Level 22: Gary’s Misadventures - 2016 Edition Reviews

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I am 32 years old. My ex-wife and I have a daughter together, and we adopted our son together. Both are now 4 years old. When we were going through our separation, I felt lost and unhappy. I was self-destructive. One day, I was so angry with everything spiraling out of control that I punched a concrete wall in a moment of overwhelming emotion. This resulted in breaking my fifth metacarpal in my right hand—the hand I worked with, played games with, and used to carry my children to bed—the hand I desperately needed to ensure I could continue providing. Upon learning the severity of the self-inflicted damage, I became almost suicidal. Keep in mind that just a few months before this, I was the happiest man, with no history of depression or anxiety. I had never experienced anger outbursts, nor was I the type to break down and cry, but I was in a tough situation that truly prevented me from seeing the light on the other side. With nothing better to do, I looked for a game I could play WITH ONE HAND while recovering. Somehow, I stumbled upon this game and read some of the comments. I decided it was worth a try... I must admit I didn't beat the game, nor did I play as much as some of you. In fact, I may have played this game for only a day or two. That being said, after doing so, I had a new joy and hope for life. I managed to leave behind the pain and suffering that had been thrust upon me. I could experience the joy and happiness of other people. I relaxed for 5 ♥♥♥♥ minutes listening to this music, long enough to realize that I would be okay. After realizing this, I turned off the game and went back to work. My hand hurt a lot, but I was motivated. I stopped feeling so sorry for myself and became the father I needed to be at that moment, not the weak boy I was behaving like. Today, I am close friends with the mother of my children. We don't fight, argue, or say hurtful things to each other. We are parents and friends. Now I have 3 children. My third child is, wait, ALSO 4 YEARS OLD. The woman I am with was going through a very similar situation at the time of my separation, and we just unexpectedly stumbled into each other's lives. We have been dating for a year and are very happy together. Moral of the story: you never know what life has in store for you, and if I had given up when all odds were against me, I wouldn't be where I am today. This silly little game helped me realize that. Thank you.

FUN GAME I LOVE IT

Took me a little over an hour to beat it but I had fun! Needs more levels though.

You know how ridiculous it was when Solid Snake hid inside a cardboard box? That's what this game feels like all the time. This is a rare case for me, an Indie game that isn't terrible but is actually pretty damn fun. (Seriously, look at my other reviews, this doesn't happen much). I can honestly say I really enjoy this game despite its issues. Highly recommended (for me anyway). Price point may be a bit high for some though since I'm not sure if there's much replay value, a community level editor would make this a much better proposition for the price. Technicals: Not much to speak of, no fullscreen/windowing options, you can toggle music and sfx on or off and you can use gamepad or mouse and keyboard (I recommend gamepad, mouse and keyboard requires you to control the character with clicks like an rts which is very awkward, a wasd and arrow keys system would have been better). Oh and nothing is remappable. Gameplay: You control Gary and try to evade coworkers and security guards as you sneak your way into work late. You hit a gameover when you are spotted by somebody (unless you just skirt their vision for a split second). The "enemies" have a cone of sight like in many games and you need to evade them. This can be done by simply learning their movement patterns and dodging them, to using the environment to hide (vents, closets, toilets etc.) , to even sabotage. Sabotage how? Well you can break their equipment to distract them, chuck erasers so they look in that direction, knock em out, OR (my favourite) give them an overdose of laxatives -insert maniacal laugh- The gameplay feels very smooth and it does get complicated at some points, I'll openly admit there was a couple points in the hour and I half I have played so far just raging. Oh, and did I mention boss fights? There are boss fights in this office lmao. These boss fights use mechanics you've already seen but in a way that feels much less like you're advancing a level than legitimately duking it out with the boss and it's great. Besides that there are little collectible figures, essentially pop figures with alternate names and some quirky descriptions. As well as secrets, these are hidden behind safes which require you to locate hints hidden throughout the level, on the first couple levels this is simply a case of spotting numbers hidden in plain sight around the level but later on it does become more difficult. Music/sound: Pretty enjoyable, the pacing is good and suited to the game and I do enjoy some of the tracks quite a bit. The sfx are decent enough, the one issue I have in this department is the fact that you can hear the employees using printers when they are waaaay off screen, no matter the size of the level you can always hear printers being used from the other side. It's not a huge issue but it does detract from the music a little. Graphics: Pretty simple, nothi9ng flashy about it. Runs smoothly at 60 locked. Of course there are a couple bugs that do need addressing: 1- I have multiple monitors and f0r some weird reason this game does not play in the primary but in my third monitor all the way on the left, this means if I were to play on mouse and keyboard I'd be at a very awkward angle. There's no in-game option to window the game so you need to alt+enter to window it then move it to your primary and alt+enter again to have it play on the right monitor. 2 - On gamepad there's a button that will zoom in the camera and lock it there, I can't figure out how to zoom back out despite mashing all the buttons, this is fixable with a restart. Fully recommend, this is honestly very, very fun for me. Nice pacing, it's got some difficulty behind it at some points, and the dialogue is quirky. I do honestly think using a gamepad will make the game feel much smoother though.

