mintee's reviews on GOG.com

Created on 26 October, 2022 03:47

Updated on 26 October, 2022 03:56

decent point and click

This game is along the lines of the hidden object genre, without the HO puzzles. Its pure point and click adventure with puzzles to solve. the puzzles have been seen before in HO games, lots of sorting, matching, find this to do that kind of thing. There is no fast travel unless I missed it but the game keeps the backtracking to minimal. Most puzzles are logical, there is no skip function which was alarming on the more tedious sorting ones but I made it. The games high point is the art, its gorgeously hand painted with complex patterns, the theme is dark and dank. Its worth the price just for the art. The story is very well done and written and I was intrigued. Total time to play was 6 hrs for me. Cons are at times it was very hard to see the direction arrows or dropped items due to the dark complexity of the art. Also, they employed a side scroll that activated when your mouse moved to the edge, lengthening the screen. This was fiddly and janky and slightly annoying. The game is big on choices with alternate endings based on those decisions. At times the path was not clear and outcomes surprising. I only made one unapologetic decision and got an ending i really think was undeserved but that is the game. I dont think I will replay it to see what would happen if i went another way. Enjoyed it, found it very fresh and interesting.

3 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 25 June, 2022 06:41

Updated on 25 June, 2022 06:52

decent enough thriller

Its a nice looking game, atmospheric, with nonintrusive music and voice acting. The graphics serve, though a bit basic. Premise starts off really creepy then with time becomes more of a puzzle game than horror, which was ok by me. There are plenty of jump scares, creepy sounds, objects moving on their own, pitfalls and tapes to find along with correspondence which drives the plot along. There is basic crafting which I found pleasurable. The horror theme is cliche, scary decrepit asylum weve seen before many times. Game does wear on you as you enter a room and cant get out until you solve the puzzle, and with saves only at certain places that can mean you lose alot of progress if you need or want to quit. I dont understand why devs insist on checkpoint saves, to me it tells me the devs have made the decision that they think their game is more important than their players being called away from their precious game for real life issues such as children, family, jobs, etc. took a star off for that inconvenience. too many times i wanted to quit but had to work out several puzzle rooms to get to the next save point. screw that. its fun enough, dont expect it to be super scary but as an exploration, puzzle game along the lines of Portal with a horror theme it was ok. get it on sale.

24 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 25 June, 2022 03:35

Updated on 25 June, 2022 03:44

tiresome mechanics

i tried, i really tried. it looks great and i loved the animation scenes, the voice acting, the whole laura croft feel of the game. but there was several mechanics that made me give up. like how all movement froze for each of the characters sometimes long winded and repeated quips. you couldnt scan for any other hotspots look at your inventory, nothing but listen for the umpteenth time. you can skip sometimes by pressing mouse click, but not all the time. then the areas, so prettily painted but there were no flavor text for exploration. it was just move to a scene, see the 3 or 4 hotspots, know that they were needed for the puzzle. solve. move to the next scene. now for the really infuriating stuff, like how hotspots wouldnt activate until you walked up to them, touched them, then use your item. forget using your item on the hotspot directly, you had to first do some rigmarole to enable it to work. or sometimes hotspots would appear until your character was in just the right place. i quit during a QTE event that restarted if you missed one click, and it was very long. the mouse was almost invisible so it was hard to see where to place it. no way to skip, no saving at the point of failure. just restart. i have hundreds of unplayed games. made in 2015 it played like a 1990s game. i dont got time for this. uninstalled.

7 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 21 June, 2022 22:03

touching, a bit forced story

i got for free on another site but wanted to give my take on the game. Its a short game, there are some daily tasks to do, farming, gathering water, food, feeding animals, preparing for winter, reading mail, eating. most tasks take a long time so you can only do a few each day before the darkness falls and you sleep. there are collectibles to find as well. your char moves super slow as she is very aged. I enjoyed all of the above, the simplistic art style, the tasks. atmosphere is very good. then the game took over and did some abrupt actions to drive home the story and you realized that it all didnt matter, the game was going to do what the game wanted. its what the devs wanted to impart. i found it annoying. to invest in all that slow motion actions to raise your herds, thinking that you were doing what youre supposed to do only to have the devs hit you with a ban hammer. i felt like it was a waste of my gaming time in the end. i read forums on the game and there is replayability in doing different actions, trying to get all the collectibles etc. but i didnt want to waste any more time on it. 4 and 5 stars for atmosphere, story and novelty. 2 stars for game annoyances and disapppointment

