Photographs

Photographs is a moving short game about regret. and original blend of narrative and puzzles.

It's a series of short episodes, each telling a story about a tragedy, eventually tied up by a credits-epilogue sequence that might even make you cry. It's powerful narrative for such a short and seemingly simple game.

It has a very interesting and original concept, even if the execution is not always perfect. It's well worth experiencing.

The soundtrack, the pixel art and the voice acting (narrators) are all extraordinary.

The gaming format alternates between a short snippet of narration of around 5 seconds, followed by a short puzzle that should take a few seconds to solve.

The narrative is made rich by many details. A hint on what to photograph. A dollhouse-like background setting, which allows you to see what different people are up to. The puzzles also intermesh with the narration snippets by, in a certain way, representing the mental and physical challenges the character is going through. It's such a smart and subtle form of storytelling, it makes me lament the game didn't get more traction.

The game has some pacing issues, though. As the characters begin to face their big dilemma/turning point, the puzzles turn more complex. It should be fine in theory -- myself I'm a big fan of the puzzle genre -- yet in the execution, you end up spending 30 seconds, or a minute, or if you get stuck even several minutes, in order to get 5 seconds of story as a reward. The story slows to a crawl and the puzzles begin to feel like annoying obstacles. In every single story, I could feel getting gradually more distracted by the annoyance of wanting to rush through a puzzle too complex to be solved in a couple seconds. Clearly something went aloud amiss.

Luckily, the dev did allow for a workaround and you can turn on hints/skips in the settings. That made the experience much more enjoyable for me.

The game has multiple endings too, which is a nice touch. You also need to be aware of a "cheat code" embedded by the dev if you want to see the other endings without playing through the story again, though. But it's worth it.

All in all, the issues being addressed, Photographs feels like a little passion project by an indie dev who had a vision, which could use more tweaking, but it's also more than worth experiencing as is.

I truly hope the dev keeps making similar games in that same vein. With some tweaking and adjusting, better execution to the great concept, it could truly become something great.

A solid 7/10 but I'd suggest skipping some puzzles for better enjoyment.

A very creative and aesthetic game!

The way the narrative and the puzzle elements fit together in each segment is very clever!
I also really liked the references in between the different narratives.

I strongly recommend the game if the description or the screenshots of the store page seem appealing to you!

It's a unique game, that's for sure. But if it's a /good/ game is another matter.

The stories are interesting (but clichéed for the most part). The pacing in the narrative is a bit too drawn out for me. The stories each have different types of puzzles - which is a good thing since I think I enjoyed the first story's puzzles the least. The rest are not like it at all.

The sequence after doing the five main stories is tedious, the idea of it being a difficult decision is notable, but the rinse and repeat of it makes it too drawn out. The ending I got was enjoyable to watch through the credits... but it was sooo slow that I can't make myself go back and watch the other stories' endings.

It's a short game and worth playing enough, but only if it's drastically reduced in price. I would be very disappointed if I paid full price for this, especially when a few puzzles were glitchy. There was a lot of replayability on the other games but for me this is never likely to be launched again.

A story that's impossible to be taken seriously (sort of like if somebody played To the moon and tried to make their own version, except really bad one), packed in the worst Sokoban variation I've ever seen. I was really looking forward to this, not knowing what I'm getting into, but boy, this missed by a mile, absolutely not for me.

in Photographs, you experience the last tragic moments of five lost souls, through the medium of pixel-styled photography and puzzles, from the team that brought us You Must Build A Boat.

If you aren't big on puzzles, that's all right -- there's an option for hints, and you can even skip puzzles outright. Skipping puzzles doesn't affect the story at all.
That said, I say it's well worth it to give each puzzle a try at least, as you can discover extra details that add to the narrative immersion.

Though, keep this in mind: Photographs features many heavy mature themes, and confronting imagery. Despite the pixelated presentation, one may have trouble stomaching scenes that feature blood, needles and drug use, and various forms of death portrayed on-screen.

I have only one issue to point out: the ethereal sound FX that plays when you unlock a new story route caused me to feel suddenly disoriented for a few moments. Granted I was wearing headphones, but still it's something I felt was worth mentioning, just in case.

