![]() ![]() John: But you began saying you liked it, and I've taken it to my negative place. And that's where the game gets so problematic it's been funded by adventure game hardcore types but its eyes are apparently on the massively mainstream mega-cashpot. Which would again speak to being afraid of scaring off casuals. Partly because there's perhaps too much hinting/foreshadowing in incidental dialogue. So I realised, "Oh, I'm going to need a small head for something," then had one by the time I met the scene it was needed in.Īlec: Yeah, I second guessed the game a little too often. ![]() John: Yes - that was a nice puzzle, although sadly one I solved long before I was presented with the need for it. Puzzles that make you feel clever for solving them, and make you laugh when you understand them.Īlec: The headshrinking puzzle was the closest to that, although three very similar looking doors took some of the fun out of it. ![]() John: I don't even want complex - I want smart. I can't imagine that they're simply unaware people want complex puzzles, so perhaps they've tried stuff and deemed it unsuitable Until you realise this was a game designed for iPad.Īlec: I do wonder what's on the cutting room floor. I know I've banged on about it before, but the lack of a "look at" is just inexplicable. Not the mind behind Day Of The Tentacle or Grim. But it feels as though it's been made by a casual games developer trying for something a bit more hardcore. John: It's utterly beautiful, and I so deeply love the theme that Schafer wants to explore - of the teenage process of discovering who you are independently of your parents and expectations. Which was a really pointless, timewasting false positive John: The peach puzzle especially wound him up.Īlec: I had to go and get a second one as the lumberjack ate my first one. Where I flew past things because I'm used to poor adventure puzzles, he's hitting walls and getting rightly annoyed.Īlec: Interesting. John: My dad's currently playing it, and his frustration with it has rather compounded my own. I'm still holding on to some hope that the puzzles will escalate in act 2, if you go into with your existing, albeit small inventory. Which is just plain weird.Īlec: And yes, a lot of faintly wretched attempts to retroactively justify the less logical puzzles in dialogue, as with the peach, those torturous puns about pits that barely made any sense. It's a nice enough story, but it's not a very good adventure game. There's no real ingenuity there, it's the try everything on everything until something clicks approach, or it's already screamingly obvious from afar. The more I remember the completely awful parts, the dreadful puzzles like the peach with the guards, or being required to fall through holes in clouds moments after the game teaches you falling through holes in clouds is bad.Īlec: Yeah, the solutions are very A-B, early Telltale style. John: The farther I get from it, the less I like it. I suppose that's to make the leads seem like real people rather than Guybrushes, but unfortunately they both seemed a bit damp to me. The supporting cast cuts loose a whole lot more. Though I must say it never made me laugh and I found the voice acting weirdly muted for the most part. It's very pretty and has excellent world/concept design. To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Īlec: I liked it, I think. So what's your overall reaction to the game? I just clicked the one my mouse was nearest to. ![]() John: I don't remember giving it any thought. As I discovered when my laptop-grabbing baby somehow hit just the right buttons to force a character switch on me earlier than I'd planned to. Of course, that proved to be deliberate on the game's part, for subversion of expectation. Not all the way through, I alternated a bit.Īlec: I did the same, because I thought Vella, the girl looked more twee. They talk of its two lead characters, they talk of its unfinished nature, they talk of its puzzles, they talk of what they wanted but what they got, they talk of shrunken heads and peaches.Īlec: Which character did you play first, then? And they have something they must discuss: Double Fine's Kickstarted revivalist adventure game, Broken Age, whose first 'Act' was released last week. Somehow, the two writers' minds reach each other across the gulf of space and time. Untold distances away, in said sea-neighbouring world of Brighton, Alec Meer also sits at a keyboard and imagines a tourist-besieged town made up of yellow buildings and fading magazine publishers. A world where 95% of its male population are bearded and wear Converse. From the distant, waterlogged land of Bath Spa, John Walker sits at a keyboard and dreams of another world. ![]()
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