quick summary of the review: story is good, there are parts i REALLY dont like, and the gameplay makes sense except for the main part of it where it really sucks

uhhh backloggd spoiler filter GO
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
okay thats probably enough
im gonna start off real quick by saying although the story is pretty good, there are a few story beats that make you go "really?" or just make you feel like it's really unrealistic
the whole psychiatrist letter with lewis just felt really forced to me, like i dont think in any world would a psychiatrist would write a letter like that then mail it to the mother of their patient (who just committed suicide)
it feels like it wouldve made way more sense for it to be split across multiple letters, instead of one really detailed "heres why your son killed himself" letter
also just the idea that edith, at 17 years old and pregnant, would decide that going to the house and doing things like climbing rock climbing walls and crawling around secret tunnels and shit is worth the risk also just feels entirely unrealistic, both from a "would a pregnant person do that?" angle and a "could a pregnant person do that without throwing up?" angle
ive read some people say that its probably intentionally risky for her because of the whole "curse? or massively unnecessary risk-taking by the entire family?" debate and edith's actions is just proof of the latter
but i think thats dumb! this is my opinion
as for the rest of the story i think it's all pretty good and although the whole cycle of learning about a person before immediately learning about their death got a little tiring, it all helped paint a really interesting bigger picture when taking it all into account along with the other things revealed in the game (the curse and the history of the family and whatnot)

speaking of painting, i think i may be alone in thinking that the whole "unfinished swan" connection is kind of ass
like the whole "he became the king" thing feels forced (there are inconsistencies in the unfinished swan that contradict this game), it ruins the mystery (because if he can just magically become an omnipotent king then of course there's a curse on the family) and ultimately it shouldn't have been confirmed as "canon" in any way and just left as a fun "haha what if" as an extension to the already existing reference in milton's room (and potentially depending on how you interpret it, the circumstances of his disappearance)

anyways none of this makes the story bad, just kind of spits on an otherwise really interesting experience and story

gameplay!!!!!
i cant really say if any of it was bad or good because in some strange way you could call this a collection of minigames where the quality of each game doesn't really matter considering any lack of quality could be considered a part of the story
i will say though the interstitial gameplay parts are kinda badly designed
like movement can just be really annoying, especially when there are areas where if you move towards a thing, you're forced into an action you probably didn't want to do
like slowly crawling into and out of a box! multiple times! or slowly entering/exiting a room! multiple times! or slowly looking into a peephole! multiple times!
this all could've been very easily prevented by just making it a button/click prompt, like several other things in the game are
also some actions have this weird interactivity to them where moving the mouse causes the action to happen or unhappen
so like turning a page in a book is like
swipe the mouse right to turn the page, OR swipe the mouse left to... unturn the page
sometimes this backs you entirely out of the action, and other times it just awkwardly puts you on the first frame of the animation until you move the mouse to the right, where you can then swipe your mouse back and forth to make the animation repeat multiple times which was honestly pretty funny and i did it every single time
it also kind of messes with the mood of the game but that may have just been my own fault
there were also a couple instances where there was just way too much swiping needed to complete the action
like i wonder what part of the game design process resulted in this swiping mechanic because it's implementation is so weird that it doesn't feel immersive at all, while also feeling entirely unnecessary for the majority of the game
it's bad! is it worse than quicktime events? no

other stuff!!!!!
the artstyle of this game is pretty good, i liked it, except for the weird family photographs that all just looked really off for some reason
also the very few moments where we see a person in their entirety reveals that apparently their main 3d modeler kind of sucked at humans
i mean apparently its this guy and he made this after the game released and
yeah it makes sense why he's a prop designer now (just my opinion!!! he is very skilled!!!!)
imo if you're gonna have a very emotional game like this, you should probably hide the achievements until after the player has finished a playthrough because i ABSOLUTELY was focused more on getting the achievements than on the actual story being told in some places


thats it!!! this was NOT a puzzle game
do NOT go into this hoping for puzzles (like i did)
if you want a game thats like this but with puzzles, you can probably find something similar on my list!
or just play the unfinished swan
that has puzzles

its like an extremely condensed portal/the talos principle
no fluff, no time to get to know the character (singular)
just solve the puzzle, then solve the puzzle, then solve the REALLY hard puzzle, then solve the puzzle
then you win! (i beat the game in 2.8 hours)
i find it funny the singular review in the accolades section on steam is from a website called "GameGrin" that basically says "its good but the final level sucks ¯\(ツ)/¯ 8.5/10"
though in my opinion the final level was fine

theres only two other logs for this game on backloggd rn and one of them mentions how only like 2/3 of the puzzles are actually hard and the rest are really easy and thats true!
the other one says how the disembodied voice talking to you in the game is a good attempt at a glados type character, which is false!
i think the character is kind of a victim of the game's own shortness
you have a notably short amount of time in each puzzle area, with a notably long amount of time in between areas listening to the voice
it becomes frustrating when the game is offering you the door to the next area, but you're standing around waiting for the voice to finish their VERY funny joke
and i checked, the voice doesn't carry over to the next room, meaning if you want to hear the full dialogue you HAVE to sit and wait for it to finish
and there is nothing stopping you from just walking forward and entirely skipping the dialogue, which imo shouldn't be the case
portal has both the elevator rides, and has moments during the puzzles where the test chamber is still being set up, and the games use these moments to kill time so you have a reason to listen to the dialogue
in this game the dialogue tests your patience by dangling the open door right in front of you
(also im not saying portal doesn't have moments where you're just sitting around listening to dialogue, it just doesn't happen between literally every puzzle)

i guess it doesn't really matter though considering all the "lore" you could gleam from the dialogue is just jokes (pretty bad ones at that)
and there isn't really anything in the levels besides the puzzle itself, i searched around for secrets and found some "oh theres probably a secret here" spots and always found nothing

honestly this game just feels like one of those gamejam games that gets polished and released officially but with like zero expansion on the original idea
they made the game mechanic, threw together a lame little story around it, and called it good

also something interesting is the game was apparently funded by "FFF Bayern and the budgetary funds of the Free State of Bavaria."
bavaria being a state in germany that wikipedia says is notable for it's independent identity from the rest of germany
so i guess you could somehow argue that this game is bavarian propaganda? cool?
i guess depending on your opinion of the game you could say its some sort of get-rich-quick scheme by taking money from the bavarian government, making a shit low budget game, and pocketing the rest
and while i DO believe this game probably had a really low budget, its honestly a fine game
so power to the devs i guess, make that bavarian bank
you've got my thumbs up on that one 👍