The Giant of Torridge Island

Leaving a review because there were none, so I took a chance--I knew what I was doing, and now the least I can do is write up a reaction for the sake of others who come sniffing around, and also for the dev. It's too bad, seems like there's the seed of a cool game in here, and if the dev spruces things up I'd be all too happy to improve my review... plus, it always pains me to rag on someone's hard creative work, and this certainly gets points for its concept... but, just... not much else.

First thing you notice is the giant controls painfully slow, the Y-axis of the mouse is inverted, and when you go to address this, for some reason the only "Settings" are/is: Toggle Fullscreen. I'm not even sure if I found all the controls in the game, because they aren't listed. All I discovered was WASD to gratingly, achingly slowly pivot and lurch your way around the sparse, garish island--your movement feels less like a bipedal giant and more like a tank in the mud--and spacebar to pick up/chuck stuff. The stuff itself is cobbled together from basic 3-D shapes in a way that's just a little too simplistic to retain any "simplistic charm," though I was ready to get with the visuals as I saw them in the screenshots when I bought this game--although, crucially, there was no trailer video. If there had been, I would have been warned off by the slow, stiff animations--if the giant's hands swayed at his sides, if he picked up a little spring in his step, if the physics and models and everything weren't quite *so* rudimentary, the whole thing could work, it really could. But this just doesn't; it would be charity to say so, and I'd rather be constructive. I get the fun, rough, kidlike element, I like that and I think that can be retained while, at the same time, tuning up the gameplay, giving more to do, and, frankly, not releasing with entire menu options greyed out, including "Main Game." This thing just wasn't ready to meet the world. Because "Main Game" doesn't exist yet, by default I'm reviewing "Free Play." There's also a "Challenge" mode I frankly haven't even screwed with.

It's hard to know where this game is coming from. It feels like it wants to be kid-friendly, with a fun, energetic soundtrack going on and bright, simplistic objects to go with this basic morality play (does giant hurt or help? what would YOU do?), but mechanically it's too damned obscure to be good for children. I still haven't figured out my first objective, which states that trees on this island wither and die without companionship (is this a euphemism for having a "dry spell?"), and suggests that perhaps I should find the trees a friend? I have no clue what this means, on any level. I tried to collect water for the trees, thinking perhaps water's a friend, in spite of the fact the only body of water was clearly the ocean and I would be watering trees with salt, but that didn't matter in any case because water didn't seem to be one of the four things that would stick to my giant's hands when I hit spacebar and he painstakingly went through his pickup animation--he does it whether or not he has anything to interact with, like a schoolbus opening and closing its doors at the railway crossing. Anyway, water wasn't a friend, so I started putting trees closer together--since my only method of placement was to chuck, at some point I chucked one too close to another, they collided and the two of them exploded into green bits I was informed were seeds. Because this was slow going, and I wasn't even sure it was doing anything, I took another tactic--I had seen some brown trees, as if withered in homeostatic lack of companionship, so I picked up one brown tree and, as carefully as possible, chucked it on the ground near the other one (trees take root when you throw them at the ground, making even basic mayhem impossible).

A gift box fell from the sky, which may or may not have coincided with my putting the brown trees together, because those had been periodically falling throughout the game, and walking over them saw them burst into a shower of green particle effects around me, but nothing else perceptibly changed. A text box at some point said the tears of the villagers would make me grow (see now we're getting somewhere) but I could not see that I ever grew perceptibly. Incidentally, I could be wrong, but I think it also said the villagers' praise, or whatever their abstracted unit of approval (it displays as a gold star), would also make me grow, so I kind of enjoy the ambiguous morals of that lesson there.

Anyway, I never knew if I found the trees a friend, but in a last ditch I tried just standing near them, as well as grouping them all together (well, not "all"--as many as I could get out of myself while driving the giant that feels like start-stop traffic). Perhaps I had solved the trees' friendship long ago, and bathing in those giftboxed green tears had been my reward, come and gone. I don't know. I am not a child, I am just a grown ass man who plays children's games, and the most basic mechanics of this game have not been forthcoming to me. I choose to see that as a shortcoming of the game, because god help me if it wasn't...

I *did* see a villager pining for a rock (by standing dejectedly with a thought balloon of the negative outline of a rock, to show its absence) and no sooner had I approached on the horizon with a rock in my hands than she was overjoyed, rewarding me with a gold star, as well as dancing around my feet, where of course I accidentally stepped on her. Then I saw a man dreaming of a tree--this time not in a negative outline showing the absence of the thing, just a fully filled-in color image of a tree, but I assumed that this wasn't some complex multifaceted daydreaming system where some dream of their lack and some dream of fulfillment, and rather just that the two icons didn't match. So I brought the guy a tree. Sure enough, he was happy, I got a gold star and when I chucked the tree by the guy's little field (the only one on the island, which also has just one house, implying unhappy things about how the island maintains its population) the guy actually went and cut it down, and then I was informed that my villager now had the necessary supplies to harvest his field, because that involved cutting down a tree, which required help from a giant even though they've already built homes and agriculture under their own steam already, and it's not like trees aren't plentiful and easy to catch, so whatever. And still, that was the one tantalizing moment when I sensed the game might actually have some mechanics coming together... but then that was the extent of it. Right after that, the text box told me the sun was going down. I assumed this was the end of day one. It was the end of the game. I got a scoreboard that said I'd been kind to nature and unkind to the villagers--mostly cus I crushed them, like I think they could afford a stiffer word than unkind--but then I guess I evened things out when I gave that lady a rock (I didn't even need to put it down, she just needed to see that it was there; it's a source of strength to her, it's... her rock). I couldn't leave the scoreboard til it ended, and I realized the game keeps it up until its little song ends, so it fades out all nice and on cue. Which, like, dude.

At one point I saw the house jump because a sheep walked under it. Not recommended, not even for five bucks. Five bucks can still get you, like, Dishonored on sale.

I will keep checking in on this thing (after I get my refund) in case it improves, cus I think it's clear the dev has a unique idea and this is a labor of love, and I'd love to come back and see that the dev has replied and made all these great changes, but until then I hope I've served as the canary in the coalmine for anyone getting too curious about this one. Wishing the best to the dev, and this game, hoping to see it in better health someday.

Game is kind of clunky. Difficult to navigate the menus and the controls are odd and can't be changed. Gameplay is a bit iffy as well but overall I did enjoy the experience. My end of day stats would occasionally freeze and I couldn't save or exit or anything. This would cause lost data? There is also not a lot of tutorial for what you could or should be doing, it is just sink or swim. The mobility as the giant is incredibly slow, kind of makes me bored spending so much time turning. My recommendations would be:
A quicker transition between days without being kicked from the file.
The ability to skip my end of day stats.
The ability to change my controls.
The Interface to be upgraded in a big way.
Faster turning as the giant when not walking would be big but honestly any change in mobility would be better.
More prompts for what you can do, I had honestly no clue what to do for the first couple days in-game.
All-in-all, good game. I will probably play this some more.

not entertaining my camera movements are inverted while up is down and down is up and its not very detailed or good