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Beautiful but flawed.

This game tortures me. It is a truly BEAUTIFUL concept, but the execution just leaves so much to be desired.

The story is great. Introspective, intruiging, well written. The atmosphere is great, the worlds you have built are uniquely disparate, pockets of familiarity tied together in a trail of memories, much like how dreams themselves are structured.

The only killer is the gameplay. It's just dreary.
The flight mechanics give no feeling of freedom. Flight that only lets you flap three times and glide? What little freedom they do give you ends up being a curse when you bring in the claustrophobic challenge sections. All it is is basically a triple jump with some lowered gravity. If you wanted to achieve true freedom through gameplay to match your premise I would have gone for a secondary 'flight' system on top of the 'triple jump' style.

The 'true' flight system would be ineffective if you tried to use it during some of the more delicate platforming sections, but would help immeasurably to open up the world and really hit home your concept of 'freedom from memories'. You could control it simply, up to flap your wings, down to dive, left and right to move respectively. All you would have to integrate would be a guide system to the next cluster of memories in the form of a trail or an arrow.

In reference to the art style, I would have gone for less bright, retro colours. I know that retro was your intention, but a greyer pallete would have helped bring out the atmosphere and mood a little more.

I loved your game 'Where We Remain'. It was poetic, beautiful, intruiging and full of secrets. This is in the same boat. It really ties in with your name and what you stand for. But it brings the flaws with it too.

Not every game has to innovate, but every game must be entertaining. It must constantly introduce new elements to keep the game flowing and keep it from becoming dreary. Combat does not work in this case, but if you introduced more challenges to your flight mechanic or introduced sporadic 'nightmare' points where the dream-scape shifts and distorts (a concept hinted at with your current model)

Again, beautiful, but flawed. Hope my criticism helped :)

nice loading :|

10 years huh?

Amazing

As soon as you take your first step on that first smoke cloud placed in front of you you are instantly transported to another world. The story line, the way the creator bonds us with the main character and actually makes us care about his entire life story as we play through his past in an artful way filled with beautiful melodic music and a sense of freedom. you feel the freedom the character feels in the beginning and the sadness that follows as the story progresses, you find yourself becoming the character as you play through the elaborate levels urging to get through to find what happens next. The mention of smoke i believe was a well placed dialogue for it allows you to know what is happening and makes you feel even worst for you know what is going to happen to said character. Beautiful indeed. I normally don't right a review like this but for a game this remarkable it deserves it. keep up the good work, love it and hope to see more from you

trying to find a tutorial really bad

link in the description doesnt work and there doesnt seem to be a walkthrough. I got up to the part where the smoke things are saying something like "my mom left her house to me in the will but i could never go back there. She is dead and i shouldnt live in the past. I think thats what she wouldve told me. i find myself trying to talk to my mother a lot. But maybe thats not any stranger then talking to myself." >> not sure what to do from here but im gunna keep trying to find ways to get through these levels

loving it to the end

I don't see why the complains about gameplay. Every levels seems designed cleverly that I develop skill on controlling my character while keep getting challenged. I enjoy the flight so much.

Story wise, it is a fantastic story but I already guess what happens from beginning because you mention smell of smoke on the story. If say, that is removed, I would questioning what happen and what are the meaning of everything around especially with the sound of fire crackles and broken items when you pick one of the items.

I love how there are diff challenges and story wsith different objects though regretablly I only replay the game once to get all the clocks.

I also have two questions:
- Are there different endings for full feathers and full candles?
- Is it actually possible to reach an end of level 8 instead just disappear?
- What does the cloakman give and means on the level 8?

And a request:
- playable lvl 8 on the menu