85 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 11 June, 2022 18:27

pretty, nauseating, gimmick game

i read the reviews and knew what i was getting into when i bought this for a buck fiddy on deep sale. its a gimmick game built around a certain mechanism like flying or swimming or scuba diving that you see everywhere nowadays. thought it would be a short game to pleasantly waste time. it is pretty, in a mimimal graphic kind of way. the only graphics i saw were grass and petal leaves and some landscaping objects. the music is pretty bad, the score, not the flower plinks you get as you collect the flowers which i enjoyed. i ended up muting the music most of the way as it gets sooooo overly dramatic and loud its off putting. gameplay is minimal, you swoop and collect flowers which give off a musical note, each area has to be completed to go onto the next, with sub areas that 'bloom' once you gain all the flowers. controls are as others say weird. i was doing good but all the seesawing and arbitrarily swinging around camera views made me sick and frankly annoyed rather than calmed. controls allowed you to turn off mouse movement and steering but then it was dead in the water so i dont understand what that was for, perhaps joystick? who knows. i can see it being enjoyable for those without motion sickness or those who can overcome the fly controls. in the end i found it more irritating than pleasure and quit.

2 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 24 April, 2022 00:17

Updated on 24 April, 2022 00:23

head bob outta control

who makes a game nowadays with no option to tweak fov slider, head bob and other simple fixes to accommodate game induced nausea. apparently these devs do. couldnt even get past the intro section when my characters head bobbed like it was in an earthquake even tho she was only walking out of her car. slowly. blurg. why do devs think head bob is a thing anyways, our point of view when walking doesnt sway and bob and dip like that, well it does but our brains compensate for the movement. anyway, gonna get a refund on this hot mess. btw, really loved the anti abortion blurp at the beginning of game which pretty much told me all i needed to know about the devs

12 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 22 April, 2022 02:31

amazing, 1star off for end data mining

Just finished watching the credits and listening to the end song by Etta James, a bluesy number that perfectly suits this immersive game. 7.5 hrs of gameplay and most of it was pretty darn good adventuring, looking for clues, rappelling, hiking thru woods, trying to avoid bears and feeling out of control as the plot went for a wild juke off the beaten path. the good: immersive, minimalistic music score so you can hear the wind, creaks and rustle of the forest or the howling of wind in dank dark tunnels. Graphics simplistic. the story. what a wild ride. i had so many theories and guesses it was a hoot. lots of autosaves and you could also force a save at any time if you needed to step away. the bad: it wouldnt start. nothing worked. finally i followed the indepth guide in the customer service thread for the game and after updating directx and restarted it worked perfectly. the storyline is forced, you dont have much leeway to change things. I havent gone online to see if any dialogue choices affected the ending yet. i hope so. would like to replay it and go another way. the game starts off pretty weird and emo, i hate games that are full the 'struggle' to deal with dire life issues and thought id have to give the game a pass, then it finished and began the game proper. sometimes hotspots wouldnt show up after triggering events, so you had to go back and circle round till they did so you could advance the storyline. biggest disappointment was the cameral roll and not being able to look at your pictures or go back over all the notes you picked up along the way. oh, you could see your photos but only if you gave them your email and let them send you a link. that marketing and data grab was really subpar and left a bitter taste in my mouth. i skipped it. so get it on sale as its a short game but i found it very enjoyable.

