Πρόσφατες κριτικές από τον stardustsunday

Imagine Persona 5 without you having to play it - this "game" is pretty much like that in terms of music, style and animation. Story-wise, I guess this would qualify as a lighthearted mystery-thriller with black comedy overtones. The pace is fast and driving, with new developments happening all the time. Although there are no choices to be made, you are compelled to move forward by the constant slew of events. The partial voicing (in Japanese) and sound effects help add to the sense of immersion.

You follow the story of Ling Ling, an ancient Taoist priest with the body of a 9-year-old girl, and Luan, a teenage ex-assassin who ends up becoming her disciple. Evil threatens the world, and it's up to Ling Ling to stop it. In the course of their adventure, they meet other interesting characters that contribute to the complexity of the plot.

Contrary to what the game's store description suggests, there are no explicit image depictions of gore or violence - you only see blood spatter and nothing more. The text is pretty tame and I came across nothing objectionable, having completed all the available chapters.

Even though the story is not complete, the current chapters are still worth a playthrough as quite a lot happens and the content is meaty.

★★★★ out of 5 stars
A fast-paced, exciting, well-presented kinetic visual novel with a solid story, that plays out like a fun anime movie.

So so so so bad. Quite possibly the worst HOG I've played in a long time yet, in every possible aspect.

Hidden object scenes
A kiwi fruit is labelled "avacado" (sic), and a flask with water is the "inkpot" the game is looking for, in one of the hidden object scenes. Various other wrongly-named items in other HO scenes abound, making them impossible to find, unless you somehow come from the same planet as the game's creator in which kiwis are called "avAcados".

Story
Narration is boring and anticlimactic. Story moves abruptly from one scene to another with no bridging narration, so you have to check the in-game diary to get clued in. Captions are rife with spelling/grammar mistakes. What started out as an interesting premise quickly becomes a complete farce when you discover how absolutely stupid some of the plot points are. Just one small example: the bad guys lock you in a room and leave a big, sharp knife on the table for you to use, which you then discard after slashing some netting. Because that's what big, sharp knives are for - cutting netting so you can find stuff, and not using as a potential weapon against your enemies. 11/10 for logic. Hurray! And oh, don't even get me started on how the bad guys need your help in opening a puzzle box even a kindergartener could solve!

Puzzles
The mini puzzles are kindergarten-level type, not one bit fun at all, and very crudely done. The adventure component puzzles are no better as you're not clued in at all about what you might need certain objects for, or what purpose they might serve. E.g. You're supposed to hack off part of a wooden railing, which is to be used as a lever of sorts. Nothing hints at this intention, and going by the looks of it, the flimsy railing doesn't even look like it could withstand the weight of the object you're trying to lift.

Graphics
If you're used to the shiny, sparkly, brilliantly coloured, semi-animated, gorgeously illustrated & highly immersive environments that many of the higher-quality HOGs offer, move on, because you sure as heck won't find them here.

Sound/Music
Utterly generic and barely there, except for a super annoying & really loud "abracadabra-like" jingle that scared the hell out of me the first time it sounded.

An exciting premise completely ruined by utterly idiotic plot points, godawful writing and jerky story flow. Unplayable hidden object scenes due to multiple wrongly-labelled items. Crudely-done boring puzzles.

Final rating: 0 out of 5 stars

You are an ancient monster whose cave home is now being excavated by a group of archaeologists. The goal on each level is to either kill them or scare them away. There are 50+ levels offering ~3-5 hours of gameplay, and as you progress, the story is revealed through the diary pages of various people on the excavation team. The game is well-made (aside from spelling errors here 'n' there), the puzzles very fun and sometimes challenging to solve, and the story lighthearted & cheeky. The game can be played with 1 hand, using just the mouse. Control and touch are very good, very intuitive.

You can only reach the archaeologists to kill/scare them by travelling through rocks. So the goal is to spawn in the correct place at the start, then use whatever props are available to you (rocks, pillars, teleportation devices, etc), in order to reach them.

