Wenjia Reviews

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.

The only thing to bear in mind is that if you're left-handed and use keyboard controls they are not customisable. I had to play with my hands crossed over each other and had to give up as the last bit was challenging and left me with numb hands and a very sore wrist. Even so I really liked the game itself.

A sweet little game with an impossible achievement - Completionists beware. Wenja is a game about a cat trying to save lost souls, or something. The story is a little awkwardly told, due to the lackluster translation, but what matters in this game lies elsewhere - namely the music and the graphic style, both of which are very well done. Movement is fluid and the game itself is very short - I was done in less than two hours. Especially the music needs some mention, because the theme song is fantastic and the piano and violin you hear throughout the game are enchanting. The gimmick of the game is switching between two worlds (backgrounds), which you need to do to solve easy puzzles, make platforms visible and so on. It works and I had no problems with the movement or progressing through the game. It is very easy for sure. However, while trying to get the rest of the achievements, I noticed something weird. There is an achievement in the game that you get when you obtain all the stories in the game (little cutscenes). There are a total of five. One you see when you start a new game, and one you see when you finish it. According to a developer comment, and one guide, the other three of them are hidden in the game. Now, the game is very straightforward and there are barely any things you can miss (aside from a few optional orbs, that are mostly also on the way). However, while watching a guide on how to get this story achievement, I noticed that the console version and the steam version are different. In the console version, the 3 optional stories were in the challenge rooms the game has a few of - some of these rooms, however, are optional. I guess the developers wanted everyone to see the full story, so in the steam version, they moved them out of the challenge rooms. In doing so, however, they forgot one of the stories that is nowhere to be found - the one that, in the console version, was in the first challenge room. You will only find two stories while progressing through the game, the third is missing. I made sure I searched every nook and cranny around the first challenge room and played through that entire section again. It isn't there - the other two, however, exist, near the challenge rooms they were in originally. The developers, I suppose, deleted the first story out of the challenge room, but forgot to place it again outside of it. There is even a small rock next to the challenge room that looks like the story symbol would fit on it - but it seems they simply forgot to place it. Long story short - if you are a completionist, you can't get all achievements on the steam version, as one of the stories is completely missing. Putting that aside, this is a short and pretty game with great music and simple gameplay that's worth a try. Personal Rating: 7.5/10.

the art is really good, and as a very-indie developer myself, I feel bad saying anything bad about a small game that clearly had a lot of time and love put into it, but I just didn't find this game fun. its only unique mechanic feels like a chore, rather than a joy... and everything else is very rote. the platforming physics are also clunky (momentum in particular feels poorly-handled), which is a big problem for a platformer! here are some better platformers I would recommend: * Guacamelee * Iconoclasts * INK * The Messenger * Never Alone * Rayman Legends (the only triple-A game listed here :P) * Shovel Knight (obviously) * Thomas Was Alone * Wuppo * Yoku's Island Express (pinball platformer wut??) * You Have to Win the Game (free; hard; super-retro graphics; but free!) recommendations with caveats: * BattleBlock Theatre (best played with local co-op) * Celeste (only if you like hard games) * Dustforce (also very hard; possibly harder than Celeste) * GRIS (super-casual; super-pretty) * ibb & obb (local co-op ONLY, I think??)

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.

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]~~

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.