Blue Whale

Probably the only game i ever really come to every now and then when i log on to steam.

Sure the lack of being able to save is annoying, but that 1 chance mechanic atleast reflects reality to a degree.

As a 27 Club member, this would be my go to.

[quote]Warning: Developer Fraud[/quote]

In an act of brazen theft and fraud, the "developer" revoked all keys to the "Marwin and the Evolution Stone" game sold through third party sites like IndieGala and GoGoBundle, keeping the money taken from those resellers but removing the game from paying customers accounts. This is essentially theft through hostile, fraudulent action on behalf of this unethical developer. There's no guarantee the developer won't repeat this act of theft on other titles too.

Under no circumstances should anyone by a game from this con artist and thief.

Blue Whale is a badly made 2D retro pixel side scrolling "adventure" game hybridised with craptastic, badly written visual novel text spam. It's barely a game, and wasn't made with the intention of being a game, it's more of a pretentious "art not game" bit of trash. Here's the thing as games as art. Games can be art, if they're exceptionally well made. Badly made art, shoved into a game-like format doesn't make "art" better, however, it just makes gaming worse, which is apparently the goal of the "developer" for this junk.

The game topic is also disturbing and delves into the topic of teen suicide, badly, for profit. That's right, the developer is trying to profit from this. You take on the role of a girl named Green (because the developer only knew one word in Japanese... and apparently not many words in English either, the writing here is horrifically bad, so bad that Google Translate should be ashamed of itself). You get invited to partake in a suicide game.

Trying to address social issues through the medium of video games is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good. Game developers are not professionals in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this can cause far more harm than good. It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to push political or social agendas. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers. People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware video games attempting to get sales by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here.

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

The game doesn't have any save game features, despite that being a basic standard for all games of this time. The developer might defend this as an attempt to make the game seem more "difficult" without them having to balance the game or do their job properly with engaging and challenging level design, but it's just as likely they simply couldn't work out how to make a save game feature work. Either way, that's a defect that adds another reason for gamers to avoid this game.

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.

There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.

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, or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.

Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs.

A strong argument can be made that construction kits like GameMaker Studio should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", Lissencephaly has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.

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 5 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 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.

Blue Whale has the far too high price of around $4 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.

FUCKING DOG SHIT GAME I WAS IN VENT I DONT TOUCH GREEN LIQUID BUT STILL DIE FUCK THIS GAME MAN

The concept was good but it's frustrating because you can't save nor run and most achivements require the player to die. Something else that annoyed me was that pressing 0 restarted the entire game and was never said, I found that out by accedentally pressing 0 on the number pad next to the arrow keys.

Why can't I save?! Thats so annoying...
I mean I get what it wants to say with it but if you have to close the game beacause of a glitch or if you want to sleep it just gets annoying to do the same thing over and over again...

Based on the real life suicide game, Blue Whale is a weird horror game that I don't know how to fully cover.

Story:

You play as Midori, a 12 year old girl. One day when returning home, she sits down next to her computer and opens up her social media, as she receives a message from the Blue Whale game, she is plunged deep into the game and you have one chance to save her.

As I said before, the game is heavily inspired by the real life Blue Whale game, where in some instances people did actually commit suicide afterwards. It's a sensitive topic to cover, but my morbid curiosity got really interested in checking it out and I'll say right now the plot in the game is really bland. The story is very hard to follow considering a lot of the times the translation is very poor. The notes you read seem to be written in a way to set up a very bleak tone and it works, cause the game is very depressing from start to finish, but it's all very cliche to say the least.

Graphics:

The art style is really decent, however I do have some minor gripes with it. Midori is a very cartoony looking character, she is very small and sort of resembles a character sprite out of a JRPG, but once you're plunged into the dark world, you run into other humans that look much more like real humans. I guess it's to set up a very surreal tone which works, cause even the environments seem to wildly different from one another.

You can enter a house and see a giant eye looking at you instead of walls and not to mention how many locations you visit, like shopping districts, beaches, bridge crossings and other stuff. It's a very moody looking game and I did really like most of it.

Audio:

For the most part, the audio is decent enough. Every little audio cue does play up the atmosphere and when you're going down dark alleyways and start hearing rumbling and wind howling it is pretty creepy. However most sound effects are very likely to be royalty free cause I've heard them before, in some other horror games. They are used effectively so I won't nag on it too much.

Gameplay:

Blue Whale is more or less an adventure game where you explore your environments and solving very light puzzles, however as soon as the game begins, you're left on your own devices on figuring out how to actually do anything. Your main goal is to save Midori and you mainly do this doing moral choices, which are actually really cryptic in a way.

When you die you are sent back to the start of the game and have to play from the start, as there's no checkpoints or a save system. This is one of the biggest negatives of the game, at least for me. It's not that bad since the game is bite size a single playthrough takes roughly 30 minutes, but it's still really annoying when you die because of something you didn't know can kill you and forced to start from the beginning.

