Giveaway from #1

Let's start with the promised gift. Two users commented with their Steam usernames for a chance to win any game from the Steam library up to 2.50€ or $2.50 in the form of a gift.

I decided to make a manual drawing. The result can be seen below:

@zeros - please contact me on Steam.

Bendy and the Ink Machine (choosen by @janmax)

The trailer looks fine. Corridors, dark and cartoon style. Something about creatures turning against their creator...

Let's start with the fact that this presented free game is only the first of five episodes, which is a trend popularized by Telltale. In many cases, the authors make first part totally free so the decision for buying next ones is based on that. At the time of writing, the second episode of Bendy and the Ink Machine is available for € 5.99 / $ 5.99 / £ 3.99. The part available for free is about 10-15 minutes length, so I think it’s more like a demo than a full game. Is it worth it? Let's find out.

Story and gameplay

The story can be described with a screen from the very beginning of the game:

It seems like a lifetime since we worked on cartoons together.
30 years really slips away, doesn't it.
If you're back in town, come visit the old workshop.
There's something I need to show you.

In fact, we do not learn much more during this short game. We have some cartoon corpse, we have a room with a mysterious machine and another room with six pillars. At the end, we still don’t know what's going on.

Game and looks

The gameplay looks like this: We must find the right room, then look for a few randomly placed items, press 2 buttons, "escape", find the axe, the end of the episode.

We’re playing from the first perspective. We’re moving through corridors that look very similar or even are the same. There are a lot of doors which can’t be opened and some scattered things with which we are not able to interact. In this game we won’t get lost, because we don’t have much to do and there are no riddles.

As for the “climate” - in some ways it is created by the so-called "jump scare", because four times something happens really suddenly on the screen.

Controls

We can choose how to play this game - to use pad or mouse and keyboard. I played the second option and there is nothing more to write about it. There is a jump (nothing useful), there are different keys for an attack and use of objects (until we find the axe all actions can be done with attack, so the E key will be used only once). You can also run, but it has not been much of a use for the time being.

Audio

Let’s say it’s standard. Everything spoken is spoken with the voice, the hero's movements have adequate sounds, and after some time music appears. It’s all average, not a plus and not a minus.

Video

Here I will probably have the most to complain. Let's start by saying that at the beginning I mentioned that I will be playing all those games on my really average laptop and it’s my starting point. The game itself does not seem to be too demanding, as can be seen from the trailer or screens.

The game automatically launches in 1388x768 resolution and settings set to HIGH. Despite the static elements on the screen, even turning is not smooth. But this is not the worst. The entire picture is terribly blurry. So blurry that you can’t see the details of the surroundings at all.

[how the game looks on default settings]

It turns out that there is a possibility to change the resolution to a smaller one and the scale starts from 320x200. But what if, after these changes, everything becomes completely unreadable? Why does the creators give this opportunity if no one will ever stay with it?

[resolutions compare and menu readability]

The first time I completed the game I was sure that the subtitles just didn’t work. That's not the case... The button in the options was designed so that I was sure the option was on when it was off and vice versa. Simply bad design.

And other annoying bugs: When you exit the game, the graphics settings are not saved. Once launched again, we have default values. In addition, the options are always marked high even if we change it to low settings.

Achievements

At this point we have a definite advantage for the achievements hunters. We can easily get 4 new entries, and they never say NO to the free achievements.

Summary

If the second episode would be free, I would probably play it. However, paying for the further part of such a short game? For the time being no thanks, it’s not worth it. Do I recommend playing the first free episode? Why not. Unless you have trouble finding random items, then it doesn’t make sense to waste your time. It's better than the game in previous post (#1), but it's still not what I wanted. We’re still looking for better game.

My propositions into #3

As always I’m open to all suggestions. I’m thinking about some "paid" game to which developers are giving away keys. So:

• maybe something free one more time?
• Mini Attack Submarine,
• Space Beret,
• The Janitor,
• The Slaughtering Grounds,
• Winged Knights: Penetration,
• Withering Kingdom: Arcane War.

Giveaway

I will honestly say that I don’t know yet. It will be for sure a Steam game, but it depends on the selection to the next post. I will wait for the comments.

The rules applies as before - simply upvote this post and leave your Steam username in comment.

Following

I'm publishing posts in English version (on @lukmarcus) and in Polish version (on @marszum) - in both you have possibility to win games.

English posts can be found under cheapgames tag and Polish posts under taniegranie tag. Both language posts are also available under steam-it tag. I have changed the last tag because there are some random posts under steamit.

But it will be much easier simply to follow me!