Sat on this for a while, but despite its charms and fantastic ideas, I think I'd much rather just pick up and reread the many books I've read or was taught about from the period rather than force myself to find something more in Pentiment.

I have the benefit of being somewhat familiar with the setting, so much of that time period was taught to us at school. It is a big part of my country's history, it was our golden age after all. Name of the Rose comes up a lot when discussing Pentiment, one of the many books we had to read surrounding that period of time, and it is definitely very inspired by it, but there's also clearly a great deal of research that went into creating believable and exciting scenarios for the game to remain interesting throughout its entire runtime. I love the way this game looks and that strive for an enjoyable mystery within the framework it set for itself. For most I assume it would be the feeling of something unique and exciting, but for me it was the old, comforting familiar feeling that drew me into Pentiment.

The way you explore the gameworld is through a set of predetermined interactions that are available to you at a given time, you are supposed to select which one you want to spend your limited time on. Some interactions do not pass time, and it is usually indicated by a character specifically asking whether you want to spend it on this particular action. The game sets up these rules to make passage of time a very important narrative and gameplay element, making the most of the time and chances given, dealing with the consequences of the choices made under its constraints, etc.

So when any cracks start to show within the logic of the gameplay or the narrative, or when one begins to clash with another, the believability and investment begin to dwindle. Unfortunately, my playthrough led me to a few too many. The game taught me that walking and exchanging simple words with certain people isn't a time-consuming action, but when I needed one character to be outside in a certain time of day, not an unreasonable one like the middle of the night or anything, I was simply unable to. Said character knew we were supposed to meet and was supposed to pass me a cure for a person that was dying, who was unable to come and get it themselves. But I couldn't do that, the game blocked me from following up on that, even though I was promised earlier that I could come pick it up the same day. I couldn't save the life of a character I really enjoyed interacting with due to an artificial reason, not a narrative one or one that was necessarily the consequence of my actions. This situation arose because it was ultimately a game and didn't set up a proper trigger for me to interact with. What's worse, a completely unrelated trigger with a different character in the same area caused the character I needed to appear to join in this activity, but afterwards they were gone once more and I could not interact with them!

Plenty of other, similar moments began popping up. I uncover a lead that I could undoubtedly confront a person with, but the game didn't set up a trigger for me to do that. I walk up to a person, their family and loved ones and they cheerfully go "Hello!" and that's that, even though I have in my posession a damning piece of evidence that would undoubtedly end up with a death sentence. Pentiment too often clashes with any idea that might pop up in a player's head because its systems are so rigid. This ultimately ties to the story it tries to tell in a way, but it is done so artificially that I simply could not find enough investment or emotion in it.

Nothing but disappointment really sticks with me from my own playthrough, yet when I take a look at it I find it difficult to not feel generally positive towards Pentiment. A clear labor of love only made possible thanks to the GamePass, beautiful art, so many stories of other people going through it and having these fantastic realizations. I know that somewhere where I haven't gone myself there is a potential for an enthralling story, and that it is entirely possible to avoid the trappings I fell into. There are some profound moments that, should enough investment be built, I think will stick with others for a long time. I would lie if the praise it gets didn't bug me somewhat, I experienced a far different game than most, but even I find it to be very charming, so I understand what an amazing feeling a perfect run of this game must feel like. I, too, loved the early moments, when I was fully invested in the history of Tassing.

Cool concept, loved the weekly release schedule, outstanding voice acting, really striking scene blocking and cuts, and from a production standpoint I was really impressed with the corners they cut (this sounds like a backhanded compliment but I promise it isn't, games are hard to make).

Unfortunately despite how strong the package is the actual content is just sort of boring. I think the developers expect us to love these characters because they're stylish and quippy but there's so little real drama throughout the game that it's hard to get really attached. As a story of twenty-something uncertainty, everything's too light and fluffy to have any weight; as a story about the music industry, it doesn't feel lived-in. I have a million nitpicks about its portrayal of industry life but the biggest one is this: the characters don't start referring to themselves as a "band" until episode 3, and up until then their actions never feel like there was an expectation of them being a band in the first place, to the point where I would be really surprised if anyone playing this game really felt like they were watching one come together in those first couple episodes.

They released this like a TV show and it's framed as such in-game too, and that is not just an affectation - picking a save slot shows a Netflix-ish UI and asks "Who's Watching", and that is exactly the level of interaction you can expect. I have a very broad definition of what games are, and I have no issue with games that are input-simple, but this stretches the definition basically as far as it can go. You are mostly going to be sitting there with the controller on the couch watching scenes play out, occasionally picking dialogue options that lead to nearly identical responses. You can't even skip dialogue, so a lot of the game is looking at an unmoving image of a character while a texting conversation slowly unfurls in front of you. The exception is the playable music videos in every episode but the control on them is really squirrely and it never feels like you're being asked to do very much other than randomly waggle your stick around or hold down a button.

The thing is, once you make something so TV-like, with so little player input, it's hard not to compare it to actual TV shows. In that respect, We Are OFK is closest to one of those Netflix shows that pops up every couple weeks, which is perfectly digestable, but there's no real pizzazz and every episode is at least 10 minutes too long. It's a shame because there are cool ideas here, and the music is at least solid (though I actually liked the background music more than the proper "OFK" tracks), but it just ain't it.

This enters the hall of fame of indie games with great concepts in great trailers that failed to disclose the trailer had the one good execution of that great concept. If another team took a crack at this game’s recursive level puzzle concept, we’d have a 3D contender for brain-melting goodness on par with Baba is You. For now, we have this tosh.

