Adventure games, specifically text adventures, were some of the first video games ever made. These were similar to choose-your-own-adventure books, but you had a set of common commands you could type, such as “Go To,” “Open,” and “Go Back.” Some games were super strict with these commands, while others were more loose. You could pick specific objects in the current text on screen to interact with. These can be very fun, as they are as much a puzzle game as an adventure game. Stories Untold starts off this way, but with a twist. I’m hesitant to reveal the game’s premise as it could potentially spoil the entire experience. All I can say is that there are four short chapters, and they all involve interacting with older 80’s equipment.
The game isn’t really a horror title, despite seeming so on the surface. It can be a bit unsettling, but there are no jump scares or ghosts. The game is full of puzzles to solve, but everything you need is right in front of you. You must tune radios, use scientific equipment, read the manuals for these devices, and follow the on-screen instructions. It’s amazing, and I had a lot of fun with these interactive pieces. I did find it a bit annoying when you didn’t exactly know what buttons you could interact with. In the second chapter, with all the science equipment, I encountered a bug that prevented me from turning on one of the boxes, forcing me to restart the game. Outside of these minor issues, the game has some decent voice acting and visuals, with some great lighting effects.
The first chapter’s 8-bit computer is quite convincing, allowing your typing to translate 1:1 with the sounds of a real 8-bit keyboard. Some will remember the CRT glow and the dark corner full of wood furniture. I never grew up with 8-bit computers as they were before my time (I started out with Windows 3.1), but for those who have, they would get a real kick out of this. My least favorite parts were when you did control the main character in real-time. There are two sections in which you do this, and it’s very slow, plodding, and uninteresting. I found the stationary parts to be more entertaining.
Overall, Stories Untold has four short chapters, and you can finish the game in about 3 hours, but it’s a lot of fun. I found the overall story and ending to be quite intriguing, and the development of the entire experience was commendable. The interactive objects and puzzles are clever and fun, but when you take control of the character itself, the game slows down too much.
The idea of AI taking over the world is an intriguing subject, and it is becoming more and more of a reality with current deep-learning AIs. Ever since Isaac Asimov touched upon the thought of machines becoming closer to humans, we have thrust this into science fiction. The Enigma Machine does just this. The Enigma Machine tasks you with a simulation of entering a rogue AI’s “dreamscape” and finding the hidden code to terminate it. The story moves very fast as there are only four levels, and despite being able to type in pre-baked commands, I would have loved to see some hidden words give interesting results.
A level thrusts you into a first-person view with PS1-style graphics. You can interact with objects and sprint. That’s about it. Your goal is to find hidden codes in the level, either written down or audibly given. You must enter these codes in the correct order, as they are somewhat obscure. The levels are small, with only a couple of rooms. Upon reaching level three, the game requires you to combine all three codes in a specific sequence. The lighting is odd, and the textures warp and shift just like on the original PlayStation, but the game takes this a bit too far. The textures will stretch farther than they should, and the final level is a glitch fest of walls disappearing and textures overlapping each other. It can be an attack on the senses, but given the setting, it’s acceptable.
The story itself, which unfolds as text on the terminal, captivated me beyond the haunting sound effects and the suspense of not knowing what will happen next. Unfortunately, the short length of the story prevents us from learning more about the program and its AIs. You have the ability to type in words enclosed in brackets, and each time you re-enter the terminal, you receive additional information about each item, though the list is not extensive. I tried typing in random words, cuss words, and various other things, but the game doesn’t seem to have any hidden Easter eggs in that regard.
Even though the horror elements are minimal, the computer’s deception and the mystery surrounding your presence and participation in this simulation remain. The game’s four levels limit our learning opportunities, and the ending text largely explains the game’s mechanics. I did find some of the puzzles too obtuse to understand, such as the fact that there’s a hidden gun and you need to complete the last level. This is a game that puzzle enthusiasts will find enjoyable; however, it is not suitable for those who prefer pure horror or a game that revolves around terminal text.
