They Came From Venus Reviews

I thought there was no way the company that put out one of best games I've played this decade could be that bad. Obviously everyone is just mad about the AI voice acting -- a new hot button issue. I was very very wrong. I would have been embarrassed to have my name attached to this. This really felt like a cash grab, like maybe the project was falling apart so they put it out just to make some of the money back. The writing is terrible. Everything reads like it was run through a translation twice. MAYBE this is on purpose and you later find out you're an alien or something, but I'll never find out as I'm refunding this. They also decide to just lock you in your room and let you bumble around angrily as though to snub your nose at the fact the game is doodoo. I then wondered around the house for 5 minutes trying to locate a ringing phone which I couldn't see due to the colors. The graphics look like something from the PS3 or PS4 era, yet somehow it still ran at abysmal framerates (I ran Elden Ring at at least Very High so it ain't my card). The controls are horrible. I tried to play with a controller, and apparently the game has built-in controller support which binds joystick-left and joystick-right to both movement AND jumping? So I couldn't even use Steam's built-in WASD template unless I wanted to jump around constantly. And then even with mouse & keyboard it controls weird. The sound was ok, then you turn on the radio in your room and get a single guitar strumming mindlessly, as radios are wont to play. As far as the AI voice acting, yes I think it's a gross thing to do, but I figured, "whatever, let's give it a shot". The voice pack they used had to have been free, because every line of dialogue had the weirdest emphasis on random words or no emphasis whatsoever. I soft-locked the game once in my 0.3 hours just using the menus. This game is free-on-Itch-tier, and even then I'd be annoyed that someone decided to released it. This is simply unacceptable for a studio to put out without a disclaimer of some kind. Grade: F. Please see me after class. :(

I REALLY wanted to like this game. I'm a huge fan of SureAI (so much that I bought a coffee mug with their logo). They made one of the best games I've ever played (Enderal). This one had some world-building detail that was good, such as the newspapers and the cassette tapes. The music was great, I liked the jukebox aspect. Voice acting was mediocre, which I can overlook. But the game is not good. It starts out ok, until after the initial escape room puzzle. Then it turns into an open-world game with no map, no direction, no threat, no real indication of what you're supposed to be doing. A huge problem I had was there was no indication to "check for a package at the front door", much less where the front door was. The house is the size of a county civic center and I'm supposed to just know where the front door is and that I'm supposed to go there? That was my biggest problem, there is no real indication of what your "mission" is or clue to what you're supposed to be doing after you leave the bedroom. I couldn't finish it, it was just boring and went nowhere.

It honestly feels like the very first project of a solo game dev that just likes tinkering with Unreal Engine.