I've always been a fan of "cruel" platformers, Iwannabetheguy, Iwannabetheboshi, Erye's Action, etc. But this one is frankly boring, uninspired, and the platforming isn't very interesting.

Because I voiced the narrator in this game, I am going to attempt to stay as unbiased as possible. Again, ATTEMPT!

The Narrator is a ♥♥♥♥ is your standard difficult platformer that, as quite a few have mentioned, is very similar to games like Kaizo Mario and I Wanna Be The Guy. Right from the very start, I rips a page right out of the I Wanna Be The Guy playbook. With a set of spikes on one side, and a apple that comes down on you like a great god above and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ destroys you, and every fibre of your being. And in the title, it already tells you what the game is about, and what it has; an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ narrator.

The whole point of the game is to be a difficult game with a narrator smack-talking you, adding further salt to the wound. Now, when making a game where the narrator is the soul point of the game, it is very difficult to have it be both funny and dynamic at the same time. This is where the game's first real flaw rears its ugly head. The point of the narrator is to piss you off, and all that, obviously. But there are times where you can't quite tell whether the narrator repeating the same line after you die is on purpose or not. But either way, it is a genuine problem because throughout the game, the difficulty in the gameplay itself is fair. It actually telegraphs most of the obstacles and where they are, so when you die it feels frustrating, but you know it's your fault for it. But the narrator repeating the same line of dialogue to when you started out in the level is genuinely infuriating. And the lines interrupting themselves can be a little awkward, but a lot of that can be bogged down to being the player's fault for that.

Now, one argument to this, is to simply turn off the narrator volume in the settings! But that doesn't work very well when THE NARRATOR BEING THERE IS THE POINT OF THE GAME AND WHAT MAKES IT SPECIAL. When you take it out, it loses a lot of its charm. So I feel like the line played at the beginning should only ever be played once. This may be fixed later on after this review being posted, so this might be a little outdated, but whatevs.

The rest of the positivity from the narrator, I can't really say. Honestly, it's mainly because I don't wanna fellate myself or my voice work for this. I had a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of fun recording for this game, though. And I loved being in this game, and am so unbelievably happy about the reception on the voice work and the improv I put in. As of this review, this is my personal favorite piece of voice work I've done.

The gameplay is very simple. That is certainly not a bad thing. One dude once said to me that this game is a little like I Wanna Be The Guy without a double jump. Which I think is a fair enough analogy! It doesn't really explain its controls, and it certainly doesn't need to. I have this thing with games that don't have a tutorial. It lets the player figure the controls out, and adds to the dickish element to the game. Its level of difficulty, as I said earlier, is ironically quite fair. Except, when there's awkward frame skips and moments when your character falls through the floor occasionally. I also feel like this will be fixed later on as well. The gameplay itself is very good, and the level design is damn fine. The last few levels kicked my ass so hard it threw me into the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ orbit.

The music is bleh. It's good for a little while, but it starts getting repetitive real fast. It's also loud as ♥♥♥♥ compared to the narrator, making him hard to hear. Thankfully, you can turn it down so it's easier to hear the narrator being an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to ya! Or, you can do what I like to do, and straight-up turn off the music and replace it with classical music. It makes the experience more hilarious and is recommended. Or you can play whatever music ya like really I'm not gonna dictate what music you think works heh :)

Overall tho, this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥' great. It's not without its faults, certainly, but the moments is has is worth getting this game alone. It's a fun-ass ride that will kick your ass so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard that your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ will implode into itself from getting kicked so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard. This game will ♥♥♥♥ every part of your senses. It will piss you off so hard that you might actually throw your monitor out of your window in a fit of hysteric rage. I still can't get past that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ final boss to this day. Christ, Adam, you have made a monster, and I love you for it.

That, is why I recommend this game.

Not only is this a complete IWTBTG clone, but a few issues hold it back and make it even MORE frustrating. First off, the graphics are pretty good, being what they are.

The narrator is NOT a ♥♥♥♥. He's an annoying, grating repetetive ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Not only does he repeat himself every few seconds, but he usually doesn't even get a chance to finish his setence before he's launched into a new line.

The game killer for me, is this. There is no analogue control. Just like IWTBTG the first couple apple trees drop apples for an insta kill and clouds drop lighting bolts for instakills, blah blah. The point is, you can't slowly edge towards it to set the trap off. You move so quicky that even if you tap the direction super quick, at least 1/2 the time you'll end up running underneath a death trap even though you knew it was there.

If it had analogue control with pads, or even a walk key I might have tried to actually finish this game. As it is I'm refunding and hoping to God I never have to hear the nasal repetitive voice of the Narrator again.

