Recent reviews by Superstars111

The execution needs work.

I enjoy Orwell and other games in this vein. My main issue here is that it's tedious. It doesn't show you which information it wants you to click on until you mouse over it. But sometimes clearly important information isn't clickable. Other times information will be essential to click, but it's unclear exactly why. The result is that you have to mouse over everything, relevant or not. If you missed something, you have to search everywhere again to find it.

The result was me being in a place where I knew all the answers and had solved everything, but wasn't allowed to end the level because I had missed clicking on some piece of information somewhere. I looked at important pieces of information multiple times, and eventually found that the piece I had missed was something that was only slightly relevant to the situation at hand.

In other words- it didn't make me feel like I was solving puzzles. It made me feel like I was trying every single option whether it made sense or not, because that was the only way to progress. When I got stuck, it wasn't because I couldn't figure something out or because I didn't understand, it was because there was some random thing that I hadn't realized it wanted me to do.

At the time of this review, over 54% of players have the achievement for translating every glyph in the game. This game isn't so difficult that you'll be bashing your head against a rock and rage quitting in frustration. But you do still have to think in order to figure stuff out, and it's very satisfying to work out the answers.

The game autosaves pretty frequently, which meant that I could play how I wanted- for several hours straight, or even when I only had a few minutes, which was very nice. When the game crashed (due to some issues I was having with my computer, unrelated to the game) I lost basically no progress at all, due to frequent autosaving.

The game is relaxing. There are some sections where you need to run from a monster or hide from a guard, or things like that, but even those are more about the puzzle than about the stakes. If you get caught, it just starts you at the beginning of the room again.

Overall, a very nice discovery game that lets you figure stuff out for yourself.

This isn't a terrible game. It was a clever idea, and mechanically it works fine.

This game takes place in a dream world. The basic premise revolves around perception. You can pick up an item, position it so that it looks bigger, and it will become bigger. Early on, this was fun enough. The occasional dialogue was amusing, and I was curious about more details about what was happening.

As the game went on, I felt as though there was very little development. There were a handful of good puzzles sprinkled throughout the game, but a lot of them did just feel like the same thing over again. "Find the box. Make it bigger so you can use it as a stool." As time went on, there was more space between the puzzles as well, so it was less about the puzzles and more about walking from place to place, waiting for the next thing to happen. (You cannot sprint. This was fine during puzzles, but frustrating during the many "walking" bits.)

The more the game went on, the more it felt like it was relying on the story side of the game, rather than puzzles or actual gameplay. This would have been fine except that, like the puzzles, there was a lot of time spent walking from short dialogue to short dialogue, and they never went as deep as I'd have liked.

I had been looking forward to this game. I was a bit disappointed with some aspects listed above, but I wasn't planning to leave a negative review. The concept was still clever, it seems to have been programmed quite skillfully, the music was nice- it had its upsides. My issue was with the ending.
Bear in mind- this is not a "multiple choice" type of game. There is one path you can take, with one solution to each puzzle. Sometimes it makes it look like you have multiple choices, but it's kind of like with portal. The way you're "supposed" to go (in-universe) is blocked, but the devs have a different route planned out. By itself, this is totally fine. But that really felt like it undercut the story here.
There's a line at the end where the doctor is talking about how you kept going, even when you were off the intended path, and even when you were in a place beyond all hope. But the fact is, we WEREN'T off the intended path. There was always only one route I could take. If I'd actually been off the intended path, by glitching through the walls or something, it would have broken things. I know the game is intending to be encouraging, but when all the puzzles are practically the same, talking about how we had to "think outside the box and take new perspectives" sort of falls flat.

There are two parts to this. The gameplay, and the story.
The gameplay was a nice idea, but wasn't fleshed out enough to really be good.
The story could have been cool, and had nice intentions, but once again, wasn't fleshed out enough to be good.
But combined, it felt as though they were intended to compliment each other, and ended up contradicting instead. Either alone would have been passable, but combined, they sadly ended up tripping over each other and dragging the whole thing down.

