Разработчик: Puzzling Dream
Описание
Another World, Heart of Darkness и Flashback.
История о члене команды исследователей космоса, который потерял свою любовь и не может никак принять этот факт. Находки древних писаний о вечном существовании во время одного из его последних экспедиций заставляет вернуться туда в поисках смысла самой жизни.
Он скоро узнает, что и планет есть свои секреты и проблемы с которыми он столкнется в поисках того, что он так давно ищет.
Особенности игры:
- Научно-фантастическая история
- Упомрачительные головоломки
- Уникальные планеты для исследований
- Ретро стиль с богатой анимацией
- Игра вдохновлена художеством Эрика Чани
Поддерживаемые языки: english, french, italian, german, spanish - spain, polish, russian, ukrainian
Системные требования
Windows
- ОС *: Windows XP SP3 / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10
- Процессор: Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD equivalent
- Оперативная память: 2048 MB ОЗУ
- Видеокарта: GeForce 8600GT
- Место на диске: 1 GB
Mac
- ОС: MacOS 10.7.5
- Процессор: Intel Core 2 Duo
- Оперативная память: 2048 MB ОЗУ
- Видеокарта: GeForce 8600GT
- Место на диске: 1 GB
Linux
- Процессор: Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD equivalent
- Оперативная память: 2048 MB ОЗУ
- Видеокарта: GeForce 8600GT
- Место на диске: 1 GB
Отзывы пользователей
"The Way"
Wendrex wrote:
"The Way" is a game developed by the independent studio Puzzling Dream, blending elements of 2D platforming, challenging puzzles, and a deeply emotional narrative. Released in 2016, the game draws inspiration from classics like Another World and Flashback, appealing to both retro and modern gaming enthusiasts with its unique aesthetic and intriguing gameplay. Below is a detailed and positive review of the game:
Story
The story of The Way is undoubtedly one of its greatest highlights. It follows a scientist devastated by the loss of his wife, embarking on a journey to uncover the secrets of immortality on an alien planet. The narrative explores profound themes such as grief, love, sacrifice, and the boundaries of humanity. It is presented in a minimalist style, with no explicit dialogue, relying instead on carefully crafted animations, detailed environments, and small story fragments found throughout the game.
This approach leaves room for interpretation and invites players to connect emotionally, creating a unique bond with the protagonist and his struggles.
Gameplay
The gameplay of The Way strikes a balance between precise platforming and clever puzzles. Each challenge is meticulously designed, requiring logical thinking, observation, and patience. The puzzles range from manipulating mechanisms to exploration and interacting with the alien fauna and flora.
The learning curve is well-balanced, with a gradual increase in difficulty that encourages creative problem-solving. While some sections may occasionally frustrate due to their difficulty, the sense of reward upon solving the puzzles is highly satisfying.
Art and Soundtrack
Visually, The Way is stunning. The game employs richly detailed pixel art, featuring vibrant settings and atmospheres that range from mysterious to desolate. Each environment on the alien planet is carefully crafted to feel unique and evocative, from dark underground caves to lively alien landscapes.
The soundtrack, composed by Panu Talus, perfectly complements the experience with music that shifts between melancholic and epic. It adapts to the game’s pace, heightening the emotional connection and immersion.
Strengths
Engaging story: The deep and emotional narrative is a major draw.
Well-designed puzzles: Challenging but fair.
Incredible aesthetics: The pixel art and visual details are breathtaking.
Immersive soundtrack: Elevates the experience and emotional connection.
Homage to classics: Nostalgic yet modern in its execution.
Conclusion
"The Way" is a gem among indie games, offering a unique experience that blends nostalgia, innovation, and emotional storytelling. It resonates particularly well with players who appreciate deep narratives and challenging puzzles. While there are areas that might require adjustment for less experienced platformer players, this does not diminish the brilliance of this indie masterpiece.
If you’re looking for a game that not only challenges your skills but also touches your soul, The Way is the perfect choice.
other than 2 specific parts of the game (the battle toads bike scene, and a water filter puzzle) i very much enjoyed this.
If I had bought this game for more than 1-2 bucks, I would have refunded it before the two hour marks. As it stands, I wanted to give it a chance, which brings me to this review. The art style and animations are great. It's a beautifully made game with a somewhat decent story.
However... and this is the big however. It... is... soooooo ... slow. Puzzles where you wait upwards of 30 seconds to finish an animation over... and over... and over again. Long jump and run sections that have no checkpoints in-between and laggy controls, so you have to redo the whole thing dozens of times. A lot of the puzzles that make no sense to anyone with a brain.
The frustrating part is that somewhere deep down there is a great and relaxing game with a grabbing and emotional story, but it falls short due to oh-so-many frustrating trivialities.
This game is so good. If you like an emotional story, alien/futuristic themes, and pixel art, then this game is a must play. Sometimes the puzzles can drag on, but the rest of the game makes up for it. It is 100% worth the money, and even better if you can get it on sale (it goes like 90% off pretty often so keep an eye out).
---{ Graphics }---
☑ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☑ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10
---{ Author of this nice template }---
☑ https://vojtastruhar.github.io/steam-review-template
The game looks cute, has a nice story, I like the thing with the memories and the sadness behind it, I like the cutsie characters and the whole premise.. but the experience is ABYSMAL, I can't even begin to explain how unsatisfying is to play the game, solve the puzzles and navigate the world (especially if you have to do jump tricks in a game that doesn't have good controls). It should have been just a couple of puzzles and a narrative game with minimal hustle. The first section of the game is great just because of this. The sections with the flying robots? The sand worm? The slide? The power stations - the furnace at the southern station bugged and the things wouldn't even shoot fire so I can complete it!! Sorry, if I can't even complete the game due to the nature of it I can't in good faith recommend it to anyone else. I'm happy I bought it less than a euro.
