Bio
I love video games and art in general and I like to write long-format reviews on games I find interesting, aka, I drone on way too long about useless info.

If you're looking for some long-winded takes on games, look no further! I like to think my taste isn't horrible lol

I have a Letterboxd too but I don't really use it.

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8/10 - Very good
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6/10 - Decent
5/10 - Mediocre
4/10 - Disappointing
3/10 - Bad
2/10 - Terrible
1/10 - Actual trash
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5★

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Favorite Games

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Moonscars often comes tantalisingly close to being a really competent game but then, just as quickly, will make some really clumsy mistakes that could’ve been easily avoided with more care and effort. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes even quite good, the potential is here, but the execution is sadly lacking.

5 / 10
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Man, I just don’t seem to have any luck with Metroidvanias as of late. Over the course of the last two years I must’ve played well over 10 of them, and I’m sad to say that the vast majority of them really aren’t anything to write home about. It’s gotten so common I’ve come to use the term “Midroidvania” to refer to the majority of them. And with that I don’t mean to simply shit on the (mostly independent) developers working in that genre; but rather I want to acknowledge that making one of these is HARD. There are so many individual elements you need to get just right. A good MV has to have a great world to explore, good combat and platforming mechanics, a good art style and good music to begin with. If even one of those core aspects doesn't fully connect with a player it can destroy the entire experience before it even fully started.

The best one I played last year was probably Ender Lilies (which I’ve spoken about in a review here), and that one was admittedly mostly pretty good, albeit with some definite room for improvement. The rest of them, while not terrible, were either too linear and short, or would try and force in some really unfitting game mechanics that did not complement the MV structure what so ever. Others yet were MVs only insofar you unlock abilities that let you bypass obstacles which you couldn’t before, while barely engaging with what are in my opinion the most interesting aspects of the genre; exploration, backtracking and environmental story telling. The last Metroidvania I played I would call a genuinely fantastic game front to back is Blasphemous; and it’s precisely the game that Moonscars seems to take heavy inspiration from.

Moonscars, like Blasphemous, is a Metroidvania set in a dark, (presumably) post-apocalyptic, medieval European inspired world filled with castles, caves, ghouls, ghosts and goblins, populated by weirdos who speak in riddles and with imagery drawing heavily from Christian iconography. It’s thick with atmosphere and asks the player to really take in the environments, and to wallow in the melancholy that the world presents.

But where Blasphemous is a game which masterfully weaves together an imaginative, rich world full of incredibly dense and cryptic lore, with great, fluid combat, great exploration and some of the best art and music in gaming period, Moonscars, in an attempt to more-or-less copy this entire formula wholesale, never really gets to define itself as its own unique experience, and also fumbles some of these aspects to the detriment of the whole game. The developers here were so busy creating an experience similar to Blasphemous, it feels like their inspiration became their literal blueprint, and this will become apparent the more we get into the nitty gritty.

Before I get more into the negative aspects of Moonscars, I want to highlight a few things I enjoyed about it first, and why - despite criticising this game quite harshly at times - I would still consider this an overall decent experience that’s at least worth a try if you’re a fan of the genre.

Let’s start with the fact that Black Mermaid (the dev studio) is a very small, newly established team from Moldova with no prior experience in making games, meaning that this is their first game they ever made. And considering that, it’s a very impressive feat that the game came out as solid as it did. I really want to again hammer home the point that I do NOT intend to shit on a small Eastern European studio with a number of employees smaller than that of a regular dentist’s office. Instead I want to offer constructive criticism where it makes sense.

Perhaps the strongest aspect of this game would have to be the combat. Here, it’s definitely the closest to actually feeling like a really solid game, making it feel like this is where most of the time and effort went. The animations on Grey Irma (the player character) look fluid and deliberate, and at times come very close to Blasphemous, with the difference that Moonscars actually manages to give the attacks and movements even stronger feeling of weight and impact. There is more inertia involved, which feels different from Blasphemous’ more “arcady” movement. The combat can be best described as “2D Souls-lite”, meaning you have your typical high-commitment attack animations which can’t be cancelled, an I-frame dodge, a parry, a magic/mana bar which lets you use spells, having to retrieve your XP on death aka “corpse running”, etc. You get the idea. In general it feels very close to Blasphemous, but I will utter my hottest take in the entire review right now; I think that Moonscars’ combat has the potential to be even more fun than Blasphemous. At least, I found myself slip into “the zone” a lot more often with Moonscars, than it did with the other one. You have more movement options, you’re faster, you have more attacks and you also die quicker. You have a Hollow Knight-esque heal that replenishes whenever you deal or receive damage, but you can use it a LOT faster and more efficiently than in that game. At first I thought that this was stupidly overpowered, with you being able to instantly heal basically whenever you want, but you can still be attacked and, like in Hollow Knight, you heal from the same mana pool that you use your spells with, which are going to become your main source of damage over time. There are also the so called “special weapons” (more like special attacks) you’ll occasionally find by beating certain enemies of completing certain tasks, but I’m afraid I’ll have to save talking about them until we get to the “bad” portion of the game, since this aspect is sadly the biggest flaw with Moonscars’ combat. Finally, the enemy design is really cool for the most part, and their variety is, overall, sufficient. It’s not fantastic, and there were times (especially towards the end) where I felt like I saw the same few enemy types over and over again but with slightly different attack animations, but it definitely gets the job done much more than other games in the Metroidvania genre. The same can be said for boss fights. They’re solid, some are even pretty good. I’d say their biggest problem is that they all feel somewhat similar, like, they’re all testing very similar skills, just in different permutations. But yeah, overall this is where the game is strongest.

