Last Inua - Review (iOS and PC)

‘Last Inua’ is set in a frozen tundra and is an icy tale of a father and son’s journey to vanquish evil from the world in the form of a demon named Tonrar. The son, Hiko, is blessed with supernatural powers strong enough to defeat Tonrar but his frail, adolescent body is unable to handle these powers and as such he is too weak to embark on this quest alone. His loving father, the physically powerful Ataataq, opts to accompany his son and protect him in all the ways Hiko is unable to protect himself. Together this Inuit duo set out to save the North from Tonrar’s evil clutches and it looks to be a tale of fatherly love set in a tranquil, snow blanketed world. Unfortunately, ‘Last Inua’ faces a plethora of problems that spoil the experience. 

Developer: Glowforth
Genre: Platformer adventure game
Platforms: PC and iOS
Release date: 11th December 2014 (PC), May 8th 2014 (iOS)
ESRB: Unrated (Mild threat)

‘Last Inua’ is a form of platforming game where you control both Hiko and Attataq in order to navigate the different levels though each character has vastly different strengths. Hiko, the teenage son, is gifted with the ability to teleport between glowing points, create bridges of light to pass over danger and fly in certain circumstances. Attataq on the other hand is the physically stronger of the two and may climb sheer, icy walls, jump and smash through enormous ice blocks that may block the path. To complete levels the player must use each character is unison and, at best, the puzzles are a solid means of traversing the environment even if your options are extremely limited. What let’s this game down however is how incredibly slow everything is and, when combined with some very touch and go controls, the whole experience is easily ruined. Both characters move at a lumbering pace as though they were wading through the snow rather than skipping across it and it’s a fairly frequent occurrence for your button presses to go unrecognized. Attataq in particular does not always jump when he is told to, usually resulting in death. This quickly becomes extremely frustrating as each death sends you halfway back across the map leaving you to plod your way back over to where you just died. This would be somewhat bearable if death was infrequent but sadly almost everything is deadly whether that’s mistimed jumps, roaming Yeti’s, spurting pools of darkness or spike traps. The entire game feels unnecessarily drawn out when you have to constantly retrace your steps at an agonizingly slow pace and this is inexcusable, no matter how pretty the backgrounds may be. 

Special mention should be made of how absolutely gorgeous everything looks and the opening cutscene in particular looks fantastic. The animations are nicely detailed and, for the most part, smooth and well executed. Visually, the art style is very simplistic but also very elegant and I personally loved the sleek, stylish appearance the game boasted as well as the noticeable contrast in colour. The first few levels are by far the most stunning as the contrasts between the inky black night sky and trees and the bright, gleaming whites and blues of the snow and ice are quite beautiful. The characters themselves are well designed and the landscapes have enough detail for them not to feel barren. A lovely visual effect that I enjoyed is also connected to a gameplay feature in that if you stay too far away from a campsite containing a fire then you will gradually begin to freeze to death. When this occurs the entire screen begins to fill with translucent spikes of ice that crackle across the screen, reminding you to seek warmth quickly or else face the ultimate consequence. 

Unfortunately ‘Last Inua’ is one of those games I really want to like but just can’t. It looks fantastic and the story is really quite lovely but the controls are unreliable, the animations are oddly jumpy in places, the lumbering pace is unbearable and there’s a great deal of repetition that makes the entire experience mind numbing. There’s a great deal of trial and error in navigating this game and, when error puts you so far back, you’ll find yourself constantly re-treading the same levels that already lack variety. Despite this, I’m sure there are people out there that can look beyond these problems and enjoy this quaint little game but for me it’s simply a deal breaker. Overall this game could have been so much better as there are some really promising elements about it that would have been brilliant if not for the undue frustration the mechanics caused me. So for this one I’m afraid I’ve got to say it missed its mark by a long shot. 

The Good:

• It looks beautiful 
• An emotional and touching storyline 
• Nice animations, when they work 
• An interesting concept 
• Atmospheric, detailed environments 
• Running from camp to camp before freezing is a nice touch
• Some truly awe inspiring landmarks

The Bad:

• Inexcusably slow
• Puzzles are very scripted with limited solutions 
• Unresponsive controls 
• Frequent deaths that put you very far back from where you died

The Score: 6/10

Final thoughts: “What a shame, if only those kinks had been recognized and worked out prior to release then perhaps we’d have a real stunner on our hands. Sadly it’s just far too repetitive, slow and unreliable to enjoy properly.”

