Reviews for After Years In Dark Tunne

[silenttorture]

Good graphics, but very poorly designed

It was overall a good game, i usually like games of this art style and the graphics on this game were pretty good, but the hope mechanic completely took away from it.

As your hope fades, the game gets grayer and grayer, to the point where everything is the same color. A perfectly understandable idea and pretty clever except for the fact that i ended up playing the entire game in grayscale, as regaining hope through prayer takes AGES. I placed my phone on the 'v' key and came back 3 minutes later and my hope was at about 80% full (i was close to sucide when i started).

Then there was start-up. In the game you begin with a quote, and a list of keys, with no explanation towards the purpose of those keys. I was pretty confused so i tried killing myself to see what would happen. All i got was 'don't panic', so then i tried praying and nothing other than yellow messages popped up. Surprisingly enough i was pretty confused. I only figured out what the two keys were for when i started praying to regain hope, then accidentally killed meself(>.<)

Next is Chloe. When i had initially started the game i had gone in the first cave i had seen. After getting lost about 30 times i had all the ship parts and bodies accounted for with the exception of the 'wires' and Chloe. So i did some exploring, found her, hit X, and lost an hours worth of work with no warning. At that point i was tempted to rate the game 0, because it would not have been so much trouble to write 'Are you sure? If you do it will end the game' -.-

Also a glitch i noticed: After i 'sacrificed my life' to enjoy chloe's company, There was an 'X' over my head no matter where i was. If i hit X then it would say 'you sat with chloe.....till you oxygen ran out' and end the game. If you hit it while you were walking however, the game would ask you if you would like to use all the ship parts to save Chloe. This made me pretty mad as when i hit X before, i had ALL the ship parts, but this option was never offered to me. At that point i had pretty much lost my all faith in this game. To the point where i didn't even want to waste all my time finding all the ship parts again so i could find the other endings.

So basically:
-Speed up how fast you regain hope from prayer
-At least explain the keys' functions. (for example 'pray to regain hope/color)
-Fix Chloe (so that if you have all the ship parts, as i did, you will actually have the option of saving her) and place a warning while you are at it.
-Add a map. If your concerned about a map taking away from the concept of exploration, then make it a shadowed map please (as snailmaster suggested)
-Fix the above glitch

As i've mentioned, the game had potential, which was killed, burned, and buried by the game mechanics itself. 3/10 2/5

[FireSoCold]

A bit buggy but a great idea!

I really liked the hope mechanic in this game. The sentiment and emotion is all there...the game mechanics are not however.

As the character moves around the map, the graphics get really twitchy and there is a HUGE bug when completing the game. The first ending I got was "B", but every time I'd complete the game afterwords, it would repeat the Chloe ending. I found all the parst, items, crew members, and ghosts, went to the flag where you're supposed to set up the beacon, I hit X and it just keeps playing the Chloe ending. Unfortunately, the only other ending I was able to get was "E" due to this bug. If you could fix some of these issues, I would've replayed the game until I got all the endings.

Again, great job on the over all idea of the game, but the design and mechanics kinda fell through. I hope you fix the bugs and smooth out the kinks in this game.

~FSC~

[cichonski]

WOW

a arty game with pixel graphics where you traverse alone in a dead land with a pretentious message and bad gameplay havent played a million of those on new ground already.

giving a 2 unless you tried to make the most generic art game ever then 10.

[ChaosWyvern]

Clever concept undone by poor mechanics

This game shows great potential; the emphasis on hope, the ability to pray to get hope back, the loss of hope visualized through the encroaching darkness, are all innovative elements. Unfortunately, the mechanics make this novel idea frustrating. The jump mechanics are awful; it is really hard to jump from tiny platform to tiny platform in this state. Also, the character "loses hope" way too quickly, especially as time goes by. I had nearly collected everything, but fell victim to the darkness despite literally holding down the prayer button for like 3 minutes straight (causing flash to crash!). The lack of a map hurts any chance of getting the items and victims quickly enough, and makes it more a test of luck than hope and perseverance.

Pros: classic platform feel, novel ideas, the "hope" concept
Cons: poor jumping, no in-game map, poorly-executed "hope" mechanic

If the mechanic problems could be addressed, this would be a really great game!

[snailmaster]

you need a map

i can work everything out except finding my way back places.
also because i saw that someone didn't know what prayer did if you collect the sayings that come up when you pray then you will be able to see again and gain hope. also that brings me to another point some times (about 75%) the prayers would be in walls were you cant get them kinda annoying especially in tight spaces.