I fell from Grace

"I fell from Grace" is an older game from 2017. It's a venerable 7 years old at the time of this review. It's a rather poor attempt at making a "dark and edgy" psychological horror adventure thought waves and waves of endless, garbage Visual Novel writing and the occasional bad puzzle. The schtick is you're an antiheroic jerk with a sick wife and to try cure her and not get fired from your job, you go on a horrible adventure where a lot of people die and imaginary children talk to you. Yeah, a terrible idea. Oh, and the dialogue rhymes (badly) but you can turn that off. I don't know what they were thinking, but one thing we know for sure, they were wrong.

One important note is that even though this is an amateur project, it does seem to be sincerely and genuinely made. I couldn't find any flipped assets, plagiarism or any other kind of insincere actions from the developer, but unfortunately genuine intentions alone are not enough to produce a brilliant PC gaming experience.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.

While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals.

The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.

To make matters worse, there's no mouse input, whether this is deliberate or through incomptence or deliberate is unclear, but Sierra moved on from keyboard-only controls as soon as the mouse became a mainstream peripheral. There's no excuse here, and this makes the game awful to play... even before the writing hits you.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 7 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.

So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

"I fell from Grace" has the laughable, eye-watering price of around $8 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.

For comparison, the $8 asking price for this game could get you games like "Lethal Company", "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" or "Far Cry 5". No pixelcrap is worth $8. If developers want to get paid the same kind of money as real game developers who know how to do graphics properly, they need to learn how to do graphics properly.

Not a good game. Good thing I only got it on sale when it was a dollar.

Don't feel like elaborating and not trying to be negative just for the sake of, but yeah, not fun at all.

I spent way more time on this game than I should. Actually this is quite short but due to achievement hunting it took me a lot of time as it has numerous branching in the story and there are achievements in different branches. It is a dark adventure game which has which started in an interesting manner but ended in somewhat confusing manner. Honestly, I have mixed opinion about this game and this is the moment when I would preferred a neutral button for review in steam.

Its still a nice game for a quick adventure experience and I really appreciate the developer creating the walkthrough guide for players to cover different branches and hunt the its achievements. I would say pick this game up on sale to appreciate the developer as no matter how short the game is, it still requires a lot of effort on developer's end.

PROS

- Interesting and mysterious story, with bits of psychological horror and a non-tipical "hero". It keeps you invested to see what happens.
- Excellent choice and consequence, many choices, branches and endings for you to explore.
- Nice pixel art which depicts very well a decaying and rotten city

CONS

- It can turn repetitive. There are lots of fetch quests, which you end up going from one side to another almost every day. The whole area is almost open for you from the beginning, so you end up revisiting areas that only change a bit of dialogue and not much more.
- Loading times are quite long

OVERALL: A compelling psycological thriller/horror story that makes you feel invested with its characters. The mood is bleak, the "hero" is a horrible person, and most people if they are not like him, they are just poor victims of other similar cruel people. You have lots of decisions with consequences and arcs, and the story does not unfold completely on one playthrough. You can see what happened to other characters or see other points of view by playing again with different choices, which provides replay value. If you are willing to go through the repetitive parts of fetch quests, and to explore every nook and cranny, I recommend it!

SCORE: 8/10

Firstly for your information: I usually play Point'n'Click Adventures and sometimes plattformer/sidescroller (only with a controller) and other games :)
I really enjoyed this game. The pixel graphics are beautiful and the story is interesting (I turned off the rhyming though, not into that. But thanks for the option to turn it off, dev :))
Your choices actually matter here and influence your game throughout.
One important information for Adventure Lovers: If you're looking for a Point'n'Click Adventure, you won't find it here. But the controls are very easy once you get used to it (I recommend playing with a controller though) and on my Buffalo Snes Gamepad I ocasionally felt like I'm playing a game from the 90s :)

So if you are open to a sidescroller adventure without mouse controls, but with an awesome soundtrack, beautiful pixel graphics & an interesting story with multiple endings based on your choices, feel free to buy this game.
I didn't regret it and plan on playing it again to check out the other endings!

I Fell From Grace had the potential to be an okay game. Unfortunately it has multiple paths and instadeaths. After investing a few hours wandering around doing fetch quests for terrible people in a terrible world, i got "prematurely" killed. Apparently that scored me an achievement without actually finishing the game.

After quitting out and fuming for a bit, i went back in and found that the game had in fact autosaved me so i could at least reload and try a different option. That just led to the game ending a little bit further on. The "ending" still had no closure, it just looped back to the start again.

