This is a blog series about the latest video games I’ve played recently, with my hidden personal notes. I decided to stop my balanced reviews, since I couldn’t escape the feeling that almost no one was reading them.
Viewfinder
Developer: Sad Owl Studios | Released: 2023 | Genre: Puzzle, First Person
A mind-bending first person adventure game in which I could bring pictures to life by placing them into the world. Some photos were there to be picked up, others had to be created by using a camera.
Really pretty, great art style. Bright and clear. I also liked the brief stroll through other art styles – drawings, paintings, even a pixelated retro game.
Cait the cat had okay dialogue, but Jessie was way too overjoyed for my liking. Think Nancy Drew from the adventure game series, maybe even worse.
The story bits by Jessie, Cait and on the recorders all felt superfluous. Sometimes I even ignored a phone call. Never managed to finish the collection of small objects either.
The ability to sit was redundant and the chair tooltips were often in the way.
I could take a photo, place it and walk into its now existing black-and-white elements. The photo could even be rotated first. I could have several photos to be browsed before placing one.
I could rewind at any time, even from falling. Sometimes rewinding took too long. They should have added acceleration to it instead of just the one speed.
Sometimes a photocopier could be used for duplicating photos.
Also cheating perspectives, and stationary as well as a hand-held camera with limited photos.
Didn’t like the last teleporter showing end of puzzles with a padlock icon. I would have chosen a different icon. How about one depicting an exit door? That would have made more sense to me.
Traveling to new hubs using a monorail. Each hub had another handful of teleporters. Most teleporters had mandatory levels, but there were also a few optional ones.
Later hubs had color filters to be turned on and aligned to form a photo, violet wall pieces that would not appear on photos at all, microphones and radios with music connected to battery pads for powering them up, and stationary cameras with a timer to be used as a personal teleporter.
The VR machine for the Viewfinder program “crashed” in the beginning of the game. The real world wasn’t all that interesting, though. Also disappointing that Jessie didn’t have a 3D model.
Took too long before the game offered a hint in the menu, whenever I was stuck. Then again, it did make me retry a few times more, and most of the time I then figured it out myself. The difficulty was mostly easy with a few exceptions. Needed about 3-4 hints.
In the end game, a shaking “chaos” camera could create photos that spawned sort of a black hole.
Cloud Climber
Developer: Two Star Games | Released: 2021 | Genre: Walking Simulator
This was a free and could be completed in 15 minutes. I climbed the stairs in a few wooden towers until I reached the top of the third one. It had a narrative about how all the workers had left the towers.
Evocative sketch-style drawn 3D graphics. Very brown too. Quake would have been proud.
The voice actor for the narrator was good. No nonsense, reminiscing the times when he had company. Now the protagonist was on his own and climbing the third tower to finish the job.
A bridge and a staircase had to have planks added for me to walk past. The planks were close nearby.
Various diary pages found mostly on tables revealed that water used to be a severe problem. The workers even started locking their water buckets into chests.
Deliver Us The Moon
Developer: KeokeN Interactive | Released: 2018 | Genre: Adventure, Sci-Fi
An adventure game playing as a silent astronaut trying to activate a power source on the moon. Primarily about exploring abandoned facilities and investigating what happened.
The style of the female voice “in a can” reminded me of the intro part from the movie Dune from 1984. Bet that was what they wanted to emulate too.
Had to turn off motion blur by turning the post processing slider down. I wish they had made a toggle.
Alternated between first and third person. First person view was used for the anti gravity parts.
Absolutely not a walking simulator. There were multiple countdowns and also stretches with limited oxygen that could be replenished on the way by picking up small oxygen flasks.
Lots of great detail in the surroundings but usually little to interact with. Some things could be picked up in an inventory, others could be scanned for reading about it in a computer mounted on the left arm.
There were also recordings to be picked up and listened to. Sarah and Rolf were on these recordings, who were the previous astronauts that tried to turn on the power source again.
Felt a little bit tame in the beginning until I had launched the rocket and started performing the launch procedures and docking. Especially inside the dormant space elevator station, it really grabbed me. The zero gravity was quite convincing due to the controls which included rotating both ways.
The docking procedure was quite easy.
Missed the countdown on the first launch procedure – deliberately as I wanted to see what happened – as I returned for the second try, the countdown was gone. Good. Countdowns are stressful.
Had to turn on life support on the space station by inserting two energy capsules.
Picked up a laser and plugged it into the suit, so I could remove the bolts on various metal plates on my way, while floating towards the control room.
Turning the rotation engine on created a sudden explosion that threw the astronaut into space. I had to thrust back through space station debris, picking up oxygen flasks on the way. That was difficult. I died four times before I got it right the fifth time.
Finally I took the space elevator down to the Copernicus Moonhub. Shortly after I got a floating ASE robot working by replacing a few parts in it. The robot looked a lot like the similarly floating robot from Portal 2, although this one was silent and just followed me around.
It did have great eye animations that made it quite cute.
Still, I thought it was too big and bulky. They should have made it smaller, for example about the size of a tennis ball. That would have made it less unoriginal and even cuter too. If I have to guess at anything, I have a feeling the developers considered this, but decided to make it as big as it is to avoid having too many small spaces it could potentially float into.
