Developer: Foam Sword
Publisher: Playism, Double Fine
Gameplay Stats: 7 hours, 24/36 achievements
I backed this game on Kickstarter! It was another game by some of the people in charge of bringing Little Big Planet its charm, so I had to support it. I think I'm going to do this one as a quick write-up since I feel like I'd be repetitive if I broke this one out into my normal sections.
Bottom line up front, I was disappointed by this game. The trailer and art style absolutely OOZE personality. But I think what's under the surface here is a really mediocre game. The gameplay is pretty simple, there are long walking sections where you essentially have to find the single object in the environment and interact with it (often with next to no foreshadowing) and there are combat sections where you fight one of 4/5 enemies that don't really telegraph their attacks and the attacks don't really make sense graphically. The game is entirely 2d hand drawn sprites which is totally fine. They really do create a neat looking little world in the Island of Penfurzy. But the modeling of the sprites into a 3d world is lacking here. The invisible barriers seem really inconsistent and I often wasn't sure where I could explore/move.
So much of the game seems like fluff though. The interesting bit was the plot between the two characters. The island seeming so large and having big bits of silence between interesting interactions really seemed like fluff to me. The characters weren't saying anything and much of the game is without music. The achievements really want you to explore the island but there really isn't a reason to. I found the minute to minute gameplay here to be overly simplistic, edging in on boring. The bits of music there are are excellent, but the huge lack makes the game feel a bit rushed in my opinion. I would've also like it if the characters had been voice acted. I think there's a lot of potential character here but it's missing in some execution.
The story here is genuinely delightful, I think that's why I finished the game. There isn't too much of an arc for the characters to go through apart from the resolution, but I liked the characters and wanted to see more of them. If I could make some tweaks I would add (or at least play) more music, voice act the characters, and if the game really wants me to explore I'd like for that to somehow harmonize with the gameplay. The point of exploring is to see all the bespoke little scenes between the two characters, but the game world is so large that the little interesting bits are few and far between. Plus there's no way to know where the interesting bits were. I started out exploring trying to find them and by about the middle of the game I was beelining for the objective.
I don't think I'd recommend this game, at least for a solo player. Many of the reviews I saw on Steam were really positive about playing through with a friend, but I didn't particularly enjoy my time here. There is a lot of missed potential in my mind.
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