The art style, music, and general vibes are very nice, and not the sort of thing I frequently see in games.
More than that, I enjoy the crafting system- the game is based around it, and it really feels like you're crafting stuff. You're not just getting the right ingredients for something and clicking a button that says "craft." You're the one making the recipe in the first place. Don't have enough of this ingredient? Well, you can work around that by substituting a couple of these ones instead, if you know how to use them right. It really feels like you get to understand how to make the thing, which is a lot of fun.

# SPOILER FREE
I had three issues with the game which, combined, force me to conclude that I cannot recommend this game.

First, the blinking mechanic. This was an interesting idea, to be sure, and I applaud the developers for thinking outside the box and trying something new. Unfortunately, it didn't end up working very well. New technology is always going to be difficult to implement. It kept on registering blinks when I didn't blink, or not registering blinks when I did. I would recalibrate, but to no avail. I wasn't wearing glasses, and I made sure the lighting was good, even moving my computer around to different locations to try different lighting. About two thirds of the way through the game, I got to a place where it registered all my blinks properly in the calibration screen, but registered none of them in the game itself. At this point, I switched to the "click to blink" mode. I am very glad it had this mode, and I did try to click whenever I blinked (and vice versa), but it didn't provide as much immersion as it was meant to, considering the game revolves around this mechanic.

Second, the "blank screen of death," I'll call it. Near the end of the game, there are sections where it wants you to close your eyes and keep them closed for a period of time. The problem is that after opening your eyes again (or letting up on the mouse button, in my case), it often wouldn't proceed to the next scene. I could see my cursor and hear the sounds, but couldn't see anything in the area and thus couldn't progress. Looking at the discussions board showed me that, while most people apparently did not experience this bug, I was not the only one, and there were several others besides myself who did. The way to "fix" it was to exit to the main menu and then replay that chapter over from the beginning. This happened several times, was very frustrating, and didn't actually fix it every time- there was one chapter where I basically had to move my mouse around randomly until it went to the right space for long enough to let me through that area. Playing the piano in the dark is not fun.

My third and final issue was the story, which... Didn't do anything for me. Obviously, I'm in the minority here. Many people seem to really like this story. But it didn't grab me. It wasn't like it was terrible or awful, but it didn't make me feel like everyone else has described. Why is that? Gonna be honest, I don't know. I could come up with a dozen hypotheses that may explain part or all of the reason, but ultimately, that's all they are- guesses. A few other reviewers have said that it didn't hit them either, and have put their thoughts as to why. Maybe they're on to something. Or maybe I just wasn't in the right mood for it. I suppose I'll never know.

Ultimately, the story itself wasn't BAD. By itself, I wouldn't recommend against this game on the basis of that. If that were my only issue with it, I wouldn't have left a review at all. But combined with having to replay several sections due to bugs and having the main mechanic of the game break on me, the story wasn't compelling enough to carry me through that.

Maybe you'll like the story. Many people seem to. Maybe you won't face the bugs that I did. They only seem to affect a minority. But I can't leave a review based on someone else's experience, I can only base it off of mine, and this was my experience.

Very short game. I played it over and over again- partly because I'm an achievement hunter, and partly because it's relaxing and stress-free.

Only in this game do I calmly scan creatures to add to my database while locked in the jaws of a vicious crab snake that's trying to eat me.

This is a relaxing puzzle game similar to minesweeper, but more forgiving. It allows for user-generated and randomly-generated puzzles, so you'll never run out.

A Short Hike is short (duh) relaxing, and enjoyable in a number of ways. You explore the island, interact with the other anthropomorphic animals there, and, of course, climb the mountain. It's cute, relaxing, and not too much of a time commitment. My ~6.5 hours of gameplay includes beating the game, following all the sidequests, getting every achievement (including catching all the fish), and also completing some personal goals of mine that didn't give any special rewards (like catching all the rare fish variants). Most of the game is optional, but I found myself seeking out every corner of the island because it was all so fun- especially once I unlocked enough golden feathers that I could basically fly all over the place.

This game is short, comedic, and enjoyable. The story is engaging and funny at the same time, and the "combat" (for lack of a better term) is fun with just enough difficulty to give you some challenge.