6
Products
reviewed
508
Products
in account

Recent reviews by Nearth

Showing 1-6 of 6 entries
6 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
6.8 hrs on record
Honestly, this was a masterpiece.

The general gameplay is simple, but far from boring. Basically Fruit Ninja except you slice other things. Plus a few bonus things. Plus an RPG part where your actions have consequences spanning across the universe.

The art is... it just works. I'd say the clashing of different styles really drives how absurd everything else is.

The music isn't very memorable although the sound design in general sometimes shines... a lot.

The narrative and choice branches would probably be the best thing about this. It's edgy, it's absurd, it's downright hilarious. Getting to see evaluations of your daily activities is also pretty fun overall.
Posted 29 October, 2024.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
 
A developer has responded on 30 Oct, 2024 @ 8:28pm (view response)
1 person found this review helpful
2.7 hrs on record
Overall a solid effort, save for a few downsides.

Gameplay: Janky, but does it job. I'd honestly polish the movement dynamics a little bit more, maybe raise the movement speed a bit and made a clearer vfx for dodge/dodge recovery, plus not entirely certain what purpose the time dilation serves other than "easy mode". Oh and having restart on T made me accidentally restart levels a few times whilst trying to reload so feels like a less-than-optimal bind. And the melee on F also felt wrong somehow (since it makes you unable to move right and melee in a quick enough succession).

Art: Lovely. Could be better during gameplay (at least in terms of clear distinction between the level and the enemies), but the VN parts feel cozy and even a bit grand sometimes.

Music: Nothing special (although not bad either), the intro track does set hopes though. And some action tracks were right on point.

Story: It has futa, it has furries, it has death and, well, not-death. The story itself is entertaining. Written without much dramatic flair, but in good language and it's pretty coherent. A bit overdone on the whole "throw her to the wolves" part. Oh and I suppose the ending doesn't feel quite rewarding enough for the effort spent.

The *content*: It's well-woven into the story but I'm not sure it truly shines here. They say variety is the spice of life. And moderation is the... mayonnaise of life? Yas, moderation in mayonnaise and vice versa.

In essence, I enjoyed the time playing the game. Can't say it was cathartic, but it was certainly a good time.
Posted 29 October, 2024.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
 
A developer has responded on 30 Oct, 2024 @ 5:29am (view response)
3 people found this review helpful
8.8 hrs on record
So apparently the thing also installs a VM on your PC and makes you part of a botnet that constantly tries to spawn backdoors onto your machine and possibly mines something.

The game was viral but this is a whole new level of "viral".
Posted 18 August, 2022.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
2 people found this review helpful
3 people found this review funny
3.4 hrs on record
This game is the vilest form of psychological abuse in game development. Before I destroy the good thoughts the readers may have had completely, I've gotta mention: the music was truly astonishing and the artwork, while shaggy at times, still delivered. The game mechanics are quite lovable, too.

Let's begin, then.

Basically, the game is constructed in a linear fashion with enough foreshadowing to tell the player that what they're doing is wrong. The first part of the game does, however, keep you interested, because one may want to find out just how exactly the things are going to go completely haywire. Yet still, it mocks the player for the inability to make choices because it's been designed as such. There's a specific moment at which the player's told they can go anywhere, however, due to lack of unlocked abilities, there's only one option (it's just a suggestion, though! You still can go anywhere!)

The second part of the game presses on the foreshadowing making the complete statement: the thing that is most sensible for the player to do is to do absolutely nothing. If one decides to follow the game objectives, they subconsciously agree to the shady methods of unknown entities which are guiding them and setting those objectives for them. Plus, there's a case of really badly timed moving platforms which make the player wait for a whole minute to get them synced so they could jump from one to another.

Overall, it does what it does: pushes the player forward with a sense of constant impending doom constantly splashing them with a milk of regret about their decision to carry on and follow the rules of the game. This double-bind of game ideology versus plotline can lead only to disappointment and stress while playing a seemingly relaxing cute game about a little fox.
Posted 6 March, 2019.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
26 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
2.2 hrs on record
TL;DR: This game is basically a nice and at times aesthetic point'n'click if you GET YOURSELF TO ABSTRACT FROM THE SETTING AND IDEOLOGY IT TRIES TO PUT ON YOU.

The art and the animations felt somewhat shaggy, although certain (read - most) backgrounds have their charm. This is not really a problem, however, as art aesthetics is not the only thing that makes a game (I mean, just look at some of the ASCII roguelikes out there, not like they try to give you the best view possible, while still being remarkably good). I got used to it pretty quickly, even though sometimes I felt like playing a paper-scrap animation for the sole reason of character drawing techniques being just... different from each other and the background (sometimes they would blend in with the background, making things even worse).

The music is somewhat unremarkable, but it went well with the atmosphere, so I can't really complain.

Now, for the setting:
While I totally dig the hippie terminator joke, I do not see reason to actually give a "battle robot" whatever emotional responses since it obviously hinders its productivity and value.
Also, sentience and consciousness does not equal same said emotions, so yeah, basically robots turned out to be whiny humans. Pure logical sentience is achievable, unless you want to harshly discriminate against people suffering from psychopathic tendencies (you wan tell me dey no sentient, you whatever-ist???). All in all, the transhumanist point of view (which is nearly vital for cyberpunk) is completely missed.
Next thing we know, we encounter a "princess" or whatever telling us she wants to bring on some sorta socialist/communist tendencies (oh yeah, let's just take from the rich and give to the poor, I mean, I'm just a stupid uneducated princess so I totally do not know how badly it went down in history countless times before). That was the point in game which made me cringe so much I saved the game, pressed ALT+F4 and couldn't carry on since.

So far:
Well I could say I like the game, but it feels so unpolished in terms of narrative that I couldn't even count it off as satire or genre deconstruction. We have a serious gritty "badass guy" protagonist who got fired because he was "too good for them", and as we watch him do stuff, we don't really see exactly where all that cool comes from. Not even a hint. To put it simply, this strength of character usually renders a person a "pathetic wimp". I could go on about whatever other character I've encountered so far, but the point is already made enough for my liking. The only remotely fun character for me was the thief from the very beginning, and even they went down pretty quickly due to their humanlike down-to-earth reasoning. Oh, and also the junkie by the club, he was pretty neat.

P.S.:
I did not seem to encounter any bugs while playing the game (wait, or did I? Probably had something to do with unwieldy controls or the UI). I also wish the devs all the best and hope they account for whatever they deem or realize wrong was with this one when they're on to making a new one (encouragement!).
Posted 11 October, 2017.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
1 person found this review helpful
0.9 hrs on record
While the graphics are really, really cute, the game just didn't cut it for me.

The gameplay is quite repetitive and your task is basically to balance everything and please everyone up to some point. The 'Lovecraftian' tag was quite misleading as it lacks 'da feels'. Sure, you have your own crapsack village in which everything (and practically everyone) should be purged and make sacrifices to a slavic demon god. But it sure feels more like an Orwell society where the Big Brother ain't you and all the god does is adjusts your sliders a little so your game turns feel different. Well guess what, they don't. What else? It's short and probably unreplayable (I've heard there are different endings but eh).

Also, a basic tutorial would be fine. While it's quite easy to figure out what to do it takes a game or two until you know what you're doing. Y'know, just an overview of what the traits/affections are and why you need those.

Best of luck to the devs, the idea's quite entertaining, which I can't say for the actual game process.
Maybe the game was meant as a casual and those just don't captivate me as much.
Posted 10 August, 2017.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
Showing 1-6 of 6 entries