Goodbye World Review (American Dove Mitten)
A psychological narrative game about an indie dev programmer and an indie game artist, making games together while trying to stay afloat, it's a little dark, but I think it provides a very realistic perspective. I can imagine this game feeling a bit too personal to some people, as a fan of extremely niche gaming myself, I too have a faith in a lot of indie devs that never get that successful release (even after 10+ attempts in some cases), if anyhting that is a norm, for every mainstream indie game that finds the audience, 10 of them don't, even if they are fun and made well. Ironically, this is probably not a good example of a niche and experimental game, actually, this game is made really well, and as far as the sinister story goes, it maintains a good sense of suspense from start to finish.
It only took me about 70 minutes to finish the story, granted, I pretty much did not play any of the puzzle games, mostly because you kept hiding the key (at least I assume that you did), and I found it less stressful to just skip it. There was a little bit of confusion with the mechanics for me, maybe I just missed the tutorial, but it took me a few stages to realize that I can place a block under myself while in the air, so you don't actually have to build any ladders. I almost feel like that publisher from the game, I mean yea it's not bad, it's certainly playable, but it's not good enough for me to play it - perhaps that was intentional.
I thought the pixel art was very lovely, there are some subtle animations that I really enjoyed, and I think it has nice attention to detail, like that little effect on the ride when it stops. Overall, I thought the game was very immersive, despite having a relatively down-to-earth narrative, I think there is a nice psychological spin to it - I felt it was very relatable.
Pros:
(+) I felt the suspense from start to finish, I thought the characters were very relatable and I think the game provides a very dark, but also very realistic commentary on the indie game dev, so many of my friends are experiencing this, it's more normal than you might think.
(+) The game overall was very immersive and visually well made, you don't get to interact much, but as far as the scenes and the way the chapters were presented, I think it was done very well. To comment on the grain which seems to be a bit controversial, I didn't mind it, it's used more as a psychological effect to create a certain mood, so in that sense, the blurry cutscenes are contextually meant to be "unclear" for the reader.
(+) There are some puzzle platforming elements to it which is mostly there to complement the narrative, I liked the game but I wish you made it a bit easier to find the keys, if I didn't see them, I would default to skipping it instead of backtracking. Again, I am not sure if you did it on purpose.
Feedback:
I don't really have any criticism for this game, I just wish the key was a bit easier to find in some stages so I didn't have to backtrack. Not sure if there was a hint for placing blocks while in the air, maybe I missed it. I kinda skipped most of the platforming, although it was a neat feature for the narrative.
Overall Thoughts: 8/10
In a way, it's a very simple story without any huge meta-commentary,
I enjoyed it for what it was because it felt very real, I have seen something similar many times just being a fan of indie games and watching many devs find themselves in that hole. The game is about 60 minutes to 2 hours depending if you finish the games, so a little expensive, but I still enjoyed it.
Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/