This post by L the other day led me to listen to some of Mushio Funazawa’s non-Kirby music.
Which in turn made me curious about this game.
Which was just a few days old and discounted so I went ahead and picked it up.
It’s a puzzle game that has sound as a major element, among other things. Most of the puzzle solutions are straightforward and some are pretty clever, but a few are confusing, buggy, or tedious. Fortunately, there’s a hint site that you can auto-translate in your browser. (The game gives you the URL for the specific step you’re on.)
When I say buggy I’m mainly referring to a single puzzle that I actually was solving correctly but that didn’t work until I closed and reopened the game. Hopefully that’s the only such case. (I’m roughly halfway through the game.) From the Steam forums it seems there have been other game-breaking bugs that the developers have been fixing as they get reported.
I get the impression that the Japanese developers used some kind of automated screen-reader for the English spoken lines, as the diction is awkward throughout. But in a way, I guess that adds to the weirdness of the setting.
The farther I progress the more I see that this was designed with care and creativity beyond what I might have assumed initially. It’s possible that I might end up posting the very first English Steam review when I finish it (probably within the next day or two).
I think mine was the first Steam review in English for this game, but now there are two. It was kind of sad to see none at all because this game does some interesting things.
But I have to wonder whether they had anyone outside their dev team test a few of these puzzles. Even when I resorted to using the hint guide, figuring out what they guide was saying could occasionally be a puzzle in itself. But I think part of that is awkward machine translations of both the guide and the game itself.
I occasionally had to make little notes like this one. I kind of like having to take notes for a video game but it rarely seems to happen these days.
