Life Gallery

Life Gallery is a short, macabre puzzle game that can best be described as surreal and disturbing, yet inherently fascinating.

Pros

• Morbid, hand-drawn illustrations
• Abundance of different puzzles
• Unsettling atmosphere
• Easy 100% achievements and is fairly priced at only $AU4.50

Cons

• No hints for puzzles

Story

The story is told through illustrations and a few sentences at the end of each section. There is no dialogue or clear explanations of the illustrations. Therefore, the level of understanding relies solely on the player, thus I will avoid a lengthy description and only keep to the basics. Players follow the life of a troubled young boy, born into a dysfunctional family and with physical impairments himself, his world is dark, dreary and lonely. Perhaps trying to logically explain the unsightly and eccentric art serves no purpose, as the games peculiarity and grotesque nature is seemingly designed to disorient and befuddle players. It achieves this goal, and excels in its obscurity.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2920336486

Gameplay

Life Gallery is split into four sections. Each chapter is filled with different screens of puzzles, seemingly telling the boys life story. In the beginning, puzzles were simple. There are no hints, tutorials, or explanations of the puzzles. Players are immediately thrust into the illustration and must click around to determine the solution.

Puzzles all involve utilising the entirety of the illustration to work out what is required of you to proceed. The puzzles vary from simple trial and error to deduce a sequence, patterns, using dials and buttons to make an image visible and so forth. They begin fairly straightforwardly, but the difficulty does increase and there were a few times where I had to look over the image multiple times to spot the clue that I was missing. Not all puzzles were to my liking, but they are bountiful and scenes are easily skipped through, so unfavourable puzzles are swiftly passed. However, if you do become completely stuck, and cannot solve it by random clicking, you will need to look up a walkthrough as there are no hints.

I was unaware of Taiwanese developer 751 Games prior to playing this, and I also have not played their other popular title Cat Museum, so I cannot comment on their exact similarity. However, it is clear that this small team has great talent in this niche genre, and I am excited to see other Indie projects they produce.

Visuals & Sound

The illustrations are grotesque and the entire game is morbid. It is unsettling and bizarre, yet fascinatingly striking to look at. Multiple eyeballs uncomfortably darting around the screen on a fishes body, strange invertebrates being ground into powder, all while a colourful fish cult looms over you. This game is not meant to be “enjoyed”, but rather, experienced. And it is an unusual experience indeed.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2920336640

Audio is very sub-standard. The same creepy ambient theme repeatedly plays over in the background.

Technical & Stats

This game was played using mouse only, and with the following PC specs.:
AMD Ryzen R5 7600x 5.4 GHz
32GB DDR5 5200 CL36 RAM
Radeon RX 6800 XT
2560×1440 resolution
NVMe 3.0 SSD
Windows 10

Playtime: It took me approximately 2 hours, but it could take around 1 hour if you are speedy with puzzles.

Controller Recommended? No, it appears designed only for the mouse

Replayability value: None. All achievements are also unmissable.

Conclusion

Life Gallery is a bizarre little puzzler. Its horror themes are unique, the illustrations exude an ominous aura and the puzzles are varied. This is by no means a narrative game, but if you are searching for an odd experience with puzzles, and enjoy witnessing obscurity, misery and horror as an art form, the mere price tag of $4.50 is well-worth it.

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Another uncanny game from the 751 Games that made the Cat Museum which I thought had a very compelling narrative, not to mention that signature art style and their affinity for body horror. This game is not a point&click adventure, more of a simple interactive puzzle game with some surreal, and perhaps sinister undertones, although that may depend on how you choose to interpret the story.

The game is around 60 to 80 minutes, which to be fair is a bit longer than many similar games in this price range. I must say these devs have a really generous pricing model, making their games extremely cheap, but more accessible, which worked very well for Cat Museum, and I think it's the ideal situation for both customer and the developer. I would not say that this game has any difficult puzzles, but some of the gameplay logic has the potential to be frustrating. Overall I liked the creativity behind the puzzle design in terms of their connection to the narrative, with the exception of many cloned puzzles, I felt like there were a lot of recycled ideas to the point where I would get confused because I thought it would be silly to have the same puzzle 5 times.

I didn't expect the game to have any emotional impact because it just jumps from one puzzle to another with an occasional cutscene, but in the end, I think the story became very compelling and easy to connect with, I won't spoil it but I think it operates in that gray area where it allows you to speculate all the way toward to end. The choice of music and imagery complements the narrative very well, it kinda gives you that surreal fantasy vibes, and yet it's spooky at the same time.

Pros:

(+) I didn't expect the game to connect with me emotionally due to the nature of the gameplay, but I think you will find that it has a very compelling story underneath its visual attributes. I didn't know where it was going, and I didn't know for sure if there was sinister intent, mainly because I am not sure if it was meant to be taken as a metaphor or if it was actually happening to the character.

(+) Personally, I enjoy any surreal game with body horror, this studio has a signature look that I can easily recognize from the trailer, and despite the short length, there is a good amount of variety and visuals in the game. The game didn't have a lot of music but I thought there was a good sense of foreboding mood to it that I really enjoy.

(+) I didn't like all of the puzzles, maybe only 70% of them, but I like that the puzzle design often flows back into the narrative, the puzzles complementing or adding something to the story, not just existing because we needed more gameplay filler, for the most part.

Feedback:

Nitpicks - there was some confusion with the "cutting" action as there is no indication it's happening, so maybe you could add some particles when you cut or at least some kind of effect if you don't want to add blood. I thought there were a bit too many recycled puzzles, especially any puzzles that are trial and error, I don't really think they add much to the experience. I am not a huge fan of those block puzzles where you have to match a picture, I think if you add something like that you might want to consider a timed skip for that puzzle, sometimes I solve those in 30 seconds, sometimes 10 minutes cuz it's really hard to do it intentionally. There were some occasional pixel-hunting problems, obviously "hidden" element is part of the genre, but you should never feel like you can't find anything to interact with and brute force click everywhere.

Overall Thoughts: 7/10

It's hard not to support this developer when they are so generous with the price, it's short but there is enough there to be interesting for an hour or so, it certainly does not lack effort, I really enjoyed the unique and disturbing visuals, and the game has a decent narrative to go with it.

Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/

Hands down, the art is creative and cool, so if you are buying it for the art, then you will definitely like it.

As for the game as a game, the story is unclear and the puzzles are very basic. So easy to finish, which takes out the excitement.