The puzzles themselves mostly consist of trying to get to certain locations, which is both simple and fairly complex and tend to be really annoying to figure out, not to mention most of these endings are just really not that good and not worth playing the game multiple times.

Verdict:

Blue Whale is a really mediocre horror game. It has some decent scares and a really nice atmosphere, but everything else is just bland. The story is really hard to follow and just boring and the gameplay is just walking around trying to figure stuff out that is not made clear to the player. For some it might be worth checking out on a heavy discount, but other than that, just skip it.

Final Rating:
5/10

Pros:
+ Great atmosphere
+ Some decent scares

Cons:
- Story is not great
- Some endings are way too cryptic
- Gameplay is really boring

If you liked this review please consider joining https://steamcommunity.com/groups/completingthebacklog and https://steamcommunity.com/groups/ImperialReviews

I really enjoy the atmosphere and the overall detail that was put into the game.It is a really well made game for the price. I love the surreal feel, the topic it covers, and that there are different endings.It is a more relaxed horror game, similar to the Yume Nikki games. It's psychological. No, you can't save the game and when you die that's it. But I enjoy that, it adds to the topic. This game deserves more credit. Thanks to the devs.

A fun quick look into a dark concept in a simply told and creepy story. The only complaint I have that wasn't the game was it's hard to find any English walkthroughs or discussions on this game. This doesn't effect the game much except for maybe achievement hunting but it's still a fun one to try. I may try and make a walkthough if I have the time. But I suggest you try it out.

The concept of this game is personally very interesting, it has a lot of potentials and the atmosphere of the game is really nice. The fact that the premise is based on a real-life incident hooks me in, and I think it's nice that you have to find letters in the game.

However, the biggest issue is how slow the character walks, and you can't really save the game which is a huge downfall. When you die, you have to start from the beginning and it's frustrating. You only get one chance in this game, and I think there's a lot of room for improvements for this game.

If you are only here because of the news about the thing of the same name, umm, I can see the connection. There are multiple endings, however. Just a hint.

This isnt a good game please save yourself the trouble and don't play it. It lacks any direction and theres no saving so if your game crashes or you close it on accident have fun walking through the entire thing again.

I mean It's not the worst horror game I ever played but there is room for improvement. I mean I did get some scares out of it however, since it's so easy to die and you have to start from the beginning after each death. My fear turned into anger.

I feel like the fear factor would have gone up If the game was much longer and had no game overs. Speaking of that, the tagline is pretty misleading "You only have one chance" except once you finish the game you can go back and start over. The game has alot of pretension but It just wasn't enough. The only positive things I can say about It was the graphics we're nice and I though the closing the game after the messege error part in the beginning was a nice touch.

Overall I'll give it a 5/10
Not a bad game but could be better.

P.S If your gonna make a game about the blue whale challenge, don't leave any details out.

ehh this game wasnt all too fun as i hoped it would be. i love rpg maker games which is why i bought it. but my expectations were too high.

this game was shit

so I bought this game bc I like games like To The Moon, Lydia, Distraint and so on
and I thought this could really be a good game, atmospheric, dark, different
but sadly it turned out to be nothing but annoying, here's why

+ the concept is good
+ there are a lot of letters to be found with interesting/meaningful messages
+ sometimes creepy shadows appear and bring some change
+ it would have a nice atmosphere but

- it just gets really frustrating really fast because:
- you can't save your game
- you gotta die for achievements
- you sometimes die by only approaching some things/creatures
- you have to restart every single time
- it's really just walking around aimlessly and hammering "Z" the whole time
(- I couldn't even find one guide)
- doesn't seem like there's really any story to it
- the proportions are just so wrong
(which I know in many games isn't an issue but here... f. ex. at one point there is a character she calls "girl" and she herself is only half as tall as her so what are we playing, an infant?...)




btw I could only play it in window mode
and one can't change any settings

[HELP]Do anyone know hot to get to the blue whale end? I've tried not to act as the list commands but at last it just turned out the good end.

Sometimes I think that I shouldn't have been at all. It would be easier to admit to yourself that it will never be better. Every day, wake up with hope and fall asleep with tears. Solitude is worse than death.

I found this game to be somewhat lacking. The premise of having only one chance to get to the end leaves me scared to fail because I don't want to slog through the entire journey back to where I was. I found the lack of interactability to be unpleasant, especially at the start where you have to eat a cookie. Upon interacting with the plate, it tells you what they are, but I hadn't a clue if I had actually completed the task. Perhaps adding a sound effect with a black screen might add more immersion, such as the way other RPGMaker games would?
Visually, this game is gorgeous, and I love the design of Midori, but I just couldn't find myself getting invested.
Perhaps when I have more patience I'll return, but I'm not the biggest fan of walking simulators, and while I did get one good scare, it hasn't really wowed me or left me craving more. Apologies, but I just don't see the appeal.

30 minutes in, still no "choices" per se.
The game does deliver on its promise of a bleak tone.
Sound design is mostly solid though there are large swathes of the game where there is no sound at all.
Probably worth a look if you are interested in the premise.

https://youtu.be/AwTWjj4YZJs