I like this little experimental game a lot. Some scenes were a little too flashy. Some game play aspects were too much clicking the same thing over and over again. I also think it was trying to grasp at something deep, but I don't think it successfully did, just felt like an imitation of it for me. For so cheap, I think it's a great experience though art wise. If you don't like weird, somewhat nonsensical games, don't play... otherwise consider trying it out.
UFO
by jiangli | Published by gooodmon
Media
About This Game
About, A Boy's Summer Dream.
What players are saying
Surreal but thought-provoking game with some nice hidden features. If you like a mystery and thinking critically about cognition and our place in the universe, it's worth the buy. Not a long experience initially, but enough threads to keep the curious mind busy.
This game is neat and it's hard to pass up for less than a bottle of water. I enjoy how it brought up seemingly meaningless concepts through (very simple) gameplay and then expanded on it through the narrative. The story itself was very simple to instead took it's time to explore the psyche of the main character, but I didn't feel attached to the character in any significant way. Additional art of them, fleshing out their backstory, more events before the dream world began, or any number of other additions could make players more interested in them and in turn invested in exploring their mind. I want to know them on the outside to better know them on the inside. The use of heavily modified photos with hand drawn animation was great (especially with the 2-bit color filter + boarder) and was the main reason I bought the game. They do a good job communicating the story and keeping the surreal aesthetic. I don't know if the clean, anime styled art of the characters works, however. It makes them look rigid in animation and doesn't match the dream-like aesthetic. The art of them is still great though, I just don't believe it fits in this game. Besides design and aesthetics, UFO has some technical and presentation issues. Sometimes text is not properly aligned to the center of a button, sometimes backgrounds persist after a button is clicked on, etc. Mostly minor things. Presentation wise, the game has issues with pacing coming from animations locking player input for too long after they finish. It's also typically unclear when it's time for players to interact with something and when they're supposed to just watch events unfold. These problems make it hard to tell when something is an intentional design choice and when something is actually wrong with the game. All of these issues are minor and aren't expected to be fixed for how cheap this game is. I enjoyed this game and I'm interested to see what the dev comes up with next.
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