🎮 Game Review - "Simple Story - Alex"

It's rare that I have time to play video games these days and when I do, I tend to head towards my staple diet of Football Manager 2020. Which is exactly what I did this morning but found it tough going - it had been so long since I'd played it (January) that I couldn't get my head into it and decided to leave it for another day (I think that chronic fatigue had something to do with it).

So instead, I thought I'd browse my Steam Library for one of the many games I'd acquired for free and never played. I then saw "Simple Story - Alex" and any game with the word "simple" in the title in my current state seemed ideal. So I installed it and set about playing it.

It's fair to say that my 1st impressions weren't great. A tiny, little box appeared in the middle of the screen that I couldn't make larger so ended up taking my resolution down to 800 x 600 to see what was going on!

Having overcome this fairly simple obstacle, I quickly got to grips with the game and started opening boxes and exploring the world around me.

The story behind the game is that you control a character called Alex who's an alcoholic. His wife has left him, he has no job and gets through the day by drinking. The developer explains the story as...

"Simple Story - Alex" - as you can guess by its name, it is a simple story about Alex the ordinary alcoholic. He lives a boring life, but dreaming to be a hero in a different world and dimension. One day, when he was leaving his house, Alex get teleported in a mystery temple. Is he sleeping? Or did his dreams come true? Or maybe something completely different occurred? You should find an answer.

In this story, you first have to leave the house (by having a drink) and you then find yourself in a temple with various items to explore.

Yes, a box full of rotten fishes. One of the many examples of the broken English that embraces this game. A few other examples are:

• That is this temple with all this statues and rotten food?
• When you go out of the building, door behind you immediately shut.
• I'm on a outside now...

Once I was on a outside, I had to find 10 coconuts for some bloke who wanted them. Which was a pretty boring task. He got his coconuts and I was teleported back to the room I started in. I continued this loop 3 times - after the coconuts, there were flowers and then in the snow, I had to find little boxes. Why I continued, I'm not really sure but at some point, I looked at the description on Steam and it said the game would only take half an hour from start to finish and I was approaching this momentous landmark.

👆 First, I found coconuts

👆 Then, I found flowers

👆 And finally, I found little boxes

I considered giving up on this pathetic excuse for a game numerous times before this point, but I'd been sucked in by this line in the description...

Complicated story. During the game you wouldn't understand what's really going on, until the very end of the game.

It appears that the developer had had enough by this point too...

Which was a relief. I then went outside again.

☠ Coconut man was dead ☠

☠ Flower lover was dead ☠

☠ Man with boxes was dead ☠

☠ I was dead ☠

The complicated story wasn't that complicated. Instead of drinking alcohol, Alex was drinking Acetone.

And after half an hour of my life that would have been better spent asleep, or doing the washing up, it was all over.

Of the 8 achievements, I'd completed 3 and have no desire to discover the other 5.

"Vampire" sounds interesting although it almost certainly isn't.

There was 1 good thing about this game - The chilled out guitar soundtrack was pretty good, reminiscent of a Greek hotel lobby.

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If you hadn't guessed, I've already deleted this game and even if you get it for free, you really should give it a miss.

Source

All unreferenced images are screenshots of the game taken by me