Space Tail: Every Journey Leads Home Reviews
Space Tail is a 2.5D adventure platformer, which immerses the player in a deep, emotional plot, and lets him explore new planets and interact with alien civilizations.
App ID | 1975660 |
App Type | GAME |
Developers | Enjoy Studio S.A., Longterm Games S.A. |
Publishers | Longterm Games S.A. |
Categories | Single-player, Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud, Full controller support |
Genres | Casual, Indie, Adventure |
Release Date | 3 Nov, 2022 |
Platforms | Windows, Linux |
Supported Languages | French, German, Spanish - Spain, English, Japanese, Polish |

82 Total Reviews
75 Positive Reviews
7 Negative Reviews
Very Positive Score
Space Tail: Every Journey Leads Home has garnered a total of 82 reviews, with 75 positive reviews and 7 negative reviews, resulting in a ‘Very Positive’ overall score.
Reviews Chart
Chart above illustrates the trend of feedback for Space Tail: Every Journey Leads Home over time, showcasing the dynamic changes in player opinions as new updates and features have been introduced. This visual representation helps to understand the game's reception and how it has evolved.
Recent Steam Reviews
This section displays the 10 most recent Steam reviews for the game, showcasing a mix of player experiences and sentiments. Each review summary includes the total playtime along with the number of thumbs-up and thumbs-down reactions, clearly indicating the community's feedback
Playtime:
516 minutes
--{Graphics}---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe
Environments are beautiful give you Ori Vibes
---{Gameplay}---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It‘s just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Starring at walls is better
☐ Just don‘t
Decent little puzzle platformer nothing to overly difficult
---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape
Nothing will cause an eargasm but the music fits the environments
---{Audience}---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
---{PC Requirements}---
☐ MineSweeper comparable
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Very Fast
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
Steady frame rate with no stutters at max settings.
---{Difficulity}---
☐ Just press W
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / but will make you think
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
Difficulty varies heavily from super easy to frustrating.
---{Grind}---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn’t necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You‘ll need a second live for grinding
---{Story}---
☐ Story?
☐ Text or Audio floating around
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It‘ll replace your life
Lovely little story about Bea and her space adventure
---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑Short
☐Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
Took about 8 hours to complete of course this will vary if you are going back for all the achievements
---{Price}---
☐ It’s free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If you have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{Bugs}---
☐ Never had any
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ Made by Bethesda
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
Minor clipping and some creatures that were supposed to be neutral still blasting my face off.
---{Overall Score}---
7.5/10
Overall, a very cute game with beautiful artwork/graphics cute charters and interesting story, plus you get to be a dog and pet it! On the negative side clipping though platforms or the game being very picky on if you make your jump or not, health is scarce and does not reset at each level/world but instead carries over putting you in tight predicaments and having to do quite a bit of repeating of certain areas with save points being far at times. Regardless definitely worth checking out!
👍 : 6 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
475 minutes
Space tail is a short and charming adventure about an adorable canine on a journey through space. This journey will take you across multiple hand painted planets featuring beautiful environments ranging from lush forests to dry deserts and crystal peaks. These areas are also complemented by some serene music that adds a childlike magic to it all. These two aspects alone are the main reason i'd recommend this game. The story while nice and sweet didn't captivate me as it felt a bit random at times, where things happened not because they made sense but because the story had to move forward. There are however some lore entries that are found in secret areas which contextualize some things but these should've been pushed to the forefront a little more as they were quite intruiging.
Gameplay is decent, with a good variety of different puzzle elements to spice things up throughout the 5-7 hour journey. Some mechanics however are more frustrating than they are fun, especially 'befriending' aliens, although it's a very creative mechanic. Most puzzles were fun to solve though, especially those about halfway through. Sadly at the end they became a bit too convoluted where they felt more like a chore than a fun challenge. All in all gameplay is fine to keep you mostly entertained from start to finish. Lastly performance is good, with barely any frame drops. However bugs did occur from time to time, with me even getting hardlocked right at the end. However there's already been a patch a week after launch that solved most issues. The developers were also very kind in assisting me with my broken save which is always a mark of good devs. These people care about their product and because it's pretty good you should too. Solid recommendation, good for an afternoon of fun 7/10
👍 : 0 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
491 minutes
Awesome game - especially for kids 6+, who grew up on PAW Patrol cartoons and still love dogs 🐶
My daughter fell in love with Bea dog 🐕.
It is thought-provoking 🧠 and has a reasonable playtime/price ratio 👍
We can't wait for the additions. 🤞
👍 : 0 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
483 minutes
The plot jumps around some, but it's a fun game. Kinda Ori-esque. Some of the mechanics are a little loose, but all in all worth the $ and time.
