I have put this review off for a while, because I’m not honestly sure how to rate the game fairly. I finished everything in the game in under an hour-and-a-half. While putting off the review, I’ve honestly forgotten a bit about it. I went back through some of my Reddit posts discussing the game to jog my memory, and ultimately settled on what I’ll discuss here.
I’ll talk about controls first. I typically use a DualShock 4 paired to my iPad (when remote playing) or PC to play. This was a mistake, frankly. If on PC, a keyboard and mouse is required to navigate menus. Using my iPad, I had to enable touch controls in order to even start the game before switching back to my controller. I’m not really a keyboard and mouse gamer, so this was frustrating. That said, controls are fairly basic. Run, jump, toggle ping. It’s an average runner with okay controls, as long as you don’t need to pause. (4/10)
Graphics are typical of an indie project. It’s futuristic, in the way that watching the mid-90s cartoon Reboot would be “futuristic” today. Things are polygonal, but they flow smoothly (most of the time). It feels like a student project, honestly. (4/10)
The music is one of the better parts of the game. It gives very 80s synthwave vibes. It’s not obtrusive at all, and it works incredibly well with the graphic style. I was actually annoyed by the occasional lull in music, but that may have been a minor hang up with me streaming to my iPad. (8/10)
The story is forgettable. You’re Ada. You’re trying to find your friend, Grace. You’re running through the web, and your service provider is trying to impede your progress. I liked the way the story was told through chat logs, but the ending was incredibly unsatisfying. I felt like I had played for nearly two hours for no pay off. I’m paraphrasing, but you essentially get “you did it! Yay, but your princess is in another castle!” That’s it, and it was the main reason I tipped my opinion from sideways thumb to thumbs down. (1/10)
Overall, the game isn’t terrible. It’s a goofy little runner that cost me nothing to purchase, and I have certainly paid for games that I would rate much lower than this. It’s worth a look and supports a great cause, but I don’t know that it’s worth investing the time to finish. I would recommend the game for kids and casual gamers who like runners, but I don’t think I can recommend it to anyone else. (2/10)
1.0