I could take control of it directly and float through ventilation shafts to reach a room and turn stuff on. It could also be parked in holders for opening doors or showing a hologram recording.
The hologram recordings reminded me of a similar feature in Tacoma. The humans were merely flickering blobs and didn’t have facial animations. I guess it saved a lot on character designs.
Later I found another ASE locked in place in a room I had to pass through to get a battery. It was evil and tried to zap me several times. Bastard.
Soon, I boarded a six-wheeled moon car and drove outside to find two towers and direct their antennas towards the central hub. The first was an easy traipse up ladders and stairs, while the second had hazards such as plasma fires venting. If only I knew how much worse this would get later.
Then I steered a monorail towards Tombaugh, but it was very far away and the monorail stranded several times on the way. In the first stop, I had to use ASE to toggle four power lights. It was one of those annoying puzzles where I brute forced it until I finally got four blue lights. Not fond of those kinds of puzzles.
Towards the second stop, QTE was suddenly a thing. The monorail got inside tunnels through a mountain. Together with a female voice on the radio, it reminded me of the intro for the first Half-Life game. I had to hit a few hotkeys on the way to change tracks, and finally a brake lever to bring the speeding monorail to a stop. I failed this QTE sequence three times before I got it right.
The part with visiting two towers in a moon car to point the antenna towards a hub repeated itself again, but this time a really nasty countdown occurred after leaving the first tower. The second tower was almost collapsing, and I needed to race to it in the moon car and then sprint up the tower to reach the controls in time. There were broken pathways to jump across and more plasma fires venting.
Amazing as it may sound, I actually managed it in the first attempt.
Then I had to get up and sprint towards the hub before my oxygen ran out. That thing with picking up a few oxygen flasks on the way for just a few seconds of more oxygen was one of those things that quickly got old in this game. The developers sure liked their timed sequences.
To be honest, I don’t think I would have bought this game if I had known there would such an abundance of countdowns in it. It brought the game down a notch in my final rating on my part, and that’s a shame since the game was otherwise quite fascinating.
I had to stealth around half a dozen patrolling evil ASE robots. Luckily it was often possible to just sprint past them and jump where I needed to go. Then they zapped me, but I could survive a few of those. I’m not fond of when adventure games try to add stealth mechanics to their genre. I’m not really sure those two belong together – but maybe it’s because I was “raised” with the likes of Thief and Deus Ex.
Sarah was stabbed by Isaac in the hologram story. I had a feeling that would happen.
The end game was about avoiding the heat of a rotating reactor, then avoiding rotating arms of death. Finally I reached a control panel, but there was a explosion and our astronaut was seriously injured.
Now I had to hump to an antenna control station and steer the enormous antenna towards a target point using a joystick, all while the astronaut had blackouts with the crosshair drifting. I had to keep the crosshair inside a small circle before the countdown (because of course there was another countdown) hit zero.
I had heard of this ending with the injured astronaut and the challenging antenna sequence. I admit it was not too easy and I had to retry it twice before I succeeded, but it’s far from the worst ending I’ve seen. As an old gamer geek with an impressive completion chart, I have seen much more sadistic end sequences.
That being said, the game was indeed frequently punishing. As mentioned earlier, I really did not like the abundance of timed sequences. You can debate whether stealth belongs in adventure games, but the countdowns? Leave those for true action games such as shooters.
The astronaut died in the end, right after finding Sarah’s medical pod.
Runo
Developer: runogame | Released: 2021 | Genre: Adventure, First Person
A free and short adventure game that took place near a wooden cottage by a pretty lake. After taking a nap and using the sauna, the lake created a dream with easy puzzles – including playing a kantele.
Took its time to get really interesting. First I arrived at a small cottage in the woods, threw darts, heated up the sauna, answered texts on my old Nokia phone, and took a nap.
The Nokia could also take really ugly photos.
Finally a few beers and a boat on the lake transformed the game into a fantasy-style dream with puzzles and challenges. Now it got interesting.
I had to collect strings for my kantele here and there. Some of the strings were blocked by rows of fire that had to be toggled on and off in the right combination. I also had to pick up jars with light cubes by a stone altar to learn how to play the kantele.
Nice touch creating circles of solid ground in the lake, to avoid drowning.
Finally I played a series of Simon games by an evil tree, eventually destroying it.
Port of Call
Developer: Underdog Games | Released: 2015 | Genre: Adventure, Facile
Another free and short adventure game talking to people on a crude ship, getting their tickets for the harsh captain. It didn’t even take half an hour to complete this one.
Mostly cel shaded with washed out colors. Very simple 3D graphics and no voice overs. Talking to people gave simple dialog choices. I could pick up things to deliver a toy or mix drinks.
Spawning on a landing bridge in the middle of the ocean. A captain appeared. I talked to him. Boom, a ship appeared behind me. The captain aboard wanted me to get tickets from less than half a dozen people, which always required that I talked to them first.
There was also an elevator for reaching the bar or the boiler room.
The drunk in the bar was the most interesting, since I had to mix him several drinks from a choice of six mysterious bottles. A little bit of trial and error there – nothing too serious, though.
The ending had two bright doors to choose between. I chose the left one together with the lady.