The Hour of the Rat Reviews

Absolutly

love it!!!

This game is the sole reason i ended up in AA.

This is completely different from everything else put out up to this point and now that I've played it I can see why you don't normally do 2D platformers. This thing reminds me of Bubsy. BUBSY.

This game definitely requires patience to fully get. There are a lot of things that don't work in intuitive ways. The game doesn't explain most of its systems, so trial and error is inevitable. There are even a couple ways to softlock yourself if you aren't careful. But if you can get past all that, then you'll have a pretty good time. Even after getting all the achievements, I still wanted an excuse to play more. Give it a shot if you want something that's tough as nails.

No tutorial makes this this simple game unnecessarily difficult, and the slow movement stops it from being the fast-paced platformer it's trying to be.

I've tried to crack this for an hour and it's a rather horrible experience. The idea as cool but the implementation is just pure jank, let's just say that the main parkour mechanic is straight broken, it's ridiculously hard to control jump distance and the mechanic of jumping of street lights sometimes just doesn't work. In the tutorial it works fine, you can sit on the lamp for like a second and it's enough to input next jump but in game you sometimes just fall from it after couple of frames. Also controls are horrible and you can't remap them. Every jump is followed by nauseating screenshake. I really don't understand how socpop manages to fail at the most basic of implementations of mechanics and UX almost every time, cause ideas are usually quite interesting but then it feels like it their first game ever and they haven't even spent an hour playtesting it.

The Hour of the Rat is a neat little game that feels more like a tech demo or high-level school project than a full-fledged game that was developed for commercial sale. There is only the 1 level and the visuals, sound design, and game mechanics are a bit 'basic.' That being said, I feel that the game was a good value for the sale price I purchased it at (~$1,49 USD) and had a lot of fun playing. I hope the dev team revisits this title and fleshes it out further - I think The Hour of the Rat would make for a great 'real game' if given some additional content and polish. I don't even think that the dev team would have to create an exhaustive amount of new content for the game but could benefit immensely by just adding more of what already exists! Here are some things I'd like to see included: - More levels / castle layouts - A 'start' menu and UI options - More ninja types - More items

[h1]Death by a Thousand Cuts[/h1] The Hour of the Rat takes place in a single level - in any other game, this would be the final level, where you put your knowledge of enemies, techniques and strategies to the test. This game throws you straight into the deep end and says "figure it out." This wouldn't have been so bad on its own - there's an element of satisfaction from incremental improvement, as the Rogue-like genre shows us. But there is so, so much that gets in the way of having a satisfying experience with this game.[list] [*] The "skid jump" mechanic feels wildly inconsistent, resulting in unreliable jump length and speed [*] There are many jumps that require a "double jump" item, which makes the standard jump feel inadequate and frustrating [*] Half of the ninjas can't use the "double jump" item at all, and is difficult to acquire for the other half [*] Roughly 1/3rd of the level cannot be accessed without either using the double jump or passing through the endgame area [*] The platforming is unforgiving and will often plummet you to the ground, which only worsens the above problems [/list] This is a [i]rough[/i] game, in more ways than one. It's a shame, because you can actually see the seed of something really good, here. The Messenger, published by Adult Swim earlier this year, shows that games based off of the tight combat of Shinobi for the NES can be expanded and refined into really proper gaming experiences. It is really remarkable that The Hour of the Rat was developed by a single person over the span of a mere two months, and when it's good, it's great. I just wish it were consistently good. Not recommended. P.S. I wasn't a fan of the shaky-cam.

This is EASILY the most frustrating game I've EVER played. There is so much that either doesn't make sense or isn't explained. Why can't I jump on multiple lanterns? Why can I only open chests sometimes? Why is the turtle guy invurerable? Why can't I quick-restart? WHY DO MY KEYS DISAPPEAR WHEN I DIE??? The worst part is that has so much potential. If they addressed these flaws, I think the game would be really good! But for now, only buy this game if you can handle seriously figuring stuff out on your own.