Update Two Hundred and Ninety-Three: 16 March 2019
Fumiko!
6.6 hours playtime, 20 of 20 achievements
6.5/10
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
In a word, Fumiko! is ambitious. A platformer that takes the word ‘platformer’ to new heights, you play as the eponymous Fumiko, an AI trapped in a compartmentalized network and struggling to bust out. Fumiko gets jerked around, given abilities that all too soon are taken away, until she grabs shit for herself and struggles against homeworld-ending forces. Those that help Fumiko are punished for it, and it constantly feels like she’s one step away from total annihilation.
Overall, it’s a really fun game, though it sometimes gets in its own way. Once you’re able to let loose, flying and jumping around the huge maps is a joy. It feels cool as fuck to just fly around. Then, the downside: Fumiko!’s distinctive style is lovely to look at… but at times makes it completely MYSTIFYING as to what exactly I’m looking at. It certainly pushes the envelope and takes full opportunity about ‘representing an abstract 3D virtual space,’ but when it runs afoul of making it difficult to see what’s where, what can I walk on, just bombarding with virtual noise it just becomes frustrating.
Some of the gameplay is frustrating, too, particularly the hard difficulty jump in the very very last area. Some parts are quite easy, other parts much much much moreso.
Regardless, I enjoyed my time with this game, even if it was with a week-long split in between it. If you’re interested in some avant-garde platforming with a pretty interesting story, pick it up!
Next up: My first Challenge Me! in a very long time! Thank you, BLAEO User Neku, for picking my games!
See you soon!
Epistory, cool. Will look for that wrap-up post!
Epistory is so lovely, hope you enjoy!!
I quite enjoyed Epistory, looking forward to see your post on it! ^_^
as very-active-capybara, started bookmarking BLAEO pages like this one (…mostly for FUMIKO). thanks tsu!
oh, you’re welcome! I’m always happy to be of service
Epistory! Beware that if you’re using a laptop don’t let the battery run out when you’re playing the game. It happened to me and my save got sorta corrupted and my word count got reduced or my progress got set back or some bug happened. Ended up having to grind on respawning monsters in order to progress which is really tedious. But other than that, I enjoyed the game. :3
I’d been waiting to read what you’d thought of Fumiko since I saw you mention it in a previous post lol. I thought it had quite a good start and it was interesting enough but unfortunately I just didn’t find it fun… the platforming and jumping around never really felt right, which is a shame as like you say it does have style! I was surprised to see so many positive reviews for it.
Oh yeah, I also thought the end was just kind of… expected, and I hate it when games have almost a non-ending. Like… oh. Okay. It’s just over.
I really liked being able to basically fly in the final third of the game, but before that it was really floaty.
I’m happy for the dev, since it looked like it was mostly made by one person with some people helping him from time to time. It’s a real unique idea hampered by some questionable design decisions, but I’m glad it exists.