So I just completed this game and enjoyed quite a bit. It's a nice addition to trippy teen drama set in the PNW genre of games that seems to be popping up. I do hope there's a quick look. I think a lot of the staff would enjoy it.

Has anyone else played it yet? If so what did you think?

@d_w: I wanted to get it but the price tag kinda pushed me away. How long is it because I'm getting this same sort of Gone Home price-to-value dilemma. As discussed on some Bomb/Beastcast the "indie" game market is changing and I keep expecting these smaller games to be $10 when in fact production values and so forth have been going way up.

This game just caught my attention in the last day or so and seems like something that I would enjoy. My understanding is that it is a horror game that more features the story than it does any kind of intense gameplay. I was actually hoping Patrick Klepek would weigh in on this game soon on his YouTube channel, but as the months go by, I'm starting to doubt more and more he is going to do any more Spookin with Scoops after falling so deep down the Super Mario Maker hole.

Damn, I was hoping OlliOlli would nab this title first.

Seriously though, I like the look of this. Going to have to try it.

@htr10:Yeah it's a horror adventure game. (Very light story premise spoilers) There's some time traveling elements to the story, but it's mainly a ghost story. It's not really spooky. There's no monsters that chase you. It's more psychological in that sense and does a pretty good job with that. It controls like a platformer (minus a jump) but is an adventure game it the modern sense. It's similar to Life Is Strange a bit, but the main gimmick involves a hand radio. But there's dialogue choices and those choices alter the story a bit. I'm not sure to what end though as I've only played through the game once.

I could see Patrick loving this game actually. It's definitely up his alley.

@humanity: I spent about 4 to 5 hours to finish it. I didn't get all the collectables however and there seems to be a lot of secrets and incentive to play through multiple times. The art is real nice and has some really awesome visual effects when things get weird. And they get real weird. The soundtrack and sound design are real well done too.

I plan on picking it up and playing it sometime next week.

I was excited for it when I first saw the teaser trailer. Unfortunately my gaming PC died. The console debut is on Xbox One, but I hate the controller enough to skip this until I get a new PC built or it ever comes out on PS4.

I think I'm nearing the end and I've really enjoyed it. Top notch writing and voice acting and it's managed to get me a few times with its scares. The only major complaint I have is that the XBO build is super unstable when loading a new area. I've had the game crash to the dashboard on me a few times and after it wouldn't boot again until I restarted the console. I definitely recommend playing it but either go for the PC version or wait until the XBO is patched. The developers said on Twitter that they're working on it but who knows when it will actually come out.

@d_w: Wait, what is PNW? I'm guessing it's the Porpoises, Narwhals, and Whales genre?

@beachthunder: he meant "trippy teen drama set in the PNW" as the genre, where PNW = Pacific Northwest

Ooh, I see, I misunderstood that sentence (it also doesn't help that I'm not an American, so PNW doesn't register in my mind).

@d_w: "Trippy teen drama set in the PNW" is my second favorite new video game genre. The first being "road trip video game".

I'm picking this up real soon for sure.

I freakin' LOVE the dialogue system. I hope future games steal it shamelessly. It feels so much more organic than any other system I've seen so far.

It's kind of expensive. 20 bucks is steep for a 3 hour indie game. I mean, I love the trailer, and I get why it's 20 bucks, but yeesh. I'll buy it if I hear enough good things about it, or it drops down to 15.

@alex_carrillo: We just need a game that combines them. A trippy teen drama set in the PNW that involves a group of teens road tripping from Walla Walla WA to Seattle.

I'm an American and I didn't get it either. Maybe it's a west-coast thing.

I just finished my first play through a few minutes ago. I absolutely adore it aesthetically, and I enjoyed the story quite a bit. While I wish there has been slightly more from a game play or puzzle perspective, as an example of games as an interactive device for delivering narrative, I was engrossed. I don't know if I will play through it a second time yet or not, but I rarely do that with many games as it is, and this one has me considering it at least.

@thelastgunslinger @beachthunder I live on the west coast and didn't know what it meant either. I think the way the sentence was written was throwing me off.

I grabbed it over the weekend after the end of Life is Strange left me craving more games with TEEEEEEENS (plus I'd heard a lot of good stuff about the quality of the dialog, which did not disappoint). It took me about four hours to beat, I'd say, though I did not do any of the collectible collecting or the side-quest that pops up in the last...quarter or so of the game. Much like Life is Strange, it's about loss and growing up, which for whatever reason has been resonating with me more than usual these days.

The spooky effects are real good and the voice acting is indeed fantastic, but there are a few sequences involving flipped or reversed controls that really frustrated the shit out of me (it's Beyond Good and Evil all over again, noooooooo). It's a pretty damn good game, and for me, at least, worth the $20 asking price (or $30 if you want the soundtrack, which... might not be the worst thing you could do? It's a good soundtrack).

Experience: Finished the game last night.

Except for the fact that it might be a bit TOO on the nose after Life is Strange, I think this would be an IDEAL candidate for the next GBEast Playdate. It's short (I'd put it at 2 solid playdates, maybe 3), entirely story driven, full of (what seem to be, at least) branching paths and choices, and probably as cool to watch as it is to actually play.