Let’s talk about the level and world design. Both aspects are done rather well for the most part, and certainly better than other’s in the genre I’ve played, but already there’s a lot of room for improvement here. More on that later though. As for the good bits, the levels are all very pretty. The artists took meticulous care in illustrating the backgrounds and all the individual elements. The lighting is quite beautiful for the most part and I think the levels all do a very good job of leading you through them without making you go down a specific path. Sometimes they do get a little too linear for my taste but it’s fine. Short cuts are frequent and see more usage than checkpoints, which are surprisingly few and far between across the whole world, which in my opinion is a good thing. Using shortcuts over checkpoints is always a great way of cultivating an actual understanding of the map in the player, since it reduces the necessity for fast travel.

The music is also very nice, even if it’s a little understated at times. It’s melancholic, sad and bleak, but never without a glimmer of hope in there, somewhere, reminiscent of FromSoftware’s Souls games. The biggest compliment I can give it is that it always felt fitting to the environments, and that sometimes it’s really serene and beautiful, even if it feels like it’s kinda everything to draw attention away from itself.

A thing I found particularly impressive was the fact that the entire game works without a single loading screen, instead seamlessly transitioning between stages. It really seems to be one, massive, contiguous map, making it feel very similar to the original Dark Souls in that regard. You can go from the very first frame of the game all the way to the credits without ever leaving the actual gameplay - safe for some very scarce cutscenes. This makes for really great traversal, never taking you out of the action, no matter where you go. I always love when games are able to do this, it makes the whole act of going through a place so much more authentic.

All that said, I’m afraid this is where I’m kinda running out of things to praise. Do not get me wrong, so far this is all incredibly impressive and ambitious for such a small team with so little experience. If nothing else this really highlights their potential and makes me very interested in whatever they’re doing in the future. But now we have to get into what they need to work on and do differently the next time.

Without further ado, let’s get right into my least favourite aspect of Moonscars: it’s story - or rather, its presentation thereof. You know what, scratch that, just the writing in general.

In the broadest possible sense I would describe this game’s style of writing as: Death Stranding / Metal Gear meets Dark Souls / Blasphemous. Meaning, you’ll get absolutely drowned in expositional dialogue (more often monologues), characters will never stop talking at you but they only speak in the most arcane way possible, which means none of it will make any sense to you at all. You get buried in utterly meaningless world salads. This is bad enough when it comes to story moments or boss monologues or whatever, but in Moonscars, literally none of the characters EVER stop talking. I am seriously not exaggerating when I say that this game has perhaps the biggest ratio of unnecessary dialogue to gameplay I have ever seen. They NEVER stop talking. It’s mental. One of the most egregious examples of this comes in the form of the “memory mould” interactions. These things basically work like the consumable Soul-items from Dark Souls, which give you XP when used. Usually with these games, you just gulp them down and that’s it. But in this game, instead, you have to go to an NPC who will greet you with 3 entire boxes of dialogue each time, then you’ll have to give her one (for a pitiful amount of XP no less) but you only get it if you listen to TWENTY fucking boxes of dialogue - PER MEMORY MOULD. This is absurd to the point of parody. Was there truly no one in the development team who realised how utterly fucking grating this would be?

Given the way I just went off about the writing in this game you might not believe me, but I don’t even mind having to listen to a lot of dialogue if it’s any interesting. I love the Metal Gear series, and I particularly love the fact that they talk so much, because if it’s not actually interesting it’s at least funny or zany. Here, everything is just boring and nondescript. It’s as if the devs were deathly afraid to break out of the mould (pardon the pun) that Dark Souls set for the genre.

It’s quite sad that Moonscars is so afraid of actually just saying what it wants to say. Because despite the game’s best efforts of making itself as incomprehensible as humanly possible, I was able to pick up on something resembling themes here. Of course you have the setting, which frames the story as the experience of a clay statue, mixed with a surprising amount of dialogue that explicitly discusses Grey Irma’s identity as a woman. In fact, there seems to be a lot of imagery and symbolism relating to womanhood, menstruation and childbirth/raising children. It’s almost as though underneath all the rubble of forcibly abstruse walls of text, there might be something of an interesting story developing. It’s very unfortunate then, that this game chose this particular style of plot structure, because now I will never bother to find out anything, simply because the act of engaging with this story feels almost punishing.

