Hadr Reviews

If I could give a neutral rating, I would. I bought this more for the idea of its main mechanic, and it's really quite original and well done! As a game, it's short, and not very difficult. One hour of playing around with the concept in different ways. The developers put in the effort to make it work well, and the levels play with the mechanic a bit to keep it interesting. They could've made more of it if they wanted, and maybe this would've been amazing. Again, the idea at the heart of this was new and interesting enough for me to buy it! As it is however, the game is only little more than a demo for the studio - a technically tricky core idea wrapped in some gameplay, soundscapes, and simple graphics. All parts of it are good, mind you, but together it's just not enough game. If you're fine with spending four bucks for an hour's worth of gameplay without much immersion (and maybe want to support a promising indie studio like I did) - go for it! Otherwise I'd suggest either waiting for this to be on sale or playing the demo.

It is always nice to see something visually or conceptually different. This game, coming up from a small Czech studio fulfills that desire. Noone would ever think about what it's like to be a piece of magicans cloth, flying all over the world and hiding things. This masterpiece allows you to do that. For 4 euros! And what is the point of that all? A story about one magician and his rabbit. A story fitted in visually mindblowing environments with mindf*cking tasks you need to accomplish. And talking about mind-something impressions, the music and graphic design just confirms the quality of the game. Totaly worth of getting all the achievements!

An interesting, melancholic little puzzle game. 7.5/10, closer to a thumbs up than a thumbs down. The game is fairly simple: you control pieces of fabric, and when the fabric obscures an object from the camera/your perspective, it vanishes, similar to the classic magician's trick. The main mechanic works well, though occasionally the tolerance for vanishing objects was too high, and I saw objects suddenly vanish when parts of them were exposed. It's ok, I'd rather this than an unintuitive system, but it is noticeable and irritating. This only happened a few times, and one level where a piece of fabric is pinned beneath a speaker kept bugging out where the speaker would only vanish if I tried to vanish it before any other object. Bugs aside, the aesthetics are lovely, and the music is droning and ominous. You get a sense of dread that you're somewhere or doing something you're not supposed to know about, and it pairs well with the minimal story presented; though I would've liked more narrative, the story present here feels a bit brief. The music gets quieter the fewer objects left in each stage, adding to the sense of making things go away. Attempting to leave a map will cause the screen to blur, which also feeds into the game's aesthetics. My only real complaint with the aesthetics is the options menu, which while minimalist, offers very few tangible changes outside of a volume slider. Providing a colorblind option or other accessibility options would help a ton, though the game's length might not make it a deal-breaker for most people. The actual gameplay is pretty intuitive with a controller; you have 1 button that lifts fabric up, and another button moves fabric in a horizontal direction of choice. Outside of a few occasions, puzzles don't really evolve past 'make everything vanish', which is a shame, since the few times the game deviates from the formula, some interesting concepts come up that would make for amazing puzzles. Without spoiling anything, if more puzzles implemented the mechanics used in the Canvas stage, the Bar stage, or the Fog stage, then the game would provide some real head-scratchers. As it stands, the timed stage late in the game and the puzzles requiring you to vanish objects in a certain order aren't really groundbreaking, which stinks since we get glimpses of really ingenious puzzle design that aren't dependent on common puzzle gimmicks. The game occasionally features multiple pieces of fabric in a stage, which functions very similar to Portal levels with multiple cubes; after you have access to the extra fabric, you can cover bigger objects. I'd be more curious if there was a level that required you to vanish a second piece of fabric to accomplish a puzzle, or a stage where the camera could be rotated with a switch or something; I like this game's mechanic, but I feel like there's a good amount of untapped potential. The achievements are good and frequently require dexterity with the cloth. Unfortunately, my main criticism with the game is this control. The fabric and cloth is frequently loose and moving in ways you can't control very well. While it adds to a sense of improvisation and attempting to control things beyond your power, it makes actually completing levels frustrating. However, since stages can be restarted or even skipped, this isn't that big of a deal. TL;DR: As a puzzle game it's meh, as an atmospheric experience it's moody and immersive

What a outstanding experience. Played on controler, movement is so smooth and nicely done. During the game I was so relaxed and at the same time full concentrated at my magic cloth. Story of the game is worth to read. I can recommend!

A relaxing and surprisingly fun game. One would not think that simply trying to cover stuff with your cloth was so engrossing, but it is! It does help that the physics and tessellation simulation for the cloth are top-notch as far as I can judge, a true technical achievement. Also, there is a demo, so what are you waiting for?

A little strange, a little creepy. Didn't like that one of the levels made so many objects it almost crashed my PC, but it's a new form of puzzler I haven't seen before.

It's difficult to explain why I liked Hadr so much. Does it have interesting, challenging puzzles? No, the puzzles are just okayish. Is the story worth it? No, it's just passable. But after I saw the trailer and played the demo I was convinced - this game is made for people like me. Hadr is somewhat similar to Vectorpark's Windosill (a surreal adventure combined with beautiful simulation). It's a very relaxing experience of peaceful exploration, and being a piece of magical fabric feels so great, sometimes even erotic :) I had a great time. Hadr reminded me of the 80s when people weren't self-limited by convention and made games about anything they can imagine. Perhaps that's what makes it so charming.

It's about an hour of gameplay with nearly zero replay value. The game, at best, is somewhat comparable to Donut County. Instead of making things disappear falling down an expanding hole, you make things disappear by occluding them from view with a fabric sheet. But the comparison breaks down from there. Where 'Donut' has a story and humor and characters, Hadr only has a weird little poem running the show with little or nothing to do with the action on screen. It's neat as a tech-demo, and I imagine someone could write a paper on the control scheme -- how do you control a warping, floppy sheet of fabric with nothing more than X, Y, and Z inputs. Where do those input apply to? To all the points of the sheet? Only the middle? Only the edges? Only the nearest corner?? I admit, I never really figured it out, but my brain fizzed a little bit thinking about it while I was trying to unfurl a pesky corner of the sheet. As an art installation, it's a little bit weak. This is unfortunate, because I think 'art' is really the only place you could go with this. Its spartan nature is the whole point, of course, but it's just a little too sparse. It's not at Superliminal levels, but it's on the same planet. It's somewhat interesting how the design informs the game, though. The game is pretty good at hinting to you. Bright lights are goals, fuzziness is bad, and aim for pillows...? The small number of puzzles are relatively straight-forward. The only time I became trapped was when a sheet I needed to move became trapped in the geometry. I paid something like $USD 3 for it, and it was worth that. I will likely never play it again, and I can't see myself bringing it out to share with guests, but I think it was worth my time and effort. I feel like I've donated a few bucks towards the next use of this technology, and I'm actually pretty excited about that. This would be an incredible mechanic in a larger game!

It is very boring. Not in a calm or chill escape-from-hectic-life way but just boring. The concept and mechanics seem interesting, but that's about it. That's all this game is. An interesting mechanic.

Disappointing :/ Although the core idea is amusing, the game doesn't do anything interesting with it. In most levels you just float around and make objects disappear until the exit appears and you can move on. Some levels show a hint of a cool idea only to abandon it in a hurry without exploring it. Worst yet, the game fails to make the main idea - playing as a floating piece of cloth - feel good. The cloth often folds on itself, stick on objects, or even clip through, and it moves veeeeeeeery slowly. All of this makes the game boring at best, annoying at worst. I really wanted to like this game :(