As the game progresses, more props are introduced. While the solution to most levels can be figured out quite quickly, some levels do require a bit of thinking. If you die or get stuck, you just restart the level, so you're free to do all the experimenting you want if it helps you arrive at the solution. There very rarely may be more than one method to arrive at the solution, but you always have to use all the props given, so in this respect, the puzzles are pretty elegantly designed.

I wish the ending had offered 2 different paths instead of just 1 (this would be easy to do: ending #1: monster gets captured if you fail to solve the last level; ending #2: monster kills Solomon if you solve the last level correctly), but no complaints otherwise, because the levels were very fun to work through, and it was funny reading some of the diary entries and seeing the poor archaeologists get bumped off in a number of amusing ways.

Fun and sometimes challenging puzzle game that requires some thinking. A lot of room for creative experimentation in order to arrive at the solution. Good controls and well-made. Puzzles elegantly designed. Funny story that keeps you going.
Final rating: 8/10 - Definitely worth a play especially if you love puzzles!

Within the first 1-2 minutes of gameplay, you already know exactly what will happen. And it does. That's it. The end. There's nothing more to it.

There were a number of grammatical errors, and the only "horror" I experienced, was from the nauseatingly ugly character art.

There's a long plug for the developer's other game, Incantamentum, when the ending credits roll, which is, I suspect, the real reason why this game was made.

This is supposed to be the prologue to a bigger game, Saint Kotar, which has yet to be released. You switch between 2 men, Benedek and Nicolay, who've just arrived in a small town in the mountains called Sveti Kotar, as you try to find out what exactly happened the night before, and where Nicolay's wife (who's also Benedek's sister) has disappeared to.

It's a classic point-'n'-click adventure game, done in the style old-school fans of the genre are accustomed to and will most probably like.

There's nothing much to do in this prologue chapter except examine/use a few objects, and talk to people. Play this only to get a sense of whether you would want to play the main game when - and if - it eventually releases. I wouldn't recommend it otherwise.

Pros
- nicely drawn atmospheric backdrops
- fully voiced, & by supposedly famous voice talents (though I couldn't tell, frankly)
- somewhat interesting premise
- some aspects of mystery

Cons
- Story not told in a way that excites you very much
- Some locations are way too dark, with no option to increase brightness
- Sound is pretty bad: e.g. some of the background noise at the souvenir shop was supposed to be "insects", but it sounded like someone scraping something (and probably was). It was intended to be scary & evoke a sense of dread/mystery, but to me it sounded like housing construction.
- Voice is way too soft (you have to turn music and ambient sound down very very low in order for voice not be drowned out by either)
- You have to feel around with your mouse in some of the dark spots in order to find something that can be interacted with
- Walking/Running is terribly slow and tedious
- Too few puzzles
- "Puzzles" require no thinking at all to solve, and are just too straightforward
- Your character attempts to walk to wherever your mouse clicks whenever you click to skip text/dialogue
- Poor narration that doesn't fill in gaps in player's knowledge: e.g. someone suddenly talks to you when you "look at" the souvenir shop in the town square, and you have no idea who it is; your character also says nothing... it turns out to be the souvenir shop lady, but you can't see her from that angle! Your character could have at least clued you in!
- Bug in tavern: when clicking to view prayers in the wall window slots, sometimes Nicolay just does nothing, and you have to click again in order to trigger a caption
- Game has a distinctive amateurish feel to it

I was shocked to learn that the developers actually paid big-time Hollywood/Broadway voice actors to do the voice acting for this game. Frankly, I couldn't tell. The voice acting was just so-so. I feel the budget could have been so much better spent elsewhere, like getting a better writer for instance.

At the end of the day, if you have a good script, narration and flow, you don't have to rely even on voice acting at all to help carry your game. And sadly, this game feels like it could do much better.

Final rating: 5.5/10
Interesting premise & nice visuals, marred by bad writing, narration and flow, and completely unimaginative "non-puzzles". Sound does absolutely nothing to enhance gameplay; may even make things less scary than they otherwise could have seemed. Still worth a play if you like horror, though don't expect to find any of that in this prologue. Not a very promising start to the main game, but maybe you might have lower standards/expectations.