It seems this is one of those games you are supposed to play over and over to get the "true" ending or to uncover all the plot threads or something, but ain't nobody got time for that. Navigating through the game is very slow and there is a lot of backtracking. The rhyming dialog is a neat gimmick, but i wish it had been in a game with a story that fit in a single playthrough. Not recommended.

This is an amazing game which I have played multiple times. I love the branching paths and random tasks. I looked at the achievements and there's still so much I haven't discovered.

The rhyming gets dull (annoying?) sometimes, but it works with the story. And this game has mature themes, so seeing topics people talk about in rhyming-fashion gets pretty good.

Lastly, this game gets dark and emotional. Don't let the rhyming fool you, this game gets pretty real.

I have very mixed feelings about the game. On one side - it has an unique style and music, feels like made with love, lots of content and variations. On other side - it's just an old style quest game where you run around gathering stuff and applying it in not very obvious ways. The plot is very catchy though, but my biggest complain is the endings. They all are bad and some are even controversial. Like, in one MC appears to be just crazy and that's how they explain everything. In other - it's about evil forces and the end of the world.
Since I have to give a mark (I wanted to stay neutral), I'm leaning to 'do not recommend', as the game is very depressive in overal.

Really dug this game. I can only speculate how vast it really is, how many outcomes it must have. The amount of things you can interact with is staggering. I've only played through it once, but the ending I got maybe only required interaction with like 5% of the objects I encountered.

G'day, completed my first play through of I fell from Grace, honestly it was enjoyable. I really enjoyed the art style (I'm a sucker for pixel art) and the music. The story is very interesting and from reading in the steam discussions there is quite a few endings!

I bought this game on a recent sale and really do recommend it, my first play through was 4 hours and I hardly opened up the story arc, with a lot of content to go!

One thing I would like to say, the Dev is really active within the Steam Discussion Forum, answering all questions and seems really geniune.

Thanks!

It's a shame that more people don't know about this game. I don't know why steam's algorithm keeps it out of sight. It is a disturbing horror-mystery story about a man whose life just seems to get worse and worse. The (optional) rhyming dialogue fits in with the dark dreaminess of the world. The plot startles and captivates as things become more strange. The game succeeds at the unique angle it's aiming for.

I do wish it had a point-and-click control scheme instead, or along with, it's WASD / gamepad controls, and I wish there weren't so much running back and forth in one particular location (breaking the game's momentum). This game encourages exploration as there are "side quests" which may open up depending on your choices in the branching narrative. And boy, does it branch. Replayability is a big feature here.

This game often goes on sale for barely any money, and I recommend it. The developer deserves more recognition for the work that went into this.

I fell from Grace is a story driven, point & click like adventure game.

You play as Henry, a middleaged man working in the medical research field. While his wife is sick and hasn't too much time left, his work isn't going exactly well either, so he's under a lot of pressure. One day he gets his hands on some strange pills that might save her life, or not. It's entirely up to player what happens next.

I fell from Grace offers a lot of different ways to experience this story. There is not only one way, or one outcome. So it has a lot of replay value. Besides the lovely pixel graphics and soundtrack, it offers a dark and mysterious story. The characters are well written and quite unique. The dialogue is mostly in rhyme form, but you have the option to switch to normale dialogue if you don't like it!
As I don't want to spoil anything, I can't say much more about it. Just that it's worth your while to play this game through and enjoy the experience. I was really impressed by the true ending.

Last but not least: I fell from Grace has a very friendly and helpful developer. Deep Taiga offered the none-rhyme version due to the players demand, provided a walkthrough and is answering questions in the forums, to give just a few examples.

A neat adventure game with many decisions. You play as a medical researcher at a pharmaceutical corporation and your wife is sick. Although it seems a tad short on varied endings, there are tons of different decions to make and almost all of them affect something noticable. The world is really built up and it touches on a broad range of subject matter. The rhyming is a bit cheesy at times, but keep it on for your first playthrough.Trying to get all the achievements and uncovering all of the endings gets dull pretty fast though, due to a lot of back and forth and super long loading screens. Other than that though, this is definitely a neat experience!

i love this game, beautiful story , a lot of choices , diffrent endings
but the only problem with the game that im having is that i can only create up to 8 saved files at a time only .

Fall from Grace is providing players a unique story with twisted personalities in it. With puzzles and collectible objects around you try to cure your poor wife. To do so you encounter interesting things and do some crazy stuff if you want. Overall is a good game but has a few key flaws.

- Need point and click playstyle for better gameplay experience.
- Maybe some objective or adventure log that provides progress for what are you doing that time and what you need to do according to your decisions.

Game has some good aspects too

+ Good story with some interesting characters.
+ Cool 2d design with side scroll gameplay
+ You can play multiple times with different choices you can make.

