DISCLAIMERS:
Written by dne27, this a collection of reviews of games from the website itch.io. All games were free of charge, but you can give a donation to the author if you so choose. This review will start with the shortest game and end with the game that took me the longest to complete. Each game will have a subheading siting the; name of the developer, run time and platform. This may be updated if I find other games that I liked/disliked and want to write about. If so, there will be a edit with a time stamp to let you know when the edit was made.
EACH REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS, READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Edit: 09/08/2019 at 03:15 for the review of Atma.
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Itch.io.
My relationship with itch.io has been... awkward at best. It's certainly a great place if you're looking for two second Ren.py visual novels with such awful art and characters covered in bandages you spend the whole time 'playing' wondering why they're not at hospital instead of the mall. I've all but given up actually bothering to scour websites and storefronts like Steam and itch.io mostly because they're a pain to use, the likelihood of you finding a game worth the £20 you're prepared to spend is slim compared to the chance of you stumbling across a assets-flipped military shooter. However, recently I stumbled across a video by the youtuber Ragnarrox and his video 'Games from Underground #2 | Non Violent & Relaxing Games' in which he talks about two particular games that are completely free called Routine Feat and Bird of Passage. Surprisingly enough these two games are hosted on itch.io and needless to say my interest in the website had been re-peaked. And at first, I was slightly disheartened. Yes, there's still waves after waves of shite furry visual novels and cutesy yandere games inspired by a certain literature club but lo-and-behold I swam through the shit in search for those illusive games promising me a short deep narrative adventure. And I believe, dear reader, I've found a handful. I'm going to fire off some brief reviews starting from the shortest games to the longest but don't take that as a gauge of how good they are. I encourage you to play each one as all of them are free and don't take a powerhouse to play. Hope you enjoy!
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goodbye, doggy.
(By Picogram. Free of Charge, 5mins. Browser-based.)
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P.E Noire
(By Picogram. Free of Charge, 5mins. Browser, Windows.)
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Storyseeker.
(By Miles. Free of Charge, 10/15mins. Windows, Mac.)
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11:45 - A Vivid Life.
(By Deconstructeam. Free of Charge, 10/15mins. Browser, Windows.) Spoilers Ahead.
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Lieve Oma (Dear Grandma).
(By Florian Veltman. Free of Charge, 30mins. Windows, macOS and Linux.) Spoilers Ahead.The last one on this list is by far my favourite game so far. A love letter to the author's Grandmother, Lieve Oma is a game about a young boy and their grandmother on a walk through a forest collecting mushrooms.
Having lost my own grandma this year I was hesitant to play this knowing how it might make me feel but boy am I glad I did. Words don't even begin to describe how lovable this short game is. The premise is simple enough as it is; you play as a quiet young boy who's been dragged out by his grandma to go hunting for mushrooms. There's not to much to the game in terms of gameplay, you simply push the analog stick to move around and press A, X or Spacebar to interact. Occasionally you might find a mushroom which you'll pick up and show your grandma, who'll tell you whether it's edible or what type of mushroom it is. You're mostly controlling your character as he moves through the forest - and what a beautiful forest it is. Lieve Oma's forest is a soft, autumnal lowpoly masterpiece that feels more like a serene painting that you can move through quite like Nomada Studio's Gris. For a one man project, Veltman has created an impressive location that feels alive even in it's peaceful state as you traverse through pine trees, navigate a winding river and pass log piles and bundles of leaves. You can almost imagine the boy passive-aggressively kick at stray leaves as you amble through the forest it feels that real, despite the obvious graphic artstyle. The music too makes you feel like you're being enveloped in a soft warm blanket as your grandma sings you to sleep.