But most importantly, #teeeenz

I feel like I'm halfway through it. It's awesome so far. The dialogue is rock solid. Every character is sooooo well defined from the jump. The radio stuff is awesome. I'd say this falls in the Twilight Zone levels of creepy. I'd recommend it pretty highly atm pending the end not completely floundering.

I'm almost done, but it's so damn buggy it's hard to get up the enthusiasm to finish it.

It crashes, the scripting breaks, and it's kind of a mess technically. It's the least stable game I've played in years. How did it pass cert on Xbox?

I just finished my first playthrough and would recommend it, even at its current price tag. The PC build was totally stable for me (I think they've patched it since the release crashes). It very much reminded me of Kentucky Route Zero with a little bit of Life is Strange flavor. It creeped me out quite a bit at times, kept me engrossed throughout the 4-5 hours it took to finish it in two sittings, and had a great dialogue system.

About the ending I saw (no specific spoilers, just describing my reaction):

i picked it up, the games soundtrack and sound in the quicklook dragged me in. very good game, i thoroughly enjoyed it. finished it in 1 sitting, and i like my ending. it was very stable on steam.

I'm in the midst it and I don't enjoy it.

Voice Acting: A-

Voice CASTING: C-

Graphics: A+

Writing: B

"Gameplay": F

I see so many people praising the conversation system and I literally do not understand why. The conversation hinges on what I feel like can only be called an "interruption system". If you are with more than one character, they will have a full conversation as though you are not present at all. The only way to interact with the conversation is to interrupt people. Interrupting people in real life is annoying. it's doubly as annoying in a video game. I've taken to calling it "Youngest Sibling Simulator 2016". The whole system is poorly designed because this is, and nothing else, a story telling game. The story is all there is. And the story is revealed by listening to other people talk. So constantly cutting off other people means you are actively stopping the game from telling you the story of the game. It's disjointed, awkward and annoying. Plus, when you are presented with dialog choices in real time... they will disappear if you don't hit them in time. So you are constantly playing a juggling act between trying to let other people finish their thoughts and interjecting with your own conversation choice before you are arbitrarily no longer able to say what's on your mind.

The game also commits a chief problem in game design by forcing the player to create their own problem to solve. The player is forced to participate in actions that the player KNOWS are not a good idea, but you have to do it because... there's no game otherwise. This is one of my chief problems with movie-games. If you were watching a movie wherein a kid walked into a weird clearing with animals dead all around and a weird mask in the center of a patch of dead grass and then proceeded to PUT THE MASK ON, you would laugh it off as being stupid and then continue watching the movie. It's a whole other thing when the game is forcing YOU to do it. If you want to set up a problem, then don't put the player in control until AFTER. Putting the player in control and then poking them in the back with a stick to prod them into a making a mess to solve is bad game design, in my opinion. I was frustrated the entire time.

You're stuck in first person and are forced to drive a manual transmission car while juggling dramatic dialogue trees, hunger, energy, and stress.

And your car is a busted ass old Volvo wagon that breaks down from time to time. You've got to reference service manuals in the middle of a freezing, wet, foresty PNW road to repair it all while being yelled at by your best friend's boyfriend who things just went south with at the Denny's 20 miles back. And then magic.

I picked it up last night, ran terrible on my laptop, will play it later today with better settings.

I'm digging the art style and music.

I'm on the west coast and didn't get it either. Maybe it's a PNW thing.

Finished the game, and I liked it a good deal. It's not groundbreaking or anything like that, but it's definitely worthwhile. I just wish it was less buggy.

FYI, restarting your Xbox One seems to help with some technical issues. Also, the devs say that a substantial patch is in the pipeline for the Xbox One.

well, I beat it. I did enjoy it, short and sweet. Now I don't find it as poorly written as some blogs made it out to be. In fact I found it to be no different then watching a horror movie would write 20 year olds pretending to be teens. And if it was that badly written then I wouldn't have enjoyed playing around with the dialog and trying to meld Alex's choices to how I felt she would be in this whole distressful night. I actually didn't think the whole "emotional game" is saying anything that a horror film would like Hideway or Stir of Eccho would say.

The game is very atmospheric and I found myself backtracking just to enjoy the music and art style of it. I still would recommend it, not ever gonna be a Game of the Year, but I love the style, the radio mechanic is actually a lot of fun just to sit and listen.

I don't think the writing is bad because of dialog or anything like that. In fact I wouldn't say the writing is really bad at all from a narrative standpoint. I think the story just becomes problematic in the way the characters react to what is happening. I think that is probably due to the way to conversation system works. It's impossible for the voice actors to know what has happened in YOUR particular play session a that point in time, so it's hard to build tension in the action and in the writing.

But, yeah, the characters were way too unflappable to be in the situation they were in, in my opinion.

Okay, I get what your saying. Well, then I come back to relating with that writing in the manner of a horror film. I can easily think of a hundred horror films that aren't scary even when they are trying to do bold things with Lovecraft horror like the Beyond or In the Mouth of Madness. And those productions could actually have the same problems as maybe a smaller game production like this had with voice actors who are just recording lines in a booth and not seeing the bigger picture.

Stuff like this makes you think more about how games get made. And I find it interesting. Actually, I saw the multiple endings..... and it seems the voice over work was their way of kinda making multiple endings without making different actual endings..... clever way of cutting corners but it would totally disappoint anyone wanting true multiple endings.