It's relatively easy to write a funny joke and put it inside a game. It's harder to use game mechanics to turn the gameplay itself into a funny joke. This game manages to do both. A masterpiece of an old game comedy genre, the "unfair platformer" (think Kaizo Mario), it murders you in all the funniest and silliest ways, while the narrator, a foul-mouthed psychopath of GLaDOS scale, mocks your every action. Short and spicy, this game manages to turn even the frustration into comedy.

Cool game, NARRATOR is true ♥♥♥♥.

Ok, so yeah this game is wonderful. It looks nice and sounds nice, but most of all it is quirky and the most ridiculous things kill you. Love that.

The only thing that could use some work is the menus, especially the option screen. But that doesn't effect gameplay or anything, just a thought.

Great work!

This game is extremely hard. Probably the hardest single player game I have played on steam. The narrator is really annoying and he will piss you off. I was really salty when I couldn't beat the first level after 20 minutes, but I just couldn't stop playing because in all honesty it is a fun game. I wish the narrator didn't repeat the same thing over and over and the beginning of most levels, but after all, he is supposed to be a ♥♥♥♥. All in all though, I do recommend this game and even though it makes me want to kill myself it is really fun.

A game that truly lives up to its name and promise.

It's like Kaizo Mario met Stanley Parable but was published by Bethesda post Skyrim.

It's very clear the creator put some love into this game but it suffers from some major gameplay issues.

The hit detection and sprite generation are wonky. I had things that should have hit, not hit entirely, and things that shouldn't hit, destroy me. At one point the ground just stopped spawning correctly and I began falling into it. The arrow keys sometimes work? and other times don't? It's random to know whether they will. This made the final boss incredibly difficult.

That being said, some of these problems were fixed when I put it back into windowed mode. I think it may just not have been built to run at that resolution.

What sucks is that I was really looking forward to some witty banter and the best I can say is that the game is named very correctly. This is where the "stanley parable" part kicks in, and he definitely is a ♥♥♥♥, but I didn't find him funny. He's just, kinda offensive and the same triggers fire every single time you run through an area, starting to grate on you. Since you're gonna be dying a lot, you're going to be hearing the narrator say the same things, over and over. When the narrator started calling the player slurs, I just switched him off entirely.

I do appriciate this game as what is clearly one of the developer's earlier released games, and it's not unplayable, like a lot of these earlier games are. I just actively can't recommend this game because the gameplay is glitchy, the narrator isn't just a ♥♥♥♥, he's downright offensive sometimes, and the controls aren't consistent.

But if you like that? or it sounds up your alley? Go for it.

From a single playthrough perspective I think most people who have viewed the trailer and perhaps read reviews of "The Narrator is a ♥♥♥♥" before purchasing it will be left satisfied with the game. The game is exactly as the trailer portrays. A challenging unfair platformer with an often lude and sadistic narrator who accompanies your player from start to finish. The comedy and gameplay catered to me perfectly.

Now, I enjoyed my first playthrough enough to play it again.. and again and again until I finally earned all achievements for the game. Having played this game a lot (probably more than I should have) I did notice that this game is not very friendly to the other masochists out there that are willing to torture themselves until they too earn the "HOW?!?" achievement (for those who do not already know, this achievement is unlocked after completing the entire game without dying).

Reasons:

• If you have just finished the game and wish to play through it again I would advice you to exit the game and relaunch it before clicking "New Game" at the ingame menu. In short, doing this will avoid an audio bug.
  
  
• If you prefer to play in windowed mode your settings will not be saved. Every time you launch this game you will have to manually toggle windowed mode to On.
  
  
• I don't know if this was intentional but there are times when your player will randomly fall through the ground. At first I didn't mind this too much. It seemed to be harmless because in most cases you can jump out and continue with your run. However on two runs where I hadn't died, I earned my first death by falling through bridges. After this happened the first time I developed a phobia of bridges and played the rest of the game frantically hopping along each bridge to lessen my chances of falling. It didn't work.
  
  
• The last problem with the game I had which is specific to the HOW?!? achievement is that once you begin a new game and die there is no way to reset back to the first stage with zero deaths. In order to reset back to the beginning you have to exit the game; relaunch it; click "New Game" & then confirm that you would like to reset. It's tedious and adds insult to injury. I hope a quick reset option will be added in the future.

BUT I did enjoy this game! There is a big focus on learning from your mistakes. After a few playthroughs I had learned the levels well enough to stop myself from running directly into a spike or being murdered by a falling apple. The once "unfair platformer" turned into a relatively fair plaformer where a few precise jumps and the final stage became the bane of my existence.

I would definitely recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a challenge.


UPDATE: Crossed out issues I had with the game I can now confirm as being resolved in the latest patch. Good job dev(s)!