Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

12 hours played
100% completed

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture: The journey starts in Yaughton, a fictinal village located in England. All the residents have vanished and it’s up to us to follow their stories, find out about their lives and learn about the very interesting phenomenon that caused everything. A stunning looking game but I hope we all know that having beautiful graphics isn’t the only thing that makes a game. Storytelling is especially important in a walking simulator and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture doesn’t really have any problems in this regard either. All of this is also accompanied by a fantastic soundtrack and very impressive voice acting. My first natural playthrough took around 6-7 hours so the game has pretty good length for a walking simulator.

However the game suffers a lot from poorly designed gameplay mechanics. Game only auto saves during certain story sequences and these are limited in numbers. You can easily lose hours of progress if you explore every nook and cranny and not find the next story sequence to save. Luckily the developers added a beta update which allows you to manually save by clicking on maps scattered around the game. This a life saver, if you are thinking of playing the game make sure to update your game to beta. I should also warn you that the walking speed is extremely slow. It’s like “we want you to be slow so you can enjoy this beautiful looking game we made”. I don’t need to be forced to walk slowly to enjoy my surroundings. There is a sprint button but it takes 6-7 seconds to pick up the pace and even at fullest sprint speed, it’s close to the original walking speed.

The game requires a minimum of 2 playthroughs that is if you are really thorough in one of them for “completionist” achievement which requires you to unlock every single story element including TVs, phones, radios, past events. Apart from these there are also collectibles in the forms of graffiti, books, maps, train numbers, microwaves. They all have their own achievements. There isn’t a checklist for collectibles so if you miss one, you won’t know what it is. It took me 3 playthroughs to complete the game. Honestly, this is an annoying game to get 100% on.

Leaving Lyndow

2 hours played
100% completed

Leaving Lyndow: A very casual and short walking simulator (took me around 30 minutes). After an elimination process, one person is picked to be on an expedition to explore the world. You play the character that is picked and the objective of the game is to say goodbye to everyone you know before you set sail to your dreams. The surroundings are extremely linear, achievements are quite easy to get, there are only about 5 very small and limited locations to explore and a handful of characters to talk to. The game was a pleasant surprise despite every criticism I mentioned and when I tweeted to the developers to thank them for the game and that I’m looking forward to their upcoming Eastshade game which will take place in the same world as Lyndow, they said “You are the best”. I just love indie developers <3

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier: (Gift from Team Backlog <3) What a collosal failure in my opinion. Telltale started having this habit of putting a dialogue option but when chosen, saying something that is not even close to the option you picked. There are so many instances of it in this game. It’s also a lot shorter compared Season 1 and 2. Not as short as Michonne but pretty short. It has a bunch of characters one can’t feel anything for so none of the choices and their consequences had any impact on me. The game ends on a cliffhanger by the way but the ending credits mention that the story will continue so I guess we’ll get another game... I feel like this franchise should be put to rest. Nothing can beat Lee’s story.

Under Leaves: (Gift from Team Backlog <3) This is a surprisingly challenging hidden object game. I really enjoyed it. There is not a HOG in the sense of this find the key, backtrack, open this chest, find a crowbar, backtrack, open the crate, find a knife, backtrack, cut the rope etc. Each scene you are welcomed by a cute animal which asks you to find certain objects. Your job is to find them but it really isn’t as easy as it sounds. Some objects blend extremely well with the background. Once you complete the request of an animal, you are taken to another area to immediately be tasked to find another type of object. It’s hidden object scene after hidden object scene with no filler content inbetween.Highly recommended if you like this type of genre.

Glass Masquerade: I’d like to thank my friend who has gifted this to me despite wanting it for themselves (I was informed of this after the game was redeemed, tsk tsk! I never would have accepted otherwise). It’s a gorgeous jigsaw puzzle game. You have clock shaped jigsaw bases and the art depends on the culture of the country you have selected in the game menu. Finishing a clock from one country unlocks more countries. There are set difficulty options for each country, the harder the difficulty the more jigsaw pieces you will have to assemble. I believe the highest difficulty had 66 pieces.

Distraint: Distraint is a very short and casual adventure game. Your objective is to evict people and then celebrate people's misery with your greedy bosses. Everytime you want to evict someone they will ask you to do a task for them before they leave. These are very simple puzzles, locations are limited so you won't get lost or anything. Achievements are simple to get but missable and the game itself is very enjoyable. I didn't like the last chapter though because it was extremely disorienting for me as I am terrible with directions. The game was fantastic up until that point, when I reached last chapter I had to check a guide to progress cause I was starting to get seriously dizzy.