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Where We Remain Review

Rating:

Where We Remain is a queer adventure game that reminds me of the old Atari Adventure - Learning how to play is part of the game's charm. However, the adventure part ends once you learn the rules, and quickly degenerates into a score grubbing arcade title.

Additional Info

DeveloperTwoFoldSecret
GenreArcade, Adventure
PlatformsAdobe Flash Player
EngineAdobe Flash
Webpagehttp://twofoldsecret.com/games/whereweremain/

Full Review

I love exploration games, and I love the sheer delight when I discover something that other players may not have seen due to their lack of thoroughness in comparison to me. It is with this frame of mind that I embarked on my playthrough of TwoFold Secret's latest title. Although I wasn't disappointed, I didn't get particularly thrilled either by my experience.

Where We Remain is a Flash adventure game developed by TwoFold Secret using the Flixel Flash game engine. It puts you in the shoes of an explorer, who needs to save this beautiful girl trapped within a cave somewhere on the island he is on. You do this by poking your head into each of the caves that are scattered around the game map, in hopes of finding the chick you are after. Even if you don't find her, every one of the caves holds an item that will be useful to you in your travels - like a map, compass or raft - each of which you have to find a use for yourself, through experimentation.

There are flowers strewn about on the main game map that you can pick up, these plants are an interesting concept - they double as a score counter, as well as a health bar. The final amount of them contribute towards determining which of several alternate endings you get to watch, but bumping into hostile creepies in caves take flowers away from your stash. While exploring the island, you are also constantly pursued by a giant, sinister-looking floating eye that cannot be destroyed, and your only refuge from it is to dodge into the previously mentioned caves.

While I really like the cool idea of having so many enemies and no combat, and also of the seldom used idea of a large undefeatable enemy that is chasing you around, I still found myself feeling cheated over the whole adventure part of the game, which lasted for only about 5 minutes into the game. Once I gathered what the game was about, I lost the sense of discovery I originally had and set about just playing for score (or flowers in this case). One may argue that the notes left behind by the captive female protagonist of this game give substantial reward for exploration, but I beg to differ - Firstly, the notes are almost always read in a panic, because they are not in a cave, and big eye always seems to be lurking around the corner as the note slowly reveals itself word by word. Secondly, reading backstory hardly seems like a satisfying incentive for me to take the risk of encountering big eye.

Probably a method for improving this might be to move the notes into caves - this allows the notes (a.k.a. rewards for exploration) to be enjoyed at the players' own pace. Another solution might be to give visual rewards instead of textual - since the map is generated randomly each time, it would be cool to discover an abandoned castle that is only available in this playthrough, or a nonsense blabbering ghost that is unseen before. This is kinda similar to the random encounters in Fallout 1 and 2, which I personally am in love with.

That said, this game is a pretty good play for about 10-20 minutes, depending on how eager you are to watch all the endings. It is browser playable with the Adobe Flash Player at this website.

Posted by Zhou Xuanming on May 18, 2010 Comments (2)


Vanguard said at 2010-05-19 10:01:

There's an item that shows the "true" messages on the notes in the caves, and reveals more of the game's backstory. By finding those and the alternate endings, you get a much better feel for what was and is happening. Going for time and flowers to get a high score is the least fun way to play this, in my opinion.


Zhou Xuanming said at 2010-05-19 11:03:

Ah I see! I didn't play long enough to get that item - only 2 playthroughs, one on easy, and another on normal. Didn't feel motivated to play on after that.

With what you said in mind, I think the incentive for exploration might be higher than what I described, but there was no way of knowing about this reward before I started exploring, hence I headed straight for the girl each time I found her, and skipped much of the content.

I guess this is a problem with letting the player discover the game at his/her own pace, because there will always be some things that every player will miss.