Chionophile
While this game is tiny (the trailer honestly shows you most of the game) it’s stunningly pretty in a way you can’t quite define. Like other walking sims from the dev we are outside, this time in winter. Kind of like Bottle, but with a more upbeat tone and fresher graphics. It is short, especially if you use your right mouse button to act as a sort of heads up display and track down flowers and platforms quickly.
But there’s also a lot more to explore once you’ve checked all the achievements off your list. Honestly, yes, it’s short. I clocked in at 45 minutes, and I got terribly lost too. But it is also like Bottle in that you can make your own fun. Go back in and take a lovely walk in the gorgeous landscape. Let your worries go and just be.
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Walking Simulator 3D Games.
In a similar vein to “Pluviophile”, it’s a nice looking environment, but with a number of strange design choices that mar its potential to be a nice peaceful walk.
To start, there are still, for some reason, flowers that you need to pick up and take to stone circles to open the path forward. There isn’t anything inherently interesting about the mechanic, so it just detracts from the experience by arbitrating certain places where you must go, making you less inclined to explore elsewhere on your own.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
The Space Between
I am not fond of games that have me blundering around in the dark. This causes nausea because you are visually disoriented. Also, the ending was just… nothing? OK you are done now, here are 2 chairs? Sorry but this was just not great. :(
– Real player with 12.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Walking Simulator Visual Novel Games.
I have a soft spot for psychological games with a retro aesthetic, the weirder they are, the more I enjoy them. You can complete the game in 40 minutes which is admittedly short considering the slow text, but in the end, I care more about my overall impression of the narrative. Without spoiling anything, you can tell from the trailer that the game focuses on intimacy issues, paranoia, and anxiety - which it does pretty well. While I enjoyed the story and the psychedelic visuals, the actual dialogue could use some polish; with the game like this I think you could avoid saying too much, and it will still have the same effect. I wish the text would not lock you into the conversation the entire time, you could just let the player walk around and read, not to mention that the camera tends to lock in the wrong place anyway. It’s not a horror game aside from one little jump scare, it’s more about the atmosphere and creating that isolation through an unsettling environment. I am not always a fan of dark shading and tiny rooms, but within the context of the narrative that tries to convey that feeling of being alone, I think the claustrophobic locations work very well.
– Real player with 3.0 hrs in game
Anemoiapolis: Chapter 1
ENCOUNTER
You have fallen into a surreal and haunted underground neighborhood. Discover its origins and escape with your life - and sanity - intact.
OBSERVE
Remember that hallway you found at your workplace or school? The one you didn’t realize was there before. Nobody ever goes there, it has no windows, and it seemingly has no purpose. The lights might be on, the floor is usually clean, but it exists for nobody.
This transitional place is the lifeblood of Anemoiapolis: a world with no sunlight and no humanity, buzzing with fluorescent apathy. It does not care about you, yet it watches intently.
SURVIVE
Experience the dungeon-like malls, pools, hallways, and basements of Anemoiapolis in first person. Utilize platforming and puzzle solving to navigate the barren commercial catacombs. If you start to feel complacent, you might not be ready for what’s around the corner.
ABOUT
Anemoiapolis reflects the experiences of a developer who grew up among empty buildings in Midwest USA, and who is currently processing our world of empty buildings brought on by COVID-19.
Expect critiques on mindless consumerism, feelings of impending doom, and eerie “mallcore” aesthetics.
Soundtrack by JORDANN and 4REST
Read More: Best Walking Simulator Procedural Generation Games.
DAEMMERLICHT
You’re playing as a small, orb like vessel that was pulled violently into this world by someone or something. As you find out that you are not the first one to arrive, it soon dawns on you that this isn’t a place, you want to stay. Many before you got lost. Will you escape?
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Explore a dark and ominous world.
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Find three lights, attached to three decisions.
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Collect remnants of the poor souls that came before you.
You will have the option of either playing in native resolution or turning on “low-res” mode for bigger, crunchier pixels.
Sunlight
Awful. A collection of random voices muttering gibberish in splat water color forest, and your arms are missing. You can’t understand what they are saying, so just tune them out. There is nothing to interact with, just painted trees and land, and sky. It takes a full minute to boot into it, and likewise to get out of it… Maybe if you waste 20 minutes into it, you can find some angle in the ‘forest’ to take a few nice screenshots and use them as desktop wall paper. But not much else in this, some additional random moaning choir music, pleasant but formless and meaningless. Pity, it seemed like it would have potential if they cleaned up the broken audio noise, reverb overload and overlapping garbled voices. In SETTINGS - You can turn down the voices, the Music, and or turn down the nature sounds to Silent. Try just Nature, no voices, no music. Then, you’ll enjoy a quiet walk in the woods. It does have an ending once you pick a handful of flowers. You can post your thoughts at the ending to share them with others. You could also just put on the music and silence the rest, enjoy the music playing in the background while you work. But the voices - ugh - babbling gibberish. Graphics 7/10 - watercolor trees.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
Sunlight
Sunlight is a thirty-minute walk through a beautiful forest enhanced by a wonderful Tchaikovsky arrangement. It’s a decent entry in the walking sim genre.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
Thirty Flights of Loving
The Metascore for this game is very misleading. It isn’t even an appropriate score if you try to call this “game” artwork–it’s poorly made no matter how you look at it.
