I wanted to dislike this, and in the end couldn't.
Grey Story is, really, on its surface, another pixellated artsy game that wants to make the player think the author is some really smart guy who had a huge, deep, mind-bending thought.
It succeeds at none of these things.
What it does succeed at is a connection with a small audience which I can only assume was the target caucus: Any guy who has given a lot up for a woman or girl, only to have it all wasted, because she just couldn't see what was right there.
Kevin, you hit the mark on that one. I've never played a game where it emotionally hurt even to move the character. I knew what was coming, and in real life, you always do, somewhere in your head. You know it's going to happen, but you keep plodding along, hoping that maybe, just maybe, it'll turn out differently.
It didn't. The guy faded away, and the girl released the dove just in time to realize that the guy, who'd given her everything she'd asked for, was now gone, spent, utterly destroyed.
The gameplay was weak; jumping was a problem at times, but not overly so, and sometimes there was a lag in command entry to execution. It happens.
Even through this small oversight, the story, which barely exists except through the players' interpretation, was grand, regardless of how you saw it; although I saw it as described above, reading through the other reviews will give you other thoughts on the matter that I find very insightful; I never thought of the guy as a spirit and the woman as depressive over his death.
In Grey Story, you play as a male character, assumedly human, who sees a woman and attempts to get her attention. Failing to achieve such, you start to bring her back items, like a teddy bear, a balloon, a necklace, a bow, a clover, and so on. With the return of each item, the man appears more transparent, or more gray. More gray trails appear, lending the title of Grey Story, as your character, at the end, slowly leaks gray out of himself and eventually disappears.
This was a fine entry.
As a fellow musician, let me just give a shoutout to silent6nothing9. Your piano piece was absolutely stunning, and lent a whole new facet to the game. Yes, the player knew from the music bad things were afoot, but the composition was extremely skilled.
Best of luck to both of you.
- Seefu