5 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 17 April, 2022 19:20

Updated on 17 April, 2022 19:34

lack of player support ruins game

I really liked the first barrow hill and point / click adventures are my favorite genre so i was thrilled to see the next barrow hill. after playing for hours im going to sadly give it 3 stars. If i judged solely on annoyances then it would be 2, if i judged solely on atmosphere it would be 5 stars. the good: atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere. its pure adventuring, looking for clues, reading bits of lore, listening to snippets of ads/shows on radio for clues. taking hand done notes like old school gaming, real movies inserted in clips, atmospheric music to ramp up dread. jump scares and generally just a feeling of dread as you wander lost in the woods. loved it the bad: game can glitch out so you lose whatever progress you had and revert back to last save, so save often. Unskippable mini puzzles, like the movie reel editing, no way to fast forward thru those long movie clips and if your poking about trying to solve it extremely annoying. Overuse of phone calls within the first half hr lead to unintended laughter on my part. horrid mapping, the sheer amt of time i spent just trying to get back to an area was super annoying. some sort of fast travel via map would have kept the pacing of the game and limited player annoyance. like all point and clicks there is a huge amt of backtracking to try out different items you have found on known hot spots. some actions do not open up until you pass a gate keeping animation. so even if you know what to do it wont let you by the end i resorted to a walkthru just to avoid the irritations of the game, lost whatever sense of awe and wonder to sheer annoyance. they said at beginning of game that the devs didnt hold your hand, but there is a fine line of being obtuse for complexity or ignoring player comfort cuz ... reasons. get it on sale and dont feel bad to using a walkthru to avoid annoyances that suck the life out of the game.

12 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 01 April, 2022 21:11

Stranded Sails - Explorers of the Cursed Islands

good game for kids

Ive played around 8 hrs and dont think i will finish it. Its a nice enough game. the Pros: cute upbeat artwork and animations, easy crafting (you just gather the ingredients and go to the designated site and build), there is alot to explore, caves, fishing, cooking, sailing to other islands, opening up higher levels on the islands via crafting items. Farming is big as you need food for stamina. There is loot or treasure to be found. You can chop wood etc. Friendship levels to be gained with the island npcs. Its all very pleasant and relaxing. the cons: a bit repetitive, loot is respawned via chests/boxes and you need the items to craft friendship items and housing goods so the main portion of the game is running around gathering. mini games at first are interesting then you realize that they are also randomly spawned and repeated. the cooking menu is bizarre, it uses a puzzle option of finding ingredients but is finicky, ex by removing the known item that isnt in the ingredients it will randomly say more items are now wrong when there had only be one. kinda frustrating at higher levels. stamina expenses rise as you level and you start the grind to maintain enough stamina to do your daily tasks. farming for one is super expensive stamina wise. the friendships are pretty shallow, just higher levels unlock some buffs and furniture items. there is no real conversation or interaction with them, and they do squat for work on the island. all of the above is not game breaking, its still a fun game, a bit grindy as most builder games are. its all just a bit shallow for the amount of grind needed to gain lack luster rewards. I also would like a home of my own to decorate, which comes later but when... its been 8 hrs already. so im just going to set it aside and recommend this for younger players new to the genre and buy it on deep sale.

9 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 28 March, 2022 03:49

Barrow Hill: Curse of the Ancient Circle

pretty enjoyable point and click

This game sent me back to Myst a few times in its movement and storytelling. I really enjoyed it for the most part. the music was very atmospheric and the voice acting good. I enjoyed the real time insertion of movie clips like old games used to do and myst movement style. The atmosphere of the game is creepy as heck, spent a good portion of it with the gps tracker on watching the camera feeds and dreading seeing something moving towards me . It also was handy for tracking your way thru the paths. (missed creep opportunity by the devs) Game didnt hold your hand much, no map other than the gps. no camera snaps for the notes and other images you may want to refer to. I ended up using my phone alot to snap screenshots and took copious notes, all of which gave me nostalgia for myst. spent so much time on my notes sleuthing, all of which was fun. one big jump scare made me yelp and scare my cat. Some issues ruined game immersion and pacing. It was very easy to get lost on paths, miss hotspots and the game mechanic of holding onto items after use so you kept thinking they had further function so i would randomly try to combine them with hotspots. After hrs of no progress i referred to a walkthru and found i missed a hotspot and even knowing about it (behind the grave stone) i still couldnt get the path to it and had to try a few positionings to finally get it. Game also froze near the end a few times forcing me to use task manager to close. luckily it had a refresh function to restore my current save progress. The ending of the game was a bit ruined for me as i had to use a walkthru because i had turned off inventory names which made the cup puzzle extremely hard to do. by the time i fixed it i was more or less done and cheated the sequence via walk thru. still overall it was very enjoyable. around 8 hrs gameplay, most of it spent going in circles. lol it was a great exploration game. look forward to playing other games by the devs.