Sadly we’re not quite done yet, as another problem that compounds with this comes in the form of really questionable translation. It’s been a bit too long since I’ve beaten it to accurately remember the exact wording of some of the badly translated lines, but I can recall at least a few phrases. For example, at one point King Drahan is referred to as “the only legit ruler of the land”, when they clearly meant to say “the legitimate king”. In general, people in the game would often use wildly inauthentic language, like using modern slang like “for real”, or “that’s cool” or similar things like that; and if this felt at all intentional I wouldn’t even point this out. But it’s fairly obvious that they tried to go for your typical pseudo-medieval Ye Olde English in the same style of Dark Souls and Blasphemous, but whoever was in charge of the translation into English sadly doesn’t seem to be fluent enough to competently write in that style. I did also very briefly check out the German translation (I speak German natively) just out of sheer curiosity, and unsurprisingly this translation is much worse. Spelling errors, grammatical errors and even some core elements of the story get translated extremely weirdly. Like, “Ichor” is translated to “Sekret”, which means “secretion” and has nothing to do with Ichor, the Blood of the Gods - in fact, it doesn’t really have a German translation as such. It’s usually just called “Blut der Götter / Götterblut”.

So this has been by far the game’s biggest flaw as I’m concerned, but sadly there is more we need to talk about.

Let’s continue with the fact that Moonscars is, at its core, extremely linear with no real instances of optional side paths, secret areas, secret bosses or anything at all really. The most you’re getting is getting to explore the individual levels relatively freely, although even here you’re led by the nose for most of it. What’s stranger is that you don’t don’t even really have to go back to previous areas at all if you don’t want to. In fact, the devs just don’t seem all that interested in making you actually explore the world they created. The only instance where you’re given the option to go back and explore is to gather a whole bunch of lost earrings. And it’s honestly pretty boring. Finding these is necessary to complete a side quest, but they only spawn in Ravenous Moon mode.

I haven’t talked about it yet because it didn’t really fit into the rest of the text yet, but to briefly explain it: The Moon Phase mechanic is a bit like Demon’s Souls “World Tendency” and is almost certainly inspired by it.

[For those that don’t know what that is: In Demon’s Souls, you have 2 forms. Human and Soul. If you die in human form at any point in a level, your so called “World Tendency” goes down one step towards Black, aka “Black World Tendency”, for that level. If you kill a boss, a Red Phantom or help another player do the same your tendency will instead shift to “White”. This works in a 7-tier system, where it goes from -3 to +3. -3 represents “Pure Black”, +3 represents “Pure White”. In Pure Black, enemies will deal increased damage, have increased health, will spawn in higher numbers but will also drop more souls and better items. In Pure White, the opposite is true. There are also specific events that will ONLY happen during either Pure Black or Pure White tendency.]

Basically, Moonscars tries to implement a similar system, with Ravenous Moon mode being the equivalent of Pure Black World Tendency. If you die a certain amount of times, the moon will become red and enemies will deal increased damage and have increased health, but will also drop more XP. You can also just switch it on or off at the Checkpoint with a consumable - at least at first. In Demon’s Souls, this would add new stuff to levels you’ve already been through, maybe include some otherwise unobtainable weapons or spells, etc. Here, it’s really just to increase enemy strength and so you can find those ear rings. It feels woefully half-baked, and like they just implemented it without thinking about how this would translate into an actual gameplay mechanic.

That tangent out of the way, let’s get back to the world design. This world consists of only 5 areas. The tutorial area village, the obligatory castle level, 2 (technically 3) separate underground sections and the top of the castle. In terms of variety in level structure, to say that this is the barest of minimums is to be euphemistic. It makes the world feel incredibly tiny. It would be one thing if the story of this game truly revolved specifically around the castle, but instead it’s about the fate of the whole kingdom and life and the universe and god and everything. And as such it just feels weird that the entirety of this game’s world-defining plot takes place entirely within the castle. As a matter of fact, only 4 out of the 5 areas in the game see actual continued usage. Once you’ve cleared the tutorial, you literally never have to go back there, not even to collect ear rings. I know this seems like a weird complaint, but to me having to go back to the tutorial area later in the game is a staple of the genre. It connects the beginning of the story to its end, and it recontextualises your journey, shows how far you’ve come. I 100% expected to emerge out of some underground passage and end up in the village at some point in the game, but that moment never came.

