First Impression: G String (PC – Steam) ~ Personal Robots Got Too Real

Steam page – Official website of publisher

I won’t blame you if you look at the title of this game and wonder what I’m going to talk about today. Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about that sort of adult game and I hope that the SEO won’t bring in that kind of traffic either. Today we are going to talk about a game named “G String” developed Eyaura. This game started life as a Half Life 2 mod just like another game “The Stanley Parable” I took a look at in the past. Now, the Stanley Parable is an amazing game in terms of story telling in games so I have high expectations for this game. Is this standalone game going to live up to it’s expectations or is this game going to fail and disappear in SEO-hell with it’s name? Let’s take an 100% honest look at this game with the developer provided press code I got for this game and let’s talk about my opinion. Meanwhile, I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article.

Editornal note: The latest patch for this game has been released on December 23th.

Personal Robots Got Too Real

This game is a passion project of the developer Eyaura who worked on this game for the past 13 years. According to the press kit, this game is 10-ish hours long and is a single player Cyberpunk FPS game that aims to envoke the feel of old science fiction films from the ’70 – ’90.

In this game, you take on the role of a young Korean girl named Myo Hyori. After a sudden earthquake, she is able to escape in her standard issue biosuit into the dystopian world. During your exploration, you learn more and more about your missing parents, what happened to the world and the personal robots and much more. 

Due to the nationality of the character, I think this game takes place in Korea. The reason I mention this is because there is voice acting in this game. Dialogue between characters is in English but the suit talks to Myo in another language. I’m not 100% sure but I think it’s in Japanese but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s in Korean since the main character is Korean. 

The voice acting is decent and adds a lot to the world building, tension and atmosphere of the game. But, on several occasions, the suit and a character were talking at the same time which made it a bit annoying to follow the voice acting. Thankfully, there are subtitles, so I was able to read what was being said. 

During this adventure, you go through various locations. You also fight various enemies like soldiers and personal robots. You also meet various other characters that all play a vital part in the story. On the store page for this game, there is a beefy “Quick Reference” guide that contains quite a lot of lore and story details. Don’t read that if you want to go in the game blind. Yet, if you enjoyed this game, I would highly advise you to read through this manual and download it to add it to the collection.

Because I haven’t finished the game, I’m not going to talk too in depth about my opinions on the story. But, so far I have been enjoying the story. While I find it a bit cheesy at certain points, it’s still a good enough story to play through the game.

Let’s survive this world

So, due to a catastrophic event nicknamed the “Friday Floods”, the world got quite dangerous to life in. So, you need to be careful while exploring in this game that you survive the dangerous surface world. 

While playing this game, I didn’t really know under which style to categorize this game. On one hand, I would call this an action packed survival horror and on the other hand, I would call this a story driven FPS. In the end, I would say it’s more an adventure game with heavy influences of the FPS genre. The best game to compare it too is Half Life in a matter of fact. In that game you also have moments of puzzle solving and moments of action. 

During my playthrough, it was quite clear to me that a lot of love has been put into this game. But, it pains me to say that there are some things that are a bit rough around the edges. A first example is the controls. The controls are great and responsive and are quite quick to learn. But, sometimes they act quite strangely. I especially had problems getting up when I got out of a vent. Sometimes, I was unable to move and I had to jump to get into the right position. Also, ascending and descending on ladders is too fast in my opinion. 

A second example of this game being a bit rough is that there is some cheap enemy placement. Especially those exploding floating balls. Some of them come in the most inconvenient moments when the game is quite tense or you are trying to avoid a sniper shooting at you. Speaking about these snipers, I have seen in a gameplay video that you are able to take them out. I was unaware of that because they barely give any feedback when you hit them. I wonder if I could destroy these turrets, but I highly doubt that since they don’t seem to get damaged when I unload a complete magazine on them. 

