Alum

The puzzles and setting are pretty interesting and well done, but the voice acting and story being told is so clumsily handled that it becomes increasingly annoying to endure. I did have to toggle it into windowed mode at a fairly small resolution to even get it to run as some aspects of the build haven't aged well. I would be interested in what this developer could put out with a touch more polish and subtlety.

Beautiful game with wonderful story. I am surprised by negative comments blasting games Christian story. In the description of the game it's mentioned that it's written as a sort of Christian Allegory. So it's very bizarre to complain about games story unless you are atheist or other kind of bitter person. Sadly as in game also in reality Invidious Umbra poisons many hearts. There is nothing wrong with story and the promise of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

It's surprisingly good game! Only few minor annoyances

Pros:
+ Lengthy!
+ Fully voiced with good actors
+ Great story
+ Likable characters
+ Good puzzles
+ Option to skip action sequences
+ Beautiful visuals

Cons:
- Death scenarios are sometimes frustrating
- Completely linear dialogue structure
- Issues with music/dialogue volume.

If you're fan of classic point & click games, this one needs at least to be tried! I loved the demo and ended up paying for the full game. The price is quite reasonable too, which is not exactly common in today's games.

This is a very long, relatively good point-and-click adventure created by (I assume) Evangelical Christians. The art quality, puzzles, and music are all very good. The voice acting quality is mediocre, and the voice acting direction is rather poor. The mini-games are a crime against humanity.

I feel as if this is a C+ game. With just a bit better voice direction, it would be in B range. The thing that prevents it from being a solid A is the rather heavy-handed almost-but-not-quite-Christian rhetoric and imagery, and the very stark good-vs-evil story. The two main villains are not believable as anything other than very basic bad-guys - their basic motivation just seems to be to do *evil* as much as they can. The heroes can't quite help but come off as a bit smug. There was a really good game lurking under the surface, here, but it just couldn't *quite* be properly excavated. As it is, this game is still well-worth playing for any point-and-click enthusiast. Just, you know, brace yourself.

Cringeworthy Christian fable. Puzzles & world-building are decent but dialogues & voice-acting ruin this. Arguably worth it for the cult factor: the increasingly questionable actions it has you do in the name of its divine saviour (pestering children to proselytise them, attacking unbelievers for no reason other than their faith) raised a chuckle or two.

It's a great graphic adventure, one that puts the narrative at the center of the stage, and does so successfully.

Alum is a nice little retro point & click, but the story is a bit heavy on religious matters.

I loved the game even though I've been stuck in some levels like the sniper mini game. The story is great and people complaining about a lot of cutscenes should consider buying puzzle game instead if they want to just get puzzles. I'm not a big fan of point and click games, I've tried Edna and Harvey Breakout and it was too hard and boring for me. I've played syberia 1 & 2 like 6 years ago and it was boring as well. People complaining about bad voice acting are partially right because it's for sure not as great as AAA games but it's not the worst.,"the altruist" or a little robot "GOBO" that I loved after hearing its voice even though its modified with software its great. But even other characters voice acting fits really good with this game retro style. Cutscenes with "altruist" feel great, voice is soft and the art in these cutscenes feels really warm. Controls aren't bad, changing actions with right mouse click or mouse scroll was useful. Ending somehow hit me hard and with credits and the beautiful song which followed it I almost cried. The game took me around 8 hours to complete and I enjoyed every minute I spent playing.

What a lovely game! Product of love, that's for sure. It provides the incredibly cozy atmosphere. Very nice artwork, marvelous music, rich and diverse plot and a set of interesting puzzles. The voice acting ranges from OK to very good. Overall, solid recommendation.

A wasted opportunity on a Christian game.

Now, I must say this has nothing to do with my lack of religious faith. I love myself a good Christian game if it's made well. But this one is really a wasted opportunity. I am not even sure whether to hit "recommend" or "not recommend" at this point, as it has fewer negatives than positives, however, the negatives are much stronger.

"If you want to scold someone - compliment them at first", one play said, and this is exactly what I'm going to do. For one, the game brings back nostalgia feels. Most of the pixel point-and-clicks are made in RPGmaker these days, and have generally the same feel to it. This one brings me back to my "Kyrandia" and "Monkey Island" days. It is simple, intuitive, I loved the premise and the world created, and the music is pretty good, as the matter of fact. It was even moderately funny at times, and I loved it. But the most important thing - it's intuitive. You don't have to solve crazy puzzles that require a lot of mental strength - they are simple, understandable, you don't have to worry or use hints to solve them, and they are never over the top, as some quests do - you always have a general idea of what you have to do. It's a rarity in modern overly sophisticated quests, and you have to enjoy the intuitively of this quest. People here did good jobs in testing as well, given the budget (not a perfect one - a few bugs that crashed the game for me I still caught, but it's far less than is usually found in indie games - no disrespect to them, I am, after all, working on an indie project myself and know the budget).