Overall, I am satisfied; one might say three hours is brief, but that's all the time that Photographs needs, really.

Short multiple stories told with small puzzles

While 10000000 and You Must Build a Boat were puzzle-matching games, this one is completely different and tells 5 complete different and original stories. Each story advances by playing a searching item mini-game and then a small and often simple puzzle game different in every story.

The stories are well told and the graphics are very nice compared to the first games. It's still pixel art but in some cases the details and expressions are quite well drawn in some scenes.

Gameplay wise, this game is very simple and even the hardest puzzles shouldn't block the player too long. After a while, there's a hint system appearing and even longer, you can just skip the puzzle if needed.

The weakest part of this game is the duration of it. Maybe it's good because you like short games, but I often felt that when it started to get interesting, the stories ended.
Each story takes 30 mins or a bit more to finish. You could finish the game very quickly in 2 hours and a half.

I recommend this game because its stories are good, the puzzles are simple yet interesting but if you were looking for a time sinker like Luca's previous games, I suggest to wait for a sale and grab it a bit cheaper. Otherwise go for it and support an indie dev that achieved to make a complete different game that looks more polished than his previous ones.

I really REALLY wanted to like this game. The pixel art is great, the music is gorgeous, and the overall concept is very strong. At first, I really did enjoy this game, actually!

However, the enjoyment falls off pretty quickly. I often found the writing cliche, the stories falling into familiar and tired themes. I was underwhelmed by each ending. The puzzles, while charming at first, also ended up taking away from the stories. Whenever I got stuck on a puzzle, it took away from the sombre mood the stories were trying to convey. And many of the puzzles are needlessly challenging at parts... but then stubborn ol' me feels ashamed having to click the "skip" button!

Finally, I hated the ending. I won't give spoilers, since the game really only takes two to three hours to play, but the game feels like it's building up to something big and cathartic, and then... deflates. I really expected there to be a deeper message about regrets and loss, but it all felt very surface-level.

Is this game a good way to spend a couple hours? Sure! It's certainly creative game design, and it's unlike a lot of games I've played. But overall it leaves a lot to be desired. I look forward to seeing what this developer creates in the future.

Despite the minor bugs, I really enjoyed the game. Beware tho: the stories are quite depressing. Make sure you're in a good headspace before playing!

It's a nice little puzzle game with an interesting few stories and I enjoyed how quickly it was to get used to and play.

I really like the game's narrative, the heartstring pulling stories, the beautifully detailed pixel graphics complimented and explored with the camera lens mechanics. What ruined the emotional experience for me were the puzzles.
The game is divided into five characters' tragic tales, each character has their own puzzle game. The puzzles are fine maybe even a bit fun but not enough for me to play that same buggy puzzle ten times per character, it gets irritating very fast. A single character segment is 30 minutes long at most but only 5 of those minutes are devoted to the story while during the other 25 we're forced into puzzles that don't work well half the time (puzzles froze on me so I had to force the game off and on to finish them) and get aggravating really fast.
The way story and puzzles are combined and exchanged is the worst. You begin with a fraction of the story that's 30 seconds long than you get a puzzle 2 minuteslong if you're smart, come back to the story for 30 more seconds, forced back into that same puzzle, 30 seconds more of story, puzzle again, copy and paste for 30 minutes. You finished that character, do the same for four more characters, 5 minutes of storytelling accompanied with 25 minutes of annoying iffy puzzles per character.
When you've finished the 5 character segments, you will play the role of God and choose which character to grant them, not a happy ending, a less tragic ending. The choice is not straightforward since you have to play essentially a tug of war game between the characters to reach your chosen one, which I like as it makes choosing emotionally harder especially when they're pleading for your help.
When you have chosen your character, what's your reward? You don't get additional story. Instead you play those goddamn puzzles again 3 more goddamn times and then greeted with the credits with extra character images. Honestly, I didn't even reach one character's ending let alone five. As soon as those puzzles showed up again, I got fed up, turned off the game and watched the endings online.
These stories really beautiful so humanly painful. Characters coming from all walks of life, they're paths are diverse colorful yet so sad I adore them. But those puzzles ruined my emotional investment in the stories. What emotions I had for the the characters were quickly replaced by frustration. So frustrating for so little story, all so one character can get a less painful conclusion and you don't even see it conveyed properly, lousy payoff. The developers should really put more time and quality to the stories, take more advantage of the camera mechanics and cut down on those puzzles.
If you're still interested the game, wait for it to go on sale.

