BUDDY

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I can't fault the art style, borrowing it from games like Limbo and Inside. This game is totally let down by broken controls, they are the WORST controls in any game I've played!

They game depends on Buddy grabbing and moving objects that is time critical to the puzzle or you die. The game ignores the grab button most of the time which is incredibly frustrating. You end up repeating the same puzzle over and over, reverting back to a checkpoint. I cannot continue playing this game with broken controls which is a shame as the game has potential.

I'm quite disappointed by this game. The art style is very cute and the story seemed interesting, but the game is just lacking in so much.

Firstly, the controls are never explained. There isn't even a menu or settings to check them in. On top of that, the controls can be fickle and don't always work the way they should, which caused a lot of unncessary deaths or repetition.
Aside from the controls being unclear, it's often unclear where you need to go or what you need to do. I'm all for hard puzzles, but it should at least be clear what the puzzle is. Constantly taking shots in the dark because it's unclear what you're supposed to be doing, or even what you can/can't do in the game, doesn't make for good puzzles.
The atmosphere is seriously lacking. If you're going to have the player walk for long patches where nothing happens, the atmosphere has to be good enough to make up for it, and this just isn't. There isn't any music and the sounds that are there don't do much. Unfortunate considering the visuals are actually great.

Long story short: It's more of a chore getting through this game than a pleasure. When it's not boring it's frustrating, and although it does have it's redeeming qualities, it's not worth the work to get the rewards.

good!

Honestly, I just spent two days time playing this game. So I guess let's start with the good:

It's fine as far as horror, great jump scares and they did well with their audio to keep you on edge, but not scary enough to give you a panic attack or anything.

That's it though. That's all the good.

The bad:
The game starts with two options: Play the game, or exit the game.
They give you no tutorial, no information on what you're about to go into, no goal of the game, you just start playing. Okay, fine. Until the point where you don't even know IF there's a save, let alone how to do so (M doesn't work, P doesn't work, ESC only provides the options of OH GUESS WHAT - PLAY or EXIT), and then something in the game either doesn't work or glitches.

I got to a point where after the woods I was in some vents, and of course you can't get out of the vents from the way you came, only to find the way forward and out, however it wouldn't let me go down the ladder - the only way to move forward. Therefore, I was stuck, I couldn't do anything, I was hoping that maybe since there's no save that it would be autosaving - I was wrong. I had to close the game and hope that it would fix itself when I came back in. I started it back up and boom - everything I had done (again, for TWO DAYS - because NO SAVE means I had to keep it running even when I had to run errands or sleep) was gone. I am so annoyed and beyond peeved. I'll probably never pick this game up again, and I recommend that unless you have the time to pick it up from start-to-finish in one sitting, you don't waste your time or money.

Well, I don't like this game. Imho it is a perfect example of a game, artificially extended by long ass periods of annoying nothingness. The elevator scene is the worst - when you are waiting for a minute to finally get some action. Really, this game could be shorter - and way more dynamic and fun to play - without all those lonely strolls in the dusk. And yup, either it is bugged, or I missed something crucial - but I got stuck in the vents of a cinema, cause somehow lost the ability to use ladders...
So-o.. no Limbo killer this time, guys.

TL;DR: I recommend this game to some people, not to everyone. It is fun and challenging, but it is also very slow and a little glitchy. I wouldn't pay more than $5 for this game.

Despite some of its flaws, I actually found that I really enjoyed the game. I do think the complaints in other reviews are valid, but I don't think they are as awful as they sound.

Right off the bat, a few cons: the keyboard controls were a bit glitchy and hard to get right. Sometimes I would have to repeatedly hit the same key to get it to work (like control!). The down button didn't always work to allow me to go down the ladders, or the jump (or up) button would sometimes get me stuck half on/half off an item. There are very few controls to master: up, down, left, right are all the intuitive ones; control (on my laptop, at least) "grabbed" or "pushed" items, and that was the only one I needed to go back and look up. Yes, it should've been included as part of the game in the instructions. Once you learn it though, I don't think it impedes the game all that much, but it does make me hesitate to recommend this game.

Additionally, the game moves very, very slowly. This is best played as a very casual game, because there are long periods of time when you're really doing nothing except walking in the same direction. I think if you're looking for something with a little more action or speed, this definitely won't be your liking. This took me about four hours to play, so it is a shorter game.

What I think was the worst is that the save functionality is... sub par. The times between auto-saving were spaced too far apart, so I would have to go through another 1-2 minutes of gameplay before reaching the part that would trip me up. It was really the most frustrating part for me - I would've preferred autosaving in much closer intervals so that I didn't feel like I was wasting time replaying through certain parts.

Pros: I never watch horror films, so I found the jump scares to be just right: just enough scary without being too much, just enough surprise without seeming totally out-of-the-blue, and just enough that I would lower my guard sometimes and get caught by another monster. If you frequently watch films with loads of jump scares, they (obviously) will surprise you much less.