I’m not the biggest fan of visual novels. Most visual novels, or VNs as the community likes to call them, either lack a compelling story or engaging characters, or they drag on for more than 30 hours without achieving anything. Mediterranea Inferno drew me in because of its visual style and advertised player choices that could shift the story. While this does exist, the story is incredibly basic, with some very elementary writing and characters that are as interesting as a wet napkin.
The game’s inclusion of queer culture may offend many people, but for individuals like me, it suggests that the story could feature some intriguing characters. The game takes place in modern-day Italy, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic (it’s mind-boggling to think we’ve built entire game stories around this pandemic), and depicts the disintegration of these three friends during that period. The overall story hints at how COVID broke friends apart and how the isolation and lockdowns made it difficult for all three of these men to maintain their social lifestyles.
This VN is very “slice-of-life,” with not much going on. The endings express no inner turmoil, and there is no gameplay. The choices you make during Mirages imply that the characters might be taking drugs at these moments. A mysterious character appears and offers a strange fruit that you can peel or turn down to alter the story a bit. You get coins to purchase these fruits by interacting with objects in the mirages. This game’s best ending for each character requires four tarot cards, but only one character can get them in one playthrough. There are three days and three nights to live through.
We learn a small amount of backstory for each of the three men here, but it’s mostly just dialog about complaining or what feels like random, boring daily conversations. I almost wanted to stop the game after the first day, but I kept going, hoping that there would be some crazy plot twist. Sadly, this never happened. I can’t spoil too much of the story (like it matters with how bad it is), but there’s not much here for anyone. Those who enjoy storytelling, queer gamers seeking a connection with LGBTQ+ characters, or anyone seeking a visually appealing game will not find it appealing. The art, while hand-drawn, just isn’t very appealing at all. The game is mostly just a giant slideshow, with an occasional low-poly 3D model thrown in for good measure.
By day three, I just didn’t know what to really expect anymore. The Mirages are weird, abstract, and poetic, but nothing means anything in this game. There’s no reason to care or keep moving. Early on in the game, there’s no hook to keep you in your seat. Most people will click away before the end of the first day. I understand it takes time to set up a story, but for a game that only has a 2-hour runtime, there isn’t a lot you can do. Overall, there’s not much here to recommend, as there aren’t too many redeeming qualities in this game.
Another independent horror game featuring a convoluted narrative and characters we find uninteresting. I keep giving these games chances, and while a lot of them nail their main monster and atmosphere, almost none can bring home a good story or good characters. This game is based on Taiwanese mythology and the 2020 film of the same name. I have never seen or heard of the film, but the folktale is interesting. A group of six university students challenge the curse on the bridge near Tunghu University and accidentally “trigger” it. You spend a lot of the game running from ghosts of sorts and finding objects in the first person.
The game begins with a promise for the entire setup. The number of voiced lines and cutscenes suggests a promising story. The voice acting is in Taiwanese and is pretty adequate for what the story needs. The first scene of the game has you running around a small park, hiding from a ghost, and trying to escape. The monsters are fairly well done, but they are nothing we haven’t seen before. Pale skinned girls with long black hair, red eyes, and really skinny. There are a few more imaginative monsters, such as a possessed mannequin, but after so many exposures to this ghost, it’s not scary anymore.
There are a few Asian horror tropes, such as a random limb grabbing something when you open a cupboard, or the main ghost appearing behind someone and showing a single eye. These cheap jump scares detract from the overall game experience and give the impression of a cop-out. Despite this, the atmosphere was rather tense, and just wandering the halls and hearing the ominous music and strange sound effects made me stay on edge for the entire game. The stealth sections were my least favorite parts, and it seems that non-combat horror games tend to focus primarily stealth. The ending sequence was the most frustrating, as these are all trial-and-error events. When caught, you must restart and complete the run in a single attempt because you are unsure of the correct path to take. The ending sequence requires you to restart each time, and you must collect many objects that increase the frustration. I ran into a glitch where a locker wasn’t in the spot I needed, and I couldn’t progress anymore.
