I am way too impatient when it comes to VNs. I randomly picked a game off the Itch Racial Justice Bundle and this was one of them. The dialogue is cringy, the character design radiates "15-year-old angsty shojo weeb, who is also a closeted furry" and I just couldn't bare to continue with this game.

2019

Kids is an experimental journey about crowds. Is it profound or just silly? I don't know. Do the scenarios represent anything? I don't know. Is the game even good? I don't know.

It's a small little cute adventure from the Sokpop lads. It can be quite tedious to play with an AI buddy, since the game is a bit buggy on all fronts. Later tasks can be quite cumbersome. But a lot of the emergent design and mechanics made this puzzler very endearing.

The game follows a very game-y level-based structure (think Mario world level select). The player must liberate a specific part of the worker forces in each world. At it's core, the game is about a Workers vs Capitalism Movement that, fundamentally, does not work mechanically or narratively.

Let's get this out first: The Player Controller doesn't work. It feels sluggish, unresponsive and imprecise. The game is fully playable with a controller - don't play it with a controller (Unless you want 0 control over your squad). This isn't a Pikmin, Crowd Control like game you think it is: you are not dependent on them. You can finish each mission just by running to the right, dodging the bullets, avoiding every enemy encounter and yet you will still "liberate" the area of the game. In fact, your allies (or more like minions) are more of a burden to you than actually helping you. The game does not feel like it is designed for a crowd control/management game - it feels more akin to a Beat em' up. Especially later moments of the game require much more out of the player than the controls allow them, making it impossible to perfect a stage as you never have 100% control over your minions. The question is "Why do you even need the workers"? I have yet to find an answer to that. I get that the devs tried to answer that by rewarding the player with some new weapons, but the rewards are locked by the amount of minions you manage to get to the goal line. However, you don't need them, the basic bricks suffice and are legitimately the best weapon in the game. Boss encounters suck: I was able to just stand in one point, move my units to the back and just hit them while they couldn't even hurt me. It tries to add a bunch of new elements to make the game feel more zany and polished, but if the core gameplay doesn't work, nothing will improve or help the game.

Now narratively, it's boneless. It has nothing of substance to say. It is as if someone took the high level idea of "Workers vs Corporations" and just slammed it into the game without any nuances or thought. In the end it feels like they used the theme of the game as a surface-level bait in order to draw people into the godawful gameplay. The ending is also too cheeky and too picture perfect for my taste and just shows that the developers never actually involved themselves into this topic.

It's a lifeless, broken game that is not fun nor engaging to play. Janky games are fun to learn from and it helps to play a lot of these games level out your "gaming palette", but this genuinely wasted my time. Don't play this game.

Edit: Adjusted some writing

It's a little 15 minutes, fourth-wall breaking experience. It does some interesting things with the mechanics it provides, but that's pretty much it.

This is less of a game and more of an educational game design piece of the simple concept of Lockpicking in games. Definitely interested if you have the slightest interest in game design.

The Wii peaked with this. It went all downhill from there.

idk the artstyle looks like straight out of a "SUPER MARIO 64 IN UNREAL ENGINE" video.

The game reeks of PS3-era shooty war testosteron vibes, but the Co-Op is just super fun and the ridiculous upgrade on the weapons is just the icing on the cake.

I love how this game has like 10000 different versions, like how? Imagine Crash Bandicoot, but like minus the difficulty. It pleased my younger peepee poopoo brain.

I remember picking this game over "Disney's PK: Over the Shadows" (We were fans of the comics) and my brother was pissed of me the entire drive home. Like, it's a lot of games, but a lot of them suck mega ass.

I think this might be the game that corrupted my game taste. Nowadays I am far more willing to play trash games just to relive the highs and lows of ecstatic confusion that RPG Sonic for the DS provided me that cursed day.

2006