Compulsion Games

A game built around a couple good ideas--setting, shadow mechanics--and not much else.

The gameplay the entire scenario is built upon can, more than anything else, be described as simply glitchy. It bugs out constantly, leading to unfair deaths or do-overs. Some puzzles, like Vincenzo's workshop, are absolutely agonizing because of this.

The setting is nothing more than an idea: Cabaret. That's it. Nothing more.

The developers seemed to have desperately built everything in this game on those two ideas, turning them into nothing more than gimmicks. The story is nonsense--a mash-up of heart-felt cliches and sexist family drama the player will not care about, with random (--wrong--) references to Einstein and generic ideas of science floating in the background. I guess it's meant to add depth to the universe they're creating, but it doesn't help when a handful of the world-building collectables are called nothing more than "Science Drawing" and are literally just nonsense symbols and images.

The story also just gets in the way: I can't count the number of times I'd move a few feet and have control taken away from me, so the camera can do a stilted, early PS2-era swoop over the surroundings, complete with lots of janky start-stop moments. Speaking of, the controls--movement and camera--also feel like the platformers (e.g., MDK 2) of the early '00s.

Whatever. Everything wrong with this game comes from its creation. It's clear the general ideas of the shadow mechanic and gimmicky cabaret setting were steps 1-10, and everything else was an afterthought.

Developer(s): Compulsion Games
Genre(s): adventure; platform
Playtime: 2.25 hours… (altro)