Small Radios Big Televisions Reviews

Small Radios Big Televisions works like this. Each level is shaped like a different geometric shape, and each side has a bunch of doors. The player must enter these doors to find a bunch of rooms, cog and key puzzles, all in the hopes of unlocking more sides to the geometric building. To move to the next level, the player must uncover all sides of the geometric shape. Each level has a unique gimmick, and all use tapes as a main gameplay feature. You find them in many places during the game, and when you use one, you will be transported to a small "pocket dimension". There is also a way to alter these "pocket dimensions", which acts as a nice little puzzle mechanic. The artstyle is nice, clean and I'm a sucker for factory-like aesthetics. The music is psychedelic, and it's a nice way to spend your time. The problem stems from a bunch of different problems I had. First, the nitpicky side of me noticed how you can almost never get a proper volume setting that doesn't make the music sound too loud or quiet. Indoor areas are really quiet, but the outdoors can blast my eardrums. Second, the game is VERY short. Within only a bit over half an hour, I had already beaten two of the game's five factories. Third (and most important), as nice as the game is presented, it's VERY difficult to nagivate. You are given a map, but when the game is almost entirely side view 2.5D and the map is top-down 2D, the feature might as well not even be there. Important gameplay elements aren't even visible on it either, so it's practically useless. The overabundance of doors and lack of any dignificant landmarks (aside from being able to close dead-end rooms' doors) makes navigation to the next location a huge hassle, and it's not all that exciting. The game is good if you want an artsy puzzler and you like getting lost within room after room. It's not if you don't like getting frustrated by samey puzzles and generally don't care much for artistic games. If you do plan on getting this, get it on sale. 12€ is a bit much for a game that can probably be beaten in under two hours.

This was very hard to get into. Despite the cute artsy indie look, you are left to wander seemingly meaningless rooms constantly and coming back to them repetitively because the map system is not instinctive at all. Puzzles are either too easy or you don't even get what you are supposed to look for. It's a bit sad that the game did not reach its full potential.

The art is very pretty and the glitchy visuals are interesting, but the level design is confusing and it's easy to get lost. It's hard to stay interested, since the gameplay offers very little in return to completing the "puzzles". I've tried to play this game at least three times over the years, but every time I gave up after 30-something minutes because it's so frustrating.

This is a weird game to review for me because I have such mixed feelings about it. Playing the game itself was quite fun. I loved the haunting atmosphere and the more I played the more invested I got with the narrative. I loved the subtle storytelling and there was one particular point in the story that really hit me and made me question everything I had been doing so far, and it really impressed me. The art style was very charming, and I quite enjoyed the puzzles as well. But the drawbacks for this game are to big to ignore, and overall they hindered my experience. I love these sort of games, the weird, atmospheric, artsy games that make you question yourself and the game itself. And this game does it very well. However, for the price it is crimminally short. I finished it well under two hours and that was even after I spent a good few minute stuck on one particular puzzle. The game isn't buggy, but I finished it in a little over an hour and I wasn't able to justify that price for the enjoyment I had for it, so I ended up refunding the game anyways. If you think this is a game you would be interested in, I strongly encourage you to check it out, but only at a major discount. I'd suggest waiting until its on sale, somewhere around or under two dollars. I greatly enjoyed my time with this one, but the price you pay for such a short experience was extremely difficult for me to swallow. However, despite that, I still really enjoyed this game and hope more people check this game out and enjoy it as well.

I have to admit, im disappointed. I saw a preview of this on youtube and it looked quite promising. What I didn´t know was that in this video (about half an hour long) I saw about half of the game, not a small portion, and the complexety of said levels would not increase throughout the rest of the game. Calling this game a "puzzle game" is wrong. There are almost no real puzzles. The "virtual realities", the main selling point of the game, are just small polygon-like enviroments where you have nothing to do besides from picking up a key (if there is one). They look nice, yeah, but they´re extremely underdeveloped gameplay-wise. I mean, there are countless ideas you could put into this theme, like rewinding the tape to get back to an earlier stage, or actually interacting with the world (I know you can move the trees around a bit, but it doesnt do anything). I finished the game with all achievements in less than two hours, and will now refund it because im not willing to pay 10 bucks for meaningless clicking around, with zero thinking required. I´m sorry, but an interesting concept doesn´t automatically make a good game. Sorry if there is any misspelling, I´m not a native english speaker.

This is a game I eyed off when it was on the coming soon pile, it sounded interesting and it's not overly expensive VISUAL Look I love the art style and the sureal nature of everthing it's nice and nead with no tearing, though some parts of it can be frustrating trying to find things it's addictive and compeling SOUND This is the real leading edge of this game the sound and overal feel of the music is almost a Tubular Bells moment PUZZlES So this is primary a puzzle game, find a tape, find a gem in a sureal landscape. It's mostly cut and dry but it's the moving from room to room, messing with a tape to get a new landscape that gives this a real "HA" moment when you solve the puzzle. CONCLUSION If you like a little light puzzleing to solve this is a nice 2 maybe 3 hours to solve if you can wrap your head around it. The sountrack is rocking and very zen. What I would have liked is more puzzles and more levels. You can buy for sure, without the soundtrack your selling yourself short, but it is small and you will finish it licksplit, I would wait for sales to pick it up chep Buy if you must otherwise put it on the wish list and wait for sales