As a longtime fan of AGS and point-&-click adventure games, I was excited to try this free title. I didn't even mind the ugly-as-sin graphics because, as every seasoned adventure gamer knows, it's all about the story and puzzles, right?

Sadly, while there is a reasonably good bit of exploration to do, with many rewards for doing so (e.g. looking at enough berry bushes, examining all the paintings in the hotel, and walking to all 4 corners of the moon - among many other adventurous things to do - will net you in-game achievement awards), the puzzles are pretty poorly constructed and spoiled the fun for me.

I've been gaming since the '80s and pride myself on usually never having to check any walkthrough or guide - I'd rather stop playing the game for a while to think things through than check the solution. But this game stumped me so much (and not in a good way) that I found myself having to look up how to solve various puzzles, because I'd tried everything that seemed logical to me and it didn't work. I also had no idea how and where to use certain items. You are either not clued in sufficiently for you to get an idea of how items should be properly applied, or that certain objects can be combined with others, etc etc. In general, puzzles are extremely counterintuitive and require too much of a brute-force solving technique.

And game progression is pretty badly done too. Events don't connect very well, and I was left wondering what to do after getting rid of the bad guy. I didn't feel like looking up the walkthrough again - it's pretty pointless if you have to rely on a guide to tell you what to do to end the game after the enemy has been defeated! - so I finally quit.

All this has been a huge shame, because I liked how the game pays attention to small details in things like item descriptions and exploration. But when things don't flow, players are left frustrated at $hitty puzzles, and have to scratch their heads at how to proceed, this is where I draw the line and say that even my love for all things AGS and point-&-click can't save this one.

Oh, and while I loved that there was full voice acting throughout the game, it should be noted that every time I heard the protagonist speak, I felt like punching him in the face. Not sure if he was deliberately trying to fake some funny mannerism or if this is the way he really speaks in real life, but it was not amusing and just came across as eye-rollingly obnoxious.

Good attention to detail and high on the exploration factor despite its short length, but puzzles are badly done and require contrived, highly counterintuitive solutions. Poor game flow and event sequencing. Protagonist's voice acting irritating AF. Graphics may give your eyes ulcers.

Skip this one, unless you're really starved for some point-&-click adventure action.

When I think back about a game I've played and can remember its plot and characters with fondness, I think it's fair enough to say that such a game is worth recommending. Fatman is one such game.

It isn't going to win any awards for graphics, innovation, sound, gameplay and what have you, but for its price, Fatman delivers a decent enough package of entertainment. The story is told with a touch of lighthearted humour, which worked for me. Puzzles were mostly not bad - exactly the type one can expect of a typical adventure game. And Fatman himself, as the protagonist, grows on you with time. There are also a couple of easter eggs to be found that contribute to the number of points you earn.

The only thing I wasn't too keen on was that some objects can't be easily spotted, putting a huge damper on the puzzling-solving process. One shouldn't have to go pixel-hunting on every screen just to make sure one hasn't missed out on any crucial object.

Overall though, Fatman was an enjoyable experience that offered a surprising number of hours (I'd say ~3-4 for me?) of fun. The game has also aged very well. Definitely pick it up sometime if you're an adventure game fan.

This is a borderline-abstract interactive visual novel with a wee bit of an adventure component, the "adventure" merely being things like what rooms you choose to look into, whether you stop to talk to someone or not, etc stuff like that, as well as some "brain minigame" thingie where whether you lose or win I suspect may not matter.

It starts off very confusingly, with some mumbo jumbo text, then you being thrown into the game expecting to know what to do. Turns out you're supposed to be controlling a man called Beckett - also the protagonist - who is represented as a round avatar with his face. It took me a while to figure out what everything was. You must move your mouse around the screen until you find something he can interact with, then click on it to initiate an action.

This game was a 5.62GB download. I kid you not. For a totally 2D product comprising merely images and animation, that is a stupendously gargantuan filesize.