The lack of more individual areas would be excusable if the already existing ones would try and stand apart even the tiniest bit, but sadly they all follow the same design philosophy from start to finish, but game design wise as well as aesthetically. All areas sadly feel overly similar in terms of vibe and structure. Sure, the castle level is a bit more vertically inclined than the lower areas, and you have some very, VERY subtle colour palette swaps between levels, but the vast majority of the aesthetic design of the areas boils down to a lot of grey, black, white and red. At first this is cool and gives the game a strong sense of style, even if it’s a little cliché. But after the first couple of hours, you realise that the entire game looks like this, and it begins to get stale very quickly. Every area effectively feels the same. And, while I did compliment the game for this earlier, the more you play this game the more apparent it becomes just what a massive influence Blasphemous was on any level, especially in terms of art direction. It often crosses the line from “inspired by” to “derivative of”.

But for the strangest thing about this game is that it almost seems like it doesn’t even really want to be a Metroidvania game at all. As strange as it sounds, it almost feels like the initial idea for Moonscars was going to be just a linear 2D action platformer, maybe like the older Castlevania games, and then they tried to tape a Metroidvania system onto it. What do I mean by that?

Let’s start with the fact that, unlike practically any other MV out there, you get only a single ability in the whole game that (very slightly) changes your core moveset and allows you to access previously unreachable areas, and comes in the form of a long dash. This dash is utterly useless outside of the very specific interactions it was designed for, and would be the most disappointing thing about this game, if the other “””abilities””” you got weren’t even lamer. They’re not even abilities, they’re glorified keys. One lets you bypass some weird roots that simply open up when you approach them, and the other’s a literal key. That’s it. No double jump, no hook shot, no phasing through walls, etc. Nothing else changes about your core move set, and you never get to explore places you couldn’t reach before. Again, it’s as if the devs of this game were actively trying to make a Metroidvania game with implementing as few of the typical genre elements as possible. While that could potentially make for an interesting project, the way they handled it here, this game just feels unfinished. Like it’s gesturing towards an idea of a fully formed game, but was never finished.

Another thing I need to briefly address is Moonscars’ so called “special weapon” system. Except they’re more like “special attacks”. And they’re horrible. Seriously, they might be the worst thing about this game. I’m not exaggerating here, literally every single one of these is bad at best, and life-threateningly terrible at worst. Trying to actually use these is a surefire way to die in this game. They’re all infuriatingly slow - one special attack takes as long as about 5 normal attacks and does about half the damage - and they have no hyper armour either. They’re just straight up death traps and I cannot believe they exist in a finished game. There is only a single one that I found at least somewhat practical, and that’s the Harpoon, which is the only ranged option out of these. And believe me, I tried all of them, mostly out of sheer disbelief that they would ALL be this terrible. It’s abundantly clear that these things did not receive enough play testing before release.

And that kinda leads right into the next point; the fact that Black Mermaid’s QA department was either asleep at the wheel or simply nonexistent entirely. This game clearly did not receive a whole lot of play-testing before it got released. There are so, so many little glitches and bugs all over it. There are so many little things that would be impossible to keep in had they been noticed by a competent team of play testers. It begins with the controls feeling extremely unreliable in platforming sections, where platforms moving sideways will actually propel you forward if you land on them with too much speed. Or sometimes, they’ll simply slip away from underneath your feet as if inertia wasn’t a thing in this universe. Sometimes you briefly get stuck on level geometry on the floor and then get yeeted 50 meters to the right because the game stored that momentum. Sometimes you can just slide through wall-spikes and completely cheese the fuck out of a platforming sections. Or one of my favourites: Sometimes when I killed enemies, they would simply freeze in the air and stay there, like a statue with floating limbs, until I reloaded the area. But it’s not just related to bugs, it’s also the aforementioned special attacks, the platforming, the walls of text, the overly linear structure, etc. It’s very obvious that this game did not receive the care and attention it would’ve deserved before release. At least 50% of its problems could’ve been avoided with 10 dedicated play-testers playing through the game a couple of times, or hell, even just a couple of staff members. Honestly some of these oversights are so obvious and apparent that this is the only acceptable explanation for me. They simply never checked for this.

Ultimately, this sadly is a very mediocre game on all fronts. It has barely any original ideas here outside of its narrative - which as we discussed is barely even comprehensible. It’s very short and its world feels rather diminutive. It took me less than 10 hours to beat this, and that’s even though I did all side content I found. This needn’t be a problem in principle, but Moonscars does feel like it’s trying to trick you into thinking that it’s bigger than it actually is. It’s combat is solid but even here there are severe shortcomings. The bosses are neat but are about the only thing I can’t find some critical flaw with.

This review ended up a lot more negative than I originally intended, because I was going into this with the idea of primarily pointing out the good things about it. But the more I thought about it and the more distance I had to it, the more I realised that this simply is not a very good game, and I’m not sure if I would recommend it to fans of Metroidvanias. I’ve definitely played worse games than this, even within the genre, but only a few. Meanwhile, just about every other MV I’ve played is a more competently put together game than this, even the ones I really didn’t like that much, like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night or The Messenger. Despite me not really looking to play those again either, I would much quicker recommend these to you if you’re looking for a new experience.

