Well, this game is like no other I have ever played.
As part of the PS4 bundle I purchased from Amazon, I got one year of Playstation Plus, their answer to XBOX Live. However, with the Playstation Plus Service, you usually get 2-4 free games per month per system (PS4, PS3, Vita). This was one of the free PS4 games.
Set in the 1920s, the story follows a young girl named Didi as she tries to help her father get his shit back together so he can move back home. Her Dad decides that he is going to put on a circus to try to make enough money to gain back Didi's mom's trust. However, to get the start-up money, he gets the mob to invest. Knowing that her dad is a screw-up, Didi follows him around and makes sure everything that goes wrong gets fixed (i.e. the stage lights are out or the pirate ship ride is not working). And these won't get fixed unless you solve the numerous puzzles involving shadows. Though it might sound a bit ridiculous, it's actually a well-written, dark story that kept me interested for the entirety of this 4-hour game. The voice acting is great and the setting really adds to the enjoyment. They never really explain why (perhaps this is Didi's dream) but all of the adults in the game are just shadows, which plays in nicely to all the puzzles in this game.
Oh yeah, did I mention that you don't play as Didi, but as her imaginary friend, Dawn? At least, I think she's imaginary. Dawn (see above) seems to be what Didi imagines she will look like as an adult. Anyway, Dawn is able to go in and out of shadows. That one dynamic is at the center of every puzzle in this game. But they are very clever. You often have to move lights to certain places and get rides and other machines moving so that Dawn can reach the roof of a building or the top of a lighthouse. As a shadow, Dawn can climb on the top of the shadows created by the machines you just turned on or the box you just moved. Anyway, as good as the story and setting are, these puzzles are what made this game worthwhile. They get somewhat repetitive at times, but nothing too bad.
Anyway, despite some random graphical and physics glitches, this was a pretty cool game. I believe you can get it on PC and PS3 as well and it probably isn't much more than $10. If you can get over the strange premise, there's a lot to like about this game. I'll probably never play it again, but it was a great experience while it lasted.
Nice. I'm curious about PlayStation Plus - I've seen all kinds of discounted prices for Plus members when it comes to PSN games and such. But I've also heard that any free games lose their "free"-ness as soon as your Plus membership expires. As in, once you no longer have a Plus account, you need to purchase the game if you want to play it again. This isn't a huge deal-breaker to me or anything, especially since so many of those free games are probably one-time short plays like this one, but I'm just curious if they've changed this model yet to be like XBox's "Games for Gold" program, where as long as you have a gold membership at the time of "purchase" (free download), the game is yours to keep perpetually. Any idea?
ReplyDeleteMy understanding that is to access the "free games," you must have an active membership. However, if you let your membership expire and then renew it down the road, every game you downloaded previously is accessible once again. All the games you get at a discount based on your membership are yours no matter what. However, PS+ games are far better/more current than the XBOX games offered.
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