Reviews for Thoreau

[MindlessFury]

Possibly one of the worst featured games ever.

This is one of those games that everyone reviews great on because of how DEEP it is, when really the truth is it's just a bad game.

It's obvious that you wanted to make one of those "crushingly hard" games that kill the players time and time again, but you failed in every way to connect your goal to the results.

There is no skill or difficulty in this game at all, its just an exercise in memory. You walk forward, you find a pot hole you die, you respawn you walk forward you jump the hole, and an arrow shoots you, you die, so you respawn you jump the hole you "Hear" away the arrow, then you get a check point. No skill involved, mindlessly walking forward just doing whatever.

And I know that someone is going to jump on me "You are supposed to use the hearing BEFORE the traps! That's skill! No, that is not skill, the number of times you can use it is limited, so if you use it on the potholes you'll find, that you don't have enough to continue because you won't be able to hear away the traps that block your progress. Which brings me to another point, Why doesn't the hearing actually show you where the hole is? Why couldn't we run from the start? Why is that three second floating platform section at the end?

So lets review, this is a failed "so hard its fun!" game, and you need to seriously rethink and plan for much longer if you want to make a game like that.

3D-xelu responds:

ignore that final platformer part at the end... still not done :P

but for pit holes.. they can be revealed with the "sight"... try using it near an un-discovered pit and you will notice it's visible.. also yes , reacting in time before the trap kills you is skill because you can get all your 3 sights back if you go back to the last light checkpoint.... on the other hand yes.. it is trial and error too.. but it depends on your playstyle... if you go running falling in every pit , memorizing and avoiding them later... or take everything slowly using your sight ability to be aware of your surroundings and go back to refill it everytime :P

also please keep in mind that it was made in 96 hours for the Game Jam :D

[ShurikenJutsu]

Uhm...

It's a great game! It DOES take a while for him to stand back up, but that's fine. When the monster fell through the roof, I thought it was a trap and spacebar'd so when the third trap came, I was one spacebar short and I died. On the second try, when the monster fell through the roof, my character fell through the elevator floor and fell out of the game into white space... not sure I want to replay all of it again.

[eivilkitty]

Great and creepy game.

The sounds just freaked me out from the start :D

[RoMeJo]

I've played several of the hallucination games...

... and this is by far the best I have come across so far. I dig the"Limbo" art style. The game moves along at a snail's pace BUT I played this in a dark room with headphones so everything seemed to fit. Pretty eerie ambient noises in this submission. Gives this game a creepy feel. As if someone is stalking you in the dark. One thing I would address is the fact that, sometimes if you touch the side of a given trap that has been triggered (hammer boulder etc) it immediately kills you. Maybe this is working as intended but I would prefer if traps such as the above mentioned wouldn't kill you just because you bump into them after they have already been tripped. Would add a bit more realism to the concept if you ask me. Since when does slowly walking into a rock kill you ? Ha Ha. Overall, great concept, great game. I enjoyed it.

3D-xelu responds:

THANK YOU! :D super glad you liked it :D

we are working on optimization.. we know what the problem is .. but we never had the time to make the game actually run smooth on low end pc's :P

the next updates will fix this problem.. sorry for the inconvenience

[teremaki]

Lovely concept

Relying on your hearing and everything.
But what is the meaning of this whole game?

3D-xelu responds:

Nightmares... i .. guess