Recent reviews by Aquatix

Pros: neat artstyle, cool character design, quality music, "hacking" process
Cons: awful controls (even for a gamepad), unpleasant experience of being powerless agains game's logic and timings.

I wish I've read the reviews before I got it. Not that it's expensive, no, but mere plot and static design and one 100-day limitation praised by a game critic are not enough to enjoy a game with awkward controls about waiting for patroling robots with short field of view to turn around and hitting them in the back with a club.

The fact that you don't chose a character but get a random person only makes wasting them less meaningful. The cash, being the one and only target is just a number in the corner and it's not rewarding to get. You have to spend the same cash to get upgrades and I;m not sure if this is clever or just lazy. Even more, the animations are build in such a way that paper money seemingly drops onto the ground while you're kinda trying to get it which feels contradictory to the whole point of a heist. It's not fun to die in all sorts of places with enemies being that primitive at first.

Also there's something offputting and in the way the game handles death — everything slows down with a nasty sound, like if it tells you "Here! You're dead. We got you. Start over, fool". Some tryhard completionists can maybe do things in here, but as a casual timekiller this game will probably put you in such a bad mood within 10 to 20 minutes that you say "f*** it".

This is what a good story-driven indie game should be like! "Oxenfree" has a proper 3-act structure with a movie-like introduction and epilogue, all of which grab your attention enough to care about what happens next even if you're here just for the

The game features distinct 2d graphics, nice sound and great innovative natural conversation system which allows adorably voiced characters to intercut and speak over one another while still moving around, which, surprisingly so, makes everything more real than what we're used to. So if the Telltale's idea is that choices matter more than consequinces, here choises feel even more personal, or roleplayed despite having consequenses or not. I only wish there was some control over interupting since the invisible timer in dialogues makes speach bubbles disapear pretty fast and sometimes you'd like to hear the full sentence before replying but that means you won't let Alex speak up afterwards.

The story itself, being a ghost story with things borrowed from here and there (seemingly, even from "LOST"), keeps you involved and alarmed, but is yet capable of giving time to think and makes sense at the end. There are next to no jump scares, or at least nothing pops up fullscreen, which I appresiate not being a downright horror fan :)

My biggest gripe would be about somewhat confusing stage design at places and clunky movement of the characters with slow transitions which have to be precise around sharp corners in order not to waste even more time going from A to B. But other than that it's a beautiful and smart 4-hour travel to the depths of what matters to a human.

Also, that little interactive thing the devs did with... let's say, propheting, also deserves attention, nomatter how minor it is. Already recommended to a couple of friends )

Despite a cute simplistic design, warm sound and atmosphere with neat social ideas the gameplay itself is punishing instead of just hard. It's not about choice or folowing ideas. It's about failing at least once everywhere beyond the training task, Then you load a save, repeat and do one thing the other way to see where that leads you and if it's gonna be better.

The finance income is non-existant, while you waste your own money for repairments in the building but get very little in return for writing reports or blackmailing tenants, and believe me — this game will agressively push you to do everything that can make money. What's funny — you never actually get payed for the job itself on a regular base to accumulate wealth overtime and to be able to estimate your capabilities. You just recieve sums here and there, sometimes in ways you would never predict according to game's logic.

Overall It's just a labyrinth you have to map hitting every corner with your head in the dark. Every mission hides a way to set you up and you never really feel like you solved a big problem using your mind or skill. You just run around getting the same things done faster or different which breaks the emmersion of this complex situation anyway.

I personally managed to get pretty far, past finding the medicine for Carl's daughter, which is a huge grind by itself. but needing even more money, I had to take a break and never came back to finish this game for bare sense of accomlishement. It's just not fun after a while and scares you off.

For example "This war of mine" has a similar feel and comes out as uneasy, limiting, cold, somewhat random and heart-braking at times, but you really want your people to survive and war to end so you learn the hard way and try to do better. "Beholder" simply punishes you for everithing despite the possibilities it wants to explore.