VirtuaVerse - cyberpunk pixel point & click adventure

[HoboForEternity]

it's been too long but i wrote a review for the game.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/hoboForEternity/recommended/1019310/

basically:

puzzles and good and fun, the humor is sick and twisted kind but funny, amazing art, amazing music.

the world has cool ideas, but the story and characters feels pretty flat.

 

[Darkozric]

it's been too long but i wrote a review for the game.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/hoboForEternity/recommended/1019310/

basically:

puzzles and good and fun, the humor is sick and twisted kind but funny, amazing art, amazing music.

the world has cool ideas, but the story and characters feels pretty flat.

I mostly agree with your review except for the voice acting part. Voice acting is not an absolute necessity in games in general. Indie voice acting is usually very bad, it would ruin a part of my experience if it had cheap voice acting. Plus I always give priority to gameplay above anything else.

 

[HoboForEternity]

it's been too long but i wrote a review for the game.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/hoboForEternity/recommended/1019310/

basically:

puzzles and good and fun, the humor is sick and twisted kind but funny, amazing art, amazing music.

the world has cool ideas, but the story and characters feels pretty flat.

I mostly agree with your review except for the voice acting part. Voice acting is not an absolute necessity in games in general. Indie voice acting is usually very bad, it would ruin a part of my experience if it had cheap voice acting. Plus I always give priority to gameplay above anything else.

I am not too bothered by the lack of voice acting tbh. I keep racking whether to put it as negative or not, but for SOME people it might matter, so yeah.

In retrospect, i should have just mention that the game have no voice acting but not putting it as one of the negative. Editing the review after it's published feels wrong now unless i am correcting errors.

 

[Misco Jones]

The main character walks slower than a snail.

 

[HoboForEternity]

i am glad the game is doing fairly well.

this is the stats comparison with dave's biggest game so far and it is just down a notch from unavowed's numbers:

 

[Darkozric]

The poor "chiptune makers" are giving lessons on how to do a proper adventure in 2020 .

 

[DoomIhlVaria]

I played through this. And having played a lot of text-based and point-and-click adventure games, the puzzle design in this really stands out as some of the worst I can remember. It feels like they started out with some pretty reasonable puzzles and then just crammed in intermediate steps after the fact to lengthen the game. The end result is puzzles that do not conceptually or logically hang together anymore. And there are a few places where, even when the logic is sound, you can't take the expected action until after talking to the right person and having the person literally tell you what to do.

There is also quite a bit of pixel hunting but it's not so extreme as to stand out as especially bad compared to historical norms.

The ending is weak. The "twist" is telegraphed so forcefully that there's no shock at all, which is compounded by a lack of originality. I suppose it's in keeping with the preachy Luddism witnessed throughout the game and therefore artistically consistent. It's hard to maintain an edgy cyberpunk feel when the narrative is so weighed down with mainstream, present-day NPC talking points.

It's a shame because I've been an MBR fan for a few years and have bought all the MBR albums on Bandcamp. And the soundtrack definitely holds up. It's just not a good adventure design.

TL;DR: Buy the soundtrack but skip the game.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Well, I tried it and I really did not like it.

The story makes no sense, because I usurped the ID of my girlfriend to buy some shit from some dude, my GF is now on prime time as public enemy number one and I am in a quest to find her to ... er.... help her... so I join a gang ? Sorry, no.
The puzzles are needlessly convoluted or even illogical (early examples : "poisoning" the makis triggers the restaurant owner to throw a whole bag of stuff) or you have to understand how the universe is working to do them - but how the universe is working is actually explained nowhere (early example : playsafe card in the coin returner).
Pixel art is great, but it makes the pixel hunting really horrible as there is no way to display what you can interact with (which the game could have featured without being made too easy given the number of interactive items,
Texts are pointless, very boring ; characters are dull,

I did not find the game preachy, but I dropped the game as some point out of boredom. Visual and music is cool, the rest is not.

On the other hand, I HIGHLY recommend the Red Strings Club :

https://af.gog.com/game/the_red_strings_club?as=1649904300

 

[Darkozric]

Well, I tried it and I really did not like it.

The story makes no sense, because I usurped the ID of my girlfriend to buy some shit from some dude, my GF is now on prime time as public enemy number one and I am in a quest to find her to ... er.... help her... so I join a gang ? Sorry, no.
The puzzles are needlessly convoluted or even illogical (early examples : "poisoning" the makis triggers the restaurant owner to throw a whole bag of stuff) or you have to understand how the universe is working to do them - but how the universe is working is actually explained nowhere (early example : playsafe card in the coin returner).
Pixel art is great, but it makes the pixel hunting really horrible as there is no way to display what you can interact with (which the game could have featured without being made too easy given the number of interactive items,
Texts are pointless, very boring ; characters are dull,

I did not find the game preachy, but I dropped the game as some point out of boredom. Visual and music is cool, the rest is not.

On the other hand, I HIGHLY recommend the Red Strings Club :

https://af.gog.com/game/the_red_strings_club?as=1649904300

He didn't like VirtuaVerse and he recommend us a worst "game" than VirtuaVerse, a storyfag bar-tending game!!!LOL! Am I supposed to pour drinks and lathe pottery for the whole game and talk like there is no tomorrow? No thanks.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Finished the game. I liked it, great art and music. Real puzzles to solve.

The game indeed is kinda preachy. I didn't care for it. It's even fun and original in its own way. I've never seen such Luddite preaching in games before.

Not great.

Spoiler

Wanna play something great? Play BROK!

But fairly competent. 4-/5