#20 | Some SG Wins

Completed two games, and both happen to be SG wins. ^^

• Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna)
  

  7 hours playtime

  19 of 19 achievements

Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) is a rather simple platformer with some puzzle elements, where you get to control a little girl and her furry friend on their journey to find the source of the never-ending blizzard. The game is set in Alaska, home to the Iñupiat, and as you progress through the game, you unlock short clips that tell stories about the Iñupiat and their culture. These videos are my favourite part of the game - I could feel the love the interviewees had for their home and I learned so much about them. The in-game story revolves around the contents of the videos, which makes the game feel like a beautiful piece of art - but unfortunately the game is riddled with bugs which takes away some of the immersion.

My characters would get stuck in random places, and the controls were terrible. It would be that bad if timing and precision didn’t matter, but it did, and cost me many deaths. The worst bug I encountered was that the next segment of a level (during the escape from the ice giant, the tree that could bring me across the river wouldn’t start moving) didn’t trigger which essentially meant I couldn’t progress. But for the longest time I thought it was my lack of skill (and the unresponsive controls), so I kept trying and trying to no avail. Turns out it was a bug and I had to exit and relaunch.

I also completed the Foxtales DLC - gameplay is similar but less platforming and more puzzling, and is based on another story. The DLC had a few jump scares that I hated - jump scares are rarely necessary, and even less so in a game like Never Alone. Get the DLC if you like the base game.

Scavenger hunt progress: Got Man’s Best Friend with a screenshot of the girl and her fox.

• KAMI
  

  6 hours playtime

  no achievements

KAMI is a nice little puzzler with beautiful minimalistic origami-style graphics. Minimalistic graphics seem to be very popular among puzzle games. Not that I’m complaining - I love simple when it’s done well. I first played the free version of KAMI on mobile - which only included the first few levels. I couldn’t get enough of it but couldn’t justify spending a few bucks on a mobile game either, so I was really glad when I won this on SG. The basic mechanic in this game is to “flood” the whole board with a single color using the smallest number of moves.

The puzzles weren’t too easy or too hard - I solved all but one without any hints. (The last one I “cheated” a little and used a hint because I had spent 2 hours trying to find the optimal solution and was getting frustrated.) It’s a really good game overall and recommended to all who enjoy puzzles.