Finger Trees Reviews

accurately describes what male loneliness looks like

First off, I have to say I feel a bit bad not recommending this game. I really like the unique aesthetic that this developer has, and I do recommend the first 20 minutes or so but not the whole game. The looping mechanics very quickly ruin the tension and atmosphere that the introduction creates. I very quickly went from being immersed in the world, wondering what bizarre structure or creature I might come upon around the next corner to bored, frustrated, and disappointed. Now, I can understand a game made by what seems to just be [i]a guy[/i] from what I can tell being a little rough around the edges tech and design wise, and I'm fine with that. My issue is that Finger Trees has enough rough patches that I don't have the willpower to fight through them to see what the rest of the game has to offer, and considering how good the very beginning is that's very frustrating. I think that the whole deep fried vaguely cruelty squad aesthetic and potential for interesting lore really has potential to be something special, and I hope that this developer continues on with it. That being said, what really lost me was the bridge world. Blindly searching for something while being chased by infinitely respawning enemies is not only frustrating but it also removes all of their impact. The thing about trying to create a tense atmosphere in a game is that if you make a section too hard or confusing and the player just keeps dying over and over at the same point it turns from something tense and exciting to something boring and frustrating. After dying enough times I ended up in the next world and if it wasn't for the achievement I would have been sure that I'd been sent back to the very start. That was the point where I really started to give up. After going through that level and actually succeeding in completing the next bridge world the intended way only to go through the door to [i]another[/i] bridge world I dropped the game. I fully admit that I am not writing this with a full knowledge of all of the content in the game, and I really would like to see all of it but I just don't have the patience to do so. What my main criticism really boils down to is that the bridge worlds are just outright miserable to play and looping back through good content that I just played is a real bummer too. I suspect that the house and the bridge world are the only locations you visit and they just have minor variations throughout the course of the game, and if that's the case I think this would be a much better experience if it had just gone from the house to the bridge world and either ended after completing the bridge world or ended at some third location. Or I could be completely wrong and I just barely missed getting to all the good stuff. I'd also like to add in no particular order: Having the help screen pop up after starting a new game or in some other automatic way would be much better than having it be an optional button on the main menu Either making the flashlight shine further or adding some sort of map system would have been nice for navigation, the limited view does wonders for the atmosphere, not so much for user friendliness in navigation. The combat system clearly had a fair bit of thought and care put into it but it's just not quite there yet if you want to have sections that are combat heavy like the bridge worlds. The round cursor thing is cool and fits well with the overall aesthetic but is annoying to use because the actual point that's clicked appears to not be in the center of the circle like you would expect And finally, if the developer does read this I'd like to say that I'm at least [i]trying[/i] to be constructive here, so I really hope this whole review is helpful and doesn't come off as me just absolutely shitting on your game just to be mean. I'd really like to see more stuff like this with just a tiny bit more polish.