love freedom
Reviews for "Nothing To Hide"
Awesome game! Very great mechanics, a fun and cute story - neat and clean art style.
The only problem I have is that I can't type while playing the game, because whenever it refocuses on the mouse, things go messy.
This can be solved by collapsing the game, so that's not a problem.
5/5 looking forward for more.
Wow!
So, I got shivers (aka "nerd chills") when the game was done. Not from the story (which is neat so far), not from the politics (which is a hot topic and thus fun to witness), but from how good the game experience was. Seriously! Throw out the story, throw out the jabs at privacy issues, and you would still have a really well made game! And then you have all that stuff on top of it! Awesome! I'll start with the things that caught my interest, all the little things, and then expand into a general overview.
So, the very first thing I noticed was the attention to detail given to the character model. Now, granted, it's what one assumes is a 2D sprite with some animation attached, but I feel like it gets them all right! The single jittery eye on Ms. Gardner is of course hyperbole (people don't usually have eyes larger than their nose) but it's done so that the player can take notice of the way her pupils are moving. A majority of her idle animation is looking behind her with one eye, which is Skittish Behavior 101. She holds her arm, even though she can clearly manipulate both of them when carrying an iEye, which is a sign of past trauma. And even if it wasn't intended, even her steps while walking and running carry a "thumping" motion to them, the kind of jerkiness that happens when real people walk because real people don't have a "fluid walking animation" they have a "raise leg, thump leg into floor until leg supports weight, repeat process" sort of gait to them and a pronounced walk or run of such produces the "head bobbing" effect you sometimes see. Or at least it felt like it, darnit. Maybe I can just sense the obvious care that was put into her and the entire game and I'm looking for more compliments.
Anyway, the next thing that caught my attention was how understanding the mechanics actually are of the way people play and enjoy these types of games. This namely came around after a quick demise when picking up the only iEye that could see me a few levels before I got warned about that (because I sometimes learn things the hard way) and I was provided with what felt like some kind of a dynamic checkpoint in what felt like a few seconds into the past. That's such good design philosophy! This is a puzzle game at it's core, with minor elements of action in the form of timed challenges, and sometimes those challenges are layered in the level to provide more complexity and challenge. However, the game demonstrates an understanding of "fun"- and "fun" isn't repeating half the level 20 times because you keep dying near the end. "Fun" is solving the riddle. The way the game only sets you back in time a little bit allows you to keep retrying the part of the riddle you failed at until you solve it without grinding the rest of it. After all, there's no need for the player to be forced to solve a riddle they've already solved once before and the game demonstrates an acute understanding of this and of what's fun in a puzzle game by providing those generous dynamic checkpoints. And sometimes you don't die because you failed at the puzzle- sometimes you just misjudge how much "red screen siren" room you have to shimmy along in before you get to the next iEye. And replaying an entire level because of that would be bullshit- and it's completely negated by the dynamic checkpoints. Death isn't as annoying now- and less annoyance is good! The game should be frustrating as a mental exercise, which it is, and not an annoying play of redoing everything over and over and over and over because you keep physically walking out of the light for .2 bloody seconds. And I love that "nondetection" is a function of whether or not the eyes can see you, not a function of all eyes being closed. You are given a very, very small distance window in which to be warned that you are exiting their field of view (I distinctly remember standing still out of sight of all the eyes once in "red siren mode") and the game's very opaque way of doing so brings me to my next point, right after I comment about how you covered your bases by providing a restart button in the escape menu for idiots like me that somehow get into situations involving 2 eyes in the treadmill room at the end that realize they're going to have to backwards engineer their own wrong solution for 10 minutes again and would rather just restart. You see, it's not that there's a restart, it's that the checkpoints cover for the restart 99% of the time. The game is well made enough with the checkpoints that this restart button being in a menu where it belongs works (although maybe mention it in passing in a tutorial level for newbies.) Restarting the entire level over every single time you fail is stupid- however, simply having the option to restart if needed, which it usually ISN'T, is great "looking out" for us. Heh. So to speak.
Details, details, details! Information is given freely and openly to the player of every active mechanic in the game. You are given moving dashed lines of colors that clearly contrast the rest of the game window in order to know exactly which iEye is looking at you, where it is, and what angle it's got on you. Areas of the game world that nothing can see are clearly blacked out and cannot be mistaken for terrain that something can see. Areas of the game world that eyes cannot activate in are clearly bathed in a contrasting red glow when visible. The floor of such rooms have clearly marked diamond patterns. And most importantly, and I absolutely loved this, areas of visible rooms that the eyes can also see are marked with dashed line patterns that allow you to set up parts of the puzzle solution mentally or indeed physically beforehand. There's no guessing "well I know the solution but I don't know if that eye can see me from there so let's give this a tr- *BANGBANGBANG*" you are informed right away if an eye can see that location by the presence of the dashed lines and this observation becomes crucial to planning routes and timings during slidewalk puzzles where active eyes are put on treadmills. I would say that you are always informed of whether or not an eye is within reach but I remember one instance of activating the grab circle while not being able to grab it, it might be a pixel perfect thing though- but uh, yeah I'll say it anyway. And I'll say it anyway because that eliminates one of the pointless interactions that would be "which eye of these two am I picking up?" Leaving the view of all active eyes activates a tremendous warning system complete with unmissable audio and video clues that clearly indicate the player is in danger. I can tell there's a little bit of location snapping with the eyes, specifically the second to last level with the slidewalk in the room made me notice it when I tried to get cute with some eye placement right at the edge of the slidewalk and it kept snapping to predetermined locations, but that's minor and probably required to make the project feasible. It's nearly unnoticeable, which means excellent implementation.
