Humble Discussion: Crescent Bay

[jensinamart]

• Crescent Bay by Advect Productions
  
  • Description: Crescent Bay is a first person murder mystery game. You play a man who comes across the murder of his friend and must use his phonetic synesthesia to solve the mystery behind her death. Crescent Bay was developed by an indie studio with developers from games like Ether One and Q.U.B.E.
    
    
  • My Opinion: Like its sister game, Crescent Bay tries for the minimalist gameplay. You play in a small environment and use a small set of gameplay mechanics to complete the end objective. The main character has the ability to use words to view ghostly after images of past events and must connect them in proper order. I found myself having a lot of fun watching each event play out and determine the order of how everything played out. The game gives only a little instruction but after a few tries I finally figured out how the mechanics works. Crescent Bay is a fairly short experience but still somehow feels a bit artificially lengthened. The introduction where you walk along a path feels like it takes just a little too long and barely connected to the story. I got curious on a second playthrough and just sat it out and I discovered that walking along the path doesn’t accomplish anything. The game is also a bit buggy as certain after images will disappear and reappear without warning or reason and I had to restart the game because the playback system didn’t work despite getting all the events in the right order. Still, as what is effectively a tech-demo I found the idea fascinating and the atmosphere to be wonderfully thick.
    
    
    
  • Would I buy the full release: While the game certainly lacks polish I think there is a lot of potential for a more indepth game. I certain would purchase the full release.
    
    
  • Who would like this game: If you’re like me and enjoy first person exploration games, give this a go. Just be aware this game isn’t quite finished.
    
    
  • Nitpicks: I get this game having one, out of place intro but does it really need two?