But the story isn't one to sleep on. It's a beautiful tale about a grandma's love and the power of just listening to someone's story. Throughout your mushroom gathering adventure the story begins to show itself in non-intrusive, beautifully well-written dialogue bubbles. It's gradually revealed that the young boy's parents have divorced and he's had to move across the world with his mother, leaving most of his belongings and friends behind. It's a pain I know all too well myself but it's also set in the unfortunate reality that most children go through. The loss of the family structure as well as friendship groups is a horrible thing to go through as a kid. Often their voices are drowned out by the noise of squabbling parents and legal bullshit that they don't understand and in the case of being moved somewhere else then it's even worse, leaving behind friends in a world that may feel like it's interconnected - but it's really not. When Oma mentions why doesn't the boy just talk to his friends via 'the game where you make things out of blocks' (nice one gran) he mentions that it's not the same anymore, the other kids have 'in-jokes' that you'd had be there to understand. It's all very painfully relatable in a way a lot of these recent trend of narrative-driven games aren't - mostly because of the honest and real dialogue. The boy talks the way a sulky young child would, reluctant and slightly irritated whilst the grandma is earnest in her attempts to communicate with her grandchild. The walk for fresh air is a pretext for the grandmother to help give the boy a chance to talk, to let him express himself and his pains of feeling isolated and alone. She conveys her love and admiration for him through lending her ear, acknowledging the struggles he's going through and giving her whole-hearted support to him because they're family and that's what families do. On the homepage of Lieve Oma, Veltman states that the game is a ode to the people who provide children 'the stability and care a child needs growing up' - and that really hit me, hard. My grandma was one of the most important people in my life; she never judged me for who I am and she would always lend an ear if I ever needed to talk - despite the fact we could barely speak the same language. The beauty in the simplicity of just taking the time to listen can be immensely helpful, as seen by the scenes where you play as the older version of the boy - happy to inform his grandma he's coming to see her for a nice cup of coco. She gave him the chance to be himself and he's all the better for it.
I'm honestly glad Veltman created this game because really it's a beautiful letter to all of those people out there; be it your grandma, a friend or even your dog, who respect you and love you but most importantly they listen. To those who give us the time of day I am eternally grateful, to Veltman for creating a lovely story and game and to my grandma, whom I love very much.
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Atma.
(By Team Atma. Free of Charge, 40/50mins. Windows/Steam.) Spoilers Ahead.
Atma is a brilliant concept game designed by three students marred by awkward technical issues, poor story and bad combat. I really don't want to be too harsh as it's clearly a student project and you shouldn't expect triple A quality but a product's a product, and a consumers gotta consume.
I want to start be absolutely grovelling at the insanely high quality of art here on display. Many have drawn comparisons to Hyper Light Drifter, and they're not wrong, but boy is this game surpassing it and then some. If there were a physical copy of this game I'd be busting into universities across the globe to show undergrads what a real project looks like (I'll regret saying that one later on haha). The painstaking detail here on anything from the headbob of a tiny bird to the amazingly real-like way Shaya (the protagonist) walks is just astounding. The colours are vibrant and pop-out at you, the characters are all bizarre and distinct from each other; with a nice mix of Asian mythology crossed with anthropomorphism. There's only a few short places to explore and each one is handcrafted with such love and care I could help but take a shit-ton of screenshots and just walk around each place for ages. The life you can see in every character's movements alone tops the awkward standing-still, shot-reverse-shot lifelessness modern games have going on at the moment. The water bubbling in the waterfalls and stream, the way the butcher chops away at his daily catch - there's so much life here I couldn't help but feel attached to the village despite the short length of the game. I think all words escape me on just how fucking beautiful this game is so I'll move on, but I hope you understand that if I could buy a poster of this game's art I'd have my whole room covered in it.