Most of the game tells you exactly where to go, and there are signs everywhere that help guide you. There aren’t many puzzles in the game, and the ones that are present are relatively simple. The majority of the game involves revisiting the same locations with six distinct characters, and while their narratives should eventually converge, they never do. The timeline lacks clarity, and the explanation of the school’s shifts and changes remains elusive. Is it a hallucination or is it actually happening? Even reading the flavor text in journals doesn’t explain anything. I’m so tired of the poor storytelling in these games. I feel like there is some sort of love story involved, but I couldn’t really figure it out.
In the end, there’s nothing really here for anyone unless you want a cheap 3-hour horror adventure. If it weren’t for the flawed stealth mechanics, I would have enjoyed this game more, but even the graphics fall short of expectations. It uses Unreal Engine 5, and it is very poor at that. The entire time I thought it was Unreal 4 or even 3. However, the lighting effects give the impression that it’s Unreal 5. They are pretty decent, but the texture and modeling are horrible. Even cranked up to max, the game just doesn’t look good. With that said, The Bridge Curse has a lot of potential but falls flat in too many areas.
Minimalistic, story-driven games can be quite memorable and fantastic. The lack of gameplay requires you to have a laser focus on the story and characters, and the subtle gameplay can bring a visual element that no other medium can provide. Three Fourths Home isn’t one of these, sadly. While the visuals are striking and minimal, the story and writing have so much potential, but they are let down by a short and disappointing ending.
You play a teenage girl named Kelly who is driving home in a violent storm in rural Nebraska while talking to her family on the phone. Gameplay consists only of holding down a button to continue driving and choosing a few dialogue options. Holding down a single button for the entirety of the game is a really dumb idea. It introduces hand cramps and constantly breaks your focus on the story. You can honk your horn and turn off your lights, which is entirely pointless, and you can’t move the car at all. You can also choose to turn the radio on and off. There is no spoken dialogue in the game, but this requires you to make up voices and visuals for the game in your head. This may sound really dumb to most people, and some might argue that you should just read a book, and in this specific context, this would be a better medium for this story.
Choices in dialogue don’t seem important at first, but your response to your family plays into how they react to you on the phone. I guess multiple playthroughs could be worth it as there are a couple of different endings, but with how mundane the gameplay is, no one will want to sit through the hand cramps to make it worthwhile. I had issues with the controls, causing me to choose the wrong option as well. You need to skip through dialogue with a button to advance each line while holding down another to keep driving, and some times you wouldn’t know that a dialogue option would be coming up and you would just advance forward.
See, with minimal games like this, you need some sort of gameplay hook to keep it interesting enough. Three Fourths doesn’t do this at all. The mom, dad, and brother are all interesting characters, and you slowly learn about this family dynamic through this phone call. You learn about why you “ran away,” what kind of person the dad is, whether or not this is a broken home, etc. The dialogue is tight and interesting enough to keep you glued until the end, that is, if the hand cramps don’t send you packing first. I also wish more was going on visually. Occasionally, a background object will be brought up in the conversation, but it’s just black-and-white visuals without any type of payoff. The visuals, gameplay, and everything else are just an excuse to call this interactive story a game, and it does the bare minimum to qualify as that.
Most games like this have a story that ends in sudden tragedy to flip the entire thing on its head and stun the player, but this one doesn’t really do that either. If it did and the pay-off was incredible, all of this could be worth it, and there are plenty of games similar to this that pull that off. As it stands, Three Fourths Home is a well-written story in a terrible game with an even worse gameplay mechanic.
Tongue-in-cheek comedies about the Cold War are something I quite enjoy. Movies like Austin Powers that make fun of the time period can be downright hilarious. CounterSpy tries this with the player working for an unknown neutral agency called C.O.U.N.T.E.R., and everything they do and their plans are all spelled this way with no actual meaning. You play either the Americans or Russians’ bases to steal sets of plans to stop nuclear weapons from destroying the moon. The goal is to keep the DEFCON level as low as possible (5), and if it reaches zero during a level, a one-minute countdown starts, and you need to find the computer to finish the level to stop it. Thankfully, if it does reach zero, the level ends, and you start from DEFCON 1 again.
