Now Testing: 407 Reviews

An ok concept for a game, marred by dodgy physics, frustrating jumping puzzles, ladders that may or may not work for you, and an announcer that by the end I absolutely hated. Like, cuss you too dude. I admit, I didn't actually finish the game because I got to chapter 8, and was presented with a long winding platforming segment with flaming rocks raining down, and if you fall off or get hit by one of the rocks, it sends you an obnoxiously long distance back for no reason other than to be frustrating. And all that on top of the fact that there are so many ways to get stuck, it's not even funny.

Cons: yet another game that cant be bothered to allow keyboard mappings. Do you have any idea how difficult it is for a left handed player ! Pros: I managed to get through the first two chapters and it was good visually and game play. SORT OUT KEY MAPPINGS PLEASE !!! On returning to the game it has NOT saved my progress. Wont be playing again. Very disappointed !

Can't climb ladders, weird physics, Deadly lasers not deadly. Nuff said about how bad the bugs had gotten. Couldn't even finish game. Only good thing is the visuals

I'm not sure why this game has so many negative reviews. For such a cheap indie game, it's really fun! It's not perfect, but the graphics are great, the story is good and funny, and the puzzles are cool. If you are looking for a fun and unique puzzle game, I'd recommend this one!!

I absolutely loved the concept of this game. It was super fun to play and looked amazing. Had a few tedious parts and what I think was an actual glitch? but still extremely fun and highly recommend

I really wanted to like this game, the writing and concept are great, but the game is physically impossible to play. I had to restart the game every time I paused it (it wouldn't exit the pause menu or use it) and I couldn't get past the third level because I couldn't use the ladders. I also think that the game outside of the levels (home, settings, pause menu) could have used a polish. Also, I think the tutorial should have been a bit longer, there was a lot of guess work in trying to play this game. I have a couple other gripes, but those would be acceptable in other games. All in all, I think the game could have used a few more months in development and some REAL playtesters to find the REAL bugs. I won't get a refund because I think this game would be good, if not for these problems.

Long time fan of Chris and Keaton outside of just this game so I am happy that I was finally able to financially support them. The game is very solid for a second game created by the lone developer Keaton, the gameplay is fun and challenging but is unfortunately short. If you like games such as Portal and the Stanley Parable then you will very much enjoy this game. The graphics are very beautiful but due to my computer limitations I had to play on low-medium settings which is a huge decline in quality. Soundtrack absolutely slaps with interesting synths, my personal favorite being Chapter 7. Chris delivers lines in a distinct way that I know from watching the PANIC series (which you should check out because it is awesome) and for him being the only voice actor, he does an excellent job. Overall a well done job by both Chris and Keaton and I am personally excited for what they work on in the future.

Not a really puzzle game. It's a 3D platformer masquerading as a puzzle game. Pros - Pretty Cons - Few puzzles are dead easy - Voice over is cringey and not funny - Frustrating jumping sequences