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Year Walk - Review (iOS and PC/Mac game)

'Year Walk' is a game set to divide opinion due to its slow pace and quiet, ambient atmosphere. The game revolves around an ancient Swedish ritual called Årsgång that required its partakers, called yearwalkers, to undergo a series of challenges that would allegedly result in visions of the future. These visions however may come at a grave cost as there is no guarantee the year walker will survive this ancient practice. As a lover of folklore the premise of the game was far too good to pass up and now, with the winter month fully descended upon us, I felt now was the best time to try it out. I wasn’t to be disappointed.

Developer: Simogo 
Genre: Puzzle, interactive fiction 
Release date: 21st February 2013 (iOS) 6th March 2014 (PC), 3rd April 2014 (Mac)
Platforms: iOS, PC and Mac
ESRB: Unrated (Horror imagery)

‘Year Walk’ is very much one of those ‘interactive fiction’ type games where it feels as though you’re playing through some kind of novella rather than an actual game and its strongest features are by far its chilling atmosphere, obscure storyline and sublime aptitude at weaving together horror, fantasy and folklore. You play as a mysterious person who has chosen to partake in the ‘year walking’ ritual in an attempt to predict your future and this starts out with saying alone in the dark, whilst fasting, during New Year’s Eve. When the clock strikes into the New Year you leave your solitary confinement and walk around the forest that surrounds the cabin, meeting strange and frightening creatures that offer up challenges in the way of puzzles for you to solve. 

 
What I particularly liked about the game was how it drew you in with just enough mystery to peak your interest but then made it quite difficult for me to find out what was going on. Initially the game is quite frustrating as it feels as though you’re just walking around in circles and getting nowhere. Everywhere I turned I found myself locked out of somewhere with no obvious way of getting in and it took a while for me to realize that I really needed to pay attention to the smallest of details in order to navigate not only the twisting and turning woodland but the game itself. A pen and some paper turns out to be absolutely essential for this game as jotting down everything from landmarks, patterns, symbols and even your path through the forest as its very easy to get turned around and find yourself lost, despite the presence of certain key landmarks. What really struck me however was the actual appearance of the game as there’s just something about its very simplistic artistic style that reminded me of a hand crafted Christmas card where everything is rather whimsical and ethereal. Spindly, silver skinned trees stand boldly against a velvety backdrop, the snow crunches beneath your feet as you are inexplicably drawn deeper and deeper into the dark, mysterious world. ‘Year Walk’ has such a fantasy feel about it that it feels as though you are exploring a gentle winters scene in some pure and innocent fairytale but the creepy imagery and frightening jump scares drop you back into reality with a bump. The constant clashing of splendor and viciousness keeps you on your toes and is very effective at maintaining the emotion that comes with an ever changing, ever evolving reality where nothing is as it seems. 

This is one of those games that sticks in your mind long after you’ve finished playing it, haunting you as though there’s something else in the snow blanketed world that needs to be revisited. Its haunting storyline, horrific scares and utterly immersive atmosphere all amount to an extremely unique experience that, for the modest price tag, is worth diving into. I should mention at this point that you may sink rather than swim in this grim tale as it’s a puzzle game with a whole new level of difficulty. In fact, I found some moments of the game utterly unbearable not because of its poor quality but of how frustrating and obscure I found the puzzles to be and there was plenty of time spent struggling on through things I found could have been made a little clearer. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a challenge and I admit that games have become significantly easier in recent years but when you spend a good ten minutes on one puzzle a little resentment does start to build. It’s not until I was fully absorbed in the ‘puzzle game’ mind frame where I started to take note of every tiny detail and utilizing my ‘companion app’ guide to learn more about the folklore that I really started to make headway. 
 

The companion app is an unusual addition but, after initially dismissing it as an added extra for those who enjoy reading in games, I realised it had a noticeable effect on the game itself. At first it appears as though the companion app is simply detailing the ritual of year walking in full detail, providing additional information on the symbols and characters you come across, but towards the end you find that you may enter a passcode into the journal. It’s not until you have ‘completed’ the game and come back to that journal that you find the game is far from over as the full story is revealed to you through additional gameplay and scenes. 

Something I found slightly problematic about Year Walk was the controls as it was originally made for touchscreens. Several puzzles require you to move your mouse in the same way you would a finger which, for me, felt really strange and I was glad there were no reaction based puzzles as this would have been pretty hard to re-enact with a mouse. Whilst the controls are nicely interactive for touchscreens, for instance using your thumb print to activate certain stones, there were times when the game was unclear about what kind of user input was required, leaving me to paw helplessly at the screen until something worked. Translated onto a PC what this tended to result in were plenty of puzzles that you didn’t know how to even begin tackling them due to the zero amount of guidance from the game.