Hesitant recommendation. Like many smallish indie games, this is one that I would like a lot more if the serving size was bigger. I liked the visuals and the soundtrack, but there's not much meat. The areas are small, and the game is very short overall. It took me 2 hours of leisurely playing to get 100%, and there's really not much replay value beyond replaying a chapter to get a missed item or leaving the music on in the background if you didn't buy the soundtrack. It's difficult to discuss a game's length [in storefront reviews] without also discussing its price. I wouldn't expect or insist that the price be dropped, but I must admit that the price is one of the major reasons why I was expecting more content. That aside, there's some inconsistent execution within the gameplay. The majority of the game is basic point-and-click. Click on a door to go to another room. Click on a tape to put it in the tape player. Click on a key to get the key. Then there are parts where you're supposed to click and drag, but it's not particularly obvious. There are parts where you're moving along "on rails" and it's difficult to point the camera where you want it to go. There is one specific segment where you gain the ability to move around in first person with WASD. Each area contains ladders or stairs that would theoretically allow a human to get to any necessarily-accessible spot you can see, but there is no human model walking around in your view, so when you get to a particular area in which you have to move a platform up and down in order to "access" a completely unlocked door, it's hard to understand why you can't just go through the door. If my tape player is always with me, why can't I take my tapes with me to the next area? Why can I finish levels with extra unused keys left over? Again, I LIKE this game, I just want the gameplay to make more sense and I want there to be more content. Tundra / 10

this game was AMAZING and i rate it a 9/10 this game only has a 2 issues: 1. the only screen resolution setting was 1280x720 2. there is no reminder if you forget what button does what other than that i say this game is worth playing

An excellent puzzle game that will tease your brain to the very limit in a fun way. The visual designs are so retro-ish but great and the old school feel will stick with you after several minutes. Gameplay not so difficult, more like moderate. You just have to focus on the details and think out of the box. Because everything is not as it seems in this game. And your patience will surely be tested the most. Less is more. b(^_^)d

[b][u]See written review below[/u][/b] or watch it here: https://youtu.be/Um0qRIeW74o [h1]TL;DR: SKIP TO CONCLUSION![/h1] Small Radios Big Televisions is a very short puzzle adventure game where you find cassette tapes containing worlds to explore. I wanted to play this game in hopes of enjoying some good puzzles and exploration. You need to find cassette tapes, and each of these tapes has a different world on it. You also distort the tapes to affect the areas on them in order to find the items you need to progress.The gameplay is mostly solving puzzles to progress, with only a small amount of exploration. I feel a bit misled by the game description and I had expected more in the way of exploration. When I heard the description say “boundless virtual worlds” I wanted more than just being stuck moving on rails, and panning the camera around to click on the same item every single time. I think they could have made the worlds better if they had some puzzles inside the tapes, had some sort of collectibles that give more insight into the story, or just made them larger areas to explore. [h1]Pros:[/h1] [list][*]finding cassette tapes to visit worlds that you'll need to solve puzzles is an interesting concept [*]the regular puzzle levels look good, and the environments inside the tapes often looked quite bizarre, but others looked decent with their minimalist art style (however, the intentional static and distortion effects may be a nuisance to some) [*]puzzles throughout the game are very straightforward, and not very challenging (this may be a con for some) [*]game the controls are fine and easy to use with almost all the interaction being done with the mouse [*]the small amount of story is fine (there are a few dialog bits during cutscenes, and thankfully the voice in the trailer is not in the game) [*]most of the sound effects were good; the music is fine, but it doesn’t really stand out as being good or bad[/list] [h1]Cons:[/h1] [list][*]you can’t walk around in these worlds, and the only item you ever find is the same, so if you want good or immersive exploration, you won't be satisfied here - there are 3 versions of 18 different worlds, but most of them are pretty small areas (the game’s trailer shows some larger looking areas like the coast that I was eager to explore, only to realize you can’t even move around and actually explore the way you would want to) [*]you don’t get full control of the camera, and it takes away from any potential immersion that the world may have had [*]lack of camera control is incredibly frustrating; when you try to pan the camera around, the game would often seize control of it causing the view to snap back to the direction the game wants you to look (I almost refunded this game because of it) [*]short for the price (the game took me about 1.5-2 hours to complete the first time, but you can easily finish the game in half of that if you rush through it and know exactly what to do) [*]puzzles throughout the game are very straightforward, and not very challenging (this may be a pro for some) [*](nitpick) mouse cursor is not locked to the game screen, and people with multiple monitors will find it annoying to accidentally tab out of the game as they try to control the camera [*](nitpick) the audio during the cutscenes is a little irritating since the communications are made to sound broken up and full of static[/list] [h1]Conclusion:[/h1] I like the ideas behind the game, but I am not at all impressed by the execution of it. The puzzles were the highlight of the game, and I still liked them, even though they weren’t that challenging. However, the frustrating camera angles, the lack of character movement while ‘exploring’ the areas, short playtime, and unsatisfying exploration took its toll. Small Radios Big Televisions just fell short for me. It just feels like wasted potential, and I think they could have done a lot more with it. If you like my reviews, please feel free to join my Steam group, and follow my curations [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/AzralynnReviews#curation]here.[/url] You can also view this review on my website [url=http://www.azralynn.com/review-small-radios-big-televisions-game/]here.[/url]