The only way to lower the DEFCON level is through passive items or getting officers dressed in white to surrendy by pointing your gun at them. This can make having to repeatedly repeat levels very difficult. The levels are randomly generated each time, but that doesn’t mean the difficulty doesn’t increase. You will need to search more rooms while plans for weapons and items are hidden better. More guards will appear and there will be more open areas. These can be the most difficult to navigate, especially when security cameras come into play. The green ones can be shot down with weapons, but the orange-armored ones can only be taken down with explosives. You can dodge and roll your way through a camera’s cone of vision, but you need to be fast. I found the randomness of levels to be frustrating, as a lot of guard patrols just don’t line up to be able to be stealthy. A lot of times, you will need to mow down every guard, and some levels can be multi-tiered. Thankfully, the alertness only lasts for that section of the level. Once you go through the door to the next section, the guards don’t know you’re there.
Cover is your best friend in this game. Yellow arrows on the cover will tell you which way you will face, and lining up your shot is important. The longer you pop out of cover to aim, the quicker guards will notice you. Guards are pretty dumb, and cameras won’t even notice dead bodies, so shoot them out to your heart’s content. This is the only saving grace for the randomness of these levels. If this was a more realistic stealth game, it would feel impossible to finish. However, I still wound up getting each side to DEFCON 1, so I had to constantly restart a level once the countdown timer started. It’s futile to try to run to the exit in 60 seconds unless you’re already close. If you quit the mission, you just restart back to where you were prior to that level.
Once you do get all the launch plans, you can continue to play either side to get more weapons and item plans and lower the DEFCON level as much as possible. The final mission will start on the side with the highest level, so this can lead to a lot of frustration unless you really want all of those weapons. I honestly felt the game got pretty tedious towards the end and just wanted to get the game over with. I didn’t feel the need to continue playing, as the randomness kind of ruins the fun gameplay elements with poor guard patrol patterns, making it impossible for really perfect stealth runs. The Vita version suffers from frequent slowdowns when the action starts. The game will pause for a split second, causing accuracy issues when shooting.
Overall, CounterSpy has all of the elements of a fun arcade-like action stealth game, but the randomness of the levels makes it hard to get that perfect run, which can discourage the player from wanting to collect all the weapons. The tongue-in-cheek humor does the job just fine, and the controls are well thought out. Just be prepared for some frequent restarts.
Telltale is mostly known for licensed adventure games such as The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead. They shut down and started back up, and now they probably don’t have the money to license these franchises anymore. I actually prefer this. Telltale has created their first original IP in years, and it has so much potential. The biggest takeaway from this game is the usual Telltale style of storytelling and choice-making. You think you know what you’re going to choose ahead of time and how it will pan out in your head, but things always make a left turn and change on you, and you’re left speechless. They are also, sadly, known for having almost no gameplay and very dated visuals.
Gameplay is more frequent in this game, but you just control your character in a walking simulator situation, walking or gliding down long hallways. There are a couple of elementary puzzles thrown in, and that’s your lot for gameplay. It’s fine, as I go into Telltale games for the story and characters and not much else. You can use zero-G movement in some areas and move around that way. You can also optionally scan a few items here and there for collectibles, but it’s very limited and linear in scope.
The best part about the game is the atmosphere, characters, and overall story. While this game is the beginning of a larger story arc that will give us more lore and behind-the-scenes politics on the goings-on of this world, this game solely focuses on establishing Captain Drummer as a brand new protagonist, and I love her so much. She has a lot of charisma and is a dark and brooding character without being cringy and formulaic. Her voice actress does a fantastic job portraying this. The other characters are written in your typical telltale manner, which allows you to constantly hate or like a character and then suddenly doubt everything in the end. The cast is small, but the game has a fantastic pace that keeps things interesting.
