Why does it say decide? It gives you the answer at the end.
Reviews for "Eien"
To be honest, I didn't think that this game was all that good. Now, straight off the bat, i'm going to admit something. I used a walk through. Not because I couldn't work out the "puzzles", but because I've never understood the fascination of tracking my cursor backwards and forwards across the screen until it tells me that I can interact with something. This appeared to be my only option with this game in many places. The worst example of this is the force field gate scene. To progress you must click on one of the pillars. (I would put a spoiler warning, but since there's no logic to the action I'm not spoiling anything). I have studied the frame, and there is no indication whatsoever that it is possible to look here, unless I am much mistaken. The problem is that the vast majority of gameplay consists of this. Find four pyramids, now find two balls. Look in the right direction to see a secret message. I don't see the entertainment in that.
While a large section of the gameplay is pixel hunting, the game does make up for it by having a fair number of puzzles throughout the game. Or at least it would, if the puzzles were any challenge whatsoever. Aside from the first puzzle, which took me a full twenty seconds of analysis to work out, I understood what to do immediately after seeing the two pieces together. The ideas behind the puzzles are pretty good, when they aren't fit the pyramid into the pyramid shaped hole. (Spoiler). But they just aren't hard enough. Puzzles are what make the point'n'click genre, and if they aren't strong, the game suffers.
The game did a few things right though, namely the atmosphere and visuals. The game looks striking, and the constant background noise does help to draw the player in. This is a commonly used device in games like this, a constant noise both makes the player feel entrenched in the world of the game, and blocks out distracting noises from the real world. And there we come across another problem, it is a commonly used device. The atmosphere is nice, but isn't any different or any better than the vast majority of point'n'clicks on new grounds, or anywhere else for that matter. This isn't just a problem with this game, it is a common problem with point'n'clicks. They either go for the very plain "stuck in a room" feel, or the atmospheric "nothing is explained" feel, which is fine, but I'd like to see something new once in a while.
To sum it all up, this game isn't bad. it just isn't good. Irritating in places and too simple in others with no feel of its own. It feels like a severely weakened submachine. On that note, go play submachine. Seriously, it does everything right. If you're a developer you might learn a thing or two. And really, I do wish you the best of luck. This was a bit of a let down, but this shows promise.
This game was...kind of interesting. the puzzles were pretty easy once you got your head around them. But the ending was Extremely boring, and the game itself needed to be longer.
Overlall: It was O.K. 2.5 Stars.
Gave up after the first puzzle, also those situation with no rhyme nor reason. Can't see how I could feel accomplished after playing this game.
The game is pretty and the atmosphere is interesting, but it is not enough to make a good game.
This game cumulates two huge problems:
1st one, puzzles that aren't puzzles. You don't guess the solutions in this game, you literally just read them on walls or on pieces of paper. In a good puzzle game, the player should feel intelligent when he manages to solve a puzzle. Here I just felt as if I followed instruction without thinking, which is not at all rewarding.
2nd one, "welcome player. To continue your adventure, you'll need to gather 3 blue spheres. Oh… you only have 2 ? Well you'll just have to go all the way back from where you started to find the 3rd one, because you aren't going anywhere without it". This problem (or should I say, this cliché) is frustrating enough in classic point and click adventures, it really didn't need to be implemented in a game that empty.
To summarise: pretty game, bad core gameplay.