A very short and simple but brillant puzzle game that tells a short and touching story about love. Which can be completed in a few minutes.
Do I recommend this game? Yes!

I really wanted to like this game, and if I hadn't played the last chapter, I probably would have.

The actual game is entertaining enough, with some fun mechanics aided by and aiding the story in turn. It's uncluttered and emotionally evocative without being, oddly, pretentious about it. But the last chapter feels incredibly forced in how it tries to tie everything together. It was sort of like seeing a writer put themselves into a very interesting premise and then being slightly unsure of how to resolve it.

I can't recommend this game because it struggles and falters at the finish line, but I wouldn't go so far as to dissuade someone from playing it. It's a nice walk in the park, but it rains at the end.

Well, it lives up to its name. The game takes five minutes, and has maybe 15 screens of minimalist retro gaming. It's pretty in its simplicity, and it challenges some gaming assumptions, but honestly if I had paid for it by itself rather than as part of a bundle, I'd be upset about it. It's a freeware game and has no more depth than that. Nice idea, decent execution, but so short it's embarrassing that they charge for it.

Pretentious Game sets itself up from the onset as something of a farce; a parody of games accused (whether justifiably or not) of being pretentious, overselling and alienating themselves by trying to tell a story that pretends to be deeper than it really is. In this way, PG had the chance to be a clever commentary on how many perceive these games, but instead it falls nauseatingly over itself in its attempts to make the most unquestionably pretentious game the internet could think up.

PG is a story of lost love; soul mates turned divorcees, children abandoning their mother, players losing themselves to drunkenness, and death taking them all in the end. It's depressing to say the least, or it could be if it managed to make me feel anything at all. PG constructs itself as a tone deaf joke; content to paint a shallow picture of life with its simplistic blocks, never stopping to attempt to reflect the real joy and heartache we all experience, while reveling in its own self loathing. Any narrative that's left is nothing more than one individuals misguided view of reality, stemming either from their own experiences or what they perceive them to be like having not experienced them firsthand.

It almost seems irrelevant to talk about PG's gameplay, as through 45 minute game it changes and breaks its own rules so often for the sake of its rubbish narrative that's there is little left to define it by. It's a platformer that attempts to hide its blandness behind worthless dialog and an abundance of underdeveloped mechanics, lacking in every regard and managing to be incredible tedious despite how little you are required to do to complete levels. There's nothing here I could pick out as engaging or original, similarly matching the narrative its emptiness and attempts to emulate other games but barely scratching the surface of their design.

Despite the loathsome name, I had hope that Keybol's square love story would be more than first impressions lead me to believe. Instead it's exactly what it says it is: a pretentious game that completely misses the point of the games it is making fun of, while simultaneously showcasing how tone deft many are to other games dubbed as "pretentious". It's memorably only for its failure at being nothing more than a misguided incarnation of overbearing, forced emotion and lopsided mechanics used improperly to move the story along. As a stalwart defender against the internet's unwavering determination to call everything deeper than the average shooter a pretentious mess, I say without reservation that yes, this is a pretentious game that should be ignored and forgotten in the hopes others don't use it as a blueprint for anything more than how not to attempt to say something deeper with a video game.

Games that attempt some level of deeper meaning are often derided as “walking simulators” or “Not a Game” so it's nice to see a game come right out and say, this is a Pretentious Game.

Pretentious Game is a minimalist platformer much in the vein of Thomas was alone but instead of the voiced narration, each level is accompanied by a single line of text not only detailing were you are in the story but also describing how to get through the level. This is a very nice trick, while some of the levels are esoteric it best, that single line of text will always lead you to solving the puzzle of each level.

The story revolves around A man, his wife, his mistress, the resulting children and even you the player all represented as boxes of various colours and how their various lives intertwine. Each level usually revolves around moving one of the story's players to either the other side or to one of the other characters but with a trick. For example one level revolves around the character feeling invisible, so they are, only a little puff of dust is visible where they land. While another claims the character has become self absorbed and only thinking of herself so the screen is zoomed in very close to the player and you can only see the close surrounds making the level much more difficult than it should be. A nice little commentary on today's narcissistic culture.

The game is very short and I'm not sure if I can recommend paying full price, all three chapters and the epilogue will take less than an hour and there is no real challenge in the platforming. I really enjoyed it but what each player will get out of it will probably depend on how the story affects you, but hey, we were all probably in love with a pink box at one time!

A game that is exactly what it says that it is. Pretentious Game may try to lull you into its grasp by its self-aware title, but do not be fooled, it is exactly one of those Newgrounds games where a thing loves another thing and then it conveys itself through tedious platformer mechanics.

While a few of the puzzles are somewhat interesting, the game mechanics are rudimentary and the storytelling is outright bland, bordering on awful. A girl square loves a boy square, one of the squares cheats on another, yet another square dies, etc. While you can try to derive meaning from how the little poetic bits of narration correlate to the mechanics you're meant to understand on the level, the game has very, very little to offer beyond that.

It is a very simple, uninteresting piece of work I do not recommend getting even for a fraction of the price while on sale. If you're interested in these types of games, I'd suggest something with a more powerful narrative to it (such as dys4ia) or something with more creative mechanics (such as problem attic - though problem attic is a very difficult game to swallow, it's certainly more interesting than this waste of time).

Four chapters, "More chapters soon", and "Like this App on Facebook" is what the main menu looks like.
Seriously? Five eurobux for that?

Pretentious Game certainly lives up to it's name. It is pretentious. However, if it wants a title descriptive of the experience, "Bad Game" would also suffice.

It does tell a very basic story in some kinda interesting ways (which I don't want to go into in any detail, potentially spoiling it for anyone), but ultimately the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. It is very basic 2D platforming. There are occasional twists such as clicking on characters to hold them in place, or walking on invisible platforms. The first time it introduces these mechanics it explains them via storyline related text, but in additional cases these are completely unexplained. On one screen I was left completely perplexed as to what I was supposed to be doing until I discovered some invisible platforms to which there was absolutely no indication that they were there. That is just bad game design.

There are four short chapters. It won't take you more than half an hour to complete the entire game. There are claims that more chapters will be available "soon", but other reviews from 6 months ago state the same thing, so whether or not these chapters will ever exist remains to be seen.

Ultimately, it's trying to do the whole Thomas Was Alone kind of thing, but does it much less successfully, and with bad gameplay mechanics. Not recommended.

if you wish "thomas was alone" was shorter and dumber then this is the game for you, you cretin

Briliant! Truly a BRILIANT STORY!
I'm clapping my hands when I saw the ending.

All of this is just a Pretentious Game.
Nicely done.