IGMC 2015 Submission: A Stranger Comes To Shore
Cloud Rating:
To start things off, I have to say I loved the atmosphere and art style. Very interesting choice of graphics. It is colorless and bland but that is what the author is going for in order to set up the correct mood for the game. Even the title screen makes you want to just drift off on your own, personal depression cloud:
The music is a perfect match for everything in the game. It was, visually and auditorily, absolutely beautiful (in a very melancholy way). Now, I'm not really a deep person when it comes to appreciation of artwork as can be shown by my choice of home decor during my bachelor, pre-wife era (speaker box coffee table, drunken paper plate drawings hung on the walls, and the center attraction of my living, the futon).
Another thing that I'm not really deep enough for are super abstract storylines, unfortunate for A Stranger Comes To Shore (or more likely, unfortunate for me).
My first playthrough was a lot of guessing and aimless wandering. It was a little frustrating to me. I mean, from what I gathered you, as the character, are supposed to know these woods very well since you grew up in them with this childhood friend of yours. Maybe the character was suffering from amnesia and didn't really remember the direction to the points of interest (not really what happens... I think...) but I felt like I was walking over the river and through the woods but I had no idea where grandmother's house was the entire time.
Speaking of walking through the woods, while I appreciate the minimalistic "world map" so to speak, the fact that I spent more time walking through it than I did actually reading the storyline or figuring out exactly what two items I was supposed to combine to proceed to the next stage was a little... unfun. The movement speed was very slow and for the first time players, you honestly get lost in the woods with no idea which direction you should go and the map is of very little help.
I didn't really understand what was going on for the most part. Now, this is probably just because I can be a little dense at times because the script sounded beautiful as I read it. Although the writing sounded very professional in bits, when I was trying to piece the whole thing together as a whole I was very confused.
After playing it through a second time and selecting completely different options, I was still greeted with the same basic premise and ending. I was very disappointed with that. I was hoping for a completely different ending depending on your choices or at least different events that led up to the same ending but it seemed like the only thing that would change with your selections was the very next line of dialog.
If you were supposed to connect the dots and put the story together in your head with these little pieces of information scattered throughout the game, then I failed. I still am not 100% positive that I didn't just pick the wrong choices both playthroughs and was greeted with the failure ending. I would have liked the story to be a little more concrete than it was, especially since there (probably) aren't chances for alternate endings depending on the story you want to go with during game play.
Now, as I said, although the story didn't really click with me, it WAS written very well. I know that doesn't really explain what I mean but it's hard to put it into words. Let me put it like this: have you ever hallucinated for any reason? If you have then you'll know what I'm talking about. What you experience can be beautiful. The colors, the sounds, the feelings. But at the end of your trip, none of it made any sense if you try to interconnect them all together. You have a vague feeling that it SHOULD make sense but it just doesn't. That, in a nutshell, is how I felt about the story. Maybe someone could explain it better to me in the comments below?
While I loved the innovative thought process behind this whole project and I see a lot of potential in it, it still seems in its raw, unrefined state. I would love to play a game based on these mechanics and artwork but with more fulfilling and easier to follow along with storyline. I'm really hoping the author keeps along these same lines with a different title. I absolutely loved the writing style.
I also loved the (sadly underutilized) combination system. Keep going at it Geoff Moore. I'm really liking the direction this project was going.
The game was fun, at times. There were more points where I was frustrated than I was having fun, however. The not having a clue what or where I was supposed to go or do next, the slow character movement speed, the game just seemed... slow. The moving from place to place was by far the worst part of it though.
I did play through a second time because I was curious about alternate endings or choices. However, I was sadly disappointed that nothing really seemed different or changed even with drastically different choices or actions. So really there is no point in playing it more than once.
This game seemed like a combination of a visual novel, point and click (without the pointing and clicking) adventure, puzzle mash-up. And it did so very well. The fact that this game style flows along so well with the art and music style really set a high bar in terms of originality. I normally don't rate games based on artwork and music, but CLEARLY that was the main focal point of this project and it did it very well.
Now, this game wasn't a bad game by any stretch of the means. Not at all. It's just meant for a niche gamer type and I don't think I really fit in that category. However, for the reasons I mentioned above, A Stranger Comes To Shore earned 2 clouds!
