Recent reviews by bashqueer

Unbelievably good in any possible way. After completing it, I feel like it was maybe the best gaming experience in years.

k.i.n.o

Newest installment of my favorite "Cool Concept For Twitter Failed By Crappy Game Design" series. Now with nice visuals! Unfortunately though, precisely those are eclipsed by the immense feeling of wasted time.

(✿◠‿◠) 𝒄𝒖𝒕𝒆 ｡･:*:･ﾟ’☆

Very surprising for a short visual novel (not eroge, at least) to come up as a nice variation on Sartre's existential ontology with a bit of foucauldian discipline (the latter filling up one more cell in notorious "postmodern" bingo card, alongside with meta-referentiality and intertextuality). Recommended for depressed teenagers.

Just as the story sporadically gives in to unnecessary Jungean esotericism (which one must see through), it is not hard to give in to several impressively staged insights on identity and the imaginary as if those were the answers to the game's main question; the question which pierces the player from the very beginning, even before they bought this game; the question which spikes them to their chair, making them sit through all those riddles and ARG puzzles; the question which makes them not being satisfied not with one or two but several end credits. It's not that those insights aren't valuable, it is rather that the subject of said question is not where it appears to be. Because at the moment of final resolution the ultimate answer comes with the essential turn: the mystery of "Who is Lila?" becomes rearranged to shoot back at You with the most crucial and real one — "What is a desire?".

As for everything else, Lynch connossieurs would appreciate.

I wouldn't really recommend this game to everyone, given it's bland story. But the surprising scale and continuously growing complexity (which prevents you from getting bored) show that it deserves much more attention than it has now with just a couple reviews in half a year since release.

One should not be deceived by the game's metroidvania platformer appearance. Even though you at times really have to skillfully jump on platforms and at times really have to "deal" with some enemies in attempts to progress through another door, the overall gameplay is much more about exploring rich and beatiful 2D world filled with ingenious puzzles and peculiar secrets while getting new and new tools to re-examine once found gaps. Very much reminds me the experience of The Witness.

Very much boring and repetitive walking simulator which tries too hard to be a puzzle. It overuses it's selling feature through the entire playthrough, developing it into something unusual (resizing the player) just for a few moments before the end. It also presents exactly 2 other interesting mechanics (projection and cloning), but beyond their perspective levels not only they do not develop — they are not used for puzzle purposes at all. Puzzles themselves are mostly trivial with a number of shifty ones and a few just challenges near the end that I wouldn't even call puzzles as they made me wonder with disappointing "How was I supposed to figure that out?" rather than grasp with pleasant "Aha, I should have guessed!". As a cherry on top, the almost non-existing story tries to emerge from tripes right before the end just to completely converge itself into the one and straight "think outside the box" (verbatim) message which is as banal as it can get for a puzzle game as this genre is literally constituated by it.

The game would've been better off as a cool concept on Twitter.

otval jopy