First off, I picked this up for $2.50 during the Summer sale, so I wouldn't have regretted the money I spent no matter how I felt about the experience. Fortunately, I think it's really cool. For me the environment on its own would be enough to pull me through 90 minutes of walking slowly towards something (and taking the occasional detour to see what's in some cave or crevasse or at the bottom of some hill). I think that describing it as just walking forward for 90 minutes is stupid and reductionist (not that anyone is really doing that here, but I've certainly seen that opinion). Maybe I find being able to look around an environment (even if it's not very big) at my own pace a lot more rewarding than other people. If I think about playing games like Fallout 3, Skyrim or even STALKER, probably a good 50% of my time was spent just wandering around looking at things, so 90 minutes of doing just that in a lovely and detailed environment was great.
As for the story, I thought it was good enough. Some of the themes may have been a little obvious, and some of the prose was a little purple, but I felt it worked and added to the experience. I think the randomization of some of the phrases is cool (I had to stop after the first two chapters and noticed this when I played through them again) and the fact that some of the phrases are contradictory or ambiguous is fine. I've seen some people mention that the ending was unsatisfying and didn't give closure, or just that they hated it, but I thought the ending was effective and made sense given the lead-up.
My two complaints are that (as mentioned) some of the writing isn't exactly top-notch and (sort-of ending spoiler)
. Neither of these are major problems, but they do detract from the experience as a whole. In any case, if the idea of walking (slowly) around an island with some occasional narration doesn't sound like the worst thing then you should check this out (I would say $5 is probably the sweet-spot for price).