I think the puzzles were sufficiently varied in difficulty: some were very difficult, and others were easier but still required some creative thinking. So long as you're patient and willing to stop to work things out (on paper or in your head), I think you'll find the puzzles appropriately challenging.

I really enjoyed the artwork, I think it was well done and conveyed the fear and anxiety and anticipation very well. I also liked the story, although I think it could have been woven into the game a little better and a little more strongly. It is very atmospheric and I liked that part the best. I strongly preferred Limbo, and I would recommend Limbo over Buddy any day of the week, but Buddy itself isn't a bad game.

For full disclosure, I bought this game ~$4, and once I played through the game entirely, I think it was a fair price. I'd definitely like to play through it again, so I definitely don't feel like it is wasted money. I would NOT recommend this to gamers who prefer fast-paced or action-based games, or to very novice players. I would recommend this to people who enjoy atmospheric and casual gaming, or who have a few games under their belt: those people would probably gain the most from playing this kind of game.

BUDDY is a puzzle-platformer horror game with buckets of potential that is just never realised.
The premise is you are a little girl's cat who is trapped in a nightmare world and is trying constantly to be reunited with his owner.
The first problem this game has are the controls. They aren't ever explained and there is no settings menu either so you can't look them up! I had to come back to the store page to figure them out. The arrow keys to navigate was easy to figure out but pressing control to pull items, a technique essential to overcome one of the earlier puzzles, is not flagged to the player in any way. How this got through without being noted in testing is beyond me.
But even knowledge of the controls is not enough sometimes, as the game has a habit of just not acknowledging them. Sometimes I found myself holding down a key and it wouldn't work. But as soon as I released and then repressed the key it would work. This is just sloppy programming to not carry out actions because the key press came too early for the game to process.

In terms of art it's a bit of a mixed bag. The background art is the strongest, conveying the horror atmosphere quite well. And the main character's animation is okay. Just okay. Just as well because if it animated anything like anything else in the game it might have been a game breaker. But the rat-dog creature stands out as being particularly bad in terms of animation.
Sound is also a mixed bag. By and large the eerie music and sound effects do well enough to maintain the atmosphere, but overuse of some bad stock sounds (the woman's scream to name but one) starts to grate after a while.
The story is simplistic enough and vague hints are woven well enough into the different scenes throughout. The game trumpets that it has multiple ending but I have no idea how I could have got a different ending to the one I did. Apparently there's 3 but I don't know how anyone could have the patience to go back and replay to find them. The few jump scares included would be even lessened in impact a second time round.

The game was also buggy throughout, particularly in regards animation. This happened a number of times like when I jumped onto a balloon string my character would hold on, but would briefly jump to the "holding-on" pose and then right back to the "standing-still" pose. Or when I was holding onto a box and then released it and my character kept the holding pose. Not a deal-breaker obviously but it just added to this whole feeling of the game being hurriedly thrown together.

I got this for 60% off and even that seemed over pricey for what I got. Granted it was pulled together by 2 people, but it is unfortunately very rough around the edges, and is very short, clocking in at less than 3 hours. And that was with some of the most horrific (not in a good way) and blatant padding I've seen in a game. I didn't feel the main character's movement speed was overly slow, but the level design was such that I found I was walking for ages without anything happening or with anything remotely building tension happening. This came to a head right at the very end of the game. Ventilation shaft levels are now the new sewer level for me in video games. Which brings me onto the save functionality. Maybe it was exacerbated by the fact I was losing patience with the game, but at times the time between autosaves was overlong, leading to infuriating replays of annoying sections. The two scenes particularly guilty of this were sandwiched close together right at the end, the aforementioned ventilation shaft level and the bird gauntlet.
In summary, I would avoid. There are so many better horror platformers around.

At first glance I thought it was a hybrid of Limbo with the artstyle and playstyle. Well it seems to copy some of the elements but it unfortunately falls flat. I was going to give credit if the game is actually made by one guy only, and well, it is (though art is made by one other person so technically 2 people made this game).

But the thing is, Limbo wasn't good because it was 'simple'. It had fantastic art, actually every background was breathtaking, and it had SMOOTH controls. Everything worked, even the objects were 3D models and had real physics.

However, in this game it's all 2D and everything looks like cardboard cut-outs.

I'm glad I didn't waste my time on a full fledged let's play of this game, instead I will just do a rant video. I even waited almost a year to give this game more patches and fixes to the controls, but it seems to have got no love.

A lot of the last levels just drags on, you literally 'walk' for 2 minutes straight... with no gameplay. And don't let me start on the vent-levels, those were the real deal. You crawl in vents for 10 minutes if not getting lost, and there is no music or enemies. It's just a maze-level to kill time.