‘Year Walk’ is sadly a very short game that, provided you knew all the answers to the puzzles already, would take a pretty meager 30 minutes to complete. The only thing that really extends the length of the game is the difficulty of the puzzles and I would have loved additional gameplay and more storyline as the game is such a unique experience it seems a pity not to extend it with additional content. That said, the pacing of the game is fantastic and nothing is rushed and, whilst the slow nature of the game may annoy some, I enjoyed the softly softly approach to exposing the mysteries that this game held. The emphasis on audio appealed to me, from the audio based puzzles to the enchanting music but this may necessarily prove to be problematic for those with hearing difficulties. The game has no spoken dialogue, everything is text based, but the requirement to hear for the audio based puzzle may stop many people from progressing in the game and it’s a shame there’s no alternative. Minor niggles aside, ‘Year Walk’ is all in all a pleasantly surprising game that is very sleek and very intelligent in its design and the way in which everything plays out and slots together. I adored this means of learning about Swedish folklore and I enjoyed the complexity of the story that, when you get around to completing it the first time, only gets better and better. I can imagine this game is not for everybody due to its slow pace, emphasis on atmosphere and frequently frustrating moments but for me it was a delight to play and I highly recommend it.

The Good:

• Very stylish game
• A constant uneasy atmosphere that something's wrong
• Beautifully artistic
• Genuinely creepy with plenty of scares
• Inclusion of the companion app is a nice touch
• A unique way of learning about folklore
• Intelligent, well pieced together, good pacing
• A story that keeps you guessing, even after it ends
• The kind of game that stays with you after you've finished it

The Bad:

• Audio puzzles
• Zero guidance when solving puzzles results in a lot of guesswork 
• The controls for solving puzzles are frustrating 
• Rather short in length 
• Slow pace may annoy some

The Score: 9/10

Final thoughts: “I’m so glad I finally got around to playing this in time for Christmas, it’s an absolutely stunning game with so much creativity and thought poured into it. It was such a twist to find out its horror elements but the creepy imagery worked really well with the dreamy nature of the game.”

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Machinarium - Review (PC and Mobile game)

It was love at first sight. From the moment I first saw ‘Machinarium’ sitting in the list of recommended games I knew it was to be mine. For a price so meager it was almost an insult I downloaded an exceptionally tiny game of around 200MB and proceeded to be astounded by a puzzle game that was bursting with personality, story and beautifully hand drawn artwork. 

Developer: Amanita Design
Genre: Adventure, puzzle, point and click
Release date: 16th October 2009 
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, OS X, iPad 2, Windows Phone
PEGI: 7+ (some violence)

'Machinarium' is a point and click puzzle game where you take control of a small, unassuming robot in a robotic society that’s victim to a gang of antisocial thugs. What pulls this game aside from the competition is most certainly its art style, just look at those screenshots, it’s a beautiful game that perfectly portrays a crumbling, rusting city and citizens living on the brink of existence. There’s so much detail and so many little touches to the environments and animations that you can only truly appreciate it by playing it yourself as the screenshots alone don’t do it justice. Your nameless, noiseless robot protagonist is quite obviously a character who’s lived under the thumb of others his entire life and in the first ten minutes you see him discarded in a rubbish tip, turned away by the authorities and then plummet into a grotesque sewer system. His somewhat bullied ‘childhood’ is hinted at in the same primary communication that all other characters utilize; soft, inoffensive thought bubbles that either reflect on past events or communicate what they want from you. Even without words it’s easy to empathize with your humble robot character as he totters about, helping others and trying to do some good in a corrupt and rundown city where crime is king and the mechanical officials are about as helpful as a robot bathhouse. 

Yet it’s not just its unending charm that’s there to impress, graphical style and personality can only carry you so far after all, ‘Machinarium’ thankfully manages to bring in a solid compilation of puzzles, smooth and thoughtful storyline additions and overall a fair bit of bang for your buck. The game’s by no means long but there will be times you’ll be held up trying to advance as the puzzles usually require some thought and not everything is immediately obvious. Whilst the puzzles generally rely on some good old item combination then using items in the world environment there’s a decent spattering of originality in the form of its unique ‘stretching and shortening’ feature of your robot friend.