You’re essentially scrappers, and there is an established order of inners: people who live inside the astroid belt and those who love outside of the astroid belt. There are pirates involved, and there is a secret treasure that everyone is fighting over. I don’t want to go too much into the story, but the game’s atmosphere is dark and haunting, but there’s no horror. The monster here is the human element and just how brutal we can be to each other in a split second. I found the ending very satisfying, and it opens up for a clear sequel that hopefully expands this entire universe that Telltale has created.
The visuals are a huge improvement over their past games. While they aren’t ground-breaking and are required to run on previous generation hardware, the stylized visuals look great, and the blacks, whites, and grays really make you feel alone and claustrophobic all the time. The voice acting is top-notch, as always, and the only thing I left with was wanting more from this series. I also wanted more gameplay, as quick-time events are incredibly dated and there are other things you can do for adventure titles other than these dated gameplay elements. More side quests, an actual gameplay loop, and more side dialogue would be nice to be able to expand upon everything. As it is, the game takes 6-7 hours to finish, but it’s incredibly enjoyable, and I couldn’t put the game down.
Kingdom Hearts has a special place in my heart. I remember when the first game came out, and it was talked about by a lot of people on the school grounds. I was in junior high when it was released, but I didn’t get it until it was a Greatest Hits release at $20. I found it hard at the time and never finished it. When the second game came out, I rented it from GameFly and actually cried at the ending. It was so memorable and engrossing for me as a teen.
Here we are, almost 15 years later, with the third installment in the mainline series. I was insanely excited and didn’t follow any previews or reviews for the game leading up to actually getting around to buying this game. I played the first area of Hercules (again?) and got to Toy Box (Toy Story!) and lost interest. Yeah, the game hasn’t really evolved all that much. My biggest problem with Kingdom Hearts III is the lack of imaginative level design and the use of mostly modern Pixar movies. The best part about a new Kingdom Hearts game is discovering what the next Disney movie will be that you get to explore. It’s like a surprise each time, and I loved that with previous entries. This was the first time I was praying it wasn’t another modern Pixar movie.
While Hercules was very cinematic, scripted, and looked great, it’s an overused Disney movie in the series. Toy Story was exciting, especially when we were in Andy’s room, but we wound up in a generic boring mall? It was such a boring level to get through, and I didn’t feel anything like the movie. We then move on to Repunzel. Why? Another issue with this game is playing each movie scene by scene around the second act. We’re stuck at a generic forest level here. After this, we get into Monsters Inc., which is actually pretty cool, but it’s a generic monster factory. Then it’s…FROZEN?! Why Frozen? We even get a literal, scene-by-scene, shot-by-shot rendition of the “Let It Go” song. If I wanted that, I would just watch the movie. A generic snow level awaits us here.
Then we go back to Pirates of the Caribbean, of all movies. I appreciate that the visuals are improved enough to give us realistic versions of this movie and not the cartoony one we got last time, but I didn’t care as the original voice cast wasn’t present again. And it’s based off of the third film for some reason. I liked the fact that you get to sail an open ship and go find crabs to upgrade your ship, but I skipped all of this. The ship steers like a hot-wheeled car, and the generic seaside town and ship battles weren’t very interesting. Then we finally arrive at Big Hero 6, which is also pretty cool, but it’s a generic large map of San Francisco, and it is incredibly boring. That’s it. No more worlds, and you are stuck in the last level for about 10 hours doing boss rushes like every other RPG has done, and this seriously needs to stop to just bloat game time.
Even if you like or dislike these Pixar movies, the fact is that the levels are incredibly boring, and each one plays out the same way. You get through several mini-bosses, fight waves of enemies, collect some stuff, and fight the movie’s main antagonist. Every world is a generic feeling with no life from the movie injected into it. The reliance on playing through scenes of these movies isn’t what I want in a Kingdom Hearts game. I want a unique experience at each level that makes me feel like I’m part of that world. Not just some character who crashed the movie in the middle of its runtime.
