I thought this was a great game! I really am confused as to why it doesn't have a higher rating. It even has a nice omnious ending. It's great to play the same thing with different difficulty. At least this won Daily 2nd place. I really could get into it.
You had to study with this one. After beating it on easy mode, you really did get better at it. It helps that it isn't too long. It really does show a great clockwork world. I had lots of fun with this.
I really liked the overall game.
For me the controls were not laggy, but then again I have a rather new machine.
I would not say that I guessed the story from the beginning (although I had some suspicion about it).
But I was almost certain about it after the end of the first cycle and even more after the second.
After that it was more about finding the ending for me, than a real surprise about what will likely come.
Things I would suggest to improve on:e
* let someone spellcheck your game text; use Google Translate if you can't help it. I'm lnot a native English speaker and I spotted lots of mistakes in the text. Overall that diminishes the enjoyment :-/
* while you're at it: as I guess you're not a native English speaker yourself, why not localize the game to other languages? It would broaden the potential amount of players, as not everyone speaks English well enough for a game whose main USP is it's story (the graphics and the sound are certainly okay, but unfortunately not exceptionally great).
* please, please, please make it clear how I can get rid of that tutorial text, when it appears. Probably add a "close" icon or some special key for that. In at least 2 occasions it appeared on the screen and I could not figure out how to remove it. So all text that was displayed, was rendered OVER this tutorial text, which diminished the enjoyment of the game a lot :-(
* lastly: consider to add a mechanism which provides players with some possibilities to unlock hints for medals that were not achieved yet (e.g. when completing all cycles). I have no clue which monitor I missed, what I would have to do to break Lynn's heart or to get the "True Sky" medal. I can only assume that I may have to finish the "medium" and "hard" version, but without knowing it, I'm not that eager to try out...
Well I played it. I was going to do a long form review, but exams make me tired so I'm deciding to pare this down to only a handful of comments regarding the story mainly. Though I will say that I did like the steam punk style and the platforming, especially how the platforms move.
SPOILERS BELOW
Another note; I haven't gotten all the medals, specifically am missing out on 100% Monitored, Break Lynne's Heart, and True Sky: I have completed the game though; like escape the facility and learn all the dark secrets ending. So I'm not sure what I'm missing to make get those.
Now onto the story review. I guessed the story before even pressing playing the game. Knowing that 'there is more to this story than meets the eye', and there's cycles, I could have told you almost the entire story right off the bat. That the main character is locked in an eternal game, one designed by a particular version of themselves for some motivation, either torturing, teaching or fulfilling some grand purpose. All that was left was filling in the blanks: Time Travel? Robots? Why is he doing this? This was further confirmed when I was dropped into action with no knowledge of anything (a mistake by the way, one I'll go into later).
Then, when I clicked play, I was presented with stilted dialogue full of grammatical mistakes and misspellings. And that didn't dispose my mood to it any more.
I'll admit that the slowly expanding the story by finding nooks and crannies and exploring is good and something I liked; though you needed to make clearer how the upgrades work. Because the jumping upgrade didn't seem to kick in until I finished the base game again, while the other upgrade kicked in the next time I died and so ???
And I also like the ending twist (?) that the person in the wall was Lynne or a copy of Lynne or something, though that left me with a question or two.
Suggestions, for future projects:
If you're going to do a good guy is secretly bad guy story you have to make me like the good guy or else there's no emotional impact. I get the desire to be minimalistic and try some background story telling, or story telling that people have to go after, but since I didn't care about Nemo at all, my confirmation about being correct didn't have any impact on me.
And if you want to make it work, don't tell me there's anything extra to the story. I get that you may want to guide players into looking for one, but really it meant that I knew something was going on, and therefore didn't find out about it gradually, but rather made me run in every direction other than the one I thought I was supposed to head in, just to gather the story as quickly as possible.
Finally, a minor nitpick, but does Nemo remember the Lynne in the crack? Because it seemed like he did, but I was supposed to be a new one each time? And, again, a problem with this kind of story which has to be handled carefully, is exactly what it was above: you have to have the characters in the story have a reason for knowing what the player knows or else it doesn't quite make sense.
Overall:
I give it 1 and a half stars because I conceptually like it; after all such story subversions are really up my alley. However, it's weak implementation means that i can't go higher than that. And half a star because of the random Lynne at the end, since that was an honest twist that I didn't see coming.
Hope this helps. And hopes it was coherent.
Pretty cool game. Love the theme. Love the indie feel. Makes me think of the old days of Flash.
I'm generally pretty confused by the story, and I have no idea what happened at the end.
Also, it's pretty glitchy. I had the instructions appear for the first time as I was exploring the lower left section of the map, and they wouldn't go away: http://oi58.tinypic.com/nnlemc.jpg
How do you get to those secret areas?
I could've guessed this would get to the front page. I entered this game not knowing what to expect and by the end of it I ended up completely blow away. The story is just so fantastic, and the way in which it is delivered is very well made and very compelling. As simplistic as a puzzle platformer might be, this game knows how to make you aware of each and every choice you make, The music and art style although a bit generic fits perfectly with the message. In the end, is it really worth to break the cycle. There's truth in both ways... live eternally alone as a god, or just wake up and face the grim reality. In the end, I'm going to say that no matter what choice you take, it's your choice and your life, so go ahead with it... this game could be a metaphor to a lot of things... as such I'm really glad that I went ahead and made a video of it right here:https://youtu.be/Jy4QbuoFNtk . Once again, a fantastic game... for a free flash game this fully deserves a 5/5. I expect great things from you author in the future...
