1.4 hours played
Written 3 years ago
In my quest to slowly but surely review every, single game that I've played in my Steam Library, I'm hopping into the time machine, setting the controls back 4 years and making a stop off in 2018 to talk a little bit about point n' click sidescroller, Octave. After completing the game it stuck with me all this time for 2 primary reasons; firstly, the presentation for a one man creation was completely top of the line and secondly, I more or less didn't enjoy anything else about it. Roll 'em, Mr. Carpenter!
Where Octave is at its absolute best is in the visual, audio and atmosphere department. It's a dark, dreary and ethereal looker that could be considered kindred to games like Detention, Downfall, Neverending Nightmares or even the recent n' awesome Lamentum (mainly the creature design). From your own sprite to the absolutely sinister, slimy looking fiends that chase you through its swamps, forests and caves, Anate Studios deserves nothing less than praise for pulling off such visuals with such a skeleton crew dev team. Environments really work up a feeling of desolation and even if animations aren't totally pristine, the overall design more than gets the job done. Sound is creepy and on point, hitting its full stride on a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones. It is just a crying shame that you'll be weeping so hard over its lack of story and bad gameplay that it'll totally fog your vision from enjoying the best parts of the experience. Well, maybe not but personally, Octave didn't anything for me.
The story speaks for itself. You are a man pulled from his world and dropped into a very strange realm where you are hunted by demonic and alien looking creatures. For whatever reason, the design of the protagonist made me feel like there was some tough fought detecting and puzzling going on; he appearing to be a distant relative of Agent Mulder. Don't get your notepads and pencils out yet you hard boilers because 95% of the game's brainteasers are simple to obtuse inventory puzzles that rush over the body like a bottle of Nyquil mixed with a few shots of your favorite toe-curler. You'll pick up random stuff, put it random places, figure out what pixels you need to hunt and the ones that you don't. You'll activate things that need to be activated and go from area to area not really knowing what end goal that you're hoping to achieve. It's so rudimentary and never gets invigorating for a moment.
To spice up the broth, pinches of dodge, run and hide are thrown into the stew without much thought. You can die and probably will as I often found that my presses and clicks didn't register or I'd seemingly click on where I need to go and end up not going there or far short of my goal. Making matters in the end game worse there is a final boss battle of sorts where you need to light candles while an awesome looking boss monster tries to snuff them out. Octave's all over the place controls and lack of point n' click precision are in full bloom here and I spent the majority of my time trying to finish that mess in one piece. When the hammer of judgment comes down, the sad fact is that this great looking and sounding game is simply not any fun to play, nor does its story ever engage the player and work up the excitement it is so capable of having. Hey, it's got trading cards though!
Sure it's cheap but there are some weeks when I've paid the house bills, had to fix my car and do a bunch of regular Joe b.s. that one $3 to $10 game is all I've got the cash for. And you know what? I do my damndest to make it a good one. Octave is not a good one. If you want my trading cards for it, hit me up and I'll try to give them to you, although Steam has a habit of not okaying my trades at the last minute. I need to study up on that or maybe it just doesn't allow Octave cards to be traded. Once its in you...it stays. Ughtave indeed.
P.S. I would play another game from this dev because if they could couple the visuals with excellent gameplay, we've got a serious new point n' click threat on the playing field.