The major problems lie in the technical side of the game. Whilst it runs fine, I experienced some pretty immersion-breaking bugs and glitches. Off the top of my head the worse glitches/bugs would be; upon first launching the game it crashed - twice, a sound effect got caught up in a irritating loop, I would constantly get attacked during a cutscene and then die afterwards and the most infuriating was a bug to do with loading screens. Typically a loading screen between locations is activated upon the player hitting an invisible trigger and this is the case with Atma, but not only can you still hear Shaya move around but sometimes it never fades to black, leaving you to sometimes wonder if the game has crashed as nothing moves bar the loading icon in the corner. Again, I'm aware that this is a school project but the fact that these problems, commonly referenced in the steam reviews and comments on the itch.io page is kind of surprising and frustrating as it can ruin the experience. The combat is another major problem. It's no secret that Atma takes major inspiration from the critical darling, Okami, which is one of my all time favourite games and - in my eyes - is the only one to have mastered the tablet/painting combat system (probably because it pioneered it). Games like the upcoming Concrete Genie and Infamous: Second Son/First Light have their own spins on the idea of using a paintbrush/paintbrush-like system but mostly use it for secondary mechanics such as graffiti or restoring the world like Epic Mickey - but only a few have attempted to use it as the main method of combat. Okami has it's typical button-mashing to activate combos but alongside that you can use a variety of different brushstrokes to defeat your enemies too - this is done by hitting R1 and freezing time (in most cases) and using R2 to simulate a brush painting across the screen. Atma attempts to emulate this a mostly similar control scheme and twists the idea slightly by having you link up every enemy on screen in order to deal damage, rather by doing it one by one. Just a quick mention here but the game recommends a controller, probably because Okami uses a controller and that games works perfectly, however objectively it's better using a mouse the controller input lag is off the charts. Anyways, Atma is missing what made Okami's system so fun and easy to use: it doesn't freeze time. This is a major problem when the enemies in this game are fast-flying projectiles that don't slow down enough for you to link them all up all the while you are unable to move - I'm sorry how does this make sense, it's my time-slowing powers why am I stopped in my tracks but the enemies aren't? I know that it would make the game insanely easy if you stopped the enemies because there's really nothing to the combat besides the vague illusion of strategy the game gives off but that's precisely why I'd argue this game shouldn't have had combat to begin with. You can still have all the puzzles, which also consist of drawing lines from one object to the other, but turn it into more of a story focus game with dialogue choices because the combat does nothing but sully the experience due to the repetition and infuriating mechanics.
Another huge problem, as aforementioned, is the games story. Not only does the story just kinda suck and doesn't go anywhere, it also has this probably unintentional yet uncomfortable message of loving those that abuse you. More on this later. Atma begins with a fairly simple intro accompanied by an okay artstyle with two choices styled in a manner reminiscent of Firewatch, in which you have two choices of how you want Shaya I guess, react to the situation she's been put in before the game starts. Basically the game is about your boyfriend, Atma, and his attempt at creating something called an Urja in an attempt to save the world. How generous. His attempt backfires however, when the God of Fate punishes him for preemptively trying to create his own Urja and he gets caught in between the world of the living and dead. It's up to you, the dutiful girlfriend Shaya, to go save him by collecting fragments of his memory in order to help him reach peace. It's a fine if boring concept, except so much of what I've just told you is kind of either poorly explained or just straight up not in the game - but can be found on the storepage.
There's so many issues with the story I don't even know where to begin. So first up you lose your boyfriend but before we're properly introduced to him, he then tells you to collect memory fragments but in each memory he not only acts like a dick, a manipulator and somewhat of an abuser - he then screws up his plan and causes potentially massive and long-lasting damage to the world. He seems to be somewhat sorry at first, even commenting on the fact that he was punished because of his vanity, but this ends up being essentially lampshading when Atma for no apparent reason attempts to kill you. We're told Atma was a good guy and that you loved him yet all I see is an asshole who is now using you and your supposed love for him in order to get what he wants - which by the way is definitely not the world's salvation. Each choice you make is so arbitrary that it makes no sense as to why they're in the game to begin with. Do you choose being consumed by guilt or choose to brush off Atma's death like it's no biggie? Well it doesn't matter because you're a silent protagonist that just goes along with everything because it's your job and people just tell you what you're supposed to be feeling. It doesn't affect the game in anyway and it's only really the end choice that seems to have any real consequence. And boy what a fucking dumb choice it is. So according to the game's homepage the game actually takes place sometime after Atma's death which isn't clear at all in the game and during that time you've become a guardian, tasked with the usual bullshit of hearing out spirits and appeasing them etc. Anyway you're doing the daily mourn at your ex's grave until he appears and asks you to do him a solid by collecting other peoples memories of him - which is achieved by going to graves I think and linking spirits together. I don't see how this has anything to do with collecting memories seeing how one of the memories is collecting by entering the mind of the bird man who's name I have forgotten.