However, it suffers from some major minuses. First two chapters of the game were amazing, but they soon rolled down the hill into a thin, and extremely boring story. It started as a nice Biblical allusion, that made me think "Oh, this should be nice, it is rather subtle and interesting, I wonder if there would be some people who just see it as a fairy tale, and not a retell of what Christianity is", but the further you go, the thinner the plot is, and the more your eyes roll up. The writer created the absolute bad guys and absolute good guys. Every good guy is oved, forgiven, they turn to their god after a mere taste of it (pun intended); and the bad guys are bad just because they're bad. Should I really explain that "he's evil because he's evil" is a tremendous flaw? At the end, I actually did expect for their god to turn out to be the second villain who just tricked everyone (which would make for a banal plot twist, but at least it would be a plot twist… at least it would make the game more fun), but n-n-nope. Good guys are good because they're good; bad guys are bad because they're bad. No reasons, no undertones or halftones, it's whether you're with us, or we kill you. Do you forget that everyone has reasons to do something? For crying out loud, even Lucifer had reasons to challenge your god! And good ones, might I add. But I will not discuss this on a gaming website, of course.
All and all, it could have been a great, fun, and exciting allusion on religion in general, if it didn't turn into preaching, and, honestly? - quite childish "this is the white prince and he's a good guy, and this is a black king, and he is a bad guy". Might suit for pre-teens, but I am sure adults wrote this game. Even the dialogues weakened with each chapter, each episode and location, becoming more and more long, banal, and boring.

Second-best (worst?) negative aspect is the voice actors. I don't think they even tried. I just found two who had any potential, and they were side characters. But the main character, guys! Don't you think the main character should have had the best voice actor? Why did he get the worst one? There was not a single intonation, not a single emotion in his voice. And I am not even exaggerating, as I was paying attention specifically to that. My original theory was that he would sound blank and unemotional for the intro of the game, because he's infected by in-game sickness (basically, depression), and when he gets out of it, he'll become more active and human-like, but... till the very end he had nothing. How can you actually let a person voice The Main Character if a cue that should have been said in a hysterical anger, in disappointment of being left behind by the person he loved the most in his life, sounds like he's reading an instruction to a nasal spray?!
Not to mention, actors weren't provided by good mikes, and about a third of them sound like they're sitting on a toilet, echoing around the tiles? Or the sound manager didn't see what the problem was and ask for another take? Another mic? Another actor? An attempt to fix it? There's no acting here, just two people tried to act, and it looks like characters just read their cues. I point it out: character read their cues, not voice actors read their cues. How can you speak about immersion with that?
Also, free brushes you can find on DeviantArt. Seriously, it takes an hour to hand-draw a map of those sizes, did you really have to use well-known Daphne Arcadius brushes?

If you would take Chapter One, and the most part of Chapter Two, and go in that direction, keeping allusions and hints from those parts, it would've been a great game. It is light, and simple, and intuitive, and great amount of work is put into it - I can see that. Everyone can. But it lacks on both story and voiceover fronts. One might think that in this case art can pull it through, but... it's not quality art, and art was never the point of this game. So with art not being th point, we look for a story, which after Chapter Two... well, it sucks, sorry for being blunt. It might be fitting for crazily religious people, or radicals who see the world in black and white, but that's a very narrow target audience. Too narrow to make a game for. If you want to make a good Christian game, look no further than "That Dragon Cancer" - look at those allusions, and those hints, they managed to create a compelling story about religion. You made a story about religion, but it's not interesting or compelling. You have potential, please, don't let it get wasted by zealotry.

PS: [insert sarcastic comment about portraying Christians as oppressed ones here]

Started out fun but eventually got super preachy with massive Christian overtones. It was just too much in your face. If it was more subtle it would have been fine, but this was just way over the top.

The demo did not engage me enough, but I still bought the game on sale. Right after I got past the part where the demo ended, I was hooked. Worth the buy.

Meh. Seemed like a fun game, but has so many christian parallels I thought I was just playing a propaganda game where the goal was to get me to become a devoted christian follower rather than providing fun entertainment.

Pros

• Nice art style
  

• Overdone christian parallels (in the credits they even mention/thank "the real unfeigned altruist = jesus christ", as if that wasn't obvious yet)
  
• Max resolution of 1280x800 (What?! This game was released in may 2015 on steam?!).
  
• The voice acting of the main character. It's sleep inducingly boring to the point where it breaks immersion and I thought he just didn't want to do this job.
  
• Completely out-of-place scenes with 8-bit music.
  
• Sometimes had "humorous moments" which felt pasted on because the game would otherwise be too loaded with emotional/sad moments.
  
[*]Completed it within 1 day

I played this game orginially in Oct of 2015 and was butthurt that the achievements wouldn't unlock on Macs. Having recently switched setups to PC and feeling grinded out of a few thousand hours of DotA I decided to go thru my library and play some old games and rediscovered this gem. It's a point and clicker type game with cheesy jokes and a cute story line. It's a bit difficult at times but it's many hours of enjoyment. It has a lot of strong Christian undertones and it isn't in your face about a man's journey to help his S.O., struggling with faith, forgiveness and love.
9/10.