So, a great advice from me is to quick save often. Especially after an encounter, since you never know when something happens and you need to load a save. Now, this brings me right to the difficulty of this game as a third example of this game being a bit rough. I started two playthroughs in this game. One on the medium difficult and one of the easy difficulty. Maybe it’s just my playstyle but I barely felt any difference between the two difficulties. Those flying orbs still gave me as much trouble on easy compared to normal. I think that if those flying orbs weren’t an instant kill, it would be a lot better.

Let’s talk about combat. You have two types of enemies. The robots and the soldiers. Only the turret and the soldiers don’t use melee attacks. All the other enemies use melee attacks. You can play this game without firing one bullet to an enemy since you have a fireball attack. Now, to be quite honest, I rarely used this attack since I found it a tad bit tricky to use and I always ran into my stray fireballs and got damage. 

Most of the enemies are quite beefy and require more than one bullet to take out. Rarely I was able to kill an enemy in one shot. Apart from when I got lucky and found some explosive barrels around and use my telekenis powers to throw it at my enemies. The combat is quite enjoyable and if you are a veteran in the shooter genre, I think you will feel right at home here. 

Destruction Of The World

I don’t really recommend that you play this game with the default visual settings. I highly advise you to play around with the visual settings since otherwise you will have some issues like textures looking a bit rough or the lighting being too harsh. 

It would be a shame since the visual presentation in this game is well done. Of course, you will see some area’s where it gets a bit rough or where it feels like you are playing a game from 2010 instead of 2021, but in my opinion, as long as the presentation of the game sets the right mood without having too much visual glitches or clashing art styles, I think it shouldn’t matter if the game looks like you need the latest graphics card or your old laptop from when you were younger. 

Occasionally I had some moments where I felt that the visuals felt a bit more rushed or unpolished like the rest of the game. But, I didn’t focus on these moments since the charm of the world kept pulling me in and I didn’t stop enjoying this game at all. 

In terms of animations, I was quite impressed. It’s a shame that sometimes small objects like planks do glitch out a bit but that’s more a problem with the engine then the animations. The only thing I feel that would improve in terms of the animations is a bit more visual flair when you are using your telekenic powers. 

At first, I felt that the soundtrack of this game was totally disconnected from the game. I felt that it didn’t match at all. But, when I gave it some thought, I started to understand what the developer was going for. The soundtrack really fits the world before it was destroyed. Now, there are a lot of silent moments in this game that helps with the tense atmosphere but when the music kicks in, you get the feeling that you are destroying the world which gives an even more creepy vibe. 

Let’s go from talking about the soundtrack to talking about the sound effects. The guns feel great to fire and they sound amazing as well. The only thing I would add to the game is a bit more grunts to the enemies since it was a bit jarring sometimes when I entered a room with a lot of enemies that after their first shot started with their grunts. 

In terms of visuals and audio, this game does a lot right but it needs some polishing in some area’s to get the game to the next level. It would improve the game so much if there was a bit more visual polish and if the sound effects gave a bit more hints to the player on how to solve a puzzle or when there are enemies nearby. 

Now, in terms of the visuals, I would like to mention one thing. I think the option & FX UI is somewhat broken. Sometimes I didn’t display the background, sometimes it didn’t even pop-up and sometimes it was a combination of the two. But, I think this something that can be fixed in an update. 

In conclusion, I think that this game is a prefect example of a diamond in the rough. All the elements for this game being amazing are there. But, the rough area’s hold the game back. Thankfully, most of the issues have to do with the lack of polish in some area’s. The issues aren’t game breaking and shouldn’t hinder the enjoyment of the game. Well, unless you feel that jank in games is something you don’t want of course. 

Would I recommend this game? Oh yes, I would recommend this game to everybody who enjoys more story based FPS games like Half Life or Alan Wake. This game is quite enjoyable and for the low price of 14€, I think you get more than your money’s worth out of this game. While the game is a bit rough in some area’s at the moment of writing but the future patches will improve the game quite a lot. 