And this really is the crux of the issue.

While I have no doubt that Beckett was made with great care in terms of style, vibe and aesthetics, I think too that the developers directed all their efforts into thinking about just this one aspect alone, and no other.

First and foremost, something marketed as a game should be fun to play and a breeze to get through, and not a slow, tedious slog that yields no rewards at every turn.

Secondly, if you make something so abstract and "artistic", it starts to make people wonder if you're doing that because you don't really have enough substance there, which is why you need to mask it with all this flowery stuff, in hopes of fooling people into thinking that you're "deep" when you're really not. Dark, brooding, melancholic text coupled with disturbing images of insects, pulsating bits and sometimes naked bodies, do not automatically a nuanced, sensitive art piece make, although simple minds may well be fooled into thinking they do.

Ultimately, I think what the game tries to convey is one man's tortured existence of a life now meaningless without a former love. In it somewhere, is a mystery to be solved, about a missing mentally ill man. Mental illness seems to connect them all, and perhaps our protagonist is spiralling into it himself. Who knows? Who cares?

Unfortunately, I could not finish Beckett because my patience finally gave out. The game is a painful, excruciating chore to get through, and offers no motivation to do so, other than the very slim hope that you may finally find out what this whole story is about (or not - that's a gamble you have to take). The worst part is having to listen to all the pseudo-artistic claptrap along the way. There never really is much reason to feel involved, despite the huge bunch of FMV the game throws at you (hence the large filesize). And the abstractness of it all just adds to all the annoyance already felt.

You never really can be sure of what you're getting, and you never really can be sure if there even is a point to it all, let alone a resolution.

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If you've not played the main game yet and want to, it would be best to complete that one first before playing this, otherwise a lot of the references in this game would make no sense to you. There are also numerous spoilers in this game that reveal exactly how the main game ends.
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This is a sort of mini "sequel" or follow-up to the main Thimbleweed Park game.

If you played the main game and enjoyed it, then you should definitely play this one too. It's free, offers more of the same adventure puzzling fun, and touches a bit on the aftermath of events from the first game. It uses the same scenes and characters from the main game, and the familiarity is an added bonus.

The puzzles were really fun and for the most part, well-constructed. You are given a total of 30 items that you have to photograph, in batches of 5 each time. I managed to solve all the puzzles without any help - some of them are straightforward while others not, but they can all be figured out if you are observant, think hard enough and do a bit of experimentation.


I really hated that the game doesn't allow you to save your progress until you've completed a set of 5 tasks. This means that anytime you quit the game before you find those 5 items, all your progress is lost. So you end up having to do things over and over. And it doesn't help that a lot of time is already wasted walking from one location to another, even at the fastest walking speed.

To combat this, I found myself having to leave the game running while I did other stuff, and that's why my gameplay length is so long. Actual playtime is probably 2-3 hours max.

The other thing I didn't like was having to skip dialogue using the keyboard (by pressing the full-stop key). Why not just make everything doable via mouse??? It was irritating to keep switching from mouse to keyboard - FFS, it's called a "point-n-click" game for a darn good reason.


If you liked the main Thimbleweed Park game and want more of the same, this is a must-play, despite its flaws. Other than fun puzzles, you also get small snippets of the story that continue from where the main game left off. If you haven't yet played the first game, complete it first before playing this one.

If you like retro pixel 2D adventure point-'n'-clicks, you must play this. It gets everything right. There's no text or dialogue of any sort involved, but you quickly figure out what you need to do, and what the goal is, as you play on. The pacing is just right, and the music & sound effects - while minimal - are effective. Puzzles are on the easy side, but not so much that there's no challenge at all. On the whole, this is a charming 30-minute game that would put many paid games to shame.


喜欢这类游戏的话，一定要玩Escape Lala，游戏多方面都做得非常好。虽然没有文字或对话，玩家探索一下就知道该做什么，流程很顺。像素版的游戏风格+音乐及声效都配搭得很好。谜题也设计得不错，不会过于难或容易。游戏大概30分钟内就能完成。