Recent reviews by Sublustris

Better then what cringe lord from youtube tells you

It all starts with a dead girl...

Medium is the most ambitious creation for a small independent developer. Probably so ambitious, it could almost eat and wear them off, like insatiable maw. Not everything here is perfect. Performance can tank incredibly hard without any apparent complexity in the scene, yet scenery can be beautiful and photorealistic at times. Stuttering can irritate, but gameplay is forgiving for it. There might be lack of game mechanics, but that doesn't wave away interest and keeps the pace of moving forward. Camera can be restrictive, yet Silent Hill taught me it's the best tool for telling story, to let feel alternate world and make unforgettable player experience. Animations are stiff, but camerawork make you ignore that. Walkthrough is linear, yet it leads to the most open ending.

What makes the good game great are things that developers nailed down. Art direction is top notch, alternative world looks and feels as it should in horror. Music is eerie and evokes emotions from melancholy to terror. Display of parallel world is fresh and to a degree technologically impressive. Story stars intriguing, keeps your interest through cleverly hidden turnarounds, always hiding that last piece of story puzzle from you, and ends as a personal tragedy. Characters are well designed and feel alive. As true labor of love, they come dear to the player and make you care.

It all starts with a dead girl...

... but it don't have to end with one.

Thank you, Bloober, for this story, and I hope Marianne's tale will continue.

Single most beautiful and touching thing I've ever played, seen or heard. If you ever happen to experience a loss of someone dear, maybe it will help you to coup with it. Because GRIS is beyond Art, it is practically a therapy. A grief can have different stages, shapes or forms, but GRIS sure touches the right strings. I've never thought that sheer essence of such complex topic could be depicted so elegantly, metaphor imaging to be shown so vividly.
Bravo Nomada Studio, bravo Berlinist!

P.S. Gris means "Gray" in Spanish.

DEMONS IN THIS GAME ARE HUGE. THAT MEANS THEY HUGE GUTS!
RIP AND TEAR THEIR GUTS!

TE SLAVEN BEN
KAR EN TUK
DU TE EXUNT!!!

8K hours, here I come

Best Amplitude's game to date

I literally regret all the 149 cents I've spent on "this". Not because of the small amount of money I've spent. I regret I've supported, even a little, a developer like that.

Look, I LOVE arthouse. I love games without traditional gameplay (visual novels or whatever they are called). I love The Path, I love Dear Easther, I love The Stanley Parable, I love The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.
BUT THIS. Critics claim it's brilliant, 'cause it doesn't present you linear nor transparent storyline, so you have to decide all the plot and intrigue for yourself.
I don't have problems with the plot, my problem is that those claims are lies. This "game"... Geez, I can't name it nor "game" nor "visual novel" in fact. Ok, this "thing" doesn't even trying to do something good. Like, literally, I can't see the developer trying to be good in any aspect of this... "thing".
Graphics, animations, sound design etc. are not intentionally simplistic, they simply lack any art style or tech, programming is horrible. In the most horrible sense possible. That leaves you with a story... Except all those "visual novel" games I love tear their asses to present the story in most beautiful, unusual and most memorable way. And this "thing" not even trying. Supposedly intentionally, but in fact, because of untalented developer who couldn't make any idea.
It's not Malevich's Black Square. It's simply a square. Not even sure it's black. It's pseudo art.
In developer commentaries it was said, that the scene with floating objects was initially bug, but dev decided to make it a part of the "game". Well, the WHOLE damn "game" is like that, in fact. SOLID BUG.

A pearl among indie games. I've played it since it was free experimental game named Dyson, but its commercial counterpart became a pleasent surprise to me. Latest updates also improved the game suficiantly from initial release, and that's 5 years since original release date. Developers truly love their game and its players.
So, make THE GROWERS proud!

Verdict: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is another pearl of indie-gaming
... and a future IGF's "Excellence in Visual Art" finalist for sure :D

Pros:

• EXTREMELY beautiful and eye-pleasing. "Dear Esther" of Unreal 3 engine. Even though it's not next-gen (game utilizes DX9c), it already looks far superior and photorealistic thanks to photogrammetry technique, that've been used to make game assets and levels;
  
• Misterious, nostalgic and captative atmosphere, that reminds of Twin Peaks, Alan Wake and that favorite suspense fiction of yours;
  
• Very well made and visualized puzzle and solving mechanics, that look refreshing and keep you interested;
  
• Weird fiction horror story. Even though nothing truly original, but interesting, logical and very well told;
  
• Rather cheap for the ammount of work put onto this project;

Cons:

• Short experience. All investigations, puzzles and plots will take you around 4-5 hours. Took me more then 7 hours, because I've enjoyed vistas and explored the levels more, then I should;
  
• Not really open-world. In fact it's like one of those vastly huge levels of first Crysis. It's understandable, and even surprising for Unreal 3 engine though - there are no loadings between locations, few FPS drops can occur here and there as assets are loading into your RAM/VRAM;
  
• I wish puzzle mechanics could be exploited more, it's too few of them for such a great idea. Scarcity of puzzles due to owerall shortness of the game and story (but not the map, lol, it's huge);
  
• No replayability, no loading to specific scene, no freeroam to enjoy the vistas after game completion;
  
• Few minor bugs here and there at the game's launch. My experience was mostly bugless though.