photographs offers 5 beautifully illustrated and voiced short stories mixed with a bunch of puzzles. each should take about 30 minutes, probably less.

in the 'hub' areas you can zoom in on stuff with the camera and take photos of various things to advance the story by solving not too taxing puzzles, so there's a kind of hidden object element when there's no gigantic arrow pointing to the next bit. unfortunately, it's not a 'widescreen camera', so most of the screen is taken up by black bars on the side.

there's about a dozen or so puzzles in each story. the first one has sliding (mouse and keyboard both work, but undo only with the mouse by rewinding the steps on the top, a bit finicky), the second is physics-based (shoot balls at an angle so they hit the girls and land in the water, hated it, but I did like how it used a story element as a mechanic later on), the third is about creating a path from the pieces you have, jigsaw-like. the penultimate story has draw a single line levels, and the last one is a matching game where you have to rescue people by making a way for them to the bottom of the board. this was my favorite.

the stories are all about bad decisions, regret and stuff. I liked the first and last the most, the second about the athlete was the worst, the rest somewhere in-between. based on your choices at the end of the game, executed in the most annoying way possible (click a million times instead of just once), you'll get a few more puzzles from that particular story and the revamped ending, plus the chance to replay any story. as usual, I was fine with what I got and didn't bother re-doing anything. you can watch all the endings by clicking the cog in the settings 10 times, but I didn't even do that, as they play out slowly during the credits and once was enough of that.

great graphics and fantastic music by ben prunty, as always. resolutions, windowed mode, separate volume settings, optional developer commentary and a hint system with a puzzle skip option (dynamic means it appears after a while, or you can have it always on or off).

there's a bit too much waiting between scenes, not everything's instant or skippable, controls could use some work and it'd be great if the game-breaking bug in the journalist's story got fixed (it's related to controls, but at least the game saves constantly, so after a restart you can continue from the same spot), but other than that it's pretty good. it's $4 on mobile, 10 eur on steam, so obviously don't pay full price, but anything below half should be fine (I picked it up when it was 90% off).

I bought this game expecting a little cutesy story (or several), and ended up with feelings, and social commentary, a really good one.

The narration is very well done, the only con is that the gameplay tends to be a little frustrating despite it really representing well how people lived their stories.

Else the artstyle is consistent, the stories are all a bit bittersweet yet really captivating, despite how short these are.

This review is negative because meh is not an option on steam.

But there just too many flaws to give this a recommendation. First I got this game for 0.99 on sale, yet it still didn't feel worth it.

Gameplay wise this game is dreadful. The first story has the best out of the 5 with sliding people into fitting holes. That was the only puzzle that was kinda fun. The next is already the worst one where you have to bounce a ball into a pool. Except the bounce has a fixed length it shows you the preview even if the bounce continues after that which spoiler often is the solution.

But the real down turner are the stories themselves. They are a complete mess. 2 of them are in a fantastical setting with magic and alchemy. The rest are in the real world with real struggles which clashes quite a bit. But the actual morals are the worst part of it all:

"I should have let her die" is one, the other is don't do drugs, then the native american learns that he should have killed all the white settlers which was the only one that made at least sense. Then we have the daily Mail shouldn't have made fake news to sell papers or an ex-employee bombs your store. And lastly you should totally kill the future murderer of your son but also go to jail for it.

As I said, a mess. It is a unique way of doing narritve in a game and some of the gameplay changes that reflected how the story went were nice but overall it's just not coherent enough. Also a few times the controls stopped working and I had to alt f4 out and try again.

I bought this game because of the pixel graphics, the photography element, and because I love puzzle and story-heavy games. The only part that held up was the pixel graphics. The game was visually very cute and I loved the almost dollhouse like transitions between scenes but it is not a game I would recommend because the other elements were either disappointing or mediocre.