This is where the idea that this is more of a concept project/demo than it is an actual finished project, because it feels like the idea and polish of going inside the Birdmans (yes I'm calling him that now) mind is too good to then have the rest of them be dumbed down to just being a line puzzle. Anyways you collect the memories and Birdman asks if you'd go and clear out the temple outside of town because evil spirits have desecrated it since Atma fucked up the living and dead world dynamic. Birdman gives you a new ability, the power of wind, and off you go to solve wind-related puzzles before entering the main area of the temple. You purify it and you get to the games main choice. Do you A.) Restore the Urja and bring peace or B.) Steal the Urja for yourself? If we just assume for a moment you chose option A then you are suddenly bombarded with a shitload of praise claiming you just saved the world and now everyone loves you - we'll get back to this I promise. Atma is severely pissed off at you and summons you to his grave for a nice little chat. You enter his impressively roomy grave and Atma remarks how you've probably done the right thing and then laments on how the two of you can't be together. Just kidding, the madman turns fucking psycho on you, saying how if he can't be with you in the real world he just has to kill you to force you to come to the spirit world. How lovely him. He then warps into a fuck-off giant four-armed monster and tries to murder you. You of course, stop him, and then it fades into a cutscene similar to the opening one. Shaya remarks how she's ready to move on now and protect what she loves, but not before she sneaks in a cheeky little 'you're my eternal soulmate I'll love you forever' that made me cringe harder than the time I got hit in the stomach by a rounders ball during P.E when I was 14. I still haven't forgiven you Jess you're not off the hook.
Swinging back round to the choice in the Wind Temple, you've decided to go with the second option. You nick the power of the Urja and the whole world goes to shit. A guy who I think is the village elder tells you that he's sent the children home because it's now too dangerous to be outside, the world is suffocating and will probably end soon. Atma again beckons you to his tomb except this time you're greeted by the God of Fate. He rightly calls you out for being a fucking idiot and dooming the world to destruction, and it's a pretty cool moment - in theory. The moment is ruined because it brings up a point that destroys the internal structure of the game. You see the big choice of the game has no context to it, thus rendering each option useless. You stealing the Urja is supposed to be Shaya attempting to gain some sort of power in order to bring back Atma but it's just not explained that either the Urja has this power or that that's what Shaya was intending to do with it - I mean what even is this particular Urja's power, is it controlling the wind or controlling the fucking world it's not clear. So you get chastised on a choice you most likely did not know was going to have anywhere near the ramifications it would have and all of this could have been solved if someone had just added in a line from any character that said 'Oh yeah don't steal the Urja bc the world will die if u do lol'. And let's not forget that when you do kill the boss, which is just a slightly harder reskin of the other boss by the way, Shaya seems to break the fourth wall by calling you out on your stupid (probably unintended) choice by stating that she's wasted the Urja in a stupid attempt to bring Atma back, even going so far as to question whether she even really needs to. Oh yeah did I even really need to bring back my ex-boyfriend, the guy I've been helping this whole time and is the sole reason this story exists.
It's absolutely mind-blowing how shit the story of this game is, how it feels like it's riddled with more wholes than a cheesy gangster villain's bullet-proof vest. Perhaps the sheer level of detail put into the art meant leaving the story to the wayside or perhaps the people behind Team Atma are all artists and know little about storytelling I guess we'll never know. I'd have honestly enjoyed this game a lot more if it ditched it's story and combat in favour of a exploration game/walking simulator. Really I'd have been a happy little gay if the game had just been going around looking and experiencing a beautiful world filled with anthro-characters with a mystical vibe. If this game truly is a tech demo and we get to see a fully-fledged Atma, I sincerely hope that it's a successful game that leaves behind it's stupid plot and revamps the combat by adding simple things like freezing time for everyone, not just yourself. I wish the best of luck to Team Atma and I look forward to whatever comes next.
Important Links:
RagnarRox YT: https://www.youtube.com/user/RagnarRoxShow
Video from RR referenced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOWy8-Ynru0
goodbye, doggy: https://picogram.itch.io/goodbye-doggy
P.E Noire: https://picogram.itch.io/pe-noire
Storyseeker: https://qwertyprophecy.itch.io/storyseeker
11:45 A Vivid Life: https://deconstructeam.itch.io/1145-a-vivid-life
Lieve, Oma: https://vltmn.itch.io/lieve-oma
Atma: https://atmagame.itch.io/atma
Atma (Steam): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096590/Atma/