Indie Thirty Flights of Loving

[DANGERMAN]

A bit of background, Thirty Flights of Loving is the game you get if you backed the Idle Thumbs kickstarter. I didn't do that, but it's now up on steam for a few quid.

I was blind going in to it, I've never even heard of the prequel only that people were looking forward to this, so I didn't know what to expect. It's a first person game with minimal interaction, a bit like Dear Esther. You go where the game leads you, bewildered as it jump cuts from one scene or time to another. At first it feels a bit like you're missing something in the environment, but it soon clicks that it's an interactive story, full of quick cuts and montages, bouncing through its timeline so you don't know what's going on.

Which is where I have a bit of a problem with it. The game kept crashing on me, booting up at the wrong resolution, freezing, so I've seen parts of that game 3 or 4 times, but I still had questions when it finished. I read around a bit about the plot and there's some things I completely missed, nothing that I'm going to spoil here, but stuff that should have been more apparent and cost the experience.

To be positive about it, the papercraft style graphics are awesome, the sound is brilliant, and it has some really nice, funny touches to it. I'll give it a 2nd play through to see if what I read was right, and it does include the first game as part of the package (Gravity Bone). I do however feel a tad ripped off, it's cheaper than Dear Esther (although a fraction of the length) and I loved that, so I think it is purely down to one having more impact than the other

if you got it through kickstarter then it's definitely an interesting play through. If you didn't then it's still interesting, but maybe not so fantastic that you should rush out and buy it

[Craymen Edge]

I liked quite a lot about it, but also found it a little disappointing. The style, the sound, and some of the scenes were really good, but playing it amounted to basically pushing forward for a few minutes. The jump cuts were sometimes a little confusing, and I think I'll have to play it a couple more times and maybe listen to the commentary to work out what that gallery section is supposed to be about.

I played Gravity Bone a long time ago now, and I don't remember it all too clearly, but I'm sure it felt more interactive than this.

For anyone having crash problems, if you set your graphics options and then quit and restart, you won't have to keep setting them each time.

[Hendo]

I really don't understand what I just played. You're saying there's a story in there? All I saw were un-connected dream sequences.

Maybe I should play it again, but I really can't muster up the desire to bother.

Music is good though. Hooray for Remo.