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Why did I play this again?
Kylaila- 07/08/2015 09:38 AM
- 1636 views
Pointless Actions is exactly what it says on the tin.
You explore the town, you can do some stuff, you can find some stuff and finally reach the end with little gained and little done.
There is a light, but the light is not for you.
Described by the author as an easter-egg hunt, you may wonder what it is all about.
There certainly is a lot to explore and to find - the world is filled with ways to make gold, to bake and "enhance" bread (the poor poor crust), amusing weapon descriptions, ways to fight fake pokemon, to doom the king, kidnapping girls, and many more fun activities along the way.
However, any excitement and any joy is dulled down by the general atmosphere of pointlessness accompanied by the well-known Gymnopédie. Battles are completely void of music. It makes for a rather depressing quest, and all joy you could have is watered down. Stylewise it is very close to Wizerd.
Almost all descriptions are bland on purpose and the repetitiveness of so many things kills the joy of finding the new. House interiors, people, even their standard lines are meant to be repetitive. The way you raid and loot houses is reptitive.
There were a few amusing descriptions and plays on tropes (like the gold-heaps), but the vast majority of whatever you see, read and hear is dull. Dull, repetitive and without meaning. Grave stones (except one), even reading through my beloved bookshelves left me unsatisfied.
Being able to get predictable messages, as washing your hands when you want to wash your hands, seeing yourself in the mirror when you look into the mirror did not enhance the experience for me at all. While there are many odd occurences, only a few instances are truly playing with your expectations.
You get me, Ralph.
The maps follow the same principle with a simple, not always pleasant mapping style, creating almost random formations of snow, grass, water as well as a leafridden "autumn" area you work through. The eastern characterset has been used a lot, but creates a clash with the artstyle of the standard RTP.
To proceed you have to complete a few quests and find the right paths. since you will explore whatever you can, and since the game has little backtracking, you can easily proceed.
Some puzzles may stop you in your tracks (talking about you, lake), but you can look these instances up.
There are a few battles to have. And the vast majority of gold you amount can easily be used to buy new weapons, because armor is overrated. Your gold really holds no value to you due to its abundance and the nonexistant need of gearing up.
Story-wise .. there actually seems to be an underlying plot of sort, but do mind the fact that you are not engaged in it, nor will get more than 5 lines about it. You may have some sort of amnesia, and try to be an adventurer and make your dull life interesting. The story ends on a positive note, but it does little to distract from the overall game experience.
It has many great ideas, but at the same time Pointless Actions aims to be unattractive. It does succeed at that.
You explore the town, you can do some stuff, you can find some stuff and finally reach the end with little gained and little done.
There is a light, but the light is not for you.
Described by the author as an easter-egg hunt, you may wonder what it is all about.
There certainly is a lot to explore and to find - the world is filled with ways to make gold, to bake and "enhance" bread (the poor poor crust), amusing weapon descriptions, ways to fight fake pokemon, to doom the king, kidnapping girls, and many more fun activities along the way.
However, any excitement and any joy is dulled down by the general atmosphere of pointlessness accompanied by the well-known Gymnopédie. Battles are completely void of music. It makes for a rather depressing quest, and all joy you could have is watered down. Stylewise it is very close to Wizerd.
Almost all descriptions are bland on purpose and the repetitiveness of so many things kills the joy of finding the new. House interiors, people, even their standard lines are meant to be repetitive. The way you raid and loot houses is reptitive.
There were a few amusing descriptions and plays on tropes (like the gold-heaps), but the vast majority of whatever you see, read and hear is dull. Dull, repetitive and without meaning. Grave stones (except one), even reading through my beloved bookshelves left me unsatisfied.
Being able to get predictable messages, as washing your hands when you want to wash your hands, seeing yourself in the mirror when you look into the mirror did not enhance the experience for me at all. While there are many odd occurences, only a few instances are truly playing with your expectations.
You get me, Ralph.
The maps follow the same principle with a simple, not always pleasant mapping style, creating almost random formations of snow, grass, water as well as a leafridden "autumn" area you work through. The eastern characterset has been used a lot, but creates a clash with the artstyle of the standard RTP.
