I really don't know how to feel about this one. There's a lot of melancholy, sure, but I feel like it hinges just a bit too hard into melodrama? Like, suffering for the sake of suffering or a more well dressed version of 'look, isn't it so cool? I guess I'm just fucked up huh? :)" Especially the way the game ends, it just goes on way too long.
Like, I enjoy a good narrative about pain and suffering, but we're playing as a character who we know nothing about, aside from the single tiny sprinkles of indirect character building that exist in the two/three rooms of the house that have them. And because this game is made in bitsy, there's not a whole lot of room for visual detail that exists without being told to you. Compare this to a game like Soul Void where there's a very obvious narrative about suffering and pain, but we see it in the environment more than we're told it out right. And on top of that, there's stuff that happens outside of that agony that gives us something to do.
And on the topic of telling and not showing, the three NPCs you find in the game have very long dialogue that largely is just more metaphors about being sad or in pain. And aside from one line/string of lines from one of the three of them, I literally don't remember anything that any of them said except from a running theme of vomit and sheets of paper. I think it might've been made better if the visuals on screen matched what they were saying, but instead we just get a boiling line shot of their face/upper body.
And as for the gameplay, it's fine. There's really only one puzzle but it's made really annoying by the fact that the solution is multiple maps away and there's no teleport/run button, so you have to go all the way back to find it, and then all the way back to where it belongs to use it. You're also expected to use the sword you find to kill the three NPCs which isn't really indicated, but maybe that's on me for not assuming to kill NPCs in a game about pain and suffering. There's also a lot of discrepancies with where you're able to walk and what shapes/tiles represent walls. As in, there are invisible walls everywhere, and also tiles that look like walls that you can pass through. It just makes traversing annoying because you don't know where you can and cannot go until you try to go that way, and when the map is as big as it is here (at least for a game made in bitsy) it gets a bit cumbersome.
I'm a bit disappointed with this one, especially considering how much I liked the previous game I played from this developer. I think the idea was cool, a miserable person in an apartment falls into these ghastly catacombs, but I feel like it could've been executed a lot better.
Like, I enjoy a good narrative about pain and suffering, but we're playing as a character who we know nothing about, aside from the single tiny sprinkles of indirect character building that exist in the two/three rooms of the house that have them. And because this game is made in bitsy, there's not a whole lot of room for visual detail that exists without being told to you. Compare this to a game like Soul Void where there's a very obvious narrative about suffering and pain, but we see it in the environment more than we're told it out right. And on top of that, there's stuff that happens outside of that agony that gives us something to do.
And on the topic of telling and not showing, the three NPCs you find in the game have very long dialogue that largely is just more metaphors about being sad or in pain. And aside from one line/string of lines from one of the three of them, I literally don't remember anything that any of them said except from a running theme of vomit and sheets of paper. I think it might've been made better if the visuals on screen matched what they were saying, but instead we just get a boiling line shot of their face/upper body.
And as for the gameplay, it's fine. There's really only one puzzle but it's made really annoying by the fact that the solution is multiple maps away and there's no teleport/run button, so you have to go all the way back to find it, and then all the way back to where it belongs to use it. You're also expected to use the sword you find to kill the three NPCs which isn't really indicated, but maybe that's on me for not assuming to kill NPCs in a game about pain and suffering. There's also a lot of discrepancies with where you're able to walk and what shapes/tiles represent walls. As in, there are invisible walls everywhere, and also tiles that look like walls that you can pass through. It just makes traversing annoying because you don't know where you can and cannot go until you try to go that way, and when the map is as big as it is here (at least for a game made in bitsy) it gets a bit cumbersome.
I'm a bit disappointed with this one, especially considering how much I liked the previous game I played from this developer. I think the idea was cool, a miserable person in an apartment falls into these ghastly catacombs, but I feel like it could've been executed a lot better.