A melancholic adventure game with really interesting premise, gameplay, music, and graphic. Sadly the forced rhyming on all of the dialogues actually distract rather than add to the experience. I'm enjoying it quite a lot when I just tune the awkward rhymings out though.

I Fell From Grace has one of the most unique and interesting narratives I’ve seen in any game this year. The unsettling story tells a compelling and mysterious tale with flawed characters navigating some truly strange events. The traditional adventure game mechanics are serviceable and keeps the narrative flowing, yet the lack of a quest log or general sense of objective means you’ll get more enjoyment out of this one playing with a guide until you become familiar with the various set pieces. Definitely worth picking up if you’re a fan of weird stories or traditional adventure games.

I had to think hard about whether to recommend this game or not.

I Fell From Grace is a 2D narrative-puzzle game. As you struggle to support a dying wife, you are drawn in to ever darker shades of moral greyness. There are multiple points for decisions to be made, sending you off down a different narrative path. Which, y'know, I was all for.

Personally, I found some of the "puzzles" quite obtuse - but the developer has put out a very helpful walkthrough guide. Seeing how the narrative developed was mildly interesting, but there is a lot of running back and forth, and back and forth, AND BACK AND FORTH AGAIN! I admit that kind of mechanic is baked into the genre, I found myself replaying the same sequences over and over again, just in slightly different scenarios. At first, I was willing to put up with this but I'm afraid I reached my limit. You will want to make a nesting dolls set of save files, to save endless repetition.

This game is very grim and very gritty and will often swerve into further depravity. Your protagonist will often make bad, selfish, violent decisions. When you offer the thuggish guard to rape your wife in exchange for your freedom, I was repulsed. That was actually sickening. My problem is this doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose other than being dark and gross for the sake of it.

Further weakening the game's appeal to me was the thinly drawn characters. Because of the narrative web that develops from multiple "choices matter" decisions, everything feels very interconnected - I like that. But the characters swing and vacillate wildly in tone. The detective, for example, goes from a "by-the-book" cop to a Dirty Harry vigilante...just because?There seems to be very little actual relationship between the protagonist and his wife. Despite featuring in the title and propelling the plot, Grace the wife is very flat as a character.

Also, everyone rhymes...BADLY. I was further alienated from these characters because everyone speaks in tortured and unnatural rhyming couplets. This is explained in the plot but, man, it just wasn't worth it for me.

To the game's credit, it's solidly drawn pixel-art. I can't fault that.

So, long stretches of tedium, punctuated by wearisome nastiness. Why did I play for so long?! The different narrative threads hooked me. I wanted to chance down the few "good" endings (There are two, according to the developer). But, inevitably, the pay-off was just not worth it.

This game had some nice ideas, but spread too thinly amongst bad ideas.

I like a lot about this game. Music is good, great pixel graphics, great story, interesting "choices matter" devices. I want to see more and finish this game and replay it. But there's a lot about this game that drags it out too long by poor design, so much so that I don't know that I will actually start playing it again.

• Too much long side scrolling and going back-and-forth. An unreasonable amount, even when you literally run rather than just walk. I've played for over two hours and gotten basically nowhere. It almost felt at times like the game designers wanted a long sidescrolling screen for no reason than to have a long sidescrolling screen. You spend more time running around to get places than enjoying the story or solving puzzles. This was by far the biggest problem I have with this game and nearly the sole reason I've given this game a thumbs down.
  
  
• Blank dialogue boxes. I will never understand why the scripts use dialogue boxes that say nothing other than "...". That's an annoying waste of my time and energy because they serve no purpose. It wouldn't be a problem if it was only once or twice, but it's a frequent offense.
  
  
• Load screens are too long. A small pet peeve, but added onto the other two issues, it becomes maddening.
  
  
• The rhyming. Ugh. I get the artistic reason for it and the real reason, but it does get a little obnoxious.
  
  
[*]Keyboard-only navagation and interaction. If everything else was good, I could have accepted this, but when added onto everything else, it also really killed this game. Much prefer mouse-based navagation/interaction.

“Cheap little rhymes, a cheap little tune, are sometimes as dangerous, as a sliver of the moon.” – Langston Hughes

Cool adventure game with a unique storyline and different endings depending on the choices you make. I missed a good deal of story content during my first playthrough and I'm enjoying playing through different decision trees to find the various endings and unlock the achievements.

Okay I get it's a a 'poetic journey' but everyone speaks in really bad rhymes, Painful to read with a reed- yeah rhymes like that with my hat. I could not really get into the game after seeing that shame. Lines made no sense in context. Which only vexed my brain like it was in the rain.

Poetry is more than end rhymes