Excellent point-and-click adventure game! Puzzles are generally fun and intuitive. Artwork is beautiful. Pays homage to the LucasArts and Sierra greats of yore. A superb entry in the genre.

PROS:
- Excellent puzzles for the most part
- Full voice acting
- Very few bugs
- User interface easy to use

CONS:
- Some of the action sequences were a little off-putting as part of an adventure game, but are fortunately skippable. Very minor issue

Overall, 5 out of 5! =)

I'm really disappointed. This game started out so well, with good puzzles, an engaging story, and good pacing. When the Unfeigned Altruist first showed up, I really hoped the game would turn into a good metaphysical allegory I don't know something. But it just gets more and more preachy and it becomes unavoidably obvious that Unfeigned = Jesus, and the way the various characters interact with him gets more and more fervent and hard to ignore. I finally gave up in Chapter 6, I think most of the way through.

So, if the preachy aspect wouldn't bother you, then it's a good game. It does have some weird timed sequences but some of them can be bypassed.

Always love anything from the Orsie crew. You guy rock. I'll be sure to listen to the Tears of Mars albums as I play. Congrats on completing this project. I would have purchased it sooner had I known you finished. stay great guys. And for those who don't know, yes this game will certainly have Christian undertones. Did you do any research at all on the people who made it? They have been promoting the word of God in their music and art their whole lives, why would they stop at videogames? But anyone who says it’s shoved down their throat is being overdramatic.

I can get over the strong Christian parralells, its set in a fantasy land, and i think its the perfect place for that stuff. So could treat it as a concept in the axioms inside the story, and not as a real meta truth which i believe it not to be, but could be as true as it liked in pixel land.

Although i was continually irked by the weak character devolpment, and piss easy puzzles just to have everyone advance the blisteringly obviouse Christion allegory, and to what gain?? To win over a small amount of maybie Athiest or agnostic retro pont n click enthusiasts.

It had no charm as a story unto itself, and got more and more bogged down with the bigger accompyning 'wink wink' that the aulterist is actually God/Jesus, until it was unbearabley foie grase'd down your throat. It killed it, as every character was just a sound byte for that single Linear interest, which was an advert for the big bearded one.

Other characters where so suddenly shoe horned in to make a puzzle work it lacked all grace (ironically), or just used as a late hash attempt for some story to push forward the tepid narrative. Any result or drama surrounding them didnt matter to me a jot, and who voiced one of the kids a 20 yr old latin male? If they toned it down with the hard Jesus sell it could of still been good with a Christian template, it could of still of been enjoyed by thiest and Athiest a like, perhaps for the same reasons..a good story and game.

Unfortunatly the perpetual and ever increasing convertion intention, felt like accidently walking in to a Christian support group, or a street evangalising session all weakly clandestine behined a luke warm fantasy setting'. This made me want out the game, i didnt want to be lectured too on something i disagree with, as its purpose seemed to do that, kudos on not mentioning the obviouse simularity until the credits though, then the final slower folk could finally see it.

Paying for it, forced me to see it through as a result, and did make me see how totally contradictory ,bizzare and emotionally selfish faith was, and for that, it was an interesting venture. Next time its best to put a 'Christian game' clearely if its going to lecture in it, as this game will either preach to the already converted and just put everyone else off. Plus it was a shit game, i assume my swear word to the left will be covered by hearts it needs to be covered by symbals of excreta to be better represented.

Great game - IF YOU WANT TO PLAY CHRISTIAN PROPAGANDA, which we did not. Very disappointed. We WERE really excited to play a traditional point and click, enough that we tried to overlook the godawful writing (seriously, why don't indie game makers hire actual writers?). Then we get to chapter two (just beyond the demo) and realize we paid $15 to endure bad writing and have the voice of pixilated jesus in our ears whispering to us about the "soft heart" of the sea monster. This game has no sense of humor, no pathos and is essentially set up as a metaphor for salvation. The only saving grace (ha ha) is that everything the jesus-voice stand in says kind of sounds like it's referring to gay sex. (drink of my rushlight, boy-o.)

The old Sierra games were brilliant because of their sly sense of humor, their complex and original referentialness and the trickiness of the gameplay. But if you're nostalgiac for pixels, maybe you'll have fun with the free and unpedantic demo.

In Chapter one, could'nt get to the roof, the item in the alley wouldnt let me select it, and the first run through would not run the cut scene for the creature jumping out, and to reload the game. Should i just keep restarting the game for this to work?

Whoa! This game was beyond what I expected.

Everything was amazingly executed... The art, the story, the game play, the puzzles, the real time mini games, the characters, the voice acting, the music. Just top-notch all around.

During my play through, I could feel the game developer's genuine passion and love for the game. You just don't find that anymore in this day and age.

This game will touch on all of your emotions as you play through it and leave you feeling inspired to live for a reason.

What a gem.