I’m not saying that there’s nothing to get out of this game; if you somehow manage to crack the code and actually understand what the fuck this game’s story is actually about, you might even enjoy it. You might really enjoy the combat as long as you never touch the special attacks. Maybe you’ll simply get something out of its minimalistic art style. Personally, I think I won’t play this game again any time soon, but I will keep my eyes peeled for whenever Black Mermaid should come up with a new game. Because what Moonscars does show is potential. The potential to mould a fantastic game out of the shards of a mediocre one.

I hope I didn’t come across as an asshole in this review, and I once again want to make clear that I 100% support small indie studios like Black Mermaid and want to see them succeed. But I also have to be honest when I see a game that simply doesn’t work, and I want to help as best as I can by providing constructive but honest criticism where it fits.

Good luck for your next game BM, I’m sure it’ll turn out better!

Fugue In Void has a few interesting ideas, but ends up yet another extremely self-indulgent walking simulator that is shockingly bereft of substance. Where other, better examples of the genre have interesting things to say and things to show, this game simply insists on its profundity while never doing anything that warrants it.

4 / 10
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So, this is a weird one. Typically, when I review games on this platform, no matter how good or bad or inconsistent, they are still games. They have a beginning and end, goals, missions, enemies, etc. No matter how god or bad, I’m still able to criticise something on those merits. With Fugue In Void, it’s different. This is not a game. Or, at least, I don’t think it’s trying to be one. At most, it could be considered a so called “art house game”. But really, it’s more of an ““interactive”” art / architecture installation, although that part might be debatable too. So why do I feel the need to review this? Well, for one, sometimes I do enjoy a good walking-simulator / indie-avantgarde-lookatmeiamsosmart pseudo-game if it has something interesting going on. You know, stuff like Proteus, The Beginner’s Guide, Kairo, Mirrormoon EP, etc. So it’s not like I completely lack the framework of talking about something like this. Second - and really, most importantly - this “game” costs 6 whole, real life, human dollars on Steam. That is pretty wild, considering that most of the pieces in this genre tend to be either free-to-play or extremely cheap, and also considering that FIV does have some performance issues as well.

Since this game isn’t even an hour long, I’ll try to be as brief as possible, since I don’t wanna talk longer about a game than it took me to beat it [EDIT: well, that didn’t work lol], so I’ll cut to the chase. It’s extremely obvious that FIV takes heavy inspiration from one game in particular, and that is NaissanceE. Made by Spanish developer Mavros Sedeño in 2014, NaissanceE is a walking-simulator / first-person platformer set inside a colossal megastructure, itself deeply influenced by Tsutomu Nihei’s 1998 manga “BLAME!”, and is one of my favourite games ever made - not because of any amazing design elements or particularly crazy ideas, more than it has a specific idea about an experience it wants to deliver and does so damn near flawlessly. It is a game fundamentally built on the idea of the purpose of architecture, the feeling of being dwarfed by structures built BY humans but not FOR them. It’s about navigating the dream-like spaces of the near-infinite, about taking the abstract concepts of BLAME! and infusing them with meaning by turning them into gameplay elements. FIV on the other hand, feels like it doesn’t even really know what it tries to go for.

I want to quickly point out the things I did like about it. The architecture on display is fairly impressive and I especially enjoyed the abstract, experimental drone-heavy soundtrack. There are some moments which manage to elicit the same kind of beautiful alienation you’d experience with its role model, NaissanceE, although sadly this happens more on the latter’s back, rather than through the unique merits of FIV. The visual language that’s being used feels very cryptic and interesting, and I like how much the visuals of this game play with texture and plasticity. The atmosphere is, overall, sufficient. But that’s pretty much it. With a game this short, I’m struggling to find more to talk about.

So, before I we get more into it, I have to criticise how terrible accessibility has been handled here. I have seen very few games with so little regard for it. First off, considering the amount of bright, flashing lights used here, the fact that there is no epilepsy warning whatsoever strikes me as very irresponsible. Second, while understand the decision to not include a save system in this game - since it’s meant to be a thing you experience in one sitting - I do NOT understand the complete lack of any pause option. I’m sorry dev, but the experience your “game” provides is not worth letting my pizza burn in the oven or letting the postman leave with my package because I couldn’t open the door. It’s not like it serves any particular gameplay purpose or anything, it really seems like this is simply the dev’s method of forcing you to stay in front of the computer for the whole duration. What’s worse though, is the fact that this decision comes with the added side effect that you can’t change ANY settings in the game whatsoever. None. Nothing. You can’t chose performance mode, you can’t change the FOV, lighting, mouse acceleration, key binds, you can’t even turn off (or even reduce) the fucking motion blur, which is a cardinal sin for me personally, since I get severe headaches from it. The ONLY thing you’re allowed to change is the resolution, and that’s only on the launcher that pops up before the game starts. Honestly, I’m not even sure how to even properly quit the game, I had to use the Task Manager to simply close the program. The launcher even features 2 entirely fake options, one being “graphical quality”, with precisely one option to chose, namely “fancy”. (which, I assume includes the motion blur)