You can literally beat this in 20 minutes and there is no replayability. There are two “games” inside here, in reality both are more like mini-games. Gameplay is entirely linear, there are no secrets to find, no character development, plus unoriginal and boring gameplay elements. There is no redeeming factor to this game; it’s not even priced fairly.
– Real player with 1.9 hrs in game
This is quite possibly the worst excuse for a game I have ever encountered. The game consists of about 10 different rooms, each taking about a minute to get through and suddenly out of nowhere you’re hit with a The End sign and a bunch of walkthrough credits with comments about the great decisions they made and how they decided on them. These great decisions are along the lines of weird random jump cuts that change the entire scenario for no reason. There’s also a room with displays of a bunch the game models and animated GIF video timelapses of screenshots of their creation. How impressive is that?
– Real player with 1.7 hrs in game
All the Delicate Duplicates
A short, first person adventure with a strong artistic vibe, and a focus on narrative rather than puzzles. You explore the home of a family who has endured some form a mysterious trauma, which involves some psychological and metaphysical themes. Uncovering the narrative occurs through inspection of objects left lying around the home. One of the novel aspects of this game is the multiple timelines, allowing you to explore the setting and story at different points in time. The somewhat enigmatic story is intriguing and indeed I would have liked to have seen it fleshed out even further.
– Real player with 2.6 hrs in game
Absolutely Highly Recommended… IF:
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You have an OPEN mind
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You go into this knowing it is an experience, not really a “game” like most would define “game”
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you can deal with disturbing ideas, seeing the world as someone with a debilitating neurological condition (aka/mental illness0 might see it, every day
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You aren’t a pew-pew-pew-pew only kind of gamer, with extreme biases agaisnt anyone who is different than you.
Especially that last one.
Worth Full Price. Absolutely.
– Real player with 2.4 hrs in game
Flowers for You: a pleasant walk
Great game for relax. Adorable colorful graphics. Great job guys.
– Real player with 4.3 hrs in game
A beautiful and relaxing game. Simple mechanics but cool..
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
Forgetter
Disclaimer: I helped out with testing the game and got the game as a free copy.
The game is mostly a “walking simulator”, so the gameplay is kept relatively simple and the focus lies more on the experience of entering the very different minds of two artists and exploring their memories and traumas. Some of these memories I kind of expected (e.g. pressure from parents) but there are also other memories, some of them even pleasant that I didn’t see coming. Personally, it felt like I got to know two people by discovering some of their key memories, which was interesting to me, because I don’t know much about the artist life. I would have liked to see the game explore the different ways the “brain recycling” technology plays out for people, like in an episode of “Black Mirror”.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
Novice developers from Hong Kong were very kind to submit the game to my curator page https://store.steampowered.com/curator/26168615-Video-Games-Art-International/ and ask for my opinion.
I would thank developers with a positive review, but this is more kinda mixed review.
The game is in first person view and allows for free exploration of 3D environments. Incipit of story is very intriguing and original. You’re a young girl on probation for a new weird job at MindJob corporation. You’re a “forgetter”. Your mission is to clear the minds of famous deceased artists! Yes, at MindJob they recycle the minds of geniuses and artists and implant them in children brains! Families pay for their children to be next generation geniuses and artists! But artists and geniuses minds are affected by traumatic memories and deviant behavior, so you have to erase and clean them before the new implant! Do you want your son to be the next Van Gogh but with both the ears, without deviant behavior? Mindjob has the solution for you! :-)
– Real player with 2.7 hrs in game
Kristallijn
I’m not entirely sure what I played. At first, it seemed as if I was playing a walking sim through a pretentious abstract dancing exhibit at some cliche abandoned building. There almost seemed to be some kind of suspense through out the game, as if you’re just constantly waiting for something to happen. The game itself is actually better than a lot of the lower grade games I’ve played. The strobe effects were a bit much in some spots (a unique kind of thing to have be the bulk sensory in a game, but it does mean that a certain percentage of gamers can’t play this game). My biggest issue was the story. I could definitely feel the game was trying to go for something but it kinda just fell flat. Even for an abstract game, I had to really think about what the ending could mean and I’m still lost and confused. Call me uncultured, but it was a bit too vague for my taste.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
Honestly, a shocker from start to finish. The way this game manipulates lights and short looped movements is incredible. I adore the simplicity and how anxiety inducing this game gets, but the ending…hits too close to home. You get in such a loop of pausing and waiting for things to move and see where you need to go, then the ending breaks you out of that cycle and its just. 100/10. Cmon, you have 3 dollars to spare, just play it and experience the wonderful work that is kristallijn :)
– Real player with 1.0 hrs in game