NOTE: This game requires a controller as the keyboard/mouse controls are poorly optimised for this game. With that said. It's alright. You get a couple of hours of fairly decent game. It's perhaps a little easy, at least I found, but hunting the collectables are fun. Good luck figuring out the safe combinations though, because some I NEVER EVER would have worked out as they are so obscure. I also had an issue with the game loading on my secondary monitor and it was impossible to move it. It has no options for graphic settings. It doesn't deserve a thumbs down, at least from me as I didn't [i]dislike[/i] playing it. Play it if you want, you're not missing anything really if you don't though.

The graphics are unique and look stylish, some decent stealth ideas are here that incorporate comedy but the positives kind of end there. Technical wise this game is pretty bad, you can't go windowed or move the game to your second monitor. The PC controls are unusable, gamepad is required. Gameplay wise there are just too many gimmicks relying on trial and error to figure out to beat the levels. My last straw was when I had to cross a moving conveyer belt, I had a cardboard box on and for some reason the guards spots you. Utterly ridiculous, that is the perfect scenario to cross an area incognito but because the game wanted some dumb reaction based puzzle sequence the tactic doesn't work. You have to be really patient and be a big fan of the art style to get into this one. Would not recommend for any general audience.

Nice polished little game, seems like the jokes are quite clever, mature, clean, fun. (like how one guy notices another guy was in primary school until age 14) The control scheme is awful. veiwport is too small, can't use WASD movement... if you COULD it might have fixed the game. Not to mention the shocking behaviour of the Devs in removing the game from steam, updating/patching it and rereleasing it as a new game, making people who purchased it in 2016 rebuy the new version wtih bugfixes.

So one day I was browsing steam and added this to my wishlist, it was a thing of the moment, and it stayed in my wishlist for a long time. The game was removed from Steam and that weird item remained in my wishlist unable to be purchased. So as time went by I started to feel very curious about it. I immediately bought it when I heard it was available again. And turns out it's not very good haha. Actually, it's not a bad game either. What I like about it is its visuals, music and humor and this unusual context for stealth. It presents itself nicely. But some things in it displeased me. So read on and see if they can potentially bother you as well. The control scheme. I played with mouse and keyboard, then switched to gamepad, then switched back to mouse and keyboard. Neither works well. The gamepad gives my left hand one hell of a workout, with movement and items all on my left thumb, while my right hand every now and then pans the camera around. The mouse and keyboard makes you move by clicking instead of using arrow keys or wasd. It does not accept click on solid objects, making it difficult to move close to walls, a very important stealthy thing in stealth games. To use item you press number keys, which is not awful but since we are using movement with mouse, why not let me use the right mouse button with scroll wheel to select item? Or, better yet, movement on the keyboard and camera and items on the mouse. The camera pan isn't smooth in either control schemes, it seems to influence my movements somewhat. Like I can't move down if I'm looking up, for example. Then there's the field of view. Considering the player and AI speeds, the field of view is way too narrow, with coworkers popping up on screen and spotting you instantly. This seems intentional as we do have control over camera pan. I can see that working to create tension, but not with that terrible control scheme. It's also a repetition kind of game. Think of super meat boy but in a stealth gameplay. AI patterns are simple but they move fast, turn instantly and spot you instantly too. I'm NOT counting this as a problem of the game, because I do enjoy that kind of gameplay. I mean, I would prefer a more traditional stealth game that rewards planning and patience rather than trial and error. But the game has no obligation to fulfill random expectations of mine, it didn't want to be a traditional stealth game, it wants to be a trial and error game. BUT if you don't like trial and error games you will not like this one. So to me it's all about the input method. These problems don't look difficult to fix at all to me and I can tell there's a pretty cool game underneath that. But I can't in good consciousness recommend a game I can't play for a full hour.