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Demo Review: Quite promising

  • NTC3
  • 03/02/2017 04:40 PM
  • 1497 views
Tumbling Apart is a commercial narrative-based rmk game that’s currently trying to get through the Steam Greenlight. While I have slight reservations about the demo I’ve played, I can nevertheless still say it certainly deserves to succeed on there.

Gameplay



Well, so far, this is about walking around and interacting with things. You have a couple of instances where you need to bring a thing from one place to another (a lightbulb to a lamp so that you can light the way upstairs for your character, a medicine from the fridge to your sister) and a decent number code puzzle, but that’s about it. I should also say that the opening, pictured above, somewhat overdoes the walking aspect: it takes 25 seconds (I timed that) of walking straight in the only direction you can go before something starts changing, and around another 25 seconds before it stops. It’s supposed to be an ominous dream, but the build-up to the revelation you get before waking up is too long and rather undoes the effect. I would suggest shortening this sequence a little, and making the background change earlier on as you go along: say, after you’ve been going for 5 seconds, you can spot a couple small buoys in the background, and once you pass them, there’s visible cargo ship in the background. The second semi-dream-like sequence is functionally identical, but comes off much better precisely because there’s a constant change in the background, even if it only involves a few repeating elements.

Aesthetics (art, design and sound)



The design approach behind Tumbling Apart seems to revolve around taking the otherwise unremarkable graphics VX Ace RTP graphics as a baseline and use the effort saved on adding a range of custom touches around them. The best example of this approach is the kind of “painted” light if you turn the night stands on or off, and turning a TV on also gets you a cone of pale light, alongside the newscaster’s babble. You can see this effect pictured above; you’ll regularly hear thunder clap outside of the house, and almost immediately get a cone of light briefly flash out of the window. Thunder is an important aesthetic element so far in general: the menu screen is literally that of a 100% dark and rainy night where you can’t see anything but the RTP rain, which is occasionally interrupted by claps of thunder and flashes of lightning. A good piano theme plays over this, the rest of the OST is good as well. When it comes to sound design, footstep sounds are present, and are softer on the carpets then on the wooden floors, as expected. There are many other small sounds used in other areas of the game as well.

Still, I do want to say that there’s a relative overreliance on RTP in some scenes, and it creates an unwelcome contrast at times. Here’s what I mean:



Pretty much the best-looking scene in the game, which basically all-custom. (Note the squirrel near his feet, too.



This scene has more RTP in it, but also looks pretty good. However, it is then followed by this.



Honestly, no, not really. Perhaps it's best to just stop the scene at the previous image? Or to at least add more custom tiles to this cliffface?



Styling the in-game character drawings after RTP is also not a move I'm entirely sure about.


Storyline



While the opening might not be ideal pacing-wise, it does introduce us well to the psychological burden the protagonist Isaac carries with him, and the guilt stemming from his yet-unexplained mistake in the past, which would clearly be the main driver of the plot. He wonders whether the multiverse is truly real, and if so, whether he could find a universe where he didn’t make the same mistake that damned him now. It’s a notable example of how traumatised people will both use otherwise abstract concepts as a way to distract themselves from their present, and of how those same concepts come to be viewed through that very same lens they wanted to avoid. There’s another example of this later on in the graveyard scene, where you can find a gravestone of someone who died in late 2001, and Isaac will wonder whether he cared much about the 9/11 attacks.

Once you wake up from his dream in the middle of the night, you find out that he’s caring for his sister, McKenna, who is mortally ill, and whose illness he was somehow responsible for. There are a lot of touches conveyed through the environmental description to further sell us on the premise. Be it the pile of papers revealed to be medical bills, his reaction to alcohol on the table being “I have to quit drinking. (pause) At least whisky.” or the comments on the paintings around the place, with him disdainfully looking at a 100$ landscape from happier days that now means nothing relative to the paintings his sister does now, hoping to leave something behind her in the short time she has left, or the portrait of them both just before the tragedy. Still, the darkest one was probably this piece of paper on the wall next to McKenna’s room:



The three simple letters meaning “Do Not Resuscicate”. Also, spoilers beyond this point, I guess?

Of course, he can’t help but tell her white lies, both about her condition, and his dream, once she asks what keeps him up in the night and he makes up a happy dream of her paintings being shown at the art gallery. While understandable, it still burdens him with more guilt, as her response as he was leaving for her medicine was “I’m glad your dream was a good one.” This is just the kind of a grey area that makes both us and him justifiably uncomfortable, much like how real-life dilemmas do. Of course, this turns out to be their last exchange, as she dies later that night. As it happens, the funeral sees people he hasn’t seen in decades show up to express condolences, and then he is left to wander around it alone, ruminating in the past until what seems like a portal to the past opening, and the demo clearly ends there.

So far, I suppose the one thing I would like to see addressed more is how Isaac has been handling the care for his sister financially. We already see the stack of medical bills, and we also learn that he almost never leaves the house now as he cares for his sister, so he obviously can’t be employed, and the funds have to come from somewhere. Of course, going into this territory would likely make the game more explicitly political, as it would inevitably touch on the questions of insurance in USA, but when it already has such dark premise, there’s not much point in shying away from that. Another thing is that for a game promising significant choices in the narrative, it’s probably not a good look that so far, the demo doesn’t seem to offer any. The one thing I’ve tried was to leave the cemetery once the glowing light appears, and/or once the door shows up, but neither works: you are literally forced to turn around if you start going in the direction of the exit. That is in spite of the message when you approach the exit earlier being “As much as I would want to, I can’t leave yet.” Just giving us a short bad ending in that case, where Isaac let his weakness dictate his actions and regretted it since, would’ve been enough to clearly show the idea of meaningful choices.

Conclusion



So, that’s pretty much all I can say about the current demo. Of course, it is only a prelude, and the video material for the game gives us an intriguing glimpse of what choices you can be potentially confronted with in the full game, which I certainly hope will make it through Greenlight, in spite of the unflashy opening & aesthetics.

Posts

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Excellent review, and you are spot on with many issues.

Putting the game on greenlight this early was not ideal, but with Valve doing away with the service, I had to. The opening scene is way too long, and is something that was overlooked when initially built. It will be much shorter in the release version. Dialogue, which is too slow in the current state, will also be much faster and more concise. And while I tried to improve upon the rtp assets, I am no artist, but hope to have one when/if greenlit. I agree with all of these issues and they will be corrected before release.

The main focus of Tumbling Apart is the incredible story of Isaac and McKenna. And while it takes a leap of faith to believe someone when they say "trust me," I'm going to ask you to do just that. Tumbling Apart is going to make you feel something emotionally that won't leave you once finished. It's rough (especially the demo), but when the polish is there I believe you will be rewarded.

Thanks for the review and feedback. It was very helpful, and I am glad you are hopeful!

-BC Shahan
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