunately, but it is still very annoying.
In regards to platforming, there is also one more complaint - the "punishment" for missing some jumps is not very consistent with the difficulty of the jumps themselves, nor with how far into the game you are, which can lead to some more frustration.
The boat you use to traverse over the body of water also feels nothing like a real boat, it actually feels like some placeholder mechanics were put in, and then never really worked on - maybe because of time constraints. The physics of the boat also feel very odd in many instances and it only really ever resembles the handling of a boat at full speed. Anyways, spinning around like a fidget spinner is amusing, but a bit off from the overall feelings the game tries to invoke.
The last issue I had with the game are repetitive encounters with "enemies", which often force you to repeat simple, but tedious tasks to trick them into "destroying" themselves, as you cannot engage them directly. This by itself would perhaps not be such an issue if it was more spread out throughout the game - so more individual encounters, but more breaks in between and less repeating at the same time, but most of the encounters lock you in a small arena and then force you to do the same thing 4-5-6 or even more times, and while discovering the methods of defeating the various enemies is pretty satisfying, it's nothing ground breaking, and will get repetitive and boring really quickly.… Expand
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