Wenjia Reviews

Found this game while looking for something similar to "Ori and the Blind Forest" - and it doesn't come any closer than this game does. Graphics are similar to Ori - some elements are practically copy-pasted - and so are the music and story. The English translation was a little shaky and I only vaguely understood the story. However, I [u] WAS [/u] looking for something like Ori, and the game really fulfilled that demand. Pro: - Extremely similar to Ori and as such: really cute to look at - Soundtrack is pleasant - Gameplay is easy and smooth - No bugs - Casual lazy Sunday afternoon entertainment Con (kind of) - Short playtime. Could be played through in 1 hrs, so depending what you're looking for this might be either perfect for you or not at all. Then again, the game is also not terribly expensive, so the short playtime was ok imho. - Gameplay is easy and smooth but does not offer a lot of features (e.g. different powers and such). However, as the game is not terribly long, it does not overstay its welcome.

This review was a disappointing conclusion to come to. There are some sections where the flow of the level is so seamless that the visuals, the music, it all comes together for a beautiful experience. But then these moments are, at best, a few minutes long. The world is broken up into so many random short segments of varying sizes that I've accidentally ended one of the levels without even exploring 10% of it. Oh, I should have fallen down instead of jumping across, and now I'm done? Great. Some levels take a minute, some can take 3 or 4, others are just a Point A to Point B path that takes you 8 seconds to cross and there is no reason to even have it be its own level. I can forgive most of this game's flaws because the spawn points are mostly reasonable and very frequent. The exception to this, and what finally caused me to turn on this short game, is the lava level. You have dozens upon dozens of difficult sections that you have to get through as fast as possible and there are no save points. You make a mistake, and you have to start the painful process over again, and over again. Having to hold the spacebar as you land on certain platforms to get thrown higher becomes an infuriatingly difficult task as you accidentally double jump instead, wasting precious time as that lava (which looks beautiful) engulfs you. There are sections in between where, on prior levels, there would be a save point, but not here, and it has turned me off of the game completely due to how badly it has broken my progress and enthusiasm going forward. In hindsight, there are numerous locations where the game is just suddenly frustrating and I'll crash into a wall dozens of times before moving on to the rest of the level that is otherwise a breeze to get through. There are generally poor visual queues for when you need to transition worlds, so you end up constantly pressing J when it's apparent that there isn't any real difference between the two environments. There are so many times where this lack of imagination becomes obvious: press J to reach this platform, then double jump and press J to land on this other platform, rinse and repeat over and over. There are a few sections where this mechanic works well as the environment itself changes shape as you jump, but in most instances, it's used to artificially make the level harder to progress through without adding any gameplay value. What changes do exist, like energy waves that float you upward, are constantly awkward to navigate. There was one section where I had to press W to increase speed through a trap, but the pop up to do press it was so short and poorly placed I had to die a dozen times so that I could see what it was telling me to do. That W for up to go fast was what I expected all along, but it only works in that one instance, so I stopped using it other than on accident, which only adds to the frustration. Overall, I got this game on sale, and for a couple of dollars it is worth it for what it is. The graphics are pretty, the music is wonderful, and I mostly enjoyed it in the beginning even if the story makes little sense. More save points during those long, painful stretches of BS would save the game. It's hard to buy into the idea of a world where you magically float through dimensions as a glowing cat when that sense of speed and movement is constantly getting broken by traps.

Even if the game can be beaten in 2h (or 1h to get achievement for speed run) it's really demanding platformer. Graphic is beautiful, story is interesting and music is nice (could be more of them but it's just 1-2h so you can deal with it :P ). Highly recommend!! ~~[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44342408-Sanctuary-for-Strange-People/]Check my curator's page![/url]~~

The graphics are nice, but the gameplay is a bit boring without much to offer. From the parts I played so far, it doesn't really do anything creative with the dual-world mechanic. It also doesn't commit enough to keeping certain mechanics in one world or the other, leading both worlds to feel the same (again, this is only based off the first hour of the game). It's not so bad that I'm unwilling to believe it'd get better later, but I wouldn't recommend it.

This game is ~beautiful~, but the gameplay just isn't there. I really wanted to like it on the strength of its art alone, but... (in order of importance) 1) The central mechanic of switching between the "matter" and "energy" realms just doesn't come together. It's more of a chore than a joy. It basically ends up playing out as "at each screen, check both worlds to make sure you're not missing anything." 2) The pacing is bad. I'd get tired of a certain gimick long before the game would stop giving it to me and checkpoints were just a bit too far apart. Also forcing me to restart a level if I save and quit instead of restarting from last checkpoint is a frustrating miss. 3) The physics is off. Momentum suddenly 0's-out at weird times, often at the bottom of a hill. Jumps are a bit finicky. Balancing on top of moving objects of both very finicky and something the game asks you to do a lot. (Those boulders...) 4) There are English translation issues. Nothing game-breaking and nothing that wouldn't be ignorable without the other faults, but it's there and it's a bit niggling. If you really like the parallel world-shifting mechanic, check out Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams which executes the idea much better, IMO.