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in a future article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care. 

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Publishing: Trip the Ark Fantastic

Trip the Ark Fantastic – an immersive story-driven scientific adventure set in the Animal Kingdom on the verge of industrial and social revolution.

5 December 2019, Zagreb – Gamechuck has just released the first trailer for their upcoming role-playing adventure game Trip the Ark Fantastic, the first Croatian game co-funded by the European Union’s MEDIA sub-programme.

Trip the Ark Fantastic is planned for release in 2022 on PC/Mac/Linux and consoles, and until then Gamechuck is inviting all interested gamers to follow them via their newsletter, Discord channel, or other social media at arkfantastic.com.

SUMMARY

“Under our homes and under our hearths, civilization itself stands on a story. Words tied us all together, and they could unravel the world. 

Find it, Charles; uphold the Myth!”

Trip the Ark Fantastic will have:

• A deep and immersive secondary world set in the Animal Kingdom on the verge of industrial and social revolution, content-rich and filled with intrigue, side-quests, and flavor at every step.
• Completely original gameplay mechanics based on the scientific method: research, discuss, experiment, and finally publish arguments in the Animal Kingdom’s papers.
• An exploration of how myths, science, and philosophy can influence society, and how monarchies, democracies, and anarchies view power, authority, and legitimacy of rule.
• Gorgeous art including frame-by-frame animation and vibrant landscapes inspired by the golden age of animation, as well as music inspired by the works of R. Wagner
• A gesamtkunstwerk approach in which the art, music, and gameplay all tie closely to the story of scientific discovery and the role of myths in different types of societies.
• The entire development completely is done in open-source technologies, including Godot Engine, Krita, Ink, and MuseScore, among others.

STORY

Trip the Ark Fantastic is a story-driven role-playing adventure set in the Animal Kingdom on the verge of both industrial and social revolution. The story follows Charles, a hedgehog scholar on a mission by the lion king to save the monarchy, but his decisions could end up helping reformists or even to bring about anarchy.

The story revolves around an ancient myth that forms the basis of the Animal Kingdom’s caste system – the myth of the Ark Fantastic. As the myth goes, the ark was built by lions millennia ago to save all animals from a great flood. The king’s gambit is that, amidst whispers of reform and revolution, a reputable scholar such as Charles proving the existence of the mythical ark might sway animals toward a royalist stance, and thus uphold the monarchy.

Charles is accompanied by the king’s trusted advisor Philippe the Fox and the captain of the royal guard – Andre the Boar. Their task will lead them to the fringes of the Kingdom and beyond, in search of elusive truth.

GAMEPLAY

The player progresses through the game by solving the Kingdom’s various problems and mysteries, but his method of solving them is a scientific one – he publishes compelling arguments in the Animal Kingdom’s scientific papers to prove his theories and disprove those of others. Only arguments with sound logic and solid evidence will have the power to sway public opinion and change the course of history. 

The evidence itself can be found by talking to the local denizens (after learning their language, such as squirrels), by using scientific equipment (a microscope, or a chemist kit), or, as a true scholar, by “standing on the shoulders of giants” and using evidence from the works of other scholars found in libraries across the Kingdom.

The player’s main challenge will be finding all the relevant evidence and then choosing the right conclusions, which are then published and reviewed by his peers, potentially resulting in a boost to his scholarly reputation.

Additionally, since Charles’ scientific conclusions can have large-scale consequences on the Animal Kingdom and the monarchy, in particular, there is a looming moral dilemma over whether the player should publish a certain argument or not.

THEMES AND INSPIRATIONS

We draw inspiration for the game from modern fables of classic literature, such as Animal Farm or Watership Down, as well as deep story-driven games from the roleplaying and adventure game genres, and games with unique and experimental gameplay mechanics.

