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This just came out and it is fricking adorable, dark, funny and absolutely gorgeous. There's so many layers of interest to it I had to stop because it was getting a bit rich and I wanted to take some time to process.

 

Search didn't turn anything up about this game so here's a thread.

 

I think anyone who digs Firewatch should love this.

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I only played through the intro last night and strolled through town for just a bit, listening to townfolk chatting, and it is indeed adorable and beautiful so far.

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2 hours ago, BigJKO said:

I only played through the intro last night and strolled through town for just a bit, listening to townfolk chatting, and it is indeed adorable and beautiful so far.

When you say listening do you mean the game is voiced? It looks interesting but I have a very low tolerance for having to read dialog in games

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No, I meant listening in character, as in Mae eavesdropping. It's all text all the time. There is endless amount of dialogue reading in this.

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I'm loving this. I played probably 90 mins last night and am thoroughly charmed. I got to play a slice of this at Day of the Devs back in 2015 and have been so excited ever since. It is so funny and sharp.

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I finished this today and I really loved it and now wish every adventure game was like this because it's much better then all of them but also I sorta know some of the people who made it so I suspect I might be biased but anyways AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

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19 minutes ago, juv3nal said:

Only about an hour in I think but it's rad.

 

Same. 

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ALSO this game has achievements that kinda actually feel like having achieved something? Like they are mostly the result of doing a cool/good thing. At least the ones I got.

 

Pretty proud of the palecat one, not gonna lie. See thread tags.

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This game is very beautiful and is going on my wishlist right now. Also, did the Canabalt guy work on this? He's always retweeting praise for it, but it's a drastic departure from his best known work to date

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He & his wife publish it as Finji co. He's also the lead on the Demon Tower minigame (which is kickin' rad except for the stunlocks).

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Wow. It is exceptional, and easily surpassed any expectations I had for it. It's much longer than I'd imagined it would be, and has a surprising amount of replayability (Though, I'll probably wait a bit before going through it again with the hope that they'll be able to get the load times down.).

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Are you on PS4? The load times on my PC were almost instant.

 

I'm definitely playing through this again with my wife, hopefully she'll choose differently than I did and I'll get to see more of the things I missed.

 

I think the stargazing, both with the old guy and with the young guy (spoilers left intentionally vague) was some of the most affecting to me. That and the poetry session.

 

It's also amazing to just not have good choices sometimes, but in a way that felt way more meaningful than it often does in games, possibly because the characters in NITW are so well-realised you don't want to fuck up.

 

I don't think a game has made me gush so much since Gone Home.

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I'm playing on PC. It's running off a solid state drive too, so I'm not sure what the deal is. The times weren't egregious, but were enough to make me plan out where I went to minimize loading. Also, I bunny hopped constantly. :D

 

The stargazing was great. As were the poems. Getting a new poem was one of my favorite parts of each day, and it's even better when you can get a bonus one from the tunnel guy.

 

I really liked the music when you wake up in the morning, and how you can just sit there and enjoy it for as long as you'd like.

 

Is it possible to find more than two musicians in the town? I get the impression that it isn't. It'd be great if all four would play on the bridge at the end. Then you could chill on the bridge watching the sun, soaking in the music.

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Despite having some reservations, I really did enjoy my time spent in the town just looking around and hanging out with everyone, including Mae. While she can be frustrating at times, I admire that they never tried to make her always likable and didn't cater to the player by always offering a cop out answer and/or the "good" dialogue option. 

 

My biggest criticism of the game came down to its length as I would actually prefer it to be more a bit more concise (and on a smaller note, some of the light mechanics didn't entirely work to me). I also didn't particularly care for the last half hour of the game but didn't hate it either, so whatever.

 

The game actually made me really nostalgic for my own smaller-ish hometown, despite it being completely different from Possum Springs. I just spent an hour browsing Google Maps and looking around the places I hanged around as a kid...

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Finished this earlier in the week, playing with my girlfriend and we both loved it.

 

In the middle it felt a bit too slow, but then

 

the kidnapping

happened and afterwards it balanced the pace a lot better. To be fair, it was maybe partly because I spent so much time seeking out people to talk to and things to do. The characters were all great, and I kind of want to replay to learn more about Gregg and Angus (if I can hang out with him more). I mostly hung out with Bea, because her relationship with Mae was really interesting, but I was surprised how much that route taught me about Mae herself.

 

 

My first ghost investigation was the park with Angus, and seeing the camera pan to show the dude staring was creepy as all hell. We both gasped at that.

 

I'm not normally a fan of mystical endings when most of the game has been much more grounded, but I actually enjoyed the magical metaphor a lot. It was a good encapsulation of a desperate struggle against confronting existential dread. And the fact that it was what had also messed with Mae made a lot of sense too. I guess the fact that it tied back to Mae helped prevent it feeling tacked on.

 

 

Very happy to be a backer of this, it came out wonderful.

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This game also is a wonderful example of how to do politics in games right. Instead of adjusting tax sliders you get to experience the life of people and a town affected by them. And the characters know it and comment on it.

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Yeah, that was great. I can't speak to the real life experience of a rust belt town at all, but in universe it was clear that the characters comment on it because it so clearly permeates the whole town and their lives.

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I really cherished this. The characters are all great and shitty and charming and relatable. Even when the dialog feels at times as though it's going to veer a bit too "clever," mostly it really dials it in and gives each character their own voice and room to react authentically. I feel like in other games/things with this style of writing (very off the cuff and anti-punctuation) characters often feel like pieces to be maneuvered into place so that a gag or whatever hits just right, which might be cool in the moment but robs them of some individuality. The only times I felt thrown off by this were when certain scenes waxed on too long, with tons of awkward silences. It's a nice trick but they probably could've used it a bit less often.

 

So yeah. It has FLAWS, some of which have already been mentioned here, but as a whole they really dwindle in comparison to all the things this does so very right.

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I will likely come back to write something more later about this, but I thought this game was truly exceptional. I loved it the way I wanted to love Oxenfree (which I liked, but didn't love even though I wanted to so bad.)

The heart with which it sees the crumbling of the American dream in Rust Belt towns especially by corporate greed and globalization hit me hard as a product of the Midwest.

Loved it. I give it 10/10 drinking too many beers at a party and vomiting.

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