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How does it connect?

It's me again, reviewing another game. Today's turn is for Merry Xmas Alfred Robbins. This game catched up my attention immediately and this was my experience of the game:

Graphics (4/5):
This game has very cool graphics, and a lot of effort put on them. They are not Hi-Res graphics with a lot of shiny effects, but they serve their purpose. I like them and they make the proper atmosphere. There is room for improving and I missed more animated events (like the bottle glass breaking).

Music and SE(4/5):
Not a lot of music or sounds here, but again, they fulfil their purpose.

Game mechanics (3/5):
I like this kind of games. It brought back memories of Full Throttle, a very good game. Maybe at the start it's not too intuitive about how to make things work, but when you figure it out things go smooth. Some things had ranges that made them not obvious, so there were a couple of occasions when it was difficult to aim exactly to the right place. There is also a bug in the inventory at the end of the game.

Story (0.5/5):
Can anyone explain me how does this story connect with itself? I won't put any spoilers here but I frankly think it could have been better. The background story of the game is clearly understandable. Then, your mission comes: bring Xmas home. Great! You do some stuff and, even while some things would change the course of the story, they don’t. Some events just occur in seconds. But worst of all, the ending feels absolutely disconnected from everything else: your cat appears, your wife doesn’t have her red dress, and the references to the events that unfold it are SO minimal that it feels like a came-out-of-nowhere-plot-twist. I even played it thrice, as I thought I’d made a mistake somewhere, that I’d missed something. But I’ve not been able to find such as a different course of events/ending. I really don’t care if it is a “good” or “bad” ending, but it is so disconnected that everything the player does before, and all the immersion the game had gained during its 15-30 minutes of gameplay goes to waste.

Final score (2.5/5):
I liked this game until the end… In fact, I still like it. The effort put on it by Billhilly and his/her team is very valuable. But even so, it leaves too much to be desired and a uneasiness feeling that kills the good game that this one could have been.

Posts

Pages: 1
Max McGee
with sorrow down past the fence
9159
12/14/2014 05:22 AM
Can anyone explain me how does this story connect with itself?

Sure can!

I won't put any spoilers here but I frankly think it could have been better.

Sure couldn't! Well actually, I'd probably take off one star for the excessive and unavoidable animal cruelty. That's bullshit and very triggering to some people. (One of my pets was murdered IRL like, no BS.)

Anyway buddy, I can explain the story to you if you want. You should change the story score to like 5 Stars, though because honestly while it's subtle, it's not overly subtle and you should have gotten it. This is on you, not the game.

So here goes, I'll explain the connection. Obviously...SPOILERS.

Show


The first 95% of the game happens only in Alfred's imagination. He is completely disconnected from reality. He has had a psychotic break. You get a lot of the reasoning for the psychotic break, the family's bleak, joyless existence, their severe economic woes, the loveless marriage, his feeling that he's failed as a husband and father. For what it's worth my dad was an awesome and loving father and also was a postal worker and we were poor so I was a little offended by this part. Anyway, what you DON'T see is any of the "action" of his psychotic break.

Every action he takes in his family murder suicide is camouflaged as something else in Alfred's shattered mind and to the player.

* Remember when you gingerly plucked the hair ribbon from your wife's head and then put it back in the back of her head? Well that was you putting a bullet in the back of her skull.
* Remember when you gently and lovingly tucked your young son in under the comforters? That's probably when you smothered him to death, you sick fuck.
* Remember when you used a shard of glass to slash open the orange "pillow" that you conspicuously "never liked" for the white fluffy cotton inside? Well that was the moment you disemboweled the orange CAT that you "never wanted".
* And then lastly and most obviously, the entire attic sequence represents your suicide by hanging, the cherry on top of this deliciously cheerful Christmas confection.

There are some not so subtle hints that shit is going wrong along the way. The scene with the spilled nail polish is pretty heavy foreshadowing, for one thing. First you spill blood-colored liquid on the floor after vomiting for no reason, then you cut yourself mixing your blood with the nail polish which is described as 'hemic', then in a Shakespearian nod all your efforts to clean up the nail polish ("blood") fail, and those failed attempts to clean it are all necessary to progress the game.

The point where an astute player should realize that things have gone horribly, horribly wrong is when you exit the boy's room after lighting the candle and placing the repaired figurine. For starters, the Christmas tree is now bedecked with lights--all RED lights. Instantaneously. Your wife is wearing a blood red dress--the exact color of fresh blood--but when you right clicked and examined the package before, you should have noticed that the dress you got your wife as a present was WHITE, not red. White dress = reality, Red Dress = Fantasy.


So yeah, now that I've connected the dots for ya with some basic Psychological Horror 101 wisdom, change your score, bro!
billhilly
353
01/22/2015 11:03 PM
Thanks for writing all that up Max!
billhilly
353
05/04/2016 09:45 PM
author=Max McGee
Can anyone explain me how does this story connect with itself?
Sure can!

I won't put any spoilers here but I frankly think it could have been better.


Sure couldn't! Well actually, I'd probably take off one star for the excessive and unavoidable animal cruelty. That's bullshit and very triggering to some people. (One of my pets was murdered IRL like, no BS.)

Anyway buddy, I can explain the story to you if you want. You should change the story score to like 5 Stars, though because honestly while it's subtle, it's not overly subtle and you should have gotten it. This is on you, not the game.

So here goes, I'll explain the connection. Obviously...SPOILERS.

Show


The first 95% of the game happens only in Alfred's imagination. He is completely disconnected from reality. He has had a psychotic break. You get a lot of the reasoning for the psychotic break, the family's bleak, joyless existence, their severe economic woes, the loveless marriage, his feeling that he's failed as a husband and father. For what it's worth my dad was an awesome and loving father and also was a postal worker and we were poor so I was a little offended by this part. Anyway, what you DON'T see is any of the "action" of his psychotic break.

Every action he takes in his family murder suicide is camouflaged as something else in Alfred's shattered mind and to the player.

* Remember when you gingerly plucked the hair ribbon from your wife's head and then put it back in the back of her head? Well that was you putting a bullet in the back of her skull.
* Remember when you gently and lovingly tucked your young son in under the comforters? That's probably when you smothered him to death, you sick fuck.
* Remember when you used a shard of glass to slash open the orange "pillow" that you conspicuously "never liked" for the white fluffy cotton inside? Well that was the moment you disemboweled the orange CAT that you "never wanted".
* And then lastly and most obviously, the entire attic sequence represents your suicide by hanging, the cherry on top of this deliciously cheerful Christmas confection.

There are some not so subtle hints that shit is going wrong along the way. The scene with the spilled nail polish is pretty heavy foreshadowing, for one thing. First you spill blood-colored liquid on the floor after vomiting for no reason, then you cut yourself mixing your blood with the nail polish which is described as 'hemic', then in a Shakespearian nod all your efforts to clean up the nail polish ("blood") fail, and those failed attempts to clean it are all necessary to progress the game.

The point where an astute player should realize that things have gone horribly, horribly wrong is when you exit the boy's room after lighting the candle and placing the repaired figurine. For starters, the Christmas tree is now bedecked with lights--all RED lights. Instantaneously. Your wife is wearing a blood red dress--the exact color of fresh blood--but when you right clicked and examined the package before, you should have noticed that the dress you got your wife as a present was WHITE, not red. White dress = reality, Red Dress = Fantasy.


So yeah, now that I've connected the dots for ya with some basic Psychological Horror 101 wisdom, change your score, bro!


Can you give me your honest opinion on what you personally though of the story, the way it ended and was written.
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