Our goal is to use the game to explore various types of society (monarchy, democracy, anarchy) and to tackle questions such as how the rule is legitimized, what role myths play in the shaping of society, and so on.

The animation is drawn frame-by-frame to be reminiscent of early animated classics, and the music takes cues from 19th-century romanticism with the use of leitmotifs inspired by Wagner and gesamtkunstwerk opera.

The game is developed using open-source software, such as the painting tool Krita and the Godot game engine. Gamechuck studio is also a sponsor to both Krita and Godot Engine and, in the case of Godot Engine, actively contributes to its development.

CONTACT

Lucija Pilić – PR and Marketing

Press mail: press@game-chuck.com

Trip the Ark Fantastic web page: www.tripthearkfantastic.com

Gamechuck web page: www.game-chuck.com

Link to Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxxCXc1ade4

Press kit: http://tripthearkfantastic.com/presskit

Discord: https://game-chuck.com/discord

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tripthearkfantastic/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ark_fantastic

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tripthearkfantastic/

About Gamechuck

Gamechuck is a Croatian game development company founded in 2017 and based in Zagreb. Gamechuck secured EUR 149,400 from European Union’s MEDIA sub-program Creative Europe for the development of the “Trip the Ark Fantastic,” thus becoming the first game development studio from Croatia that received funding from the EU. Gamechuck has also been nominated for the Best Game Idea at the AzPlay Bilbao, the Best Transmedia Project at the Filmteractive Warsaw and Best Game Idea at the Casual Connect London for its debut game “All You Can Eat,” while its second game “vApe Escape” was featured in the Humble Monthly Originals selection in November 2018.

First Impression: Across The Moment (PC) ~ Let’s Go On A Journey!

Official Steam Page

Today, I want to take you on a journey. The journey that the game “Across The Moment” tell you. Currently, the first episode is out. There will be 4 episodes in total. The three other episodes will come as an update in the future. To write this review, I got a review code from the developer. The developer also gave me full control in what I could write in my article. So, this is completely my opinion. In any case, enough introduction. Time to get reviewing this moment. Well, “Across The Moment”. As usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article.

Note: While I have almost finished the first episode, I’m not going to make this a review since not all episodes are out.

Artstyle tells it all

When you look at the promotional screenshots of this game, one thing is quite clear. This game doesn’t look like your run of the mill adventure game. And it is, this game is trying to tell a grim story about somebody falling into a depression and doing something. I won’t talk about it since it would spoil the game a bit in my opinion. But believe me, this game talks about some heavy subject matter. It also has some social commentary that really made me think about how our lives currently work.

The story gets more power from the voice acting. While the voice acting didn’t click with me at first, after the story started to get more and more clear, I started to understand and appreciate the voice acting and the direction it got.  The only thing I shall say is, imagine it’s somebody telling his life story about he fell into a depression and how defeated he felt. It really comes through in the pacing and voice acting.

Apart from the dialogue, the story is also told by the journal. Whenever something happens, it gets written down in the journal. From story bits to observations of the world you are in. I really like how this game is written. It clearly shows a passion for the story that the creator wants to tell with his game.

Everything is documented from the game, so when you take a break from the game for a while or when you need a refresher on what happened in a certain place or world, you can look it up in the journal. It’s an extremely handy tool.

Thanks to the dark artstyle with bright colors, the story gets even more meaning. The only issue I have with the art style is that sometimes the game is a bit too dark and you barely see where a wall is.

Visually, the game succeeds in setting the required atmosphere. I really liked the world building and the story is told through symbolism. The animations are great too. The use of color really helps to guide the player to where to go next. If I may change one thing in terms of visuals is that more items you can pick up like the screwdriver or the belt are in a different color, even a different shade of grey. Since it’s not always clear if there is an important item you missed or not.

Let’s Go On A Journey

The first episode takes about 1 and half hours to complete if you really know what you are doing. If the other chapters are this long, I think you have a 12-hour game on your hands. But, let’s keep our focus on the current released episode.