I can go on and on about how much I hated the uninspired level design and repetitive nature of each world, but then there’s the Gummi Ships. I hated these in the first game, and I really don’t like them here. I like that the Gummi Ship part is a large open map that you can explore freely between worlds, but there’s nothing interesting here. You fly around collecting parts, Munni, and you can find shooter waves flying around that have levels and stars attached to them. Upgrading your ship but being able to buy parts to put together blueprints is a staple of the series, but I just don’t find it interesting. A new alpha Gummi part can be attached now to help fight in battle. It’s essentially a satellite ship flying around yours. There are speed tunnels all over the place, asteroids, and various obstacles, but I just wanted to get to the next world.
Finally, there’s the combat itself. I never really cared for Kingdom Hearts‘ combat. It works, it’s fine, and it can be fast-paced, but you fight the same Heartless over and over again, and the game is heavily reliant on keyblade transformations. Actual attacking and magic have taken a back seat. I rarely touched magic, and it felt useless. I was just attacking until I got my three pips and I could transform my keyblade into a more powerful weapon and execute its finishing move. This does the most damage and is a must for bosses, or you won’t survive at all. The final act of the game pits you against around a dozen bosses, one after another, and it’s a frustrating chore. You can still use Link commands, but they aren’t that great this time around, and I felt like they hindered battle more than anything. The goal was to attack and get a few combos in, transform my keyblade, execute attractions that put you on famous Disney park rides that do damage, and just rinse and repeat. Items are useful for sure, and it’s important to keep abilities tagged, as adding combos and modifiers to combat really gives you an edge. However, this all gets so repetitive, and you just stop caring before you get to the third world.
Then there’s the story, which I haven’t even touched on yet. It makes zero sense, even to people who have played the series up until now. My main interest was in the little stories inside each world. I never cared for the overarching Kingdom Hearts story. It’s a bloated, overcomplicated mess involving Organization XIII, and Final Fantasy isn’t even a part of this story anymore. Xehanort was the X-Blade. Aqua is trapped in a world, I think, where there are multiple versions of everyone. Yeah, I don’t know. Go watch a comprehensive timeline explanation on YouTube instead. Sadly, each world is just a retelling of each movie, which I could just go watch if I wanted to. At least the visuals are really good, and everything is bright, colorful, and full of life.
The voice acting is also hit-and-miss, but mostly terrible. Haley Joel Osment as Sora again was a bad choice; he’s just not a good voice actor. Outside of some of the mainline Disney characters, the voice acting is just wooden and awkward. Most Disney films don’t retrain their original voice actors. Especially in Pirates of the Caribbean…again. What’s worse is the writing. The script feels like it was written by a grammar school student. It’s just the most basic lines, replies, and banter. It’s just enough to get through each scene. There’s a lot of nothing being said by most of these characters. Shouting each other’s names a lot, and a lot of “You will never stop us!” or “I will defeat you!” over and over again. Yawn.
So, there’s a lot I don’t like here. The lack of older Disney movies, the complete absceneness of Final Fantasy stuff, and the fact that each movie is just a scene-by-scene replay of the original movie are boring. The levels feel generic, uninspired, and repetitive, and the combat, while flashy, uses an overreliance on keyblade transformations, attraction attacks, and links and magic. Enemies repeat far too often, and the final act is nothing but a frustrating slog of a boss rush. The story is insanely and wildly confusing and unnecessarily complicated, but at least the visuals are a nice treat. If you didn’t like previous games in the series, this does nothing that will convince you to like it now.
Side note: I was incredibly disappointed by Utada Hikaru’s song with Skrillex on this one. Both Simple and Clean and Passion/Sanctuary are classics and some of Utada’s best work. This song was terrible and wasn’t a good start to the game for me.
You play as Kai. A girl is sent away to a strange village in a post-apocalyptic world to re-connect with her extended family. You spend the entire game walking around to the various dozen or so screens, collecting seeds, planting gardens, and learning more about your past and the ties between the village and your family.
I have to give credit to the developers for their tight and well-written dialogue. The characters have, well, character. For the short time you spend in the games (under 4 hours), you really get to know these people, and the dialogue is written in a way that feels organic and like you’re listening in on a conversation. Talk of relationship issues, depression, carelessness, death, suicide, and many other emotions that we face in ourselves and amongst our own families. There’s an atmosphere that’s both uncomfortable and familiar. You will plant your own life in this game and strategize relating to certain characters or hating them. It’s just so well done.
