The Narrator Is a DICK Reviews

This game is extremely hard. Probably the hardest single player game I have played on steam. The narrator is really annoying and he will piss you off. I was really salty when I couldn't beat the first level after 20 minutes, but I just couldn't stop playing because in all honesty it is a fun game. I wish the narrator didn't repeat the same thing over and over and the beginning of most levels, but after all, he is supposed to be a dick. All in all though, I do recommend this game and even though it makes me want to kill myself it is really fun.

"The Narrator is a DICK" is an extremely easy platformer that you can ( likely ) beat on your first playthrough. I would love to have tea time w/ the narrator. All kidding aside, if you are a platformer junkie like I am , this is a no-brainer.

It's funny. It gets pretty difficult pretty fast, but the narrative humor keeps it going (until you run out of narrator responses to the same death scenario...).

This game is reminiscent of I Wanna Be The Guy, with the added bonus of a charming Narrator who is only too happy to chaperone you through the idyllic levels. Ignore the game's misleading title. The Narrator really is a benevolent person and he would never attempt to manipulate you into deathtraps of his own design, or mock you relentlessly for getting killed by an apple falling sideways into your path at mach speeds. Not a bad little platformer game. Give it a try!

[i]The Narrator Is a DICK[/i] [sic] proclaims itself to be a "comedy-based, challenging 2D platformer" that is "fully narrated". In some (admittedly reaching) sense, this is true. But it is only [i]just[/i] true. The comedy is not funny, the challenge is not clever, and the narration is not interesting. The first thing I saw when I started up this game is a "Made with Unity Personal Edition" splash screen. This is not, in itself, a horrendous thing, but more often than not is indicative of mediocrity. Still, I am committed to the premise, and carry on. The second thing I saw was a heavily cropped fullscreen window on a different monitor (I have a dual-screen setup on Linux). I could make it to the options, but several options, including windowed mode, were inaccessible, and upon attempting another resolution, the game crashed. Further attempts to boot resulted in a blank screen. Fortunately (or so I thought), there was a prefs file in the config path. I tried altering it; it failed to do anything, for apparently the game alters the prefs file on startup. Eventually (and only after a period of time longer than I ended up playing the game for), I found a situation where deleting the prefs file allowed for the game to show up on my primary monitor, which, while still cropped, [i]could[/i] allow me to reach the button for windowed mode. Also, the volume options default to 0, no sound. This is a game about a voiced narrator. Take a second to think about this. The game itself is... [i]uninteresting[/i]. There's no real puzzles, and the obstacles are either traps or moderately annoying percision platforming. I allowed myself to think, initially, that there was some level of meta-commentary on the canonical Indie Puzzle Platformer with Narration that is in the zeitgeist, but in retrospect, this was too optimistic. The narration just sort of contradicts the on-the-ground reality and occasionally yells at you. There's no real interaction with the gameplay. You might as well just let it be silent. This is not serving any higher purpose; the crappy gameplay does not reek of intentionality or camp. There's a Dance Dance Revolution minigame in the second level (which requires you to figure out that the 'E' key, and [i]only[/i] the 'E' key, is needed to interact with NPCs when prompted), where you are prompted to put inputs in time with arrows overlapping the arrow boxes. This only works with WASD keys, while you can play the rest of the game with the arrow keys. Keybinding is either absent or sufficiently obscure to the point that I did not see it. I gave up on the third level at the flying spike trap. It did not seem worth it to go through all of the traps you had already avoided repeatedly to get back to that obstacle. With substantial overhauls, there might be the start of a good concept here, but I'm not particularly getting my hopes up for [i]The Narrator is a Dick II: Dick Harder[/i].

It's like Kaizo Mario met Stanley Parable but was published by Bethesda post Skyrim. It's very clear the creator put some love into this game but it suffers from some major gameplay issues. The hit detection and sprite generation are wonky. I had things that should have hit, not hit entirely, and things that shouldn't hit, destroy me. At one point the ground just stopped spawning correctly and I began falling into it. The arrow keys sometimes work? and other times don't? It's random to know whether they will. This made the final boss incredibly difficult. That being said, some of these problems were fixed when I put it back into windowed mode. I think it may just not have been built to run at that resolution. What sucks is that I was really looking forward to some witty banter and the best I can say is that the game is named very correctly. This is where the "stanley parable" part kicks in, and he definitely is a dick, but I didn't find him funny. He's just, kinda offensive and the same triggers fire every single time you run through an area, starting to grate on you. Since you're gonna be dying a lot, you're going to be hearing the narrator say the same things, over and over. When the narrator started calling the player slurs, I just switched him off entirely. I do appriciate this game as what is clearly one of the developer's earlier released games, and it's not unplayable, like a lot of these earlier games are. I just actively can't recommend this game because the gameplay is glitchy, the narrator isn't just a dick, he's downright offensive sometimes, and the controls aren't consistent. But if you like that? or it sounds up your alley? Go for it.

Ok, so yeah this game is wonderful. It looks nice and sounds nice, but most of all it is quirky and the most ridiculous things kill you. Love that. The only thing that could use some work is the menus, especially the option screen. But that doesn't effect gameplay or anything, just a thought. Great work!

It's relatively easy to write a funny joke and put it inside a game. It's harder to use game mechanics to turn the gameplay itself into a funny joke. This game manages to do both. A masterpiece of an old game comedy genre, the "unfair platformer" (think Kaizo Mario), it murders you in all the funniest and silliest ways, while the narrator, a foul-mouthed psychopath of GLaDOS scale, mocks your every action. Short and spicy, this game manages to turn even the frustration into comedy.

Not only is this a complete IWTBTG clone, but a few issues hold it back and make it even MORE frustrating. First off, the graphics are pretty good, being what they are. The narrator is NOT a dick. He's an annoying, grating repetetive asshole. Not only does he repeat himself every few seconds, but he usually doesn't even get a chance to finish his setence before he's launched into a new line. The game killer for me, is this. There is no analogue control. Just like IWTBTG the first couple apple trees drop apples for an insta kill and clouds drop lighting bolts for instakills, blah blah. The point is, you can't slowly edge towards it to set the trap off. You move so quicky that even if you tap the direction super quick, at least 1/2 the time you'll end up running underneath a death trap even though you knew it was there. If it had analogue control with pads, or even a walk key I might have tried to actually finish this game. As it is I'm refunding and hoping to God I never have to hear the nasal repetitive voice of the Narrator again.

I've always been a fan of "cruel" platformers, Iwannabetheguy, Iwannabetheboshi, Erye's Action, etc. But this one is frankly boring, uninspired, and the platforming isn't very interesting.