Mechanically speaking the game handles so well I had to stop to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Everything in the game has a constant feeling of fluidity to the mechanics. Things are smooth and well tied together. Every time I got within distance of a wall with a dynamic picture on it the way it would slide to life and then back to darkness depending on where I was really struck me as well implemented. The way her text pops up as facebook posts that follow her around is really funny and also just so suave and smoothly done. The SFX and music in the game are perfect! They capture the intended ambiance of drama and tension very well (though I could maybe do with less static hiss in the music track, I thought that was some unknown mechanic at first but I guess it's actually a joke on the "player camera watching Poppy" eh?) The "cutscenes" being manually driven by a slide bar made to resemble social media serves an amazing trifecta of purpose- it makes the cutscene skippable for anyone that doesn't care by allowing quick scroll through, it makes the cutscene readable and enjoyable for people that can't read fast enough, and the way that the sound effects interacted with the current location of the slide bar was just incomparably good. The way the iEyes stare at you and follow your movement relative to their position is an incredible addition to the atmosphere alongside the jittery Poppy and the intense darkness she so desperately wants to hide in but cannot. The freedom to skip a level or indeed multiple ones is an interesting choice- personally I feel like missing out on any of this content is a mistake, but it's there. I don't know if that was intended or simply a leftover "cheat code turned feature" but the option is nice.
What can I say in terms of improvement? Well, and this is an easy thing to miss, a slider for music and SFX volume control wouldn't be missed (and if it was there then I'm a very silly person and I legitimately missed it, I checked the escape menu again just now.) My own personal preference makes me tone down music to a fraction of sfx audio in most games in order to listen to other things as well but still hear audio cues tied to sfx noises and games I can't do that in make me wonder if volume control was just forgotten or willingly not implemented. I somehow managed to bug the game out just now also, a function of restarting too many times perhaps, but now the game won't load any levels at all including after clicking the "play button" at the start and through level select. And this is another personal thing, but if you die with a "speech balloon" active the text goes away instantly, and this became a very slight annoyance for me when I in fact died immediately after one came up and I never got a chance to read it. The dynamic checkpoint sent me "back in time" but I don't think it reset whatever governs the speech balloon trigger -which forced me to restart the level to see it-, because I wanted to see it so badly because the game's overall theme, feel, and story is so fantastic. I don't want to miss dialog because I'm a bloody moron sometimes (lol), even -if- I'm grumbling "you did that to yourself" at the escape menu which even if it's left as so is probably just fine considering how generous the rest of the game is with the whole "death" thing. As with a lot of other things in the game, the checkpointing made that little episode much less frustrating than it would have been had I been restarting entire levels for an hour. Turns out making a game fun makes little anomalies like that alright in the long run.
So, yeah. I decided to write my review while avoiding all the obvious critique directions that could have been taken, which would be about the overarching theme of- as you call it- a story about insecurity in security, an "anti-stealth" game where the goal is legitimately to get creeped on 24/7 yet is done in a way that creates a welcoming environment to most if not all players and especially ones that like puzzle solving. Even the solution to the final puzzle, and the way I figured it out by noticing what the "eyes" were doing, was so well done. Focusing entirely on the mechanics reveals a very solid, yet fluid, yet mechanically sound game. Combining that with the tension of the story and atmosphere makes for an incredible game. I sincerely feel that if this project continues in this direction with all the love and care and effort it seems to be receiving if the -demo- is any indication, that it will be a masterpiece that may very well do better than one might think it would. I'd be ready for this to catch more than a few eyes when it goes out.
Get it?
Eyes?
(*rimshot*)
(I'll be be here all night. Tip your waiters.)
Hm… I completed this game the other day with no problems. Now though level 1, 4, 6 and 8 no longer load. A shame because this demo is amazing! The music and art is great, and damn that cliffhanger. Oh, and the gameplay is of course enjoyable too. The puzzles were challenging with unique mechanics. I also love the message this has, just, love it.
I support this project and hope the final game is a success! I'd donate if I was able to… :\
Anyway, please fix the demo. As I said, it worked the other day but now barely half of it is playable. As soon as this is fixed I'll be encouraging everyone I know to try it out ^^ I already gave this five stars when I played it last time, but in this review I'll rate it 3 because of all the dysfunctional levels.
Nutcasenightmare responds:
Those are the levels that the Newgrounds medals are called. Hm. Something horrible probably went wrong with the medal API. I'll fix it soon.
EDIT: Fixed now. The CORS proxy server for the Newgrounds API was down. TOM IF YOU'RE READING THIS, FIX YO' CORS HEADERS
Easily one of the most entertaining games I've played on Newgrounds so far. The concept is great; haven't seen anything like it.
Love both the art and the story. Can't wait for the full version. 5 stars.