👍 : 0 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
415 minutes
[MINOR SPOILERS FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME AHEAD]
It's a fun and cute game with a beautiful graphical style and unique game mechanics, that's really fun to play. Sadly, the story is delivered in a strange way, and that affected my enjoyment of the game.
You start out doing the tutorial, and once you've completed it, a small cutscene plays explaining how your character is put onto a rocket and sent into space. It then says "She tries to penetrate the metal to ensure that her intuition is correct and that 808BY is still flying out there somewhere", but at this point in the game you have no idea who 808BY is. Because of some free DLC that was installed, I thought that I had somehow started from the mid-point of the game, but no, this is the start of the game. Referencing a character that you apparently have a connection with and are supposed to know, but don't.
The into cutscene then goes on. "A horrible fireball engulfs the escape pods when a shot from the station hit the space between them. [...] Bea is terrified as she has just been separated from 808BY."
A moment ago we were being placed into a rocket, and now we're in an escape pod and there's a space station shooting things? No escape pod or station has been mentioned previously, again, reinforcing the feeling that you've missed a chunk of story. Also, another mention of 808BY - a character we're yet to meet.
Yes, you can unlock lore as you progress through the game and view it in the gallery, but players aren't likely to do this during the tutorial section.
This isn't the only time it happens in the game either. There are other examples where things/characters are mentioned for the first time in a way that implies you already know what/who they are. I think with some patching, the story could be elaborated on and make more sense, and really enrich the game.
👍 : 0 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
193 minutes
Space Tail is a solid puzzle platformer so far. The story is simple but tugs at the heart. I really want Bea to find her way home.
👍 : 0 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
612 minutes
This is more of a neutral (case #287973 where I wish steam would let me)
The game all in all is nice. Handling feels a bit clunky at times, but that's probably because Bea (the dog) is so wide as opposed to your normal platformer protagonists.
The senses were a nice idea, with an awful execution. So you have one sense that points you to important items and secrets. Which means you probably always use it. If only it had a toggle for always-on. Hell, have all senses always on, but muted (hard to see), that would be the best IMHO
At least one puzzle is buggy, and it feels like by design. Minor spoiler: You carry around fruits that have different sizes of NPC groups following them. You gotta distribute 4 groups to 3 buttons to get the correct weight on each. So far so good. Annoying puzzle because the dudes don't end up right next to the fruit so you have to finagle around to get them all on the button, but nothing to bad. But as soon as you have enough dudes on a button, it locks in place. If you then move the fruit (NPCs)to a different button, that first button doesn't reset - but still counts as wrong for the end solution. So you feel like you have the perfect weight on each button but nothing happens.
And what the hell kind of story telling is that?
Tutorial -> on a planet, in a fancy space suit, task to restore 8o8by's parts (who the hell is bobby?) -> use bobby to hack and stuff for the whole level -> "2 hours earlier" -> what happened after the tutorial, how you meet bobby, how you got the fancy space suit, complete with tutorial mesages on how to hack, the thing you have been doing for the whole of the last level.
It's like they mixed up the order of the first two levels, then thought "ah screw it, slap a '2 hours earlier' in between them"
Yes, flashbacks exist and they can be a nice storytelling tool, but it really doesn't feel like one. When tasked to restore 8o88y's parts you think bobby was the boy of the tutorial and think you gotta find space shuttle parts or something. Not small glowing rectangles. And later, you already hacked aplenty, you had to use it to finish the previous level, so why a tutorial again? Even in the gallery the two levels are switched.
Hell, even if it was a flashback, that's not a place for one.
Also, a pet peeve. Who pronounces Bea as "bee"? Is Beatrice now bee-trice?
👍 : 1 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
778 minutes
I will preface this by saying that if you are already somewhat interested in this game, and it's on offer, then for how little it costs, I can easily recommend picking it up. There’s enough content in the game that will be worth the price of admission, and there’s even a demo; again, if you played it and it’s got you interested, you will find it worth the price.
As for the game itself, I think it's rather quite good. There’s quite a lot this game does right as an indie title, though there are also some issues and problems that are present. Note: this review will be as spoiler-free as possible.