I was the most excited about the photography part as I thought it could be such a cool way to move through a story. In actual game play it's incredibly "on-the-rails" as you are told what to photograph and because you don't get to actually frame the shot or use the mouse or a key as the shutter, it's little more than a glorified viewfinder. I can't tell if this wants to be digital or analog. The photos look like they're supposed to be Polaroids, yet there are in-camera settings along the bottom like a more modern digital camera - though I guess it doesn't matter as you aren't really taking any photos.

The puzzles are really just okay - they're what make it a game but because the puzzles don't really have any affect on the stories except that you can't continue without completing them they mostly just felt like busy work. They aren't complex enough to feel gratifying when you finish one, but aren't all easy either. I do like that they gear up in complexity as the stories themselves get more intense, but even then they just kind of felt flat because there was so little pay off to completing the puzzles.

The stories I was the most disappointed in and because everything about the game hinges on them, though there are things about this game that are cool, I don't recommend it.The stories are all different, yet very much the same. It feels like time, location, and different realities are used to give the illusion that the stories are more different than they actually are. Perhaps this was intended to imply unification, that grief/tragedy spares no one? I don't know. I just think that for 5 stories about regret, they could have been a lot more nuanced and culminated in outcomes that felt or seemed dire without explicitly being so, but these all have a very similarly dire and heavy handed end.

This game frustratingly falls into the uncanny valley for me. I think it desperately wanted to be a lot of things and fell short of most of them. If you're looking for a pixel art visual novel with some tame puzzles thrown in the pass the time for a few hours, this could work for you, but if you're looking for a game about photography or complex, satisfying stories, it's a pass.

“What if I'd done it another way?” Hindsight is 20/20, I'm sure you've felt it once in your life. But once it happens, you can't turn back time, and must live with the positives and negatives that came with that decision. But what if you were given a second chance to right your wrongs? To take the knowledge of what you did and correct your mistakes? To delete the previous, and create a new snapshot of your situation? Throw it away, refocus, realign: and take your best Photographs.

Photographs follows the stories of five people who have become the receivers of misfortune, each recipient with their own tale of tragedy. Set off in the distance, you're given a camera, looking to take photos of their lives: whether it be a grand-father and grand-daughter playing their favorite game, a diver perfecting her craft, or strangers working together to survive. Each photo is set with a small puzzle, each style different for each arc, that progresses the time line before taking the next photo. Each photo taken dives deeper into the lives of these five individuals, all the way to the climax of each arc, showing what went wrong, and our character's wishes.

What really pulls you into Photographs is the simplistic, yet solid story-telling. Each scenario lasts less than a hour, but packs a serious emotional punch as each story unfolds. The struggle to carry on a legacy, the constant admiration to be the best, the ability to play God: the highest highs, to the reality-crushing lows. For a game that only runs about 4 hours, it does well to stack an emotional toll, not wasting a single moment...until you reach the puzzles.

In between each photo, a small mini-puzzle sets itself up almost as a roadblock to pass through. During each arc, the puzzles will start easy, showing their importance and understanding to each section. Crafted specifically to add to each story, you'll help each character through their troubles: learning a new dive, helping pick herbs and medicine, rescuing others. Though it feels integral to the story, I can't help but feel like these are deliberately thrown in to break what EightyEight Games may have felt as a monotonous pace to their own game. But in my experiences, these puzzles start to lessen most of the tension the stories build. Instead of pushing forward, eager to turn the next page, I find myself more concerned of the next puzzle and how it may throw a stick in between the spokes. I'm torn because I understand the necessity of the puzzles that play along with the story, but I almost feel that they could have been removed and have each point explained through the story. It feels like a weird compromise to add play-ability to the game, while denying some of the accessibility it would have had in its own story telling.

While I will not spoil the ending, because it is quite a doozy: Photographs is in a desperate need of an ending select. While I respect the game's intent to indulge in a second or third look to catch everything Photographs lays out: the slow pace will turn people away from repeated attempts, and it's sad to know that such interesting endings were possibly never seen.

For all the speed bumps in the road for Photographs, it is a title worth playing through. While the puzzles and grind for the different endings can be off-putting: Photographs offers intriguing, Black Mirror-like stories that catch all the imperfect angles of humanity, showing that the road to Hell is paved by good intentions, and that even a perfect photo can be blemished.

