Platform 8 Review (Magnus)
Overall I enjoyed the game and would recommend it, though the gameplay differs from other anomaly games in the style of The Exit 8.
There's a lot of interesting anomalies and jump scares throughout the game. Unlike many games in the genre, the player is not looking for subtle anomalies to decide whether to go forward or turn around. The player can only go forward. Instead, the goal is to figure out how to move past the anomalies. Many of the anomalies are simply jump scares or creepy changes to the environment that require nothing more than walking past them. Other anomalies require following directions to get past. Some require the player to figure out what to do to proceed. In all case though, it's simply moving forward.
There are only a few (5?) of the subtle "spot the difference" type anomalies, and in all case there is a notification that one is present and to wait for it to go away before proceeding. This is done by finding it and looking at it for a few seconds, and it will go away.
It's a fun game, but I was expecting Platform 8 to be more like The Exit 8. In The Exit 8, looking for subtle differences that could be present in each room, and knowing that proceeding while missing one will reset the game, drives a sense of paranoia and much more thorough investigation. That, combined with the fact that The Exit 8 has many subtle variations that could be present leads to the player being unsure and second guessing themselves which is part of the fun.
Conversely in the Platform 8, the player can just charge forward until they hit an obvious anomaly. Then it's just a matter of figuring out how to proceed past it. This renders all of the normal train cars as meaningless as there's no reason to spend any time in them as there's no decision to make about which way to go. It's simply getting to the door on the other side and going through it and if there's no obvious anomaly that means the player can just sprint through it. In some cases the anomalies are just cosmetic and there's nothing to do beyond just walking through it.
I don't want to be overly critical as I enjoyed Platform 8. That said, as lazy as it sounds from a developer perspective, I would much rather see future games go back to The Exit 8 model. That's a winning a formula for this style of game. Platform 8, while still good, is a step down from it. I would love to see more explorations of this universe in the style of The Exit 8.