On screenshots this looks like Limbo, but it's like alpha version, no, pre-alpha version of Limbo. Don't waste money on this.

I love this games old school horror film it has very unique feel. I would recommend this game to others who are looking for a unique game like Buddy. Check out my let's play of Buddy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yKnj-mdnJY

Not recommended.

It does pain me to say this as this game does have a lot of potential. However, it is plagued by bad controls and outright broken game mechanics that make it unplayable unless you have a TON of patience. I am all for games that are hard. But a game should never be hard because the mechanics do not work properly. This game was clearly not tested well enough. I tried playing for roughly two hours before giving up.

BUDDY is kind of cute but the pacing it pretty slow and the controls leave much to be desired. It has some creepy elements but the tone is over-shadowed by frustration when the tip of a spike touches your tail and you die, getting sent back twenty minutes of play time before and having to redo all the puzzels.

The puzzels themselves feel little more than a way to stretch game play time and it seems like the only way to figure them out is to just keep flicking switches until you trigger progress.

I dunno, maybe I'm just stupid...

EDIT:
If you're on a first date, or reading a book, or any situation in which you're experiencing something/someone new - first impressions are everything. Perhaps others might have had a more favorable view of the game, but for me: nothing was exciting enough about it to continue playing.

I found the gameplay to be clunky, the events to be predictable, and the puzzles to be counterintuitive. Maybe as the game progresses it'll get better, but I was very disappointed by everything that I met in those 30 minutes.

I'm going to probably give the game another hour or so and see if my impressions are different, and if so I'll update my review, but I didn't feel or see anything that hooked me into wanting to play the game any further. That's pretty telling if a game doesn't make you -want- to play more.


ORIGINAL
Art style: 9/10; this was one area the game was great.

Gameplay: 6/10; clunky and not well explained.

Puzzles: 2/10; either they were obnoxiously predictable or unbearably hard.

Jumpscares: 2/10; I didn't find a single one that wasn't predictable. Humorously so.

Overall score: 3/10; I wanted to like this game. It missed the ball. Missed it bad.


I don't ever write reviews. Ever. This game, though... I had high hopes. Like really high hopes. I wanted this game to be great. I thought it was going to be the perfect mix of Psychology, jumpscares, and puzzles. Instead, all I was met with was disappointment.

I even have a YouTube channel where I play games and discuss the Psychology behind them, and this game missed the mark. Bad.


Here's some first impressions and reaction (I didn't even get to talking about Psychology!)
Note: I played further than the video, I just stopped recording. It was that bad.
https://youtu.be/gAyT7yjpaS0

A nice and short story game with jump scares quite often. The story didnt seem to make any sense at the start because you were just a cat walking around, but an hour in it starts to make sense. The ending is good (depending on which one you get). I recommend if you like story or horror games!!

Let's get the obvious questions out of the way first, shall we? Is this game a bit like Limbo? Yes. Is it as good as Limbo? No. Of course not. Will I enjoy this game if I enjoyed Limbo? With all overwhelming probability...yes.

Apart from the obvious cosmetic similarities, Buddy most certainly shares the trial-and-error, learn-by-dying-a-lot puzzle-platforming style of Limbo. The most obvious difference, having said that, is that while Limbo can be quite fast 'n' frantic at times, your spooky little cat character in Buddy staunchly refuses to do any more than walk at a moderate pace, even when he has a gigantic rat monster on his tail. He's a stubborn little fucker that way, I guess. But the puzzle-solving style is very much intact, and much of the sensibility besides certainly recalls the greatness of Limbo, while never quite attaining the same heights as that already-classic game.

This game is certainly a bit of a head-fuck at times, and surely likes to mess with you. I'll give a nice little example (minor spoiler alert):

You've just gone through a door, it's closed behind you, and the monster which was just chasing you is now pounding on it from the other side. No matter: Buddy's gonna nonchalantly walk on, at his usual semi-leisurely pace, and eventually find that he can't progress any further after a brief cut scene. Guess I'm gonna have to...go back the way I came? Oh look...the door I came through is now open. And there's an item I could surely use now lying in the doorway. Does the game seriously expect me to..? Yes. Yes, I suppose it does. And sure enough, a huge claw comes out of the doorway when I get too close, and Buddy loses all nine of his lives in a single swipe.

Cheeky fucking game. (The next time I was a bit more cautious, and got that item outta there before the claw could get at me. But the game still got me good, if only the once.)

So sure, this product is clever, highly atmospheric (both visually and sonically), and alarmingly scary for a platformer. That's the good news. Now for a rant. (Deep breath:)

WHY THE HECK DOES EVERY SINGLE DEV WHO MAKES A PLATFORMER FEEL COMPELLED TO PUT AT LEAST ONE OR MORE SECTIONS IN THEIR GAME SEEMINGLY DESIGNED TO INFURIATE THE PLAYER TO THE POINT OF RAGE-QUITTING?! AND WHAT THE HECK DO THEY HAVE AGAINST SEMI-FREQUENT, SEMI-FAIR CHECK- AND SAVE-POINT SYSTEMS?!?

