Blanc Review (Horriblon)
This game was a very pleasant surprise for me. A warning first: The game is very short, in my case it was 3 hours for the first playthrough. Still it was a wonderful experience as a game and as a bonding session with my kid.
This is a cooperative game. I played it with my 6 year old daughter, who only played a few touch screen based games before. She was able to use a gamepad to play through the whole game with me, without too much trouble. We used local multiplayer and I haven't tried the online functionality.
You control two unlikely companions on their journey to reunite with their families. That's about it for the story, but the game does a wonderful job presenting you with real looking places, realistic problems, character development, unexpected encounters and more. It fully utilizes the "show, don't tell" storytelling approach. Almost all of it is done strictly with sound and visuals. The protagonists are wonderfully animated. There are lots of tiny animations that make the characters lifelike and also convey the emotions they are feeling at any given time. The characters also interact with each other and with the environment.
I was very impressed with the game design. The visual cues and the well paced introductions of new mechanics made sure, that we always knew what to do next. We only got stuck for a little while in one of the final scenes of the game, your results may vary of course. My daughter was playing the wolf, which I would recommend for the first playthrough, because the wolf often needs help from the deer to be able to continue and it could save some potential frustration, when waiting for the deer to get to the right place. There are also some puzzles that require help from the wolf for the deer to proceed, but those are much more rare.
The sound design is great. Next to realistic soundscapes, the sound cues and from time to time utilized musical pieces fit the mood of each scene perfectly. You only ever encounter animals in this game and they all sound realistic and at times delightful.
We didn't encounter any technical problems., except it initially wanted to be played with the steering wheel that was connected when I first started the game. That was easily solved by disconnecting the steering wheel, even though there might be more elegant solutions.
The game run smoothly and looked great otherwise. The only real critique I have for this game is the camera. While it is very impressive in its ability to keep both characters on the screen at all times, sometimes it fails at doing that. There are a few big setpieces and also some cases, where the camera turns to present the scene from a different angle at a certain point. There we had a few occasions where one of the characters ended up either being off screen or hidden behind the scenery (you can see its silouette still). When it happened it wasn't immediately clear, how to get both of us back into view. Just a side effect of a game that lets both characters move pretty far away from each other at any given time.
In conclusion, this is a short, but very beautiful game. Get it if you want a heartfelt story, some light puzzles and an opportunity to bond with whomever you play this with.