This game does have highlights, such as the nice visuals, music and creative platforming but there are a few issues with this game, such as: It is way too short, I was able to finish the story in just over 1 and a half hours The animation feels clunky, especially while jumping, ruining some of the platforming a little bit. Finding secrets doesn't actually do anything Overall, you'd be better off just getting Ori.

Fun side scrolling platform game from what I have played of it enjoyable eventually I'll pick it back up and continue to the end of this one but I would say its worth picking up to play even if you want to wait for it to be on sale.

It's a visually nice game and the mechanics work well, but ultimately I just found it much too frustrating and wasn't making progress fast enough. The tolerance for timing errors is so low in some sequences that, when combined with too infrequently placed respawn points during those more difficult parts, the game turned into a peculiar combination of aggravation (dying at the same spot over and over again) and tedium (playing the same sequences over and over again to get to the tricky part). I finished Ori and the Blind Forest so I know what a frustrating platformer is like, but with Ori I felt like I was able to make progress -- the hard parts always felt within reach and even as I continuously died I would usually manage to push past where I last failed (only to then die shortly after, but at least progress was being made). With Wenjia, after dying at the exact same spot for 20-30 consecutive times (each attempt taking about 30-60 seconds), I just couldn't bear it any longer and requested a refund.

First of all, perhaps Ori and the Blind Forest is just too good, hence the comparison. I noticed this game when it was launched on steam, first impression to me is that "The graphic is really very much a-like Ori and the Blind Forest". Could this be the next Ori that I, or we, are looking for? Then I dig into the review section, having reading a few reviews telling its different from Ori, good soundtrack, different mechanics etc, then I gave it a try on steam winter sale 2018 with 50% off. I have just played about 3 hours and making this review, may change if I proceed more. 1. The game itself is absolutely nothing like Ori except similar in art/graphic direction. 2. There is no resolution options therefore QWHD is not supported. 3. The main character animation is just not as fluent or simply odd, for example just take a look at the running animation shown as gif above, it feels like your character is skiing or sliding over the terrain than actually touching the grass with the legs 4. There are some nice soundtracks to be honest, just like Ori, but the same soundtrack keep looping over and over again, no variation of rhythm in different environment making it dull. (Ori has the same rhythm, as in not the same as Wenjia of cause, played with different instruments and in different speed, making the game full of surprises and creativeness, hence keeping you intrigued and satisfied at all times) 5. Learnt a double jump skill and nothing more after the entire hour of gameplay therefore the same jumping to solve different puzzles, game started to get repeated boring because you just keep your thumb over the jump button. 6. Based on you only have one skill, jumping, there is this sound effect "bing" whenever you double jumped, this sound effect gets really annoying over time. This annoyingness further extends when you enter and exit the portals with another sound effect, some areas you have to keep jumping between portals to get the hidden rewards or solving the puzzles, I certainly found Portal and Portal 2 has better and more intuitive sound effect than what Wenjia has implemented. 7. I dont understand why there are some short and meaningless map in between the "bigger maps" causing unnecessary loading between them. 8. There are speed puzzle within the game where you have to collect the final star before it disappears and only the very first of these puzzles let you actually retry, the rest you just simply cant go back and retry within the story mode. 9. For the platforming puzzles you will have to timed absolutely right otherwise you would just keep dying, and with a little help of the dull soundtrack and boring mechanism, therefore it feels more of a torturing than rewarding even if you succeeded. 10. Recently discovered a lot of reviews in Chinese and these reviewers are given the game for free, you know what is actually happening. Final words, I wouldnt recommend this game because the dev tried to make it like Ori but failed in many aspects, yet tried to insert its own character into the game and also result in failure, with the same amount of money probably you could get better games during sales.

Pretty amateurish. This is a platformer built around the (by this point fairly common) mechanism of switching between two planes to avoid obstacles or use platforms. In most games like this, you can see all of the relevant objects, but you will pass through stuff that's in the other plane. Not so here, instead everything in the light world is totally invisible when you're in the dark world, and vice versa. This makes any sequence longer than a single screen length (most of them) an exercise in trial and error. The only way to see hidden items is to swap, and thanks to the length of the swap cooldown, doing so will get you killed most of the time. So while the main path through the puzzles is fairly intuitive, if you want to look for secrets, or even if you just don't expect the objects to be where the devs put them, you'll have to run each puzzle multiple times. Just not very well thought out. The game also isn't as pretty as it looks in the promo material -- it just doesn't feel great in motion.