So, finally, onto the actual ”game”. Starting with a 10-minute long, uninterruptible AND unskippable cutscene (I guess “abstract imagery in video form” is more accurate) when the entire experience isn’t even an hour long is certainly one hell of a move. One could even describe it as “radical” - but only if one were to misunderstand the meaning of the word. The animations are certainly beautiful, and the use of different textures and surfaces is interesting. In terms of abstract / applied art, or viewed as a virtual gallery / art exhibition it may or may not challenge our perception of how these things might work; however with a game, this approach strikes me as deeply regressive and antithetical to what is truly avant-garde within the field of game design. Interactivity is to me the core, the beating heart of what actually differentiates games as art from other media. That is not to say that all games have to work the same way, or even feature traditional gameplay. Again, I have a massive soft spot for more abstract experiences like this, from tiny indie games like Proteus, Babbdi and of course NaissanceE, to massive AAA experiences like Death Stranding. I love radical, abstract games that challenge what the medium is even capable of. This is not it. This is essentially an architectural exhibition masquerading as a video game, and that would be fine if it would at least commit to it.

Structurally, FIV simply leads you through a couple of short walking-sections, interspersed with longer sections (at least they FEEL a lot longer) in which you can’t move and are forced to watch the infuriatingly slow-moving animations of shadows and light moving across the screen. Similarly, the character’s movement speed is agonisingly sluggish. There is a sprint option, but it feels like what the default walking speed ought to have been. I will never understand why devs in this genre insist upon turtle-speed being the definitive experience. What’s worse is that the walking sections are on a timer, meaning if you DO find yourself in the position where you want to stop and stare just a little longer - which seems like its entire raison d’être - you better not take too long. The game this reminds me the most of is Awkward Dimensions Redux, and seeing how that one may just take the title for “the worst game I have ever played” this comparison truly does it no favours what so ever. It’s even down to both apparently having been “inspired by [the dev’s] dreams” and both having zero interest in your role as the player. To them, you as the player exist merely to experience THEIR vision. YOU are only here to enjoy whatever THEY dictate your experience to be. For me good art - doubly so when it comes to games - is, to me, a conversation. A back and forth between artist and beholder, dev and player, etc. The artist creates a work, and the beholder imbues it with meaning. Much like Awkward Dimensions Redux, this game feels more like someone strapping you to a chair and making you watch their holiday pictures. This feeling only worsens when you realise that there are invisible walls everywhere, including the sides of stairs and even the smallest ledges so there’s absolutely no way you’re not going through this thing in the exact manner the dev intended. It’s as if the game actively fights you on every step when trying to participate in the experience, trying to make it your own.

I wish I could at least compliment the game on its aesthetic and the feeling that the colossal, brutalist architecture commends, but that would be very disingenuous, since its visual identity does draw so heavily from NaissanceE it feels like I’m actually complementing THAT game. Even its visually most impressive moment - a short section where you walk through a colourful desert with a humongous structure looming over your head - is taken straight out of NaissanceE, except that game did it so much better, letting you take your time and really reflect on what you’re experiencing in this moment, something Fugue In Void seems to be hellbent on preventing.

From a look at Moshe Linke’s (the dev) homepage, it seems that he specialises in these architecture-based walking simulators, making me think that perhaps he has a background in that field. That is perfectly fine, and please do not understand this as me saying that all games need to follow similar formulas or can’t get weird with their structure. I LOVE when games get weird and experimental. It’s one particular phrase from Linke’s website that really irks me in the context of this game. He states that his work is “A fusion between art and games”; and THAT is precisely the problem. Games already ARE art. Games do not need to be “fused with art”. The very concept of interactivity, and games’ ability to enter a direct conversation with their beholder imbue them with a power completely alien to other media. And this is precisely what strikes me as pretentious; that Linke - and many other developers within this subcategory - seems to think that his curtailing of video games’ unique abilities and strengths by attempting to approximate the experience of a virtual art gallery in the same way that mid-2000’s AAA developers sought to make gaming more “cinematic” by spending all of their budget on creating as many, overly long cutscenes as possible. Games do not need to be “like other media”.

Now, my tone here may strike you as harsh, but I feel like that, if you’re out here asking for 6$ for your highly avant-garde virtual architecture installation / dream journal, when there are plenty of similar experiences out there that are way more interesting, offer way more in terms of deconstructing the concept of gaming, are way more interested in your actions and feelings and also typically cost no money (or at least, way less) then I feel like you really ought to have something to offer that warrants that price. I’ve played plenty of shitty walking simulators made by people that enjoy the smell of their own farts and I rarely feel like I have to call them out.

