The Only One

Title: The Only One

Genre: Puzzle adventure

Completion Time: Nineteen minutes

One of the best implementations I've seen of using mechanics to reinforce mood.

Interesting:

This seems to be a budding genre: games where you do the same thing repeatedly, getting further each time as you gather information and master skills. I am a huge fan. This is a fairly straightforward implementation, although it gets points for creative marriage of genre and theme. 3/5

Fun:

The action was exciting and for the most part it was smoothly designed. For a game like this, being at loose ends would be torturous, and the way the world is laid out mostly managed to avoid that. That said, I wouldn't have wanted the game to be any longer. 4/5.

Moving:

This game is short and simple, lacking the depth of my five-point games. That said, a lot of emotion is packed into the small interactions between the characters. And while I've never experienced a loss like the main character, I am familiar with the crippling depression he starts with. I thought the game did a phenomenal job capturing the experience of breaking out of apathy and re-engaging with life and the world.  4/5.

A powerful experience in a small package. Great demonstration of storytelling that can only be done via the unique medium of gaming. Highly recommended.

Anodyne (Highly Recommended)

Title: Anodyne

Genre: A retro, Zelda-esque action-adventure game

Completion Time: My logged playing time was 6 hours and 25 minutes. Someone more coordinated than me might finish more quickly.

Anodyne is, for the most part, a dark, surreal, and cryptic imitation of old Zelda games like Link to the Past or the Game Boy ones. Add in its Earthbound-like diversity of quirky worlds and characters, and Anodyne was pretty much everything I could want in a game concept. Your mileage may vary.

Interesting:

Like I said, Anodyne is very firmly based in old Zelda games. However, instead of a sword the main character is armed with a broom, opening up a whole array of dust-related puzzles. (Not a phrase I ever expected to write.) There are also a lot of puzzles that involve exploiting the behavior of enemies. An old concept, but with some compelling twists. 3/5

Fun:

For starters, I will tell you this: you are going to fall in pits and die. A lot. Jumping is always finicky in these kinds of games, and plugging in a gamepad bumped up the fun level at least two points, and even then there were some rooms where I was ready to pitch a fit. That said, the gameplay is otherwise excellent. Puzzles are logical and varied, and combat is at a nice level of challenge. The world is sprawling and involves a ton of exploring, but a good map and teleportation system means that the spatially challenged (e.g., me) can wander about the beautiful maps without fear.  5/5

Moving:

What this game lacks in coherence it well makes up for in atmosphere. This is clearly a very personal game for the writers, but not in a way that tells you anything concrete for them, so I think your reaction to the game depends on whether their personal mythology resonates with you. In a world so packed with detail, though, I had no problem finding plenty of things that pulled on something deep in me. If any of you play this, I will be very curious what you think. 4/5

A bizarre, beautiful, and compelling game in the body of a much more commonplace one. This game will stay with me for a long time.