evan_soloway
1 review liked by evan_soloway
Only If
2014
I remember playing this back in 2014, back when I was on my "Slowburn indie walking simulator lookatmeiamverysmart" grind and thinking it was really profound. When I think about it, I was probably just stoned out of my mind when I played this. Because the thing is, I also remember playing this back in 2020 and thinking it was a huge pile of pretentious garbage.
These days I'd say it's closer to the second, but I still think this game deserves some form of actual review because there clearly was some effort put into this, seeing how this was essentially made by a single person.
It does have a few interesting moments. The horror segment is weirdly intense. The visuals aren't terrible for a free game on Steam.
I'd say the biggest problem with it is that it tries to be way too many things at once without ever really nailing any single aspect. It can't decide whether it's a walking simulator, a puzzle game, a horror game, some avantgarde surrealist experience or even something unique entirely; instead it simply is all of it at once, depending on what the situation calls for and, as mentioned, never really gets to the essence of any of the experiences it tries to emulate.
The voice acting - yes, there is voice acting - ranges from acceptable (for the protagonist) to a grating caricature (for the antagonist) The antagonist, Vinnie makes no goddamn sense in the narrative, as he is never truly explored or contextualised. Is he even real? Some figment of the protag's imagination? A clever metaphor for something the game is way too far up its own ass about to explain? The game clearly doesn't care to go anywhere with it all, so why should you?
The Italian-American accent implies him to be some kind of mobster but the game ultimately doesn't really explore or explain the conflict, neither implicitly nor explicitly. The voice acting isn't... bad? It's just unbelievably misplaced. It feels like it was recorded for a totally different game. I have no idea why they went with this.
Which characters this bland and terrible, you can probably surmise that the dialogue - of which there is quite a bit, to my chagrin - is equally grating. It feels forcibly quirky and witty to the point where the characters don't feel like real people anymore, despite the attempts of going for a more naturalistic style.
As mentioned before, the game does have a few interesting ideas here and there, like having you type stuff on your IRL keyboard to solve a puzzle, or featuring pretty impressive surreal environments. I do like the section in the park, where you have to literally "find your words". There are some other things too. Which sadly kinda circles back to the main issue:
The problem is that none of these ideas and impressions feel connected, neither thematically nor through gameplay. None of the individual gameplay elements play off or reinforce each other, they all get introduced and vanish just as quickly. It feels like the dev went "Oh that would be a cool thing" and added stuff in without thinking about how that would add up to a cohesive game.
And really, that kind of sums up my issues with this game; there's just not a whole lot of thought behind it. And that's even worse considering how unbelievably up its own ass the game is about its story half of the time.
The suffocating air of pretentiousness does very little to mask what a profoundly shallow experience this game is.
I do not use that term lightly to describe art, as I firmly believe that almost always it's used to disparage any nuanced thing a piece of art might have to say.
This, however, truly feels like a game by someone who knows enough about games to copy ideas they enjoy, but lacks the artistic talent to actually thread these ideas together into a coherent piece.
3/10
These days I'd say it's closer to the second, but I still think this game deserves some form of actual review because there clearly was some effort put into this, seeing how this was essentially made by a single person.
It does have a few interesting moments. The horror segment is weirdly intense. The visuals aren't terrible for a free game on Steam.
I'd say the biggest problem with it is that it tries to be way too many things at once without ever really nailing any single aspect. It can't decide whether it's a walking simulator, a puzzle game, a horror game, some avantgarde surrealist experience or even something unique entirely; instead it simply is all of it at once, depending on what the situation calls for and, as mentioned, never really gets to the essence of any of the experiences it tries to emulate.
The voice acting - yes, there is voice acting - ranges from acceptable (for the protagonist) to a grating caricature (for the antagonist) The antagonist, Vinnie makes no goddamn sense in the narrative, as he is never truly explored or contextualised. Is he even real? Some figment of the protag's imagination? A clever metaphor for something the game is way too far up its own ass about to explain? The game clearly doesn't care to go anywhere with it all, so why should you?
The Italian-American accent implies him to be some kind of mobster but the game ultimately doesn't really explore or explain the conflict, neither implicitly nor explicitly. The voice acting isn't... bad? It's just unbelievably misplaced. It feels like it was recorded for a totally different game. I have no idea why they went with this.
Which characters this bland and terrible, you can probably surmise that the dialogue - of which there is quite a bit, to my chagrin - is equally grating. It feels forcibly quirky and witty to the point where the characters don't feel like real people anymore, despite the attempts of going for a more naturalistic style.
As mentioned before, the game does have a few interesting ideas here and there, like having you type stuff on your IRL keyboard to solve a puzzle, or featuring pretty impressive surreal environments. I do like the section in the park, where you have to literally "find your words". There are some other things too. Which sadly kinda circles back to the main issue:
The problem is that none of these ideas and impressions feel connected, neither thematically nor through gameplay. None of the individual gameplay elements play off or reinforce each other, they all get introduced and vanish just as quickly. It feels like the dev went "Oh that would be a cool thing" and added stuff in without thinking about how that would add up to a cohesive game.
And really, that kind of sums up my issues with this game; there's just not a whole lot of thought behind it. And that's even worse considering how unbelievably up its own ass the game is about its story half of the time.
The suffocating air of pretentiousness does very little to mask what a profoundly shallow experience this game is.
I do not use that term lightly to describe art, as I firmly believe that almost always it's used to disparage any nuanced thing a piece of art might have to say.
This, however, truly feels like a game by someone who knows enough about games to copy ideas they enjoy, but lacks the artistic talent to actually thread these ideas together into a coherent piece.
3/10