Ultimately, rating this game is very difficult. I did enjoy the music and the imagery, which is the bulk of the experience, but I really dislike almost everything else. I wouldn’t say I hated the experience as such - it’s way too short for it to warrant active hate - and I think that in the context of an actual art installation, where, for example, all of these levels were individual things you could pick from a list, wearing a VR headset in a large atelier or studio or museum or whatever, might’ve been really interesting. But I simply think that - IF you are going to put your work on Steam - this type of experience must accommodate the fact that they are meant to be played at home. After work. After being done with your day, when you just want to turn on your PC and play something fun or interesting. And that’s not impossible. NaissanceE managed. Dear Esther, Gone Home, Yume Nikki, Scanner Sombre, Journey, etc, all of them managed. And yes, these games all attempt to work as games much more than Fugue in Void does, but they are also aware that they are, at the end of the day, also consumer products, and if you expect the same amount or even MORE money than the games mentioned above, you should expect the same level of scrutiny. Here’s hoping that Linke can make “Neon Entropy” into something more interesting, whenever it’ll be finished.


4 / 10

Teardown is perhaps the ultimate example of how a game with great mechanics, cool aesthetics and a really unique idea can be utterly destroyed by terrible design and execution. How you can make a game with this concept this mind-numbingly boring and repetitive is beyond me.

3 / 10
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I remember hearing about this one years ago, and thinking that the concept sounded really cool. Being able to destroy literally every single object in a game world sounds awesome. It would be far from the first game to play around with this concept, in fact just last year I played “Perfect Vermin”, a free game which similarly features fully destructible objects which you can blow into increasingly smaller bits with a giant mallet. The big difference being that Perfect Vermin is actually a competent game, instead of a glorified tech demo. Admittedly, the tech that Teardown demos is much more elaborate. However, it’s not much of a video game. I’m really glad that I got it on PS+ for free, if I had paid actual money for this, I’d be pretty miffed, considering it costs something like 30 $/€ normally.

Before I go into anything else in more detail, I will mention that - as of now - I could not bring myself to actually finish this game’s campaign, I dropped it after mission 8 or so. Typically, I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing an actual review/critique about a game I’m only about halfway through, but in this case I feel like it is warranted, since there truly doesn’t seem to be all that much to it beyond what the game presents you with in the first couple of missions. What’s more is that, to be fair, the campaign mode isn’t really what this game is about. At least, that’s what you would assume, based on all the extra modes, but we’ll get to that.

From what I’ve read from interviews with the dev team and other reviewers on various platforms, Teardown’s development started with what ultimately became it’s most recognisable aspect and selling point, the fully destructible environments, and got built up from there. In case you’re unfamiliar, the game uses voxel-based tech similar to Minecraft, only the voxels are way smaller and as such allow for more complexity when you break the game objects up into their individual voxel components. Think of a building made of LEGO that can break up into all the individual pieces, with different materials like bricks, wood or rock having different properties. Now, credit where it’s due, this system works very well - for the most part. The way that individual voxels all break apart and remain as smithereens in the environment, which can themselves be crushed down more and more, is really impressive. The way different materials react to different stimuli is also very well made. The sledge hammer (your starting weapon) can break up wood, glass, dirt and other “softer” materials, while not really doing anything against metal or buildings made of brick and mortar. For that, you’ll need something with more damage potential, like an explosive propane tank, or a big vehicle that you can crash into it, or one of the tools you’ll unlock during your playthrough, ranging from blowtorches and spray cans to rocket launchers and canisters of nitroglycerin. It mostly makes sense, and blowing shit up and watching all the little pieces fly everywhere is very cool. What’s especially impressive is how nicely fire works in this game, how well it spreads by itself, how realistic it looks and just how natural it feels. Teardown also just looks very good in general. The best way to describe it would be something like “Minecraft with shaders”. I’m sure you know what I mean. The lighting is great and the game runs at a very stable 60fps pretty much no matter what’s happening on screen. The background music within the levels is a little… understated, but it’s pretty chill and works well as your typical “music to study to” or whatever.

So, what’s the problem here? If I had to sum up my problems up into a single phrase, it’d be that: Teardown has no idea what kind of game it wants to be. If you haven’t played this game for yourself you might think “What are you talking about? It’s obviously a demolition simulator where you can blow shit up.” Yes, that’s what you would think. But it’s not. In actuality, this game, whose entire mechanical framework is ostensibly built upon destroying objects, is really more of a heist game. And sadly, not a very good one at that. You’re basically playing Thief with destructible environments. This game, whose entire marketing, online-presence and trailers ALL make it seem like this game is primarily about messing around with a pretty advanced physics engine, the game whose name is literally “TEARDOWN” really just wants you to to steal documents or cars. That’s got to be the biggest bait and switch I’ve seen since the days of MGS2, but not in a good way. And this is where I have to come back to what I said before about how the devs started with the physics engine and tried to build their way up from there, because they clearly didn’t really know how to construct an actual game around that concept. Again, you might think to yourself “This doesn’t sound so bad, that sounds kinda fun!” But the problem is less that the devs made a very strange decision to merge two very different game experiences with each other, it’s more that they clearly didn’t know how to design an actually fun heist game in the first place.

