This is an incredible game. I started it with no expectations at all (as I mentioned before, I can’t even remember why I’d flagged the game to look at), and have come away from it as one of my favourite games of 2016.
Slick, beautiful, gently challenging and supremely well designed, it’s a stunning piece of work. Oh, and I need to make sure to remember to mention the music – ambient gorgeousness, which you can hear here. Sometimes I get annoyed with a puzzle, have to walk away for a bit, but when I come back I wonder what I was thinking. Perhaps that sort of approach is more suited to a phone, but this remains a game that plays very well on PC, and looks utterly stunning in its conversion.
There is no deep understanding here, you won’t have your mind changed, and it certainly doesn’t have any of the emotional impact of Papers Please. But within its own barmy universe, it works! It’s a good chunk of fun, and easily survives at least a second play to see how much you can mess with people’s lives.
Muddled? I am. There’s so much going on here, but I never really feel like I’ve got a proper grip on it. It feels like a puddle the size of the Atlantic – this vast concept, but too gossamer to sink in deep. Huge stories, but minor roles in them. Exquisite detail, but all going by too fast. And yet, pretty good with it. Just not as good as what’s come before.
What a treat. And a surprisingly deep one, with compelling moments you’ll want to talk about. It’s a pleasure to control, it has impeccable difficulty balancing to keep you moving forward while always feeling like you’re being skillful, and all in the prettiest of pretty pixel graphics. Triumphant.
While it’s not as impactful as Rusty Lake Hotel, or my favourite Cube Escape, Seasons, there’s an absolute ton going on here for a crazy tiny [price].
Better responding controls would do a lot of good, but for £6.40 you’ve got a lovely idea, often delivered very well.
Astonishing amounts of work have gone into this, to creating such a vast detailed city, writing an apparently infinite story, building something on such scale. And then this has been dramatically let down by the dreadful AI, a woeful inability to edit, and the mindnumbing monotony of its identical missions. I'm fascinated by it, but I absolutely cannot recommend it.
Get into the flow and there are moments of pleasure to be found. Nipping from shadow to shadow, flinging a shadow blade at a distant foe, evading attention, and reaching a goal, occasionally feels neat. But these moments tend to come as a run of luck, that doesn’t involve bumping into any of the game’s issues.
It’s poop, which is disappointing. And it doesn’t help that you have to switch off one of a whole bunch of hideous German techno/thrash metal music stations every time you start a vehicle. That’s weird. It didn’t entertain me, it didn’t distract my son, and it’s very broken. Maybe it’ll be a cult classic by Giant Machines 2023, but not yet.
I love that they reached so high, but I really wish they'd thought harder about what it was they were trying to balance on as they did. Ambition wasn't thwarted by technology, but just a lack of common sense. I find myself still wanting to recommend you play it, not least because the action is mostly fine, if very repetitive, and therefore there's nothing that's actively unpleasant about playing it – you can experience the wonders it has to offer, just for the price of grinding through the okay-ness of it all.
t’s very funny, very sharp, and most importantly, a lot of frenzied fun.
Oh, this is a bummer. What a lovely setting for a game, and a potentially intriguing society, as AI develops and perhaps the flaws of humanity begin to be revealed in robotic kind. It could have been a fascinating exploration of the human condition, or just a really nice sci-fi tale.
Inkle's Sorcery! series proves to be one of the best RPGs of all time
[The price] is a lot for two hours, and as I think I’ve perhaps covered above, it’s an abysmal game. The Welshest game I’ve ever played, but still abysmal. Great TV show for the most part, but one that keeps annoying your viewing pleasure by asking you to click on a dot. Graphics are amazing, though!