This game is a 3D adventure game. It’s more of a walking simulator with a lot of puzzles and exploration. So, basically, it isn’t a walking simulator at all. In this game, you have to solve puzzles to be able to open doors and progress to the next area. Here is where some issues are with the game. My biggest complaint is the inventory. In my honest opinion, the inventory system is decent, apart from one thing. The system that is used to combine items is just annoying to use. Perhaps it’s a limitation of the Unreal 4 Engine being used, but it’s annoying to use. You must click on the ying-yang symbol, drag one item in the left box and the other item in the right box and click on the misaligned “yes” to try and combine them. You don’t even get any feedback if you can’t combine the items. It makes controlling the game annoying.

Which is a shame, since the controls for this game work fine for the most part. I wish that the controls were rebindable. Since, just like various other indie titles, they don’t know that “AZERTY” exists and now I must put my fingers weird again.

Just for you QWERTY-users, a reference. To move forward, I must use the Z key. And to move backward, the Q-key. The S & D-keys do their job fine. Anyways, let’s get back to reviewing this game.

There are two other things I want to point out about the controls. One is there is something odd you can do while you open your inventory. You can still duck, stand up and jump. Also, when you hold any of the movement keys, you hear the walking sound effect.

The second thing I want to talk about in terms on the controls is the jump. Besides having a great jump arc, the jumping is stiff in my opinion. I noticed that when you jump first and then press the move forward key, you don’t reach as far as you jump after you have moved forward a bit.

The jumping mechanic needs some polishing up. I found it frustrating and unreliable to use, especially in the platforming segments of the game. There was one segment in the game that took way too long to make. It would be great too if there were some checkpoints between the jumping segments. There is nothing more frustrating than being almost at the end of a jumping segment and falling all the way down for just one minor mistake.

Symbols

In terms of the music, the soundtrack is good. The style of the soundtrack isn’t 100% my thing, but I love how it adds to the atmosphere of the game. The sound design is decent. While I wish there were a bit more sound effects for when you jump or when you land, I think the sound design is like I said: decent.

The difficulty in this game really depends if you can see the solution or not. Sometimes, the solution isn’t that clear and you are overlooking one thing. Really experiment with your environment and your inventory if you are stuck. Try the “everything on anything and combine everything with everything” tactic if you are stuck.

This game is also available in Chinese and Russian. It’s still a mystery to me why this option isn’t in the options menu but in the main menu. I think it would be more helpful if you move this option in the options menu, to be honest.

I do have to say, this game is only 3€ on Steam. I think that you get more value for your money when you buy this game. If you are interested in this game, I think you should buy this game.

There are also Steam Achievements and trading cards for people who are interested in that. There are 4 card drops for 6 cards to create a badge. Good luck.

That’s everything I wanted to say about this game. I can’t wait to see the second episode of this game since I really want to know where the story goes next. Thank you so much to the developer for giving me a key to try out this game. I really enjoyed my time with this game. I hope you also enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Game Quicky: Uauim Challenge (PC) ~ The First Stages

Official website

Today I want to take a look at a game still a challenging game called U.A.U.I.M Challenge. The first version of this game released a month ago and the developer asked me to take a look at the game. So, that’s why we are here. In order to be able to review this game, the developer gave me a review code for this game. I played v0.5 for this review. Let me be clear on one thing, this article is my opinion about the current state of the game and is my opinion alone. As usual, feel free to post your opinion on the content of the article and/or the game in the comment section down below.

Background

So, before we continue, what is this game? This game is a pretty challenging top-down shooter. You can compare the gameplay to games like Galaga, 1942 and other games like that.

This game is being developed by one person. I have a lot of respect if you develop a game on your own. Even when you didn’t make everything yourself and you got some help in for example the creation of the music, still I have a lot of respect for you.

