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Indsendt: 20. maj 2022 kl. 18:41
Opdateret: 20. juni 2022 kl. 16:10

6.8/10.0 (recommendation: get it on sale)
my feelings about this so far are a little mixed. I gave it a tentative thumbs up at first, but as I explained in the comments on this review, I just can't recommend it, at least not in its current state. There is a lot of potential, but... well, let's just get to the list.
pros:
  • the artwork is good/cute
  • the story is "decent" and I would almost describe it as "charming". It's not really what I'm used in a game like this (not that I play many games like this in the first place), but I really liked the writer's perspective.
  • some of the puzzles are well done, and they seem to integrate well with the core game mechanic on the whole.
  • the core game mechanic was a very unique idea, and deserved to be utilized way more than it was.
cons:
  • First of all, I'm physically handicapped and put a premium on control flexibility for any game I buy. I cannot use a physical keyboard (I work around this with voice recognition/transcription software and the Windows On-Screen Keyboard for most things), so the fact that even the game menus are keyboard-only is frankly infuriating. I can't use the virtual keyboard for full-screen apps, yet I had to navigate by keyboard to get to the option to disable full-screen. Relatedly (yet almost a separate bullet point on its own), the game does not draw the cursor when it is over the window, meaning I have to guess where I am in order to get to my virtual keyboard
  • Next, and almost as frustrating, the store page says it's about 7 hours of gameplay. Even if we account for the slow pace at which I play (which honestly isn't that slow. I'm partway, probably most of the way, through chapter 2 and have only been playing 1.4 hours), it still ends up being WAY less playtime than I got out of Slime Rancher (for about 1/4 of the base price), or even compared to another game from this publisher (Humble also published Forager). I can't say for certain yet as I'm only partway through the game, but I feel like the price point is probably too high.
  • Third, while I give a lot of credit to whoever did the art, I don't feel the same way about the story. , as I mentioned in the pros, it's decent, but I feel like it could've been better in a few places. Most notably, in the prologue: why would Carto have a Storm and Airship "piece" (that wasn't even a map!), and why would she combine them if she did? Just leave the storm unexplained, mysterious plot set ups are an acceptable trope!
  • Lastly, as much as I like the map mechanic, the game's signature feature, the puzzles don't seem to be done right. A game design video I watched recently suggests that good puzzles have the following components: the mechanics, the catch, the revelation, and the assumption. The catch in this game should be obvious, right? Not being able to fit a piece where you want it to go... except thus far at least, that has played a very small role. The bigger challenge is often figuring out what a character wants you to do, and sometimes the dialogue is rather too cryptic ("change the flow of the river" in chapter 2, where I'm currently stuck, for instance)...
although I have refunded this game, I intend to pick it back up if it's ever in Humble Choice again (like it was when I first discovered it; I give it to a friend).
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Udviklersvar:
loki  [udvikler] Indsendt: 1. juli 2022 kl. 4:47
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2 kommentarer
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Twisted_Code 20. juni 2022 kl. 16:11 
review updated. Someone please let me know if they ever make the mouse cursor usable with the menus and stuff.
Twisted_Code 26. maj 2022 kl. 6:28 
I am amending this and asking for a refund. After some thinking about it, I'm not sure if I want to finish the game. One of the biggest deciding factors for me with ANY game is how well it makes use of mouse controls (in places where mouse control is trivial to design, e.g. menus and the game's map interface), so even if I have to use a keyboard for things that frankly wouldn't make sense for the mouse anyway, I at least don't have to work around EVERYTHING. Accessibility is so important to me that I've provided friends with academic quotes related to it in the past, with one of which effectively said that if there wasn't an accessible option whatsoever, I wouldn't buy the game. Accessibility isn't hard; just letting the mouse do some of the work is often enough to satisfy my complaints. This game has yet to even consider that.