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What a unique game. It is rather short (took me right at 3 hours to complete), and is effectively a collection of mini games that get progressively harder as you get through each story. The game mechanics were pretty self-explanatory, and even the hardest puzzles never felt too frustrating. Each mini game is also somewhat related to the story being told.

The stories are heart-wrenching and most definitely have you feeling for the characters making the difficult decisions. The pixel art is fantastic, as is the music. The characters voices are great as well. The sound effects weren't quite balanced though. The "Level Up" sound effect in the diving story was just absurdly loud no matter how much I adjusted the volume in game.

If you're looking for something rather unique with some good stories broken up by some light game play, give this a shot.

This game COULD be wonderful. The stories are interesting, and the "change of background" is nice.

BUT...

It is interrupted with stupid mini games. Not "stupid" like in a Wario Ware. Stupid like free to play flash game.
Like others did mention, it is so boring, that a replay to see different endings is more pain than fun.
So I will wait like others for one hero, that puts the story online, without the mini games, and just the developement of characters.

Also I did read it is 2 - 3 times more expensive than the mobile version of the game (what explains a lot why it is so "flat"). Fitting for a mobile, but not for PC... :(

There are good and bad things about this game as many have already mentioned. Did it entertain me? Yes. But not nearly enough to justify the time spent on puzzles that feel a lot more like mediocre versions of different flash games I've played in the past. None are very unique, and apart from setting the pacing of the story they don't feel like they bring much to the table.

The pixelart is near flawless. That alone could be worth the price of admission.

*** SPOILERS ***


This is a game about choices, and making bad choices that you regret. And for a game like that there are no real choices to be made in the stories. I would have rather have to make choices that turn up wrong than have a story laid out to have the characters make those choices without you having a choice.

*** MASSIVE SPOILER ***

I really did dislike the ending choice, having to choose which of the 5 stories you have just witness turn out differently if the choice had been made different. After having spent the same amount of time in each, not getting to find out the consequences feels like you've played 4 stories without an ending and only get to witness 1. I feel a bit like the rug was pulled out from beneath my feet. And there's no way I'll sit through 2 more hours of rather tedious gameplay for each ending just to see a short cut scene of "What ifs". There's just no replayability, which is sad when the story is about choices.

A beautiful series of vignettes that’s let down by the gameplay. Not to mention it's three times as much on PC than it is on mobile.

Photographs is a series of five, tragic vignettes that offer a glimpse at the life of a downtrodden character. Essentially, you take pictures of something in a scene (with a clear hint for each one) and then you’re presented with a puzzle to solve in order to see a picture which comes with some narration from the main character of whatever vignette you’re playing. The stories (I’m halfway through 3/5) are great, but the puzzles are just so frustrating that it spoils the experience.

Positive:

• This game features some of the best pixel art I’ve seen in a long while, it really is just stunning. I also really like the way the game is animated, after each picture there are a number of flashes as the scenery in front of you changes to include different objects/characters.
  
  
• The stories (from what I’ve experienced so far) are very well written and work well despite being broken up into very short chunks. I really feel for the characters, which is impressive given how short each vignette is.
  
  
• The music is really beautiful and helps create a nice, relaxing atmosphere for the game.
  
  
• The voice acting is pretty good, definitely better than I expected.
  
  
• I actually really like the ‘photography’ part of the game. The execution isn’t flawless (for example the camera settings at the bottom have no rhyme or reason to them) and you’re getting polaroids from what seems to be a digital camera with an analog viewfinder BUT it is fun to zoom in on the scenery and search for whatever is hinted at by the game. It’s not challenging, but I liked it.

Negative:

• The puzzles really suck. Some of them are kind of easy to medium difficulty, these ones are actually pretty decent, and I enjoyed some of them. The problem is, there are a fair few puzzles that are really challenging. In fact, I’m writing this now because I’m completely stumped on a puzzle and my frustration has peaked. I have two problems with the challenging puzzles.
  
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• Firstly, the challenging puzzles are frustrating because they’re holding you back from the story, which is the genuinely great part of the game. I’ve been stumped on some of them for as long as 4-5 minutes, which may not seem like a lot, but it’s frustrating when completing that puzzles gets you one more line of narration before you’re back trying to tackle another challenging puzzle. I really really don’t care about these puzzles, the game could have come without the mini-games entirely and I would have been a-okay with that, all I want is to enjoy the stories.
  
