This looks VERY promising. I trust Ron Gilbert's judgment enough to buy this, without really knowing anything else.
Reviews for this game are starting to hit. I watched some of the Giant Bomb Quick Look before deciding that I didn't really want the entire first hour of the game spoiled for me. It was enough for me to know that I definitely want to play this game. So far I've only read the Eurogamer (7) and IGN (79) reviews, but both were positive while also acknowledging some shortcomings.
I think this got quietly pushed back by one day. The Steam store page said January 23rd yesterday, and now it says the 24th.
Its not really Lost Vikings-ly, at least so far. Nothing really relies on precise timing like that did. So far its just some puzzles that require more than one character to complete. I am enjoying it but am stuck and no walkthroughs exist yet, so time for a break.
That trailer is trying way too hard to be clever. A talking cave? A character named The Hillbilly? Bleh.
You mean where it makes it clear there are no real penalties for death? It stops responding to your deaths after that. Seems like a weird complaint.
And just finished my first playthrough, which according to steam took about 4 hours. I enjoyed the game, it pretty much hits the mark for what it sets out to be. I went with the hillbilly, twins, and monk this time. Their stories were all nifty, though the twins stands out for me based on setting alone. Only one puzzle stumped me, and once I realized how to do it I felt like an idiot. Otherwise they are fairly straight-forward with a modicum of thought (possibly even easy, since I am not great at adventure games). Also I was initially apprehensive of the humor considering Ron Gilbert's last effort was Deathspank, which I found fairly unfunny and trying-too-hard. But I ended up enjoying the humor here, its at a solid Double Fine quality level. I plan to do a second playthrough, and am curious how much repetition there will be (though I have a decent idea based on the level structure). I seriously doubt I will attempt a third one, since with 7 characters the third playthrough will result in 2 repeated characters, thus seemingly a crapton of repetition. I don't really understand why they went with such a weird number, when 6 or 9 make way more sense.
I'm definitely going to check this out at some point, though with Ni No Kuni arriving today, likely not anytime too soon. Thanks for the impressions, Brinstil.
Also, when doing the Knight's specific quest, at one point I thought for a second that I had screwed up, but then I remembered that these characters are all basically awful human beings.
I'm only a little ways in and enjoying it so far, but I was expecting more interplay between the three characters. Not so much things like banter as just the game changing based on which three characters you picked as a group. Instead it seems to be structured that you get a unique area for each character that is completely independent of what your other two characters were. I was expecting more of a thing where you might see many of the same puzzles and areas each playthrough, but you solve them differently based on who's in your group. Instead, it seems like the non-unique areas are solved in the same way by any character, and it's only in each character's unique area that their unique abilities come into play. Is that accurate? Adree, complaining about the death quips is silly. After a few, the Cave says something like "I'm not going to talk about death anymore" and then he stops.
There are a few of the neutral areas where your skills are used to get to the cave paintings. I cannot recall any actual puzzle use though. I had the same expectations initially, but wasn't too disappointed considering the price and scope.
I played this a little bit last night, I kinda like it. I made it to the Knight's quest but couldn't figure out what to do exactly so I just quit and went to sleep. Now when I'm trying to select Continue from the menu, it gives me a loading screen for a short period and then dumps me back to the title screen. It clearly tracked my progress because my cave paintings are there. I wonder if my save somehow got corrupted.
Just finished my first playthrough, and I pretty much agree with your assessment. On this point though, I think the idea is to force more than one playthrough with each character Also, one puzzle in particular stumped me for a long time, because it turned out not to be a puzzle at all: I went with the Twins, Scientist, and Adventurer. I think I enjoyed the Scientist's story the most, though it seems like the Adventurer was way more useful in the rest of the cave than anyone else.
So I understand fucking up the spoiler tag, salwon, but once your post appears with the spoilers on full display...
Yeah, that would require actually reading my own post though... Sorry for anyone who was viciously spoiled!
I think it's worth the $15, even if only to encourage Ron Gilbert to keep working. The setting is interesting, the writing is clever, the platforming doesn't get in the way, the puzzles are all pretty logical (no cat hair moustaches), and the art is great. It'll probably keep you busy for about 6 hours if you do the reruns, so it's not as dense as something like DotT. But if you like the genre, it's not like you have a ton of other options.
What genre are you putting it in, exactly? Puzzle games are common, as are platformers and adventure games.
I think so. Let's do a list of RTS, FPS and Adventure games released this year so far. I bet Adventure games win.