There might be spoilers in here, read at own risk. I'll go over the negatives first, then the positive and then an explanation why I have like 6 hrs in this game... BAD: - Puzzles are too easy --> no real challenge - Way too simple game mechanics --> no variety - Weird engine --> very bad control over the character (problem in platforming segments and there are A LOT of bugs that I will mention later) - Inspired by portal but doesn't live up to the standards at all - Very short - No settings for: Audio, FOV, Controls (platforming game with no control settigns wtf hello???) - Turning up/down the shadow quality just increases/decreases the brightness of the game (last lvl unplayable at highest shadow setting) GOOD: - Very pretty, good visual design - A nice commentary over the gameplay although the commentator kinda feels like a male rip-off of GLaDOS - The game is only 3€ Why did I play this stuff for 6 hrs? Mainly because I was bored... I played the game together with a friend (not online, just parallel singleplayer incl. screensharing via Discord-Stream). The two of us went in there with relatively low expectations bc the game's so cheap therefore we weren't exactly disappointed. We mainly had fun finding all the bugs that are listed below (yes, all self-found by us) so we had a lot of fun with that. We were constantly trying to solve the puzzles in an unintended way, abuse the broken physics to get OOB or fly over levels, to skip segments and just generally break the game (I'm not talking about the "ingame-glitches" that are part of the game's mechanic but about actual bugs/glitches that are a result of programming issues). It worked mosty (as u can see by the length of the bug list) and we actually had fun there --> THAT'S the reason this is a positive review btw After all: - If you want a puzzle game --> play somehting else - If you want a jump and run --> play something else - If you like searching bugs, exploiting them and abusing a broken physics engine --> actually this might be a fun experience for you Buglist: - 144hz bugs out ladders and poles (no movement) - landing or awkwardly grabing poles/ladders locks movement and view angle to 180° - If the user takes too long in a puzzle the music will eventually stop looping resulting in silence - It is possible to exploit cube physics to basically fly - Cube-sockets remain activated a short duration when the cube is removed --> you can take a cube with you through doors that should be closed when the cube is taken away --> you can "block" you way backwards resulting in unsolvability of a chamber - Spamming the 'ESC' Button while loading into a level will bugout the pausemenu - It is possible to stack cubes into magnetic 'cube-sockets', making the puzzle unsolvable - The button for spawning Lasercubes will activate even if mouse1 is being held down instead of just pressed once - It is rarely possible to get cubes through closed doors Division by chapters: Chapter 1: - OOB possible - Grabbing cubes through the glass at the side of the room Chapter 3: - OOB possible - No respawnpoint past certain point - Flying via abuse of physics engine can be utilized to skip the entire puzzle Chapter 4: - Angleing the laser to solve the puzzle in an unintended way is possible - Possible to smuggle a cube into another room Chapter 5: - The impossible Level is possible (; - Cubestacking results in being able to make a usually impossible jump - Angleing the laser to solve the puzzle in an unintended way is possible Chapter 6: - Doors have no collision (Spawnarea) - Going too fast in the beginning will result in overlapping voicelines - It is possible to spawn moving platforms inside one another - Invisible walls can easily be found (not necessarily a bug but still annoying) Chapter 7: - Very weird fps drops - OOB possible - It is possible to skip the puzzle by jumping into the loadingzone for Chapter 8 Chapter 8: - Very weird fps drops - It is possible to skip almost the entire Chapter (Jumping while in timefreeze and while ziplining provides hyperjumps) - Random resets within the jump'n'runs Chapter 9: - Laser has a limited range (honestly why???) Chapter 10: - OOB possible - Shadowsettings can change the brightness of the level DRASTICALLY Thanks for reading my review :)