10/10. I cried multiple times. This is what a masterpiece of a game looks like. The story is beautiful, emotional, and strung through every moment of the game. The sci-fi genre is beautiful, the style, everything. I wish there were more like this. Reminds me a lot of epic sci-fi worlds like Hyperion or Foundation.
I recommend the game but there are some caveats.
Last chapter was a bit broken- the game just crashed when entering the final level (just after tincan was wounded) :(. Fortunately after a 4th restart it managed to load the final chapter.
The graphics are cool and reminescent of the "heart of darkness", detailed and beautiful, a but a bit more low res :). There is a great scifi atmosphere, and some very good synth music. I liked the game a lot. Came here mainly for the puzzles, which are mainly cool, some are more miss than hit, especially ones where You have to be precise in your movement apart from realising the trick to them. There is some precision platforming that can be a bit much sometimes. Dexterity driven challanges (race with the alien for example) are fiddly and seem unfair, even if you manage to finish them. They are unforigving and a slight error means you're dead (and have to complete the entire challanging section from scratch). A bit annoying and frustrating. The dex/action sequences are why I almost didn't recommended/finish the game, they left me with a bad feeling even after I finished them. I imagine they might be a big problem for someone who requires accessibility options in their action games.
The ending a bit underwhelming and sad, but a solid one.
I've enjoyed the game overall, but there were some low moments
I rarely review games before completing them, most of the time even a review it´s the final step before unistalling tons of games for me, when I trully feel there´s nothing more to experience about it, that´s when I trully think my oppinion is informed enough to be shared. With The Way though I have to make an exception, cause I understood a long time ago that I will never complete it. The negative reviews are correct, this game is utterly frustrating, it has never being patched despite the multiple complains and probably never will, remaining as uncompleted for most players, specially since it lacks steam cloud and therefor unless you take your own messures, losing your progress is a posibility and you simply wouldn´t want to repeat any of the frustrating, difficult and time sensitive puzzles you may have manage to overcome allready.
But why the positive rating then? Becuase this game is as beutiful and well design as frustrating. The art style is used masterfully alongside some really good designs for an alien world that is completely unique. The story is presented with such simplicity yet care that takes you back to your childhood games if you happen to be a little older, where the limitations of hardware and sofware would force devs to get creative on how to present a narrative. And it´s difficult not to get hooked precisely due to the puzzles being kind fo hardcore, the more you progress things escalate and there´s a point of no return where the game would have capture you enough to desire finishing it. It trully manage to pay a heck of a homage to the games it clearly draws inspiration like Flashback and Another World.
Overall I think this puzzle action platformer needs to be experienced, again, the only drawback it´s the fact you may not be able to experience it entirely. There are a series of specific puzzle that have become notoriously infamous for the community, some are more doable with either patience or a guide and others less so depending on the type of player you are. But it´s also super cheap when it´s on sale, as I write this review it´s on a sale for 0,89, that´s a crazy bargain even if you don´t manage to complete it. I think I paid a similar price and have 7 hours registered, when I got stuck I decided to watch on youtube the rest of the game to see the ending and sucks I wasn´t able to get there but I did enjoy the story still even if I wasn´t making those final steps.
This is an abandonded game with bugs to stay. Punishing but rewarding. Puzzles are a bit underexplained. Has a really low price on sale, under 1 euro, which is a good deal.
The Way feels very immersive, it has great artistic design and atmosphere.
It's an adventure game and a puzzle-heavy platformer.
I haven't played the games that inspired it, but the retro sensibility is obvious and feels authentic.
If you like puzzles, adventures, and a sense of wonder it's a good fit.
However, it has one downside for my taste, possibly explained by those retro sensibilities.
It's very die and retry.
You play as a human, grief-stricken, driven by mad resolve, gradually moving from mundane reality into wondrous alien landscapes.
This is conveyed by the gorgeous color palette, and by a sense of scale: functionally, you are a speck.
You have one (1) hit point.
The platforming is fiddly. The game registers your inputs just fine, and it knows how to be responsive, but vertical movement is often based on grabbing ledges, and you have to be precise with the positioning just to move around.
Dropping by more than a few hundred pixels (your character avatar is small relative to the scenery) is death.
If the boundaries of where you can survive aren't quite obvious, you die, retry, until you hopefully have finger memory of what works.
You'll gain a handful of abilities (starting with a gun), which you absolutely need for your survival, but you can only use those when standing and not moving. Cool-downs require you to plan ahead. Moving triggers animations (those ledge interactions), and those also make you a vulnerable target.
Each area is a little tableau, entering one gives you one (1) checkpoint, after that you are generally on your own. (Solving a puzzle occasionally gives another). Whenever you are facing enemies, your extreme vulnerability doesn't much encourage experimentation or improvisation, you have to be patient and repeat what works.
The well realized atmosphere makes it worth persevering. I just wish being a resolute speck didn't involve so much dying.
PS:
The puzzles are much more friendly to experimentation.
You'll occasionally need to take notes, I used steam's screenshot and notes functionality which worked out well and saved some backtracking.
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Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Puzzling Dream |
| Платформы | Windows, Mac, Linux |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 15.01.2025 |
| Metacritic | 67 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 79% положительных (411) |