Slender Threads Review (Epicje)
I'm a little on the fence with this one and it has to do with the ending. Possible spoilers ahead!
You play as Harvey Green, an aspiring writer whom tries to sell books in a little backwater village. Upon arrival at said village, he explores around town and something mysteriously draws him to a place were he hears his own name on the radio and the game picks up pretty nicely from there.
The game has done a lot of good when it comes to wondering what comes next. The story unfolds piecemeal and had left me wanting for more as it was rather interesting... At least up until a certain part.
The visuals aren't the best, but they serve this point-and-click well enough.
The voice acting was good. Everyone seemed to give it their all, even for characters that were minor / afterthoughts.
Most of the puzzles were logical enough that it keeps the player engaged enough, but there were some of them that left me frustrated with the mechanic / visual of it, which I'll explain in a bit.
The sound design and music are... Not that amazing and it feels like it was all a little too low on volume, or simply absent, but that's not really a huge issue.
For the not so decent: there is a puzzle there with a hair dryer that made me frustrated with the mechanics. Yes, I understand what needed to happen, no the game didn't allow you to. The issue here isn't so much the solution; the problem is that, on the game's screen, the hair dryer has an electrical cable plugged in. But since the player can't click on this outlet, they have to interact with a power box. Seriously, who just takes spark plugs from the power box without deactivating certain devices first?
That's where I noticed the 'hint system' wasn't exactly helpful. I knew what to do (rather: wanted to do), but the system was rather unhelpful with providing a solution. I acknowledge that this could be a 'me problem', but I once again point out towards the logistics of said puzzle.
Another slight problem I have with it, was meeting one of the major characters in the game, whom then asks if you want to open a window. I immediately called out what was going to happen and the game does 'exactly' that and it was played as an 'oh no! How did that happen?' Come on, if the player sees it from a kilometer away, so could the game. Though this could be more of a pet peeve of mine...
Now, the reason why I won't recommend this game and actually glared at the screen and begrudgingly played the epilogue: the ending.
It's all in your head only works very, very rarely and this game has been a huge victim of it. It's not exactly that, but the concept is the exact same thing. That completely caught me off guard and not in a good narrative way. I get wanting a twist in the end, but this is not a good way to do it. It felt cheap, even with the epilogue in the end to sort of - kind of, wanting to justify it.
It's a bit of a shame, as the rest of the game is pretty good / decent despite some flaws. I usually want to play point-and-clicks multiple times, despite having a linear story, Monkey Island, The Journey Down or The Dream Machine. This one, I'll gladly leave in my library without touching it again, simply because of that ending.