I want to like this...

[ThunderPeel2001]

but it's incredibly dull.

Like most Indie games it appears to want to say something "important", and like most Indie games it appears to do a terrible job of it.

The first few levels I thought it was potentially genius. The juxtaposition between Thomas being alone, and then seeing the world through Chris's suspicious eyes was brilliant. It said something about the fact that we're pretty much the same, despite how suspicious we can be of each other, especially strangers. But then it got boring: John was full of himself, making him difficult to relate to. The Clare came along and was equally full of herself, and poor Thomas was left out of the narrative.

I've just gotten to the point where Lindsay has been introduced (level 3.x), and I'm hopelessly bored.

The dialogue is banal, despite how effortless it wishes to be percieved, but worst of all: The puzzles are so depressingly dull.

I could forgive its pretentiousness if it had decent puzzles (indeed that's what I did with BRAID, which had wonderful puzzles) but here they're brain meltingly simple. What's worse is that they're a chore to solve, relying on lots of boring repetitive actions (pile Chris onto John, then add Thomas. Put Chris on Thomas, move up one level. Repeat).

Please, someone, tell me that this gets better!

[cazaron]

Maybe it's not for you. But I found it quaint and beautiful, the puzzles were easy but not depressingly so. It's a game that's stayed with me, it's grown on me, and I loved it.

[epiplon]

Originally posted by ThunderPeel2001:

Please, someone, tell me that this gets better!

Wait, you didn't finish it?
If not, you must play to the end before having a final opinion about it.

[Zyklon-Basti]

It's not going to get better. The Puzzles are extremely easy until the very end, I didn't have to think about how to solve a level even once. It was just tedious.

I felt exactly like you after the first hour but I pushed through it because I didn't have anything better to do. I'd just recommend you to drop it, you'd be wasting your time.

I really liked the presentation of the game, especially the soundtrack, but that doesn't make up for the mindnumbingly simple gameplay.

[epiplon]

This is a game to be driven by the story.

[Zyklon-Basti]

This is surely a matter of taste, but I think that the story is mediocre. The only special thing about it is the fact that the characters are blocks.
Even if the story was good: It could be told in five to ten minutes. The rest of the game consists of gameplay. This is not The Walking Dead.

[Marci]

Yes thank you

[Alex2life]

I still have 10-20 lvls to go and the only complaint I have is that the controls arent that tight in certain situations - Love the story and the interactions between the characters :D
That the dev made personalities for something as simple as shapes is cool imo :)

[Ganon MS]

Story is brillian, controls too, I never had a problem.

[Muffinmurdurer]

If someone can make blocks relate to you it must be that it is one good developer.

[Vivisector 9999]

Originally posted by Ahnon ap Epiplon:

Wait, you didn't finish it?
If not, you must play to the end before having a final opinion about it.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

EDIT - Translation: You're drowning in wrongness.

[scranch]

Totally getting the same feelings as OP. Well, I got this as part of the Humble Bundle, so I'm not complaining. What the devs did with a few blocks is pretty decent, I must admit.

[Zuboki]

Quaint is an excellent word for this.

The story is by no means amazing. The characters are clearly defined as soon as you meet them, with maybe a sentence or two each of actual advancement or development. That's not inherently bad, of course, but saying the story is "wonderful" or "brilliant" is pretty much mailing your kindergartener's drawings to the Louvre instead of posting them on the fridge.

It was an amusing game to play through. The mechanics were simple. The difficulty curve was good enough, with the lack of any real spikes. The collectables were a bare minimum effort, but appreciated. It pulls the move of "Don't explain anything fully" to leave the player to infer what's going on in the "outside world" to lend an air of mystery, a sense of the unknown- but it's pretty shallow. And it comes to an anticlimactic end.

To be quite frank, the voice-overs, quality music, and tightness of controls are the only things that really set this apart from any random free flash game on Nuugrounds.

[jeremyy]

Agreed. The gameplay is mediocre. To be honest it feels like someone just took one of the thousands of generic free flash platforming games and slapped some surface improvements on top to charge a high price for it.

The story isn't exceptional, I don't get why so many people are praising it. Nowadays people just latch on to any pretentious game with 'minimalism' and a half-decent story and call it 'art'.

[lucifertdark]

Sorry? how is the gameplay mediocre? Jump about, solve simple puzzles, collect pointless objects & try not to die, that's the essence of every single platform game ever written.

[epiplon]

Originally posted by asforien:

The story isn't exceptional, I don't get why so many people are praising it.

Because it is not meant to be complex, so you will hang around with friends trying to solve the "story's mistery", like Braid.
It's nice because it gives the blocks some personalities and they are charming, even without showing any expression.
That's it. Why not love some story about blocks with sense of humanity?