That would be illegal for them to provide.
AROAH1337
Recent community posts
I applaud that JordiBoi successfully put together a game that is functional; tells a generally well-executed, albeit very trope-laden story; and has a bunch of presumably popular YouTubers I don't recognize (besides CallMeKevin and Jacob Geller) doing voices for characters without them being jarringly out of place (save for Berleezy, but I didn't mind). I genuinely look forward to how the developer's work progresses over time. I just hope that they get enough criticism to help them learn to make things that are more palatable.
I'm gonna be honest, about 40% of the game could have just not been there, and I think it would have been a better experience for it. Lots of inconsequential stuff like driving in a straight line, walking down long hallways, the entirety of the trailer park "puzzles," I could name so many times when events happened that were totally unnecessary and added nothing. I was very close to quitting, several times, because the pacing was so dreadfully slow for so long.
I get that this was going for an interactive story more than a typical game, and to that I would say that there's nothing wrong with omitting gameplay if it doesn't really add anything to the experience. The race through the sewer? That was good. It added tension to the scene without taking me out of it. Turning the valves in the sewer to turn off the steam? That was pointless. The mechanic wasn't reused in an instance of being under pressure, so there was no reason to teach the player about it in a non-threatening place. Pulling the trigger on the gun at the end? Thematic, adds weight to the moment. The literal Resident Evil puzzle a few minutes beforehand? Felt completely out of place. Worst of all, the photography thing had no real payoff at all. It was yet another throwaway mechanic that didn't need to be there.
Let me be clear, while I was very much tired of playing the game over 20 minutes before it was complete, this is not a terrible game. It's simply amateurish, which is fine. It's leagues better than a lot of Unity schlock on Itch and Steam, and it deserves praise for trying to be a mature, grounded story without stooping to cartoonish violence or otherwise emulating Puppet Combo. While those things have their place, this was going for a noire detective story, and that's what it told, via environments that weren't a series of empty rooms or thoughtlessly thrown-together prefabs. In a world where far too many indie games gain notoriety for being amusingly awful, The Final Pin deserves to be recognized for being an altogether solid experience, if a dull one. Again, I very much look forward to the creator's future endeavors, assuming they intend to continue down this path.
I get that this is meant to be an art piece more than a game, but having multiple segments where there's nothing to do other than spin in place doesn't make for a great game, and I don't see how it really helps with delivering the message of the piece. It's... fine for what it is, but it's definitely lacking in terms of taking advantage of the medium.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it really feels like this game is trying to say that taking medication for mood issues is just ignoring some underlying problem, and that everyone who has been diagnosed with a mood disorder is actually suffering from some sort of personal issue that's not being addressed. If that is the case, that really annoys me, and I'm honestly rather offended by it.