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I am speechless, just like the main characters of the game!

Hello
welcome to the review of Eternity, a puzzle game made for the Hawktober 2020 Gamejam without dialogues.
Ok, to tell the truth you still need to read to appreciate this game, since there are still many sentences written here and there, even on the maps, using grass, anyway the three characters cannot speak between themselves (but they still undertsand and communicate with each other), and here's the reason: they are from different species!
There is a child, an ethereal woman (ghost?) and a sort of alien mindflayer.

These three unlikely heroes wake up inside a dreamlike place and they have to escape collaborating between themselves. Each one has some particular abilities: the child can open paths for the other two (for example standing on some platform of the same color of the barrier they remove), the ghost woman can enter the astral plane, and the mindflayer can enter a "mindcape", but both have to reach and activate particular items to enter these alternate realities.


HELP! What is this thing? It's a nightmare, not a dream!

The astral realm is a sort of parallel dimensione inhabited by evil spectres. Here the etheral woman has to collect some fragments avoiding the spectres, but here she can fly, so obstacles don't exist. Of course she has to come back to the access point to become corporal again.

The mindscape looks like an underground cave with big totems and little masks of different color. The mindflayer has to bring each mask to its totem of the same color. Here there may be hostile creatures but also lever puzzles and other obstacles.

All the three heroes have a life bar (I like a lot how each is drawn in a different style) that is automatically replenished after reaching a new area. There are also save points, so be ready to reload if you are going to lose, and that's valid especially for the timed sequences that I think are pretty difficult compared to the parts where time is not an issue! (at least for me, the first timed sequence was the only one I needed to repeat more than once, the rest was pretty easy).

During the adventure, that is a sort of dream, we get to know more our three protagonists, through some pictures and scenes that explain something about their past without using words. The graphics are cute and well done (mapping is ok, but consider that each map is a puzzle that has to be solved, so there are not beautiful landscapes or charming locations), the colorful pictures are especially well done and merge prefectly with the surreal atmosphere. CG art and balloon emotes are used to create a cute and emotional story about the unlikely heroes, and the art and custom assets are extremely well done.

Music is likewise a contribution to the mysterious atmosphere of the game that clearly has some Cosmic Horror elements. It's curious noting that every written sentence/phrase is expressed by the "dream" that captured our three amigos.


Travelling the astral plane and avoiding the spectres that have already hit us! (see the health bar over there?)

Verdict
This is a great little puzzle game with very well structured enigmas, I also liked a lot how the adventure progresses, with some action parts when for example the ghost and the mindflayer are kidnapped and the kid alone has to rescue them! This is an unexpected and exciting event that suddenly breaks the quiet progression of the story (here there's also the only issue I found: the game zooms for some second to the kid then suddenly returns to the normal view and this sudden change made me lose some health due to a misstep! Otherwise no problems with this game at all!).
The only problem is that it's not always clear what you are going to do, what you have to collect and what instead can harm you, but the discovery is a part of the game, I guess. Also the visual sometimes become confusing (in crescendo) during the most dramatic parts, and that's an added difficulty that some players can believe to be an error, well it is not!

In the end I can confirm that this is a pretty good and charming game with nice original aestetic and an interesting premise, it's well structured and without any problem. I liked it a lot, and if you like puzzles, well this is a good entry!

4.5/5, a polished, cute and entertaining puzzle game with lots of style!

PS: I wonder if it was made on purpouse but the savegames were deleted as soon as I completed the game! Weird, anyway it would perfectly fit the theme.

Posts

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First of all, I thank you for giving a review of this game and that you enjoyed it despite its glaring directional issues. Being that it is mostly silent storytelling, I do not want to handhold the player with tutorial images. I could have conveyed that a little better though.

In addition, visuals showing up rapid fire can be hard to take in, I will admit that there's a lot of the timing I messed up. I was a little too content with the game's speed that I thought adding more periods would be overextending their welcome.

The difficulty is a major consensus that people seem to be having, especially with the first boss. I have already reduced the difficulty significantly since then with more brighter areas but at the end of the day, I made it with the intention to ensure that the challenge is not as easy as walls. Though I could have choreographed and paced things better. Such are the woes of it being a jam entry.

As for the save files, they don't get deleted per se but you will lose access to them, seeing as this game is meant to be played only once. Though I can't be certain if that's a good design choice or not, it is an intentional design I chose to convey to the player that you saved them and there's no need to reset just to replay them. Taking a bit of page from Oneshot in a sense.

Once again, I appreciate that you took the time to give a review. And it is an honor to receive a relatively high rating.
author=BerryRMN
First of all, I thank you for giving a review of this game and that you enjoyed it despite its glaring directional issues. Being that it is mostly silent storytelling, I do not want to handhold the player with tutorial images. I could have conveyed that a little better though.


Well that was really well done even if sometimes I was worried about understanding what I had to collect and what I had to avoid! But yeah, not an issue!

author=BerryRMN
The difficulty is a major consensus that people seem to be having, especially with the first boss.


Yep I did that part three times and that was the only difficult part... later encounters and even the final zone were no problem for me.

author=BerryRMN
Such are the woes of it being a jam entry.


As a reviewer I play many jam entries, so I took in account that detail! Was very good considered the short time.

author=BerryRMN
As for the save files, they don't get deleted per se but you will lose access to them, seeing as this game is meant to be played only once. Though I can't be certain if that's a good design choice or not, it is an intentional design I chose to convey to the player that you saved them and there's no need to reset just to replay them.


I don't know if it is a good choice or not, since it's a linear game I would not worry, I usually do not replay the games, and I guess most player would do the same. I noticed that because I usually reload games to take pics for the reviews, otherwise I would not have noticed that!

author=BerryRMN
Once again, I appreciate that you took the time to give a review. And it is an honor to receive a relatively high rating.


It's well deserved, this is a game I can recommend! And I hope to see and play some other games in the future!
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