The gameplay is a story-driven platformer with elements of stealth, action and a little bit of puzzling. You control a dog called Bea who starts off living on Earth before being separated from their adoptive owner. They then end up embarking (pun intended) on a quest to reunite themselves while exploring the depths of space. In terms of the gameplay, it is a classic 2.5D platformer and all the staples are accounted for and familiar. You have three innate “senses” which you can use to aid you: hearing, which allows you to visually see sounds; smell, which allows you to see which gases are poisonous and what scent you have for some puzzles; and sight, which allows you to see connections between things like buttons and doors. The game makes good use of these, and they are very useful if you want to find additional collectables and hidden lore. Another notable mechanic is the ability to communicate with the various inhabitants that you come across in the story. I find this mechanic just “ok”. It’s not anything particularly special, and the only punishment for messing it up is having to wait or dodge away while the creature returns to their neutral state. My main issue is there is no depth to it; simply choose a starting action, see how they react and go from there. Where the problem lies is that if you pair each action with their counterpart on the opposite side of the radial menu, they cancel each other out. This means you cannot ever lose any encounter – simply choose an action, if it didn’t move the creature to a happy state, simply perform the opposite action and try another action.
The story is perhaps the next big piece and very much drives the gameplay. I will not spoil anything here, but I found the story to be, in contrast to the communication system, much more fleshed out and with quite a bit of depth to it. There are loads of characters, artefacts and lots of general information that does a fantastic job at describing the fictional universe. While traversing levels, you can find areas, which you can scan to get lore fragments. These can be read in the menu and, to my surprise, have a decent amount of information in each of them. These are actually quite fun to read, and it really does complement the story – aside from one bit, which I’ll get to later. A couple of minor issues I do have is that it firstly can be described in a single word: “contrived”. To me, it feel like the next stage in the game was heavily forced by the cutscene that preceded it. The issue is, after you finish the stages on a planet, it feels like you could just go straight to the end of the game from a narrative point of view. The cutscenes’ remedy to this is by having a significant amount happen in about 4 panels of narrated images. The whole set of stages on a planet could take an hour where, typically, you have one or two goals that progress the story. Then, the cutscene happens and loads of things happen, and you’re now on a new planet. It could just be me, but the story felt a little disjointed – more like every planet had its own story written in isolation, and then the overarching story tried to link them together.
The final bit of the game requires you to make two choices; both affect the story, and one of them affects the final gameplay. A small thing with this is one of the choices makes absolutely no sense in my opinion. One of the choices is between destroying two entities, or combining them. Throughout the whole game, each of these entities has been described, documented and shown to be chaotic and evil – which makes the choice of unifying or destroying them seem a non-choice; clearly the latter is what should be done. Strangely, if you download and complete the two DLC levels, you will be given two cutscenes which explains these entities, how they were created and what they stand for, which makes this choice actually a meaningful choice. If these pieces of information were present to the player before the decision, then this would seem like a simple fix.
As for the soundtrack, I’m someone who enjoys game soundtracks and plays them more than regular songs. I’m happy to say this one is quite a nice addition to my collection. It’s more focused around ambient/atmospheric pieces, and it does the job very well. Soundtracks are always the most subjective, but for me this was a decent OST.
The art style is also nothing short of fantastic. It’s very well constructed in my opinion and there are a number of places in the game that look amazing, despite not having an advanced lighting system in the game engine or anything like that. This extends to the cutscenes as well which, while they are basically just still images with a little bit of animation, again the art style really shines.
So far, my review has been based on my casual playthrough. At this point, I would say this is a good game, close to being great even. Unfortunately, where this game is at its worst is when going for completion.
I wanted to go back and collect all the lore fragments, and find all the hidden skins you can get for Bea...at which point I found some infuriating bugs. While I did encounter some bugs on my initial playthrough, they weren’t frequent – the same cannot be said when going for completion. There are lots of minor bugs: Bea freaking out when on the edge of ledges; some abilities and senses not activating; the gravity of objects getting very confused when you jump; all fine examples. Where the game became infuriating was the collision detection...or lack thereof. For some reason, collisions will just refuse to detect anything sometimes. I will sit on collectables and they won’t be collected, buttons won’t be pressed, etc. It is much more prevalent because the game seems to recalculate collisions whenever you die – which you will do a lot of when trying to find collectables. When I load into a level, the collision can be fine but then I die and can no longer hit a button I could previously. You can die again to hopefully fix it...except that can sometimes mean losing a huge amount of progress for levels that have few checkpoints. And when I say collision detection, while I’ve yet to fall through the floor, the triggers that take you to the next stage can also fail to register – the closest I got to quitting the game out of frustration was a little over halfway into the story where I died jumping into a pit. I naturally assumed that it meant it was a bottomless pit I should avoid. I then spent at least 20 minutes trying to find a way to progress because the only thing that I could do was move left...but be blocked by a box that I could never jump high enough over, or jump to the right...which was blocked by electric gates. There was literally nothing else I could think of and so after racking my brains I decided to try the pit again and...it loaded the next stage. Extremely frustrating.