A game with a lot of promise, but unfortunately has very poor execution. For something that bases it's story around a tester inside a video game "exploiting glitches", it sure has it's fair share of glitches and bugs. This would be easy enough to put aside, as I only tend to find glitches when I went outside the linear path of the game but it's also disappointing that for certain levels in which with a little brain power you can find yourself getting onto other ledges and areas that you normally wouldn't be able to access, you're not greeted with a nice hidden secret but instead a game breaking bug that causes you to restart the entire level. I will be splitting this review into 3 parts. My personal opinion, the good and the bad. My Personal Opinion: I don't think the description fits the game-play. Sure it has puzzles, but I would say it's more platforming than puzzle (I normally wouldn't have an issue with that though per-se.) In the second video the developer says "and the other thing I wanted to add was fast and fluid movement. Sort of a little bit of a parkour system." I can't agree that it's game-play would be "fast and fluid" but more bulky, frustrating and at times glitchy. I don't think this was a fault of the actual movement/physics though, I point this more towards the direction and the platforms you have to use in order to proceed through the level (more on this later on.) On one level in which I had to go back to a certain checkpoint multiple times due to falling, my character would refuse to climb a ladder until I looked directly downwards. This happened every. single. time. And there wasn't any moments in which I thought to myself 'Wow! That was a fun parkour sequence." Maybe in the first couple of levels, but it quickly turned into jumping on tiny platforms with no sense of speed but just constant fear that you'll fall and have to do it all over again. In the video the developer also says he "loves games that has humorous and witty dialogue and break the forth wall. I think it's super creative and not enough games do that." I found the dialogue to be very forced, and there was no 'breaking the forth wall' moments. It felt extremely unnatural, and at times quite cringe. Moving on, the description it has states "A puzzle-platform game taking place inside of a videogame where you can exploit glitches to solve puzzles and traverse outside of the actual game map." I will be completely honest, the first time it happened for a quick second it had me fooled. But then everything else you would expect to happen, well happens. Sure you "traverse" outside the "actual game map", but you can tell it's still part of the map. The "exploit glitches" part just feels like you've unlocked an extra ability. I would have liked to have seen actual glitches, a corner glitch as an example, that once you've been taught how to do it, you can then go back to the very first level and do that glitch or glitches as it's always been a part of the in-game 'game'. It really didn't feel any different or special, which is sad as I have always wanted to play a game with this sort of a concept. It breaks my heart to have so many negative things to say about 'Now Testing: 407' as I can tell that a lot of work, effort and heart went into trying to make something that is enjoyable, but I feel even if the glitches weren't there, it just wouldn't quite be a fully polished experience. The Good: The game looks very nice, and for most levels it will run at a nice 144 fps (keeping in mind you have to enable this setting in the options otherwise it will cap at 60.) The puzzles in terms of difficulty I would say is a 6/10, so nothing too complicated at all, but there was a couple ones that I did enjoy once I had worked out the answer. The running and jumping physics isn't horrible, but the level design needs to cater to the more faster speed movement that it has as you are constantly overshooting platforms instead of having the opportunity to try the maximum speed to it's fullest. Load times are very fast, and the rest of the audio sounds great! The Bad: You get severely punished for making an attempt to explore the levels further, something I was quite disappointed with. The most fun I had in this game was on the third level when you are up on the rooftops of some skyscrapers using a floor jump boost, jumping from one roof to a lower one that had the jump pad thus continuing my momentum and then trying to fly through the air and land on a different rooftop that was off in the distance. To my surprise, a couple of them were solid and landing on them felt great. Sadly, some of these surrounding areas when falling wouldn't reload you back to the checkpoint thus forcing you to restart the entire level. I also wouldn't recommend trying to take extra cubes with you in an attempt to be clever and see if it will trigger any secrets, as you can end up going back to the area where you got the cube from and end up stuck behind the locked wall that the cube would trigger to open, forcing you to restart the level. If I could make a recommendation for a future game especially just using the same engine you are using for this one, making a game that involves flying from rooftop to rooftop with exploration involved would be extremely enjoyable. Really needs a save and load feature. At least this way you wouldn't need to ensure that every single fall-able area has a respawn back to the last checkpoint. And would also allow players to make a quick save before making an attempt to do something out of the ordinary. Time and time again, it felt like I had found a secret ledge. Only to end up jumping off and falling forever having to restart the level all over again. The lens flare is far too much, especially in the laser puzzle levels. It would physically hurt my eyes which has never happened with any video game I have played up to this date. Turning post-processing down to low seemed to fix this. In terms of the ending, I found the last two levels far too frustrating. Went from having to watch where you jump, to you can't even see where you need to jump. BUT I did get a good kick out of the very end itself, so A+ for that (Despite the slight confusion.) In conclusion, I was really hoping to like 407, was trying to find strats so I could speedrun it as well. But in it's current state it would prove to be far too frustrating in order for that to happen. I was also disappointed that there was no form of exploration involved, even just a few hidden areas or platforms to give a pat on the back to the player for their creativity. I am more than happy to re-play 407 at a later date should there be further updates with fixes (As I see the developer has already released an update fixing certain glitches, 5 days after game release - very good stuff!) and re-write my review. But if a few players can find this many bugs in a short period of time upon release, perhaps more time and/or resources should be spent on testing the product before release.