Aspire: Ina's Tale Reviews

I wouldnt recommend it to everyone. I really enjoy the game and the design but it gets super frustrating constantly screwing up puzzles because you were 1 second too slow.

A quick and wonderful game to pass the time, neither too difficult nor too easy. The graphics are very beautiful, with wonderful environments and puzzles that are not that difficult. The game itself only has 1 boss that has 3 stages, the third being the best of all, a race against time to victory.

If you're into puzzle platformers, definitely give this game a whirl. It has a lovely art style, to my eye it's kind of a blend of Gris and Fez, both top notch platformers. In terms of mechanics, we have the usual jumping, climbing and rope swining, along with some more unique ideas using the themes of motion, energy and size. There are some tense moments in this game, with a handful of enemy encounters, but for the most part its your standard puzzle-solving. It *is* possible to get stuck and forced to reload last checkpoint at several areas, which to me is not something a modern platform should include. Great design makes it impossible to get stuck. Good design has a "load last checkpoint" in the esc menu for when you do, but having those checkpoints in places where you have to replay a cutscene/narrative conversation, or before a slow tunnel crawl, well that peeves me off, so minus points for that. I won't say a whole lot about the music, I did turn it down because I find loud music in games overstimulates me, but what I did notice was a nice accompaniment. Certain puzzles were timed, and/or required precision. I had varying degrees of frustration on those. The story was...there. Tbh they were going for something that didn't quite sink in for me. I get the journey through the underworld vibes, and there was a lot of stuff about fear and courage but nothing that really struck me as profound or moving. All in all, a decent game, I would put it in a B tier where Gris is S-tier and Planet of Lana is A-tier. 6.5/10

Great game with beautiful art. The story is simple, but good.

It certainly is an interesting little game. I don't know about the "relaxing" part though... Some puzzles may hurt your brain. The difficulty of puzzles seem to spike randomly, causing you to wonder if it was just you or the game... XD I have no idea what's going on in the story. I guess it's open to interpretation. It has it's beautiful moments though, as the game IS really pretty. So if you want a kinda short, (I left my game running in the background at one point, so shave off some time... Under 4hrs ~ 4hrs to completion? Unless you do all Achievements. *snort*) surreal and non-relaxing puzzle platformer... You have one here. Thanks you! :> :)