Maquette’s base concept of recursive level design feels like it could be as good as thinking with Portals. Every level has a diorama of the level within it, and any object you place within the model is moved proportionally outside of it. This means you can change the size of objects by moving them between recursions, or explore at different senses of scale by venturing forward yourself. The same physical key can be shrunk to unlock a door within the diorama, or enlarged to be used as a bridge. I normally maintain we, as a species, have met our quota of Alice in Wonderland themed media, but I would allow an exception in this case.

Unfortunately, not every level uses this recursion mechanic properly, and others are bloated with vaguely-related but still generic puzzle solving. The proper levels still limit the number of objects used to one or two at a time, and there’s severe gatekeeping to guide the player towards what part of the diorama to examine next. There just isn’t the complexity present promised by the premise. The genuinely brilliant puzzle solutions were so distended by mush I discounted them as possibilities because my opinion of the game’s creativity sank so low in the valleys between the modest highs.

What cratered the game for me from “disappointing” to “bad enough to derisively mock with my friends” was the truly atrocious unrelated romance story that serves as the “reward” for advancing the levels. The writing is the most twee, saccharine, vapid, shallow, privileged, infuriatingly juvenile “romance” story I have encountered in an indie game yet. To call it pretentious does not convey nearly enough contempt. It is so bad and played so completely straight my brain implodes trying to imagine what kind of person thought this would be of interest to anyone, much less relatable, much less of any emotional worth, enough to record multiple minutes worth of spoken dialog. If there are real people in California like this, I hope they die before I meet them.

In my rating system, 2 stars represents an average, C rank game. Between Maquette’s highs and lows, no other rating feels more correct, even though this one doesn’t feel correct, either. If anything, the game feels incomplete, like brilliance was stumbled upon by people who can’t design puzzles. If this was a single dungeon within a mediocre Legend of Zelda game, that game would win game of the year a decade ago.

Mostly impressed by the people who are able to find this relaxing. If the game weren't so insistent on outlining everything in little red lines I would probably be endorsing it as a little therapeutic adventure, but as time went on I found myself just flying through the levels, taking all the shit and putting it on the floor so I could just see those red lines as quickly as possible and figure out why the MC is so damn insistent that putting the microwave 8 feet up on top of a cabinet is better than leaving it on the countertop.

I really enjoyed one or two of these, mostly the ones with the most room for creativity, but unfortunately the game is a lot more interested in providing a dump truck full of little trinkets for you to use to cobble together a story. I don't think this is inherently bad! But I had a lot more fun arranging the GF's collection of horror movie merch than I did finding spots for the horribly bland MC's collection of Eiffel Tower souvenirs. There are a handful of very obvious plot points that nobody is going to miss, but it seems that most of what people enjoy about this game is the story that they've projected onto it. There's a chapter where the main character moves in with The Worst Video Game Boyfriend of the Year who the devs tried very hard not to make "too cartoonishly terrible" and his biggest crimes are... picking an overly grayscale apartment and having hobbies that are a little too "adult Redditor"? Zero sympathy for the main character trying to hang her movie poster-sized diploma in every apartment for the next 20 years after she graduates. Under the bed is absolutely the perfect spot. These two deserve each other.

Yeah, I've pretty thoroughly soured on this game at this point, having played through the whole thing and mostly feeling like the game doesn't have a real point that it's making. Life events happen? You can tell a lot about a person through their belongings? Clutter bad? Really makes you think! I could tell you almost nothing about this person, but I know enough to find them deeply annoying. The power of games!

How much interactivity is needed in a game? I've always been a big proponent of narrative adventure games or walking sims as they are sometimes called in a derogatory manner. I strongly believe just watching a stream of these games is not enough as the interactivity adds something extra, usually immersion and an ownership of the characters and thus their choices: Role-playing without the stats.
I sadly find it hard to make those arguments for Last Stop.

The characters are the main attraction of this game, as the story follows the lives of 3 characters with a supernatural twist. They are decently written and the animation while looking rather low budget, are expressive enough to get the emotion across. But the main problem is despite the supernatural element, it's just all too familiar. If you've consumed enough stories in your life, you'll most likely be able to identify the characters arcs in all 3 stories within the 1st 2 "chapters." That robbed me of any investment I could have had in the charm of this short game.
As for being a game, I feel the gameplay hinders the story more than it enhances, specially the walking sections. You could argue there are some choices that slightly alter how a scene plays out but it's never enough to put you in the shoes of the characters and more often than not it commits the cardinal sin of each dialogue choice giving roughly the same response despite hinting at otherwise.

All in all, it's a decent game that I'd rather be a tv mini series. If you're really into narrative adventure games and got 5-6 hours to kill, no harm in giving this a shot.

Variable State bungled what was otherwise an interesting concept in their nascent title Virginia, a hodge-podge of references and storytelling beats derived from the works of David Lynch. With zero expectations from their botched walking sim going into their most recent title, the game ended up being a surprisingly competent Telltale-esque adventure that, while pulling from a wider array of film and game influences, manages to mesh them all together in a clever, bittersweet journey that rivals some of the best in the adventure game genre.

Held back only by the technical limitations of their engine and (presumably) a fraction of the budget needed to successfully pull off a story of this breadth, Variable State's Last Stop hits the high notes in nearly every other aspect. The voice acting felt natural and suitably Bri'ish, the character designs mirror the kind of caricaturized proportions in an Arkane title, and the storytelling - excepting a handful of missteps - always engages and intrigues, sending the player across a whole host of environments not limited to the street corners and flats of the small city the main narrative takes place in.

Definitely a major step up from Virginia and a world I wouldn't mind returning to in the future, Last Stop is - without a doubt - a success for the fledging team that put it together, warts and all.