This is a phenomenal experience, I thoroughly enjoyed my time exploring Venue! The amount of polish is mind blowing - everything from the visuals, audio, and interactions all follow the same cohesive style. I’ve never found picking up cubes as satisfying as this. While the link to the jam theme felt a little faint, the amount this game offers is certainly generous.
I collected all the stamps and finished the game with 12 artifacts and 589 cubes. The odd number of cubes makes me feel like I’ve missed some, it would be nice if there was an indication of how many there are.
Below are some random thoughts and findings. Really remarkable work!
Spoilers
- I couldn’t work out what to do with most of the artifacts, if they did have a use.
- Found the Mysterious Tape shown in the screenshots :)
- Playing the Stringed Instrument in the pool room takes you to the errored artifact which, after a cool sequence, transports you to a bedroom. I only found one thing to interact with there and dialed out thinking I could return later. I feel like I missed something, but don’t want to reset my save to go back.
- In the stairway from the ‘Sooner’ path of the forest (Center of Nowhere?) you can dash onto the rail and then dash again to get under the stairs. There’s a strange box and a symbol that looks like ⎍ but with the bottom connected.
- Near the playground you can walk up the railing of the underpass ramp and use that to get out of bounds. Walking along the grass leads outside of the skybox.
- I loved the art gallery light switch - that was executed so well!
- Using the player’s name in the birthday room was creepy, I assume it came from the USERNAME environment variable?
- The “It’s almost time!” guy and mouse toy were fun.
- The statue room in the screenshots doesn’t have the lil goober watching and there appears to be a blood splatter D:
- “This is not his usual residence” - is his usual residence the church by any chance?
- A lot happened in 1981.
- In the vaporwave area you can climb the railing of the tower, dash onto the big eye, dash onto the next eye, and then dash onto the cube on stilts.
- Despite trying to find everything, I’m sure there’s heaps I missed.
- ‘Doggy’ will be missed :’(
