Steam store pageI found out about this game thanks to a forum friend of mine. I will sure send this article to him. The game got me interested. I like adventure games like this, but when I played this game… I was seriously disappointed. I’m terribly sorry Priom, but I think I need to rip this game a new one. Yet, how bad is this game? I did some digging about this game. I got some very interesting results. I found a lot of empty review pages all over the internet. I found one positive review. The website looks unprofessional. Okay, I think I’m running ahead of myself. Let’s take a look at this game as an objective critic. How is this game? Why did it leave such a bad taste in my mouth? What can improve and what doesn’t need improvement? Let’s take a look. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the content of this article and/or this game.
Problems everywhere
You could argue that I’m being too hard on a 5 bucks game made by three people. Well, I think I’m not. Because when I look at their website, it looks like this isn’t their first game. So, they have some experience.
First of all, let’s take a look at the story. It looked interesting after the first dialogue part. The voice acting was decent. It missed some emotion but it was all right for a three man team.
But two major flaws ruin the story presentation. Some visuals look less crisp than other. But the animation and the lack of sound effects are the two biggest issues. You see the main character struggle the whole way trough. There is no sound effect for that. Also, at the end of the cut scene… The main character is able to slip away. This came from nowhere since the visuals didn’t indicate that you were able to escape.
Then the dialogue itself. Well, it’s fine to create a fantasy world. If you explain things to the player. If you talk about “humans” and “demons”… You could explain a bit more how people have glass wings, what their goal is and things like that. In the introduction, the main character got the main objective. To get her (or his?) glass wings back.
Signs to older/other games?
It’s rarely a good sign when a game has a separate .exe file to change the buttons for the game. It’s an even worse sign if it has a major flaw. The controls, are responsive yet flawed. There are some buttons assigned to some functions. There are TWO pause buttons. If you rebind one of those pause buttons, believe me, it won’t work… It still pauses the game.
Oh, and you can zoom in and out. Interesting and unique feature. But why can’t you run when you are zoomed in or out?
Okay, the subtitle said… signs of an older game. Well, the “load” option is actually you jumping into a warp pipe. Some people might praise a game for this, I’m more in the camp that doesn’t like this at all. It feels cheap and lazy. It feels like a trick to draw you into their game because you remember that mechanic from other games.
The menus aren’t well designed. When I booted the game, I was greeted by a sort of options menu. Some text overlapped some options. Also, the game settings can’t be changed once you are in game. And that’s a big issue in my eyes. If you notice that you want to change one setting, you have to shut down the game and boot it once again. There was also an option to do an “Alt boot”, which is for so far I can see, just an alternative costume.
Both in the graphical and music department, I think this game lacks a lot of polish. Like I said in the part about the introduction cut scene, some textures look smooth while others … well, just look ugly. The animation was lacking some serious polish. Another issue with the graphics is that the area around the doors looks unfinished. I also had some animation glitches, which worked out in my favor, where a jump landed me miles ahead from where I should land. Oh, some animations look also like they are missing some frames. The camera can clip through walls, the visuals of the levels look uninteresting among other things. Oh, and let’s not forget that all the traps look the same. Just a paint smudge on the floor. (And let’s not forget that you emit red light on the ground for some reason.)
The sound of this game, well, it gives me a vibe of “stock” music and sound effects. While the music sounds decent, the sound effects sound quite out of place. Some sound effects really don’t feel right.
The final negative I have with this game is the fact that there is a reset button. It just doesn’t sit with me well.
Positives?
So, I think I made myself clear… This game left a bad taste in my mouth. Are there positives? Well, actually, there are. The main menu is quite interesting. With the bridges being the save slots and all. If only they polish this idea a bit up, it would be a bit better.
Well, this whole game can be more enjoyable if they polished up this game a bit more. Play tested it and didn’t only look at the parts that didn’t work but the parts where regular gamers would try to do things you didn’t intend. Things that might confuse a gamer that is interested in this game.
The premise and gameplay felt fun, yet a sloppy execution made this game feel short. Extremely short. Would I recommend this game? Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend it. If you are interested in what you saw from the screenshots, you might be better off watching a let’s play episode or two. Or even try the demo.
This game had potential. It’s quite a bummer to see that this was the end result. If this game would be in early access, I wouldn’t give it such a rough time. While I can understand that people would enjoy this game… I don’t think it’s a good game. It lacks some polish but it doesn’t lack the love of the developers. I’m sorry From Soy Sauce, while I enjoyed the gameplay, I couldn’t look passed the other issues in this game. So, I think it’s highly unlikely I would finish this game. Maybe I might check later since I see that you recently released a patch for this game. Maybe in the future, most of these issues are resolved. Who knows…?
In any case, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I know, it’s something different from what I usually write. But hey, I felt like not writing about a good game for a change. I hope to welcome you at an other article, but until that time… have a great day and game on~
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