6.5 hours played
Written 3 years ago
[h1]Flawed indie platformer with a bizarre but oddly consistent storyline[/h1]
I cannot in good faith [i]recommend[/i] [b]Dungeons & Geese[/b] - it is a buggy, clumsy platformer that just screams mediocrity.
However, it surprisingly has some things going for it that may make this a mixed review instead.
I will keep this spoiler-lite regardless.
[h1]Set the stage[/h1]
An old, rich, and (surprisingly relevant storywise) gay drunkard wakes up in a basement after a party, having lost their memory, and has to fight rats by throwing "pink spears" (dildos) at them.
It's just a tad mindblowing as it's ludicrous. It's amazing that someone came up with this and made it into a mostly consistent plot. Once you get out, there's visual novel / old-timey RPG sort of dialogues to enjoy, including one or two dialogue puzzles.
[h1]So bad![/h1]
[i]Dungeons & Geese[/i] is not exactly a masterpiece. It's got numerous flaws:
[b]Unbindable keys and clumsy controls:[/b]
- WASD for moving, 'W' for jumping, 'S' for [i]falling faster[/i], mouse for shooting and activating special items, and finally 'Q' for interacting (when an indicator for it shows up).
- Typical of indie platformers (I know, I have struggled with this myself in hobby projects), jumping does not work consistently, as sometimes you cannot jump right after landing (because it does not detect ground correctly)
- Similarly, sometimes you cannot move [i]unless you jump[/i] after getting hit or using an item. Rather annoying, to say the least.
[b]Odd, unconventional jumping mechanics:[/b] In most platformers, the time you press 'W' (or whatever jump key) affects how high you jump. Not this time! You always jump max. height, a crazy bunny jump. Instead, you can control the jump height and falling speed by pressing 'S'. This gives some much needed control but woah, if it isn't both novel and strange.
[b]Big, inconsistent hit boxes:[/b] Sometimes a swinging axe hits you, or a bullet that already zoomed past hits you regardless. Also, sometimes your "spear" hits an enemy (that should die of one hit) and sometimes it does not, instead just bouncing off harmlessly.
[b]Unreliable invulnerability frames:[/b] This one's an annoyance. You can generally take three hits before dying. But, being hit by certain enemies can stunlock you and deliver several hits in a row, effectively killing you outright and quite unfairly.
[b]Did I damage the foe or not:[/b] Player agency is varied at best. For instance, the bosses typically have no health meters, and then it's often unclear when they take damage if at all. The first boss in particular does not look like it takes any damage from your attacks, then suddenly dies (and somehow its corpse can still damage and kill you). Thankfully, the later bosses have some indicators for getting hurt but after the first boss missing them completely it takes a while to realize this.
[b]Bad English translation:[/b] There's numerous typos, and sometimes words cut out, double up, or are written on top of each other. Once, the dialogue soft-locked the game and I had to restart the scenario through menu. The Russian version might or might not be better.
[b]No sound effects:[/b] Just Victorian-style melancholic piano music and a volume slider (in the menu) keep you company.
[h1]Some good?![/h1]
There's three kinds of weapons and three kinds of items. Two of the weapons operate similarly, with the "green spear" being slightly more powerful and being able to stop some foes that are normally unaffected, and the third seems to be only used in particular story mission.
The items are bizarre as the rest of the game.
- [b]Invulnerability pretzels[/b] are useful but only if used before taking damage, since if you activate it afterwards, the invulnerability frames provided by the pretzel and the damage are both eliminated after a fraction of a second.
- [b]Health potions[/b] (i.e. wine) oddly come with two functions: first, you understandably heal by drinking them, but the secondary use is an attack by throwing the bottle (it figuratively threw me off the balance as well until I figured it out).
- The third one is useful and story-related and most consistent of the three, even in its absurdity.
Crazy and badly translated as it is, the best part of the game is [b]the story[/b]. When at first nothing makes sense, it somehow falls together in the end, including having twists to make it interesting. It's not necessarily good enough to suffer through the gameplay though, unless you particularly enjoy vivid, surreal narratives.
Note that the dialogues can be rude and discriminatory.
Art style can be described as either original or ugly, depending on your taste. It's commendable that the characters have varied expressions in the dialogue and the style is consistent throughout.
[h1]Technical troubles: No mediocre game would be complete without some[/h1]
First, I played it in fullscreen, though it always starts in windowed mode. However, when I died, there was a chance that it would hardlock the game and force the game window on top of everything else. I was unable to even Alt+F4 it out. Luckily, I was able to maneuver Steam window to my second monitor and kill it through the library.
Afterwards, I just used the full window so I could more easily maneuver out of it when it happened: it repeated half a dozen times over my playthroughs. Often I had to use Task Manager to kill the process to get it to shut down completely.
[h1]Conclusions: Finally it's over[/h1]
My first playthrough on Hard difficulty was about 4.5 hours, and it was agonising, like expected of Hard. I was able to see three of the four endings on my first playthrough but had to play it again to unlock the last one. The second playthrough (2 hours more) I was utterly spent and opted for Easy.
On Hard there are more traps, more enemies, and they shoot more projectiles than on Easy, and bosses have more hit points. There's also Noob setting that I didn't try out but I expect it would be even easier.
I think you can receive all Steam Achievements by playing on any difficulty setting; it does not seem to matter.
If you have the stomach for annoying and weird controls and just love bizarre settings, you [i]might[/i] enjoy [i]Dungeons & Geese[/i]. Just don't say I didn't warn you. Also, get it on sale (it can occasionally be snatched with -80%).
[url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9997062/]~Twistorian Curator~[/url]
