Eye of the Beholder
My Experience
The game got off to a semi-interesting start, and I became invested in the story pretty quickly. It’s always a little odd playing a game that was designed for VR without a headset, as the sensation of being on rails and being teleported forwards is more prominent.
The game fell apart a for me during the scene that takes place after the radio repair. The character that had been helping me said to an enemy combatant, “There is no place for your kind anymore […] You Sokranian scum get what you deserve […] You don’t belong in our country.” Immediately, I lost sympathy for this character and his “side” in the conflict. As an American, I just can’t get behind this sentiment. These statements hit too close to home with respect to the way that some intolerant people see those south of our borders. Of course, on the other hand, we have a faction that is acquiring and planning chemical weapon attacks that run afoul of international humanitarian law. So no sympathy here either.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
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Experienced on the Oculus Quest 2
This is a mostly narrative-driven, cinematic experience with some basic interactions. You’re basically in a war-torn situation in the Middle East involving the possible use of chemical weapons. You basically have to decide which side you’ll be helping early on and then live with the possible consequences. Whole thing took me 16 minutes.
The game is running on the Unity Engine. On my RTX 3080, I was getting a steady 90 fps. There is no locomotion, instead you are automatically teleported from one scene to the next. You use a flashlight to highlight objects to either make a decision on how to act or clear an objective.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
qrth-phyl
qrth-phyl falls in the class of games like Lumines or Space Invaders Extreme that offer simple, familiar mechanics, carefully tuned and immaculately presented. It’s a love letter to snake-like arcade games, with easter-egg tributes to the genre’s innovators. You alternate between snaking around the outside of rectangles or rectangular prisms and free-movement 3D snaking inside those prisms. The idea of 3D snake worried me initially, seeming like a potential camera disaster, but the implementation is rock solid and I haven’t had a death that didn’t feel like my fault. Playing well increases “corruption,” which increases the difficulty of the proc-gen levels but offers more dots and a higher chance of encountering the treasured blue dots, which turn your tail into dots for you to consume like Pac-Man CE:DX’s satisfying ghost trains. The dynamic difficulty system persists between runs, and it feels like one of the best such systems I’ve encountered, quickly dialing in a consistently engaging level of challenge.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
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I absolutely love this game. The aesthetics are working great for the retro-arcade style. The controls are responsive and the game is challenging. Also the hidden sequence adds yet another dimension to the game (pun not intended).
I got this game years ago on IndieGameStand. That store doesn’t operate anymore and I had the only .exe file I managed to download before they went out of business. And here we are, qrth-phyl finally safely in my steam library.
I’m looking forward for future updates. Maybe VR support could be nice?
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
Wanderlust: Travel Stories
- Wanderlust: Travel Stories -
I’m old. I’ve played a lot of games. I’ve played games that were in cassette form. I’ve played the first Civ game off a bunch of floppies… so quite a bit of gaming history up to now, 2020. I’ve played AAA titles, I’ve played the very best the 80’s and 90’s had to offer. I’ve played some absolute stinkers, and I’ve played games that are simply unplayable. My expectations are always set to medium/ low.
Despite all of that experience, Wanderlust is still very hard to love.
– Real player with 185.9 hrs in game
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Explore the world from your desk!
Overall, Wanderlust: Travel Stories is a very pleasant, calming experience, one that feels as though it should be played in the same way one might curl up with a good book. Both the stories and broader narrative are interesting and it is a strong interactive novel, however, there are additional gameplay elements and mechanics integrated with just enough subtlety. Destination, travel methods, interactions and even choice of clothes can affect both character and story but this didn’t feel intrusive or hectic in any way and all the elements combine organically to create a somewhat meditative piece of interactive escapism.
– Real player with 14.2 hrs in game