To proceed you have to complete a few quests and find the right paths. since you will explore whatever you can, and since the game has little backtracking, you can easily proceed.
Some puzzles may stop you in your tracks (talking about you, lake), but you can look these instances up.
There are a few battles to have. And the vast majority of gold you amount can easily be used to buy new weapons, because armor is overrated. Your gold really holds no value to you due to its abundance and the nonexistant need of gearing up.
Story-wise .. there actually seems to be an underlying plot of sort, but do mind the fact that you are not engaged in it, nor will get more than 5 lines about it. You may have some sort of amnesia, and try to be an adventurer and make your dull life interesting. The story ends on a positive note, but it does little to distract from the overall game experience.
It has many great ideas, but at the same time Pointless Actions aims to be unattractive. It does succeed at that.
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Closeauthor=KylaliaThat sounds mildly philosophical and slightly confusing, might I ask what you mean by that?
There is a light, but the light is not for you.
Well, first of all, Kylalia, thank you for taking the time to write this review!
You're absolutely right in that this game does not have much of a story, music variation, or battles. I am as perplexed as you as to why you chose to play this game (the lack of battles and story, after all, is advertised on the main page). I'm glad you did, though, and wrote this review, because I am certain that all this feedback will help me make a better game in the future.
I have seen several separate let's plays of this game, and the let's plays are universally confused as to what to do. Perhaps I should shorten the tutorial to a text box with one word: "Explore!"
... Hm, that's actually a good idea. I might just do that.
author=KylaliaIt was intended to have the opposite effect xD Just as a man in the desert finds greater joy in seeing a pool of water than if he were in an ocean, the repetitive atmosphere was meant to enhance the joy of finding interesting things. I suppose I executed it poorly :/ I've got to work on that, then.
the repetitiveness of so many things kills the joy of finding the new
author=KylaliaWell, I managed to get one thing right xD The goal was to have you go from "What am I even supposed to do" to "Why have I been doing this for the past hour". The goal was to give the player some entertainment that was perhaps not their standard strain of comedy, and after the game was over, to have the player laugh a little, shake their head, and ask, "Wait, what did I just play?"
the general atmosphere of pointlessness
I am sorry I failed to capture your interest (or rather, didn't deliver on the interest that caused you to click "Download" in the first place), and cannot refund your time.
Last few questions for improvement:
1. How long were you able to stay interested for? (how long did you play the game?)
2. Would the experience be improved if the graphics/music were better?
3. Did much of the humor fall flat due to the atmosphere?
Again, thank you for writing this review and trying out the game!
First off - I commend the way you take in and process feedback. Only few are as actively engaged, too.
I was referring to the fact
1. My interest stayed rather low. In terms of humour there are a few clever things to be discovered later, and you can skip more of the boring ones, too, so the start killed off my interest very quickly.
I still kept playing for at least 40 minutes. The only thing in my way was solving the lake puzzle (?) and entering the barn needed to proceed to the last boss. I could not open it, nor solve the lake puzzle even with the hint, or trying Europe and such. Not to mention that the shape made no sense to me whatsoever, haha.
So I watched the let's play and decided to skip doing it myself, I usually do try to finish it myself, but I really did not feel like asking and going back to it later.
2. The graphics may not add to the game, but I did not find them a hindrance.
The music really does, the music immediately sets the tone and expectations of your game - and also the way you interpret events. Which is why this piece works splendidly with games like I'm scared of girls, but less so when you are supposed to search for fun.
Later during the butterfly-conquest you were walking around quite a lot without any dialogue, too. And trust me, just listening to it over and over again alone was enough to make me want to stop.
But that was more due to the general atmosphere created - so a wider variety of the same atmosphere-inducing songs would probably not have made much of a difference.
3. For me it really did. There a few chuckles here and there, but even the screens that were a blast to see felt weak in the actual game.
It is a very strange combination. It really reminded me of the wizerd quest, just that in that game, the atmosphere was a reflection of the protagonist's self-esteem, world view, and wishes (adventure) in his dream. And even then the atmosphere "destroyed" much of the fun and the jokes that were to be had.