The only good thing I can say about completion is that the achievements do not seem to be adjusted for the DLC levels, meaning you actually only need 29/31 lore fragments and 18/20 skins to get them.
I do want to end this by saying I did overall enjoy my time playing it, and I definitely got more than my money's worth from it. As this is the first game by this indie studio, I cannot expect it to be flawless and I will say, even with the bugs, this is a good attempt at a first game.
👍 : 2 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
34 minutes
I have a great fun playing that game. If you like games like ORI you should not be dissapointed. Its a puzzle platformer so also for people who loves solving puzzles. The game has quite unique mechanics. You will need to use dog senses and interact with other creatures to make them friendly and help you in the game.
Graphics: 8/10
Music: 9/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Game Balance: Good (not to hard but not easy as well)
👍 : 10 |
😃 : 0
Positive
Playtime:
6 minutes
Note: Played via family sharing, hence only 5 minutes on record (min. to post review). Actual play time around 1h.
I've played through a bit of the game and I have some useful feedback for the devs. Currently I can't really recommend it, it needs a lot of polishing... but I do see quite a bit of potential for it, yes. So I went through the trouble of writing this review for you, to hopefully help you out with it.
The art is commendable, great work to the artists and animators! I love Bea and the effort that you put into this world. The controls feel natural, I like how Bea controls, that's pretty good too. These are my favorite things about this game.
But there are a lot of game design problems that aren't making for a good experience right now.
I will describe the problems I had.
1. The necessary buttons don't always show up when needed. For example, as much as I love the senses idea, if I'm in an area where I'm going to need my senses, it's helpful to have RB pop up on the sense area as a reminder. Display RB only, nothing else.
2. And speaking of that, there's way too much text. I'm trying to play a videogame, not read a novel. You have to be as brief as possible, guys. For example, you got here a message that says:
"Hold LB while in your target's range to communicate. Select your expression with R and confirm it with RT".
You could separate this in 3 little steps. Look:
"See range: Hold LB" - Player holds button, game displays "Emote: (R)" - Player selects expression, game displays "Confirm: RT"
In game, this makes it a lot simpler and quicker to read.
3. And please, don't make it even worse by putting big paragraphs of text in the middle of the screen. Big text can sit on the bottom, away from Bea, just fine. Quick button prompts is fine, but not lots of text. I like having my sight of the game uninterrupted by text.
4. Minor thing, but while reading the lore at the gallery, I wanted to read the next and found myself unexpectedly needing to do two steps - select and activate. The game could easily switch lore automatically and immediately when pressing the arrows or dpad without clicking the corresponding ball on the bottom or pressing A. It would make it more fluid.
5. I am unlocking skins, but there's no way to open that tab and check them out. That is not good. If we aren't supposed to know of or use them yet, they shouldn't be showing up at the start, nor should we be prompted to press LB/RB to switch tabs.
6. I had no idea of what parts of the UI were until I noticed them described in the pause menu. It's OK for them to be there, but we shouldn't rely solely on that to learn what they are. Consider pointing out the health bar when we take some damage, for example. It should be obvious which element represents health, but it is not. We usually expect the health bar to be red, or to have a + on it, or the character's head, so please mind that.
7. I found the Drydons a little annoying, and it took me a while to really figure them out, but they are OK now. What I wrote before on #2 should help.
8. Performance at 4K and 1440p feels inadequate, dropping significantly below 60 FPS. I don't have the most modern graphics card, but mine handles more complex games than Space Tail at these resolutions, keeping 60 FPS. So something doesn't seem quite right when it comes to that. Not that it's a big deal, but something to keep in mind and to try to understand.
9. At the training center, I died twice for a red gas obstacle that swaps too suddenly and kills instantly without warning. There is no way to foresee the behavior quickly. We players have nothing warning us to stop.
It is OK to have foreseeable obstacles that do damage, but unpredictable insta-kills... no, just no. That really annoys, even if the respawn point is not far away.
10. Tutorial messages keep showing up when no longer needed as I circle around the stage to get stuff done. They should disable automatically once players have accomplished the intended actions, showing up again only if they are stuck.
11. I got stuck at a forest puzzle and nearly stopped playing. I didn't know what I was supposed to do because I did not know the green mushroom behaved like a sponge.
Please consider showing tips once players haven't moved through a puzzle area within 90 seconds or so, that would be appreciated!
I hope this review helps, and I look forward to updates on Space Tail in the future. I really want to love this game. I may recommend it later if I see good improvements to these problems, so I'm counting on you. Good luck! :)
[OBS: Will still play more of it and may edit with new findings or conclusions]
👍 : 73 |
😃 : 5
Negative