Recent reviews by cyanic

This is not really a negative review as much as a mixed review. I don't hate the game, it's just got some (fixable) issues.

Generally, I like these types of "make path and fill space" type of games, so I was understandably excited when this came out. It started out pretty good. It started out alright, looked nice, played as you expect it to. But as I went through the levels, it really started annoying me, not because of the levels themselves, but because of other things. I'll go through them.

Pros:

• Classic gameplay, just as you'd expect
  
• Lots of levels
  
• Looks pretty

Cons:

• No music, kinda lame sound effects
  
• The grid is at a funky angle. This isn't a problem in itself, but begins to get annoying as I'll describe later.
  
• Game-breaking bug. It's not a bug with the levels, but the level selector. If you unlock level 101, you can't access levels properly due to a logic bug pulling the number of levels you can select back to the beginning of the game.
  
• The levels honestly don't get much harder. Earlier levels can be completed in a few seconds, while later levels take between 15-20 seconds, if you have experience with this type of game.
  
• Three-star time targets. Before level 101, they were easily attainable. Beyond that, they start getting ridiculous. You've only got 12 seconds for three stars. For 5x5 grids, this is passable. But once it gets into 6x6, the funky angle makes everything a lot more difficult. I usually have to retry 2-8 times before I can get under the target, and this is with a pen. Just imagine how you'd accomplish that with a mouse. And don't even get me started about the 7x7 grids. Half of my logged playtime is trying to get 3 stars because they've set the target to an incredibly short time.
  
• Game actually looks worse on Fantastic. This is probably the first game that I had to lower the graphics settings to play, not due to my graphics hardware getting overwhelmed, but due to some stupid shaders the devs decided to use. Anything above Good, and the colors of the targets are barely discernable. It also doesn't help that yellow and orange look quite similar and can be easily confused with, also contributing to the difficulty of getting three stars.
  
• There's no exit button and Alt-F4 doesn't work full-screen, so you have to Alt-Tab and close the window from the taskbar.
  
• Lastly, there aren't "over 200 levels". There are exactly 200 levels, the last of which is a poorly designed copout, and it loops back to level 9 when you've finished that.

So yeah, a game that would have been decent if it wasn't for all those annoyances. At least they're mostly fixable. In fact, the game actually contains a 2D mode that would make playing it less annoying, and I hope the devs add a toggle for that at some point. This thing's cheap, so if you can put up with the issues, go ahead and grab it, but otherwise, wait until things get fixed.

It was decently fun. Although there are 107 levels, most of them were pretty easy. You'll spend about 40 minutes on the first 80 levels and 30 on the rest. It's alright for the price.

Oh boy, how do I say this... calling this game bad would be an understatement. When you hear of Flash games, your expectation is probably above what this game delivers.

Gameplay: It's standard point and click fare. You find items, use them on the scene, sometimes combine things together. Most of the game involves opening locked doors, with half of them having the key somewhere in the room. Not really any puzzles to speak of. The biggest problem here is there's pretty much no guidance on what you're supposed to be looking for, and when you have the item, unless it's something to open a door, what you're supposed to do with them. The only text that appears in the game is a page you find at the beginning, and it's something Google Translated that makes no sense at all. By the end of the game, you pretty much just have to combine everything with everything else and place them on a table, without knowing why you have to do any of it.

Graphics: Awful. Mostly because it's a mobile port and the backdrops are all 960x540. Everything is super pixelated if you try to maximize the window.

Sound: one single background loop, over and over again, and a few sound effects, nothing notable.

Was it worth a dollar? No. There are other Flash room escape games that are magnitudes better than this game. Even writing a review for this is giving it too much credit.

Super short, only 5 scenes repeated twice, takes about 10-15 minutes total to play. First time around you find five objects per scene, second time around 10 objects per scene. There's a lot of object reuse across scenes. The UI is huge, and sometimes obscures items you're supposed to search for. If you drag the scene around, it leaves bits of itself behind. Basically, a very poor, effort-free mobile port. The dev can't even set up the depots right to ship only files for the current OS. The only things going for this game are the background music is catchy, and it is actually a hidden object game.

Update 2017-10-28: More objects is just the same five scenes again with 5 more items to collect per scene than before. Not sure whether there are actual new objects, but the insane object reuse across scenes is still there.

Update 2017-11-22: Achievements are here... There's one for playing 1 hour??? At most you're going to play it for 20 minutes. I think the hint button disappeared too.

Not bad. It's pretty all around, things control pretty well, and generally feels polished. Puzzles are quite simple, but this isn't really a full-on puzzle game, so that's fine. My only gripe with the game is the bird can be pretty grating, and the text on the book is slightly blurry (perhaps a bigger font or putting things closer would help). The voiceover isn't too bad. There's a clear Chinese accent in the reading, but it's understandable. However, paired with the writing, it feels a bit dense. I ended up getting the theme of the game completely wrong.

Note about locomotion: It's teleportation-only, and I feel you need to have a moderate-sized room, because some things are difficult to do without moving around. For example, there's a painting puzzle, and you need to dip a fairly long paintbrush into some cans of paint and then paint something with it, but it's slightly awkward to do if you just stand in one place. So if you're playing seated, you might have a bit of difficulty.

Note about length: this experience should take you about 20-30 minutes (without the extra ending) if you don't make silly mistakes like I did.

I am not very impressed with the game. From looks to execution, everything just feels lacking. The first thing that will hit you is how poor the textures are. They look like they were from the late 90's. Second is the locomotion. While billed as a feature, the push-to-walk requires too much spinning around, and as usual comes with the slight motion sickness compared to teleportation. I find it hard to keep the game's walls lined up with my Chaperone bounds because you can't just eyeball and line up the bounds and teleport there. Third is carrying of stuff. There's a lot of stuff in the first room, and you don't know what you actually need, so you end up having to toss pretty much everything into elevators, then toss them back out. Lastly, it's quite easy to get into situations where you're stuck between floors, because while there are invisible walls in-game, they don't exist in the physical world, and the game does not gracefully handle you getting off an elevator platform while it's moving. No saving or menus for that matter means you have to quit the game and restart.

There are other VR room escape games with prettier graphics, more rooms, and better puzzles.This game pales in comparison. For now, Escape the Bunker is not cutting it for me.

I really like this game, especially for its modding value. Sure, it's just brainless shooting, but at least its graphics are pretty good. And it runs on old graphics hardware too (albeit with low frame rates)! I'm making a mod right now, that's due in a few days. If you like to kill 20-minute chunks of time, and want a bit of difficulty, you'll like this.

Public review update: I still enjoy this game. Yes, the story is shallow, voiceovers sometimes annoying, and the missions all playing the same, but if you just want to shoot some baddies in space, it delivers. Every once in a while the in-game banter is funny. If you like messing around with game files, the game is certainly moddable. I've completed my mod a long time ago (see here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/34810/discussions/0/882960308802221978/), and although the models are in a proprietary format, I think I saw some 3DS/LWO loading code, so it's probably possible to introduce new models.

Go pick it up on a sale.