22 people found this review helpful
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 2.4 hrs on record
Posted: 26 Nov, 2021 @ 9:13am

I'm torn on this one. I'm going to give it a thumbs up because it successfully kept me hooked with "What the hell is going on?", and the puzzles are well-designed. The 2.5 hour runtime should tell you they're not terribly difficult, but there were a few headscratchers, and they were all intuitive - there weren't any with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ solution no one could have reasonably found out on their own.

The reason I'm torn, though... I won't spoil anything, but I will say that the story is the kind that makes you view everything up to that point in a completely different context, which is cool, except the more that I think about it, the less I actually like it. Once I got past the twist, I started to realize the most interesting character in the game actually has nothing to do with anything and is just there for show. And I'm sure someone will say "That's the point!", but unless the point was "Make the player regret seeing this story to its conclusion," then I'd say they whiffed. And if making players regret it *was* the point, then... well, that sucks.

It's the difference between story and story-telling. The story-telling is fantastic - like I said, I was hooked. I was super interested in finding out how all of these seemingly unconnected threads came together. But the story - how it all ended up coming together - feels less and less satisfying the more I think about it. I know the old cliche is "It's not about the destination, it's about the journey!", but when the destination retroactively makes the journey less satisfying...

I don't know. I will lean thumbs up because, as a narrative-driven puzzle game, it's well made (and also gorgeous). And I imagine everyone's mileage may vary for the ending. It just didn't do it for me.
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