This jawbreaker left a sour taste in my mouth.
- Developer: Catcomb
- Publisher: Reef Entertainment
- Release date: 13 May 2020
- Genre: Adventure, Indie
- Platforms: Windows PC (Steam)
- Reviewed on: Titan Gaming PC
- Game Supplied by: Publisher
Upon opening this game, I was immediately worried about the amount of effort that had been put into it. The music looped in 10-second intervals and the animation style was clumsy: I held my breath and clicked “start”.
Within 10 minutes I was well and truly bored, this was not a game but a visual novel bedtime story. The plot starts with an exchange student being sent to stay in another country by their parents. There’s way too much unnecessary information provided about the main character such as their innermost thoughts and feelings. The writing style was clumsy and felt forced in its style, almost like a teenager exploring creative writing for the first time. Plus, one thing that I can’t forgive is that the developers published a game full of grammatical errors.
The sound design in the game is quite poor. As mentioned, the background music loops over and over until eventually, I had to mute the game. There was one scene where the music came in so loud and un-equalised that I had to remove my headphones and turn the volume down. There are vague background noises in the game, but they also loop. I don’t mind looping audio, but when there is a noticeable gap in between loops I’m unable to deal with it.
The gameplay is non-existent, the only thing I did within the first 20 minutes of the game was clicking to progress the narration. As someone who enjoys an interactive game, this style bored me quite quickly.
The one saving grace of this game is the character drawings. Each character was clearly well thought out during their creation phase and the drawings were cute and easy to look at. The only animation style being when the character’s mouth closed and opened when talking. Other than that, there was no other animation for the characters in the game.
Honestly, this game felt rushed. I love indie games because so far, each indie game I have played has so much love and effort poured into it. This one felt like a developer had become bored during lockdown and wanted to do something with their time. It’s a shame because whoever drew the characters could be a great indie artist.