The weird thing is, the game’s first mission even starts out with you simply demolishing some building, handing you a couple of tools and letting you go crazy with them. Just try them out. Whenever you’re finished destroying the building you’ve been tasked with, you jump into your escape vehicle. The second mission does the same, with additional objectives thrown into the mix. It’s starting with the third mission that things take a very weird turn. So, up until now you’ve been given basically complete freedom in how to tackle your missions. Take however long you need, do what you want, just get it done. But starting now, the game begins introducing increasingly annoying gameplay elements and rules that run completely antithetical to the experience I just described. For starters, you’re not really tasked with destroying buildings anymore, rather you’re supposed to steal documents, cars, safes, valuables, etc. Very occasionally this also includes raising a building, but - for reasons that will become apparent shortly -this becomes less and less relevant the further the game goes. I realise this is beginning to sound very abstract, so let me give you an example:

A typical Teardown mission will look like this: You’re tasked with stealing 3 documents as your main objectives. Each of these documents are stored in different locations throughout the level, often as far away from each other as possible. Beyond that you typically also have optional objectives, which are mostly just more valuables to steal, let’s say 2 additional documents in this case. The mission takes place within a closed off, but openly designed space, and lets you tackle any objective first if you want to. There is no time limit, and there are no enemy NPCs (as far as I can tell, like I said I haven’t finished the campaign) But here’s the thing: Each and every one of these objects is trapped with a 60 second timer that ends with you getting arrested - and that goes for the whole run. Yes, you have to steal all 3 objects within 60 seconds starting from the first one and get to your escape vehicle before the timer runs out. The alarm cannot be deactivated by any means. The idea here is to utilise your ability to destroy the environment to create an “optimal path”, as it were. Except that all the buildings in most levels are now also equipped with fire alarms, meaning they’re heavily restricting your ability for maximising destruction, subsequently robbing you from what is by far the most entertaining aspect of this game. So you want me to destroy everything.. but not too much? So, what this boils all down to is this: You load into the level, you do nothing but scouting for the first 5 minutes and just study the map on where everything is. Then you go and, with pinpoint precision, create a little path of destruction (but not too much!!) with your frustratingly underpowered tools for usually 15-30 minutes depending on the level only to THEN rush the actual “game” part within 60 seconds. Only, if you made the mistake of not quick saving before actually starting your run, and you make some tiny mistake or the physics decide to fuck you over - and they WILL - you get to do it all over again. Yes, the entire thing. If you actually decided to use the spray paint like a good little boy to mark your optimal path or whatever, guess what, that’s gone too.

I wish I could at least compliment Teardown on being a somewhat decent destruction simulator, but even there I have to qualify my statements a bit. The controls for grabbing and throwing objects don’t work very well and I feel like explosives are way too underpowered. Generally, I’m not sure why this game seems to shun the idea of grand scale destruction for its own sake, but I feel like I’m repeating myself. What’s worst is the fact that any building - literally no matter how much you’ve already destroyed and burned it - will absolutely, categorically refuse to fall over if there’s so much as a single line of voxels forming a pillar still standing. The way the game just switches to Minecraft-physics for this is just jarring. The game already features relatively realistic gravity for any object that is already detached from a larger structure, so I just don’t understand it. It ruins the whole experience - even more than the things I already mentioned.

So the missions aren’t great. The story mode isn’t the only mode this game comes with. What about creative mode? Surely this could salvage this? Maybe, I don’t know. I might know if they didn’t make the harebrained decision to make you unlock both all levels AND tools in the story mode before you got to properly use it. Seeing how I don’t feel compelled to go and play this game’s terrible missions any more than I already forced myself, I guess I’m not qualified to really talk about it. Just when you thought they couldn’t make any more calls like that. I know there are even more aspects to the game, like a co-op mode or something but again, it really isn’t giving me any actual incentive to go and find out.

Ultimately I don’t even really know what else to say about Teardown. It’s a game that should’ve been great, a game all about appeasing that most primal parts of our brains that just want to see things go boom. It’s a game I really wanted to love, I wanted to have a great time with it. But instead, it’s a half-hearted tech demo that is so shockingly bereft of any solid gameplay foundation to stand on that it barely even meets the requirement for me to call it a “video game”.
I really can’t say much more than this: There is potential here, and I hope that the dev team behind it can utilise more of it in the future. If they use the tech from this project and attach it to a game that actually fits it thematically, they could have a hit here. But there is a lot of work to be done. Might just be that they have to (pardon the pun) tear this whole thing down and start from scratch.