To wit: There's a bit in this game where you do a series of jumps - not dangerous ones at first, but certainly time-consuming, and annoying as all buggery if you miss one and fall back down and have to do it all again. After about ten to fifteen such "easy" jumps, there's a series of decidedly more difficult and deadly ones. The catch? You die here, you go ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE START OF THE EASY JUMPS. Like, no kidding, about two minutes of gameplay you have to repeat again and again, despite the fact that you've already "conquered" the first dozen or so jumps ten times already. AM I THE ONLY PERSON SICK TO DEATH OF THIS STYLE OF "GAME DESIGN"?!

Devs: Please, please, pretty please, get people who AREN'T on your design team, and AREN'T your bad-ass hardcore gaming friends, to play scenes like this in front of your eyes. Watch them accept the early failures with perfect grace, then watch them slowly-but-surely get ticked off as they're made to redo the same frigging bits over and over and over again...for no good bloody reason...then don't blame them when, since the dev is in the very same room as them, they decide to PUNCH YOU IN YOUR SMUG F-ING FACE. Let's face it: You'll deserve it. And I'm a non-violent kinda guy, a total pacifist. And even I'D punch you in your smug f-ing face.

And I don't just mean the Buddy devs here; I mean ALL of you devs. Please. Stop making people needlessly hate your games. Throw the player back five or ten jumps at the most, maybe a minute of gameplay at best (unless it's a purposefully long boss fight or suchlike). There's no need for people who paid you good money to keep bashing their heads against the same brick walls (other than giving the illusion of the game being longer than it is; but at a solid three or four hours, I for one am more than satisfied herein). Surely I'm not the only one who considers this kind of design nothing but a waste of their precious time.

So apart from a sometimes crappy save/check-pointing system, would I recommend this game? Hell yes. I'd even recommend it at the price of fifteen bucks, though I can't help but wonder if they're pushing their luck a bit when Limbo is only ten (though this game is newer, I guess).

Why do I keep mentioning Limbo? 'Cause not only is it a well-known game that people may be familiar with, it's also pretty much "the bar" when it comes to these kinds of spooky puzzle-platformer games. This game comes reasonably close, and that's to be seriously commended. Add in a bit of "walking simulator", and a wee, wee bit of Alien: Isolation - you'll see what I mean when you play it! - and you damn near have this game in a nutshell. A little more fairness in the saving department, and I'd frankly recommend this to anyone. It's just a shame that some very patient players may not see it through to the end, just because they're not sufficiently "hardcore" in the "skillz" department.

Oh, and the death sequences for our bold little kittie-cat are a bit lame, and the character doesn't always "align" with the scenery that perfectly (especially on ladders). On the whole, though, this is quite the minor gem. Here's hoping the devs spruce things up a tad, and get some of the acclaim and sales which they surely deserve.

Respect. To the devs, AND to the players who forgive them their flaws, all too freaking often...

Verdict: 8.5/10.

Eh, I like the art style and the concept, plus I'm getting intense Fran Bow/Broken Age/Bulb Boy vibes, It's just really clitchy. And the conroles are bad, WASD, exept W and SPACE don't work so you have to use the arrow keys. And the checkpoints could be better.

As I said, I REALLY like the concept and it has potential to be a great game, just not at the moment. :/

It has many technical problems. the worst issue I faced was saving. I passed many puzzles and when I died, the check point suddenly changed and I had to start from the begining of the stage. I don't konw if that was a glitch or not. In general, the game can't be played and the developers should fix these issues. Without fixing, it is impossible to complete this game.

See written article below or watch it here: https://youtu.be/2Z20gDYB_zg

TL;DR: SKIP TO CONCLUSION!

Pros:

• very good art style, and colour pallet that the game uses (reminds me of Limbo and Albert & Otto)
  
• audio is good, and the ambiance, and sound effects are well suited to the game (for what I did play)

Cons:

• black splotches popping up all the time was a bit distracting
  
• game is way too slow paced, there were several times where you walk or push something for a long time without anything happening at all
  
• horrible controls (for both keyboard and controller), and the game never tells you what the binds are, and there are no way to see or change them
  
• the actual jumping is so painfully slow, and there’s no reason that jumping should be THAT MUCH slower than walking...
  
• bug where you can move a box around without even touching it
  
• bug where you are glitched and walking on air to move the box
  
• dying to monsters that never actually touched you
  
[*]bug that teleports you to a different area, forcing you to exit and reload

Its a cute little "Horror" Platformer :) i like the art style and the puzzles so far :)

Check out some gameplay:
https://youtu.be/5b8HwohcLiE