  
• Secondly, the puzzles aren’t even particularly well designed, and there’s not really a sense of satisfaction from completing them as you might get from an actual puzzle game. For a lot of the more challenging ones, I’ve found myself just trying every possible option until I eventually stumble my way through the solution.

It costs three times as much on PC (full price) as it costs on mobile. I can understand why you would need a lower price to appear to mobile gamers, but selling the exact same game for two very different prices is pretty unreasonable in my opinion.

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Verdict:

Photographs is a beautiful game, telling well crafted stories but in my opinion the experience is ruined by the puzzles. I really don’t want to be leaving a negative review for this game, but when the meat of the gameplay is so frustrating, it’s hard not to.

If you found this review helpful, please consider following my curator page: Kemo's Corner.

I've been playing through the first two stories and wow, that's deep. Puzzle mechanics are nice, they give the game a good pace and the art direction is gorgeous. Give it a go if you like new experiences and story driven games.

It's a tragedy that the puzzle gets in the way of the narrative.

And the game is bugged.

It's a pity, because a lot of things stood out to me. The graphics are gorgeous. As a photographer all the little details were a nice touch- seeing the camera settings change with the scene and even with cursor movement put a smile on my face.

The photographs are just a framing device for the story as it moves along. The experience is all about the stories. I enjoyed most of them. The format, pacing, and style lend themselves to the most personal ones, and a couple with bigger messages fell flat on me. There is also a puzzle game mixed in with each story, and this is where things took a downturn.

The puzzles break up the narration to a frustrating degree for me. They interrupt too often, for too long, to the point where some photographs feel like time-wasters. There is a difference between pacing and padding, and unfortunately the puzzles in Photographs belong solidly to the latter. It doesn't help that some of them can be brain-teasers, or that they interrupt during climactic moments. They are supposed to help with telling the story, but while some story elements are reflected in the puzzles, they don't actually help with the _telling_ part of storytelling.

I spend an inordinate amount of my time on puzzle games. I enjoy a good story. I love novel game mechanics and attention to detail. But this attempt to blend them together doesn't quite work.

Most- actually, I would say all- of the "game" "play" is there to help pace you through the story. To let things settle in, take your time digesting what's happened. Enjoy the art and the music. That works until you hit a difficult level which, while you're sitting there puzzling it out, makes you wonder if the story could have done without it. And you almost start to dread the next photograph for mechanical rather than story reasons- which breaks the immersion.

Normally I'd suggest playing this story by story. But because of a certain mechanic I can't say which would be better.

Overall- it's barely a don't-recommend. There is a lot to like, and a lot to dislike. But ultimately this feels like a storytelling session bogged down awkwardly by its gameplay.

Photographs has 5 interactive stories that will pull on your heartstrings. Be careful looking up any screenshots or anything about this game in the forums, the ending is absolutely awesome. It takes about 3 hours to finish, although there are some multiple choices near the end, not sure if they add any replay value. Each of the stories has a different puzzle mini-game, while the narrative sometimes spills into gameplay which is really cool. Actually, I thought that all 5 scenarios were very good and I liked all of the characters, but it's the ending that really makes you feel like you payed for an awesome experience. To be honest, I only liked one of the mini-games toward the end, most of the puzzles are pretty generic or even redundant. In order to interact with the game you have to take photos by playing a 'hidden object' game, but it's not difficult because the game gives you hints. I have to give the developer some credit for a very creative use of pixel art, all stages have a time lapse where the environment constantly changes (nice attention to detail).

Pros:

+ good narrative & awesome conclusion
+ good voice acting & soundtrack
+ beautiful pixel art

Cons:

- I only enjoyed maybe 30% of the 'puzzles'
- could use achievements

Overall Thoughts: 8/10

The ending just made my day, I absolutely loved it. Don't get me wrong, I like that puzzles served as an extension of narrative, but I just did not care for that generic gameplay (played enough of that junk over the years). However, I think the story is so good that I can ignore the puzzles. That ending though, what the hell XD.... loveeeee it.

For more Hidden-Gems: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/