6 people found this review helpful
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 1.6 hrs on record (0.9 hrs at review time)
Posted: 16 Aug, 2022 @ 3:59am
Updated: 16 Aug, 2022 @ 5:11am

The game seems solid and definitely brings a lot of joy. There are a few things that bugged me, like lack of quick save and not always visible enough spikes, but overall the game is beautiful and fun to play. Bea is cute and pretty much like in “Stray”, animal being animal is adorable, so all dog lovers should be happy with Space Tail. I do recommend this demo, and I’m waiting for full release to play it, as well as review it.

Plot:
It's only a demo prologue, so hard to say much about the plot, so my only point there would be that the Lector kind of destroys for me mystery about what is happening in there. For my personal experience, plot would be better to be thrown into that world almost without any information, without narration. To explore myself and slowly start to understand the world around. Lector just leads me thoughtlessly and explains everything before I even ask. Although I'm not everyone and some people, definitely younger audience, will appreciate that easy story-telling.

Mechanics:
SPOILER ALERT
First things first, the game definitely could use the quick saves. For now, it happened for me once, in a place when u get double jump, you can get back and pick up with new upgrade shields that were on unreachable platform and then make a long jump. Long jump wasn't the easiest, and it took me several tries before I did it. And of course I was getting back for shields every time. In prologue, it was fine, going for shields didn't take more than 30 seconds, but in later game if the level would be more complex, and I’m guessing harder, it may create unnecessary frustration. I'm not sure if lack of quick saves is only in prologue, and they will be added to full game, but if not then I would advise consider adding it.
I love the idea of dog senses helping us find various things around the map. It perfectly fits the climate and the fact that Bea sniffs her goals and doesn't take out some kind of map out of her butt, or she's not using Nav of some kind is great, and it's a lovely detail.
The befriending creatures idea is also neat, but tends to be a bit confusing at the start. There are pop-up texts technically telling you what you are supposed to do but in a “shock” of colorful, detailed background they just disappear from perception and my first befriending experiences ended up failing without me doing anything. When it comes to “emotes” it’s again cute idea, but sometimes it's a bit confusing since same type of creatures don’t like same behavior (everyone has their own preferences, even if they are same specie).
Jumping seems ok, I didn't have problem with it at all. Gives vibes of Ori and Hollow Knight.

Graphics and level design:
Visually, for me, the game is very appealing. I believe that liking in art style depends on person and for some people it will be beautiful, for some may be messy. For me personally, graphics are ok, but what definitely deserves a praise are animations. They are being well-made, cute and interesting. All dog lovers around the world will definitely appreciate that Bea can growl, roll around or give a paw. And even besides emotes, Bea’s running looks excellent, and it gives that feeling of speed. Most importantly, she does act like a dog. She squeezes through small holes, she barks, she sniffs around to find the direction. It’s all well thought. Congratulations, you Devs surely loves dogs. :)
Surroundings at the same time are sometimes a bit hard to read. Maybe it's because of the first location being a desert biome, but especially at first I had a hard time finding the way.
SPOILER ALERT
Although I do not agree with some other reviews about the game being too hard to understand and easy to get lost in. If you say so that it either mean that you can’t read the popups or you can't process in your mind that u have to stand on one edge of platform to make other edge go up, run there fast and jump on higher platform. Simple as that.
When it comes to visuals, my only complaint would be about the spikes. Maybe it's a matter of me not playing long enough to get use to (it took me less than 1 hour to finish prologue, even tho I tried to look for some secrets), or maybe it's again about the desert. But yeah, few times I literally stepped onto spikes without even realizing that they are there, and few times I was preventively shooting normal flora just in case it would try to kill me.

I don't like to grade games in numbers, so to sum everything up, I'll just say that demo is definitely worth trying for all Platformer and Dog lovers. I'm waiting for the full release. :)
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