THE GOOD PARTS
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It’s a game that FEELS driven by the narrative. Let me elaborate on this one: many jam games attempt to create a narrative experience but often lack the elements that make for a well-presented one. I’m talking about cutscenes, pauses, time for the player to try to engage with the events of the game, some camera movements that really made the game feel “cinematic”, and the voice-over were the elements that enhanced the narrative-driven design of this game. With that said, I think most of those elements do well, which is not a minor achievement.
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A platformer that feels good enough. During my playthrough, the platforming controls felt nice, I managed to get everywhere I wanted without having to battle the controls and that’s something that I’m thankful for. There were some instances where the character felt sluggish and not on par with some of the platforms’ movement speed but that can easily be attributable to the limited time we have to develop these games so it’s all right.
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The music is great. I really enjoyed the music up until the end of my playthrough; I did feel like the last soundtrack, when you’re running away, didn’t really match the situation or the feel of the game [but this is just my subjective opinion, though].
THE BAD PARTS
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I didn’t get the story. Yeah, I just praised the narrative-driven design of the game which had elements that work well when they’re separated or mildly connected, but as a cohesive/homogeneous entity, I don’t think the premise is communicated well enough to at least grasp what’s going on. Some explosions, then you’re with Fee [which seems to be an important character because the game is named after it, but doesn’t have a lot of screen time which resulted in me having a mixed impression as to what’s going on with that character], then you have to pick an orb, and finally, the orb goes haywire which means you have to escape from something. I feel that the game had an intention but the story didn’t get to me even though I paid attention to each line of dialogue (I swear).
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Some on-screen effects were too much. And I’m not joking, the 3D elements have so many effects that try to enhance the experience but they’re so many that they end up competing for your attention and made me dizzy (no joke, I had to look away from the screen for a while, have some water, rest my eyes a bit and then come back to write this review after my playthrough). I’d recommend toning down the number of on-screen effects and using them to highlight important elements of the game like a point of interest, a collectible, power-ups, threats, etc.
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The voice-over was not OK. I think this game would have benefited from having just a single jingle for each audio line played in a loop for each character that appears on-screen (like in Undertale/Banjo Kazooie/games alike). Instead, the voice-over was kinda distracting because I was trying to figure out if they were actually recorded by humans or computer-generated because you need to have the talent [or be a computer] to communicate so little emotion when interpreting a line. I saw someone else in the comments making fun of the game’s voice lines which I think it’s not fair because the game doesn’t seem to be presented as something that’s trying to capitalize on being half-assed or badly done on purpose; instead, it’s presented as something that was trying to be great and awe-inspiring but missed the mark by a little bit.
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Ummmm… Loop? I missed the jam theme on this one, I didn’t really get where the theme interpretation is other than the character running in a loop when the scenes are loading; I think this can be attributable to lack of time to develop the idea further and present what was supposed to be the theme’s interpretation but I think the theme implementation should have been prioritized further.
CONCLUSION
I think the game is good. It has a little issue with the mouse sensitivity but that can easily be attributed to my computer. The narrative-driven design works well when it works (particularly some cutscenes make the game look like you’re in for a ride) which is something that’s not easy to do and this game managed to do in certain scenarios. Gameplay-wise, it’s a light game so you won’t have any issues getting to the end of it and enjoying the full experience; beware the eye strain, though!