In a traditional ‘Bender’ fashion you can lengthen your robots legs to the point where he can access previously out of reach areas or shorten him to a hobbling, squashed up little robot that can do all sorts of things in this new, skirting board level territory. It’s different and its interesting and what strangely appealed to me is the influence of retro gaming that makes its appearance in old, disused arcade machines and the in-game walkthrough that can only be accessed by playing through increasingly difficult levels of a spaceship game. I liked this allusion to how everything is old and past its time and I also liked the option to use a walkthrough in-game but by earning it through a rather difficult mini-game that didn’t feel out of place at all in the overall scheme of things.

With ‘Machinarium’ there’s just this feel that everything slots together and everything’s very well thought out and crafted from tiny animations like the slurping up of a coil of string when you pick some up to the slow, measured teetering movements when you’re tall. Everything you do has a special animation that will make you squeal with excitement, well maybe not squeal, I do get a little overexcited with indie games, but you get my point, it’s cool stuff. The game is incredibly cheap for what you get and quite honestly I can’t think of a game quite like this one from its design to the way it plays out it’s most definitely an experience and one I applaud for both its squeal-inducing ability and its confidence at portraying a silent hero in a rusted world. All in all, I loved it, even if I am five years late to the party. 

The Good:

• Very well animated, lots of attention to detail
• Beautiful, hand drawn graphics that constantly impress
• Interesting areas to explore
• Full of personality
• The lack of dialogue surprisingly pleasant
• Pretty decent storyline with room for a sequel
• Challenging puzzles that will keep you guessing
• Extremely atmospheric

The Bad: 

• A little slow in places
• Some puzzles are extremely difficult

The Score: 9/10 

Final thoughts: "I genuinely struggled during this game as the puzzles are pretty damn hard, and frankly the walkthrough mini-game is no walk in the park either. Regardless, the game is well worth playing as its beautiful, full of personality and presenting quite a unique experience and premise."

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Blek - Quick Review (iOS and Android game)

Never have I quite played an iOS game that is as elegant and unique as 'Blek' is and, amongst all of the faceless, duplicate puzzle games that swarm Google Play and the App store, this intuitive brainteaser stands out vividly.

Developer: Denis Mikan 
Release date: December 3rd 2013 (iOS), June 30th 2014 (Android) 
Genre: Puzzle 
Platforms: iOS and Android

The game is excessively simplistic and takes full advantage of touchscreen technology where the aim is to draw lines that hit all of the circles on the screen. It sounds a lot easier than it is as each time you draw a line it will repeat on itself, over and over again until either all of the circles are collected, it bangs into dangerous black spots or wanders off the edge of the screen. The way in which the line comes to life is quite an intriguing thing as the way in which you draw it dictates the way it will move once you’ve finished drawing it. Draw arches as though tracking the path of a bouncing ball and the line will follow this track as though actually bouncing itself. 

The difficulty level of the game goes through several phases as, at first, it’s quite an unusual concept to adjust to but after just a few levels you’ll think yourself an expert at it. It’s not until you get about midday through the game, there’s 60 levels overall, where you’ll start really struggling with some very tricky and often frustrating puzzles. Not only is the gameplay and premise very enjoyable but the game itself oozes personality in its sleek, stylish graphics and dreamlike music. It’s for the best that the music is so calming as, when you’re forced to think outside the box in an abstract manner, there will be times where you’ll be too frustrated to continue playing for much longer. The game is best in short bursts and is very easy to dip in and out of as the levels often take very little time and, overall, the entire 60 levels won’t take you much longer than a couple of hours to complete. Due to the various ways a level can be solved however there is some degree of re-playability and, besides, 'Blek' is such a likeable, attractive game that it’s nice to return to even after completing it.

Currently there is some concern with the way the game has been ported onto Android phones as there’s no clear way of how to exit the game and, upon pressing the back button, you’ll be taken back a level and not to the home screen. A lot of users have also reported crashing which is such a shame as the game is truly elegant and quite beautiful.

The Good:

• Imaginative game that encourages thinking outside the box
• Addictive and time consuming 
• Challenging but rewarding 
• Lovely music, beautiful graphical style, very elegant 
• Innovative gameplay stands out from the crowd

The Bad:

• Some control issues with buttons and menus
• Very short lived and will not take long to complete 
• Difficulty curve becomes quite steep mid-game
• No S-Pen support for Android users

The Score: 8/10

Final Thoughts: "Finally, an iOS puzzle game that actually makes you think about you next move."

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