Wow this game really got me. How emotional.
Reviews for "Alex"
I would like to start off this review by saying that "Alex" is a brilliant and thoughtful insight into ALS. It has lovable graphics, adorable characters and a soundtrack that fits the game. It also succeeds in providing an easy-to-understand and emotional experience that really drives in the point: ALS is a serious disease and we can all do something to help. My only criticism is, as stated by various other commenters, that the game is very short, and very fast-paced (within 30 seconds you're already told you have ALS). However, this in no way distracts from the point, and "Alex" is a great game nevertheless.
Hey so the game's pretty solid and the message is cool.
The one thing that bothered me though, and the only reason I'm writing this review, is that the whole story is directly told to the player, when I could have just as easily "felt" it through the increasing restrictions on the controls. I feel like the gameplay was too restricted to the story (understandably so, as it was designed to create a sense of empathy for ALS patients), but there are probably more game-design-specific ways you could have done the same thing.
If I had designed this game, I would have probably made the gameplay a little less linear. Instead of having one track the player follows, which magically adapts to the player's inabilities, I would have made one short level that the player has to traverse over and over, maybe getting another carton of milk every week. Each time, it would be a little bit harder to jump around, forcing the player to find new ways to cross the terrain each time. By the end, crossing the one level would be really difficult and time-consuming. I don't know much about ALS, but I feel like that would be a better comparison.
In the end, empathy is an emotion games can create better than any other medium, and I guess that's why I felt it so unnecessary to see text on the screen telling me what was going on. It really shouldn't bother me, and I guess it doesn't really detract from the gameplay, but it does kinda seem like you're using the text as a crutch to tell the story, when the game is perfectly capable of doing that on its own.
It has a nice balance to it, it's also interesting to watch a character lose, rather than gain power ups over time. It's a bit short and it's a little too cutesy for such a dark subject matter, still fun though.
Would have been better if losing abilities like double jump made it harder to get through the levels. E.g. there is a passage that you could easily pass by using double jump. However you've just lost that move so you have to take a harder way.
Especially the way home was too easy, you just had to fall down. It's not that dramatic that you lose your abilities because you wont need them anyway.