As for the rest of the game, there’s something to be desired. As you walk around the screens, you will see a hand icon over anything you can pick up. These are usually plants, and you need the seeds to plant gardens to advance the story. There are eye icons for objects that Kai will comment on and a clock icon for an interaction that will advance the story. You never really get lost. Kai’s journal gives hints on who to talk to and what area you need to be in. Using a little common sense and learning the screens and where everyone resides helps a lot. As you pick up seeds, you learn songs that help you grow the garden. Each seed grows based on its song, so it’s recommended to plant seeds of that type. You can place the seeds with an outline of the plant that will tell you if there’s enough space for it. Sing the song a few times, plant enough seeds, and your garden grows. You can then harvest the plant for what you need to advance the story.
Don’t get this confused with something akin to Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley. This isn’t a farming simulator at all. The planting and gardening are rudimentary at best and mostly uninteresting. I just threw seeds around until I filled up the meter, spammed the correct song, harvested, and off I went. I was more interested in the characters and the story. There’s a mystery behind the village that I couldn’t wait to unravel, and unfortunately, gardening got in the way. I did love the music; it’s amazing and good enough to listen to outside of the game.
The art style is well done. It’s bright and colorful, but it can be really dark when needed. The characters have unique humanoid designs that seem familiar but are still alien, and the paper cut-out look just fits so well. I just wish the story was a bit longer, as I wanted to get to know the characters more. I can’t really complain about gameplay, as you do move around constantly and patterns change and mix up, so it never really gets boring. This is a great little adventure game that can kill an evening, and you might have a new favorite OST.
2D walking simulators seem to be a whole new genre of their own, are more interesting, and tend to be better than fully 3D ones. Games like Limbo, Little Nightmares, and Inside are perfect examples of this. There is some light platforming, some puzzle solving thrown in, and maybe a little bit of stealth. While none of those had stories that blew me away, they did make up for it in atmosphere and character. Shady Part of Me sadly doesn’t accomplish any of those things. The only thing going for it is the dual-character puzzles, and that’s about it. There really isn’t even a story to speak of. Yourself, your shadow, and some disembodied voice narrate the entire game with cryptic dialogue that really is either open for translation to the player or is entirely meaningless.
This game reminds me a lot of Limbo and Lost in Shadow. You play as a little girl in a white dress who is afraid of light, and her shadow (always on the wall) is afraid of darkness. You switch between both to help each other advance. Puzzles involve pushing boxes and pulling switches, and in later levels, your shadow can defy gravity and even take over puppet bodies. Most of the puzzles have that “Aha!” moment, which can be satisfying, but there were a few that really stumped me and took a lot of time just fiddling around until something changed. Most puzzles have you manipulating objects in front of lights to make new shadows, move them, or make them grow or shrink. The real girl can’t jump, but your shadow can. This means there is light platforming in the shadow, but nothing complicated.
I did find the aspect of two characters to be a bit tedious. Some areas just have you running to the right to stop in the circle to advance to the next area. You then have to switch to the other character and run that full length again. It’s not a major problem, but it happens too frequently. I also found the rewind feature to be really handy. This prevents constant deaths and restarts. You can rewind as long as you want, so I have to applaud the developers for making this a frustrating mess. A lot of times your shadow will die or you will get caught in light, and it stops the game, but rewinding allows you to see the error you made and correct it. If you fully died every time and went back to a checkpoint, this game would be unbearably frustrating.
Overall, the visuals are great. The sketchbook look and early 20th-century aesthetics are fun, but they’re also nothing memorable. We’ve seen this kind of art style before in other games. That’s the biggest takeaway from Shady Part of Me. It does what it does fine. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t leave a lasting impression like the above mentioned games. Limbo was gruesome and had a memorable atmosphere. Little Nightmares’ ghoulish monsters stood out, and Inside’s dystopian world put you on edge. You will spend around five hours in this game and mostly forget about it the next day.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.