The “this is going in the right direction” things

Let me first talk about the good points of this game. I think that the sprite work is going in the right direction. While I wouldn’t call it 16bit, I remind me more of the old days of Atari and very early NES games.

If the enemies will get the same level of animation that your ship has, I have high hopes for the animations.

The controls work pretty well. I have only one nitpick. I think it’s quite strange how you are unable to pause the game using an XBOX controller. I really tried every button and I wasn’t able to pause the game. Oh well, thankfully the “ESC” button on my keyboard wasn’t too far from my reach. Also, thank the lord for auto-fire!

The game really delivers on its name. The game isn’t easy. Thankfully, with some practice, you can get further and further into the game. This game is all about memorization and knowing which ships come next. That’s why I’m so glad I have infinite continues.

Something I really like in this game is the different “skins” you have in the game. You can change the “CRT mode” in the game to five different modes and you can change the brightness of the game by just a button press. As a retro game enthusiast and collector, I’m really happy that things like this find their way into modern games.

The “needs more development and polish” things

The scoring system needs some polishing. First of all, I would love to see enemies display their score value when they die. Like right after they die, you quickly see how much points you got from killing them.

Secondly, it would be nice if there was a high score table with a date when you reached said score. Something that would be even more awesome if you had the ability to share this online.

And finally, I think that the “High-score” system is bugged out. Each time I start a new game or use a continue, the player score resets and the high score too. That’s something the developer should take a look at.

While the UI in this game is pretty decent, I was pretty close to putting it in the good department until I reached the section you see in this screenshot above this paragraph. It’s really hard to read the score when you use a dark blue colour on a purple background. I think it would be easier to read if you make it white instead of blue. In addition to that, I think it would be pretty helpful if you made the font in the main menu a bit bigger. When I wasn’t sitting close to my screen, I wasn’t able to read it very well.

One minor detail that you should add is a “Are you sure you want to quit” dialogue when a player selects the quit button.

While I was able to arm myself with a bomb, I was unable to use it or to figure out how it works. But this will be most likely added in a future release of the game. It would be interesting if some rare enemies drop more bombs.

There are three things that could improve for the future versions of this game. The first thing that I would focus on is the soundtrack. To be honest, I really didn’t like the music. The sound effects are fine, the little jingle that plays when you start the first level isn’t good.

The game could use some more sound effects, to be honest. It would be helpful for the player when the special flame arrows are shot, a special sound effect plays.

The second thing that I didn’t like too much about this game is some wallpapers. I think that the current assets that are being used don’t fit the theme at all. The game gives off a space/industrial vibe to me and most of the backgrounds are more generic ones. Keep the backgrounds a bit more consistent.

The third and final thing that I would change is the difficulty curve. While the game is supposed to be challenging, I had a long time to pass the first level and I got pretty frustrated and stopped playing the game for a few times. I think this game could benefit from more gradual build up instead of being extremely hard from the first few minutes.

The engine

If I may be honest, I think that this game is held back by the engine it’s programmed in. When I talked with the developer about the first version of the article, he told me that various things I recommended weren’t possible with the engine.

I think that the developer has some nice ideas that are present in this title, but I think it would be better if the developer used another engine that allowed more freedom. Something like YoYo GameMaker or Construct.

I think that this game can become a better game if it would be rebuilt in an engine where the developer has more freedom to control more elements of the game.

Conclusion

At this moment in time, the game is 3$.

At its current state, the game is pretty rough and needs more polishing before I can recommend it to other players.

But, I think it would be a nice idea to take a look at this game and give your feedback to the developer. Since, I think that this game can become a nice indie title if it gets some more development and gets a bit more polished up.

If you are interested in what you have seen and read, go ahead and buy yourself a copy from the official website. Otherwise, wait a few months until the game got some more development and give a try again then.

So, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing about it. Thank you for reading my article and I hope to be able to welcome you in another article on my blog, but until then take care and have a great rest of your day!