Pointlessness, depression and similar are not all that compatible with the wonder of details and fun.
For the time I have been suffering from depression, I lost all sight of the fun details and went into tunnel view. Even the things I could identify as fun, didn't feel fun.
Shooting to create this atmosphere while retaining the fun is a task I find hard to achieve. If you were to induce fun with it - you would have to play on a completely different level of expectations (since humour is all about breaking that expectation)
So you could potentially make it fun by playing with how you think actions are pointless when they are in fact not - and vice versa. How you feel you have no meaning when you actual create one in the world.
That would be the way to go if you wanted to keep the atmosphere.
--
Either way, for now it seems to be for a very niché audience. There seem to be people enjoying the mix, but it is a quite difficult one to pull off.
I was referring to the fact
that with the ending sequence Ralph's real adventure starts after your game. Just you are not going to do the fun stuff
1. My interest stayed rather low. In terms of humour there are a few clever things to be discovered later, and you can skip more of the boring ones, too, so the start killed off my interest very quickly.
I still kept playing for at least 40 minutes. The only thing in my way was solving the lake puzzle (?) and entering the barn needed to proceed to the last boss. I could not open it, nor solve the lake puzzle even with the hint, or trying Europe and such. Not to mention that the shape made no sense to me whatsoever, haha.
So I watched the let's play and decided to skip doing it myself, I usually do try to finish it myself, but I really did not feel like asking and going back to it later.
2. The graphics may not add to the game, but I did not find them a hindrance.
The music really does, the music immediately sets the tone and expectations of your game - and also the way you interpret events. Which is why this piece works splendidly with games like I'm scared of girls, but less so when you are supposed to search for fun.
Later during the butterfly-conquest you were walking around quite a lot without any dialogue, too. And trust me, just listening to it over and over again alone was enough to make me want to stop.
But that was more due to the general atmosphere created - so a wider variety of the same atmosphere-inducing songs would probably not have made much of a difference.
3. For me it really did. There a few chuckles here and there, but even the screens that were a blast to see felt weak in the actual game.
It is a very strange combination. It really reminded me of the wizerd quest, just that in that game, the atmosphere was a reflection of the protagonist's self-esteem, world view, and wishes (adventure) in his dream. And even then the atmosphere "destroyed" much of the fun and the jokes that were to be had.
Pointlessness, depression and similar are not all that compatible with the wonder of details and fun.
For the time I have been suffering from depression, I lost all sight of the fun details and went into tunnel view. Even the things I could identify as fun, didn't feel fun.
Shooting to create this atmosphere while retaining the fun is a task I find hard to achieve. If you were to induce fun with it - you would have to play on a completely different level of expectations (since humour is all about breaking that expectation)
So you could potentially make it fun by playing with how you think actions are pointless when they are in fact not - and vice versa. How you feel you have no meaning when you actual create one in the world.
That would be the way to go if you wanted to keep the atmosphere.
--
Either way, for now it seems to be for a very niché audience. There seem to be people enjoying the mix, but it is a quite difficult one to pull off.
Novalux
618
author=Kylaila
Pointlessness, depression and similar are not all that compatible with the wonder of details and fun.
For the time I have been suffering from depression, I lost all sight of the fun details and went into tunnel view. Even the things I could identify as fun, didn't feel fun.
...
So you could potentially make it fun by playing with how you think actions are pointless when they are in fact not - and vice versa. How you feel you have no meaning when you actual create one in the world.
I had some of the same thoughts while playing. One of the problems with depression is that you overanalyze and oversimplify unconsciously, always getting tunnel vision from anything that suggests it. Trying to stuff the whole world into a formula. And when every single dialogue box follows a formula, it only serves to confirm your suspicions.
I found the game fun because it was so unexpected and random. I just kept thinking "why am I playing this?" With the implicit assumption that it didn't matter, and taking an amused attitude towards the game. I started off with rock-bottom expectations (humph... this is no real game) and became more impressed as new curves were thrown at me (a battle system? In an rpg? Well, in this rpg? Woahhhh.)
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