Reviews for Fixation

[JonFawkes]

I absolutely loved The Company of Myself, and I must say this is a wonderful prequel. The story is very engaging, and the puzzles are well designed. The puzzles are fairly intuitive, and I'm glad that you trusted your audience to be smart enough not to include a tutorial at every single step (although for some places like the rain it might have been useful to get a hint).

The visual style works well. There is a very nice variety in the levels and I never got bored of any one particular set.

The one thing that bothered me about the puzzles, and Company of Myself suffers from the same problem, is that sometimes certain elements will be used only a few times (for example, the rain) and so learning the mechanic was a waste of time.

The story overall is well paced, but in some parts it felt a little slow, and I found myself missing parts because I was progressing through the level too quickly. The dialogue was very lengthy but not very engaging. Perhaps something like voices could help players in that sense.

Finally, I absolutely loved the character development and ultimately the tie to The Company of Myself. A wonderful payoff, and a great game overall

FreeAsANerd responds:

Thanks for writing!

Voice acting wasn't really possible for this game. There are more than 700 lines of dialogue and the swf is already close to 15MB with all the sounds and art assets...so it would have gotten pretty rough.

[2Dozen]

nice, some of the dialogue was a bit much tho

FreeAsANerd responds:

Thanks for sticking around anyway!

[RoseColoredIris]

This is definitely one of the better puzzle, and even "art", games. I liked the story, gameplay, and visuals and I loved the philosophical and physiological questions it raises. However I am VERY hard to please when it comes to endings of things I find interesting and the ending just didn't do it for me. I found it confusing and I feel like it left a lot unanswered. I always find endings to be the harder and more crucial parts of writing a story. If anyone would care to elaborate on the ending that would be most appreciated, I don't want to leave such an intriguing story with a bitter taste in my mouth. Like I said before endings are the most important to me so I give you 4 stars for this very above-par/above-average game. Nice work.

FreeAsANerd responds:

SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDINGS TO COMPANY AND FIXATION BELOW

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Seriously, there are spoilers if you keep reading. I mean it!

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Okay, still here?

In the original game, we learn that Jack killed Kathryn, but we don't know exactly how it happened. This game does NOT explain exactly how it happened, but it does give some insight into the cause. The main factor is Jack's drug use: It's mentioned here and there in this game, but he always brushes it to the side and never actually confronts it. Kathryn helps Penelope with her troubles and Jack helps Kathryn with hers, but he won't let anyone help him.

In the last levels and comic strip, we can see that he's zonked at the time: His drug use caused him to make a bad judgement call that lead to her death. In gameplay terms, this means that he assumed the pit on the right was a safe one instead of a bottomless one. There's no way to know what this correlates to in his real world, though, since he's already forgotten the specifics by the time he realizes that she's not around anymore.

[DiGreatDestroyer]

i really wanted to end the game to review, but it hink im gonna break my screen before i finish level 4-1
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great game, great story, great music, like i said i didnt ended it, and i can see im far from the end, but i can see how the story is gonna develop

8/10 4/5

pd: im using arrow keys, my broken mouse, and my notebook pad to try and pass the level, im gonna have to buy 2 more mouses, and hire 3 friends to help do this

dont take this very seriusly im speaking out of anger right know ;)

FreeAsANerd responds:

Haha, that sounds like a pretty ridiculous setup. Maybe you'll get past that level some dayâEU"thanks for the review!

[MeGa-wise]

Excellent puzzle game and a great sequel to The Company of Myself. Both of these are top tier puzzle games, although they have different mechanics each, they both provide a lot of depth and puzzles are challenging and unorthodox, sometimes impossible at first glance, which makes solving them a great satisfaction.

This game is quite long, longer then the first part. I enjoyed the length of gameplay and the 5 different visual themes, great work!

I also appreciate the story going in parallel to puzzles, it gives something additional to think about if you are stuck on a puzzle so it doesn't get boring. The story has a lot of philosophical angles which entertain the brain even more even trough I disagree with some of the views characters expressed it is still good material for thought.

A particular moment that amused me was when I reached psychologists house and he seemed like this calm and levelheaded old man, and then suddenly he jumped on a table. This was an unintentional funny moment that made me laugh.

Three things trough stand between my score for this game of 8 and total perfection of 10:
- No fullscreen.
- The mouse cursor was standard not customized.
- That moment when Katheryn cockblocks Thomas and ruins their relationship. That never works that way. Yeah he was kind of an overconfident asshole, possibly hiding an insecurity behind that bravado, but that's how women actually like men. Penelope would get back with him after a while anyway and would blame Katheryn for trying to break them up. Or she would find a new guy just like that. And he did nothing that bad - just expressed a truth that death is part of life. I am too always bewildered by people being shocked with death of an old man. It is to be expected, get ready for that when he is still alive and hold yourselves together. It almost looks like author seems to be in some delusion he can get back to men like Thomas, that probably stole his girlfriend trough this element of storyline. Maybe it's not the case - but this element of storyline was weak and psychologically (considering this game delves into some psychology) implausible. Well actually the game shows that a nicer person can be more dangerous sometimes - the ending shows that. If that's how the author intended that, then I must take my criticism back.