Pinstripe

Pinstripe is a puzzle platformer which lasts around 3 hours. You start out on a train, playing as Ted who is accompanied by his daughter Bo. You meet a character called Mr Pinstripe who kidnaps Bo. You are then in an icy environment, on a quest to rescue her. There are several areas in the game, so see woodland, cliffs, caverns etc. I think there's quite a lot of flaws with the game design.

When your journey begins it seems like you need to head right, but it's not clear you cannot progress without going left first. There's all kinds of branching paths, and collectables you cannot reach which is a bit daunting. Graphically there's maybe 4 layers (there's the objects just in front of the camera, your plane, background, far background) and it's hard to discern what you can jump on or interact with.

I've watched quite a lot of Thomas Brush on YouTube, and although he creates some beautiful layered environments, he kinda messes this up with the depth. Once you get the slingshot, you would assume it fires just on the level you are on, so won't hit background objects. However, there is a large bell blocking you on your layer, yet when you shoot, the projectiles go behind it and you can aim at the mechanism which looks like it is on the background layer. It's not logical for you to perceive that as the solution. Then later on, you shoot some spotlights but one is pointing up and you are below it. However, it is clearly positioned behind the house which is slightly in the background (the door is interactive), and there is an enemy on your layer (since it will drop projectiles on you). But the solution is to goad the enemy so it is above the spotlight and he will drop his projectile into it - but why would it hit it? The fact that you never have done this before (and only have to do that once later on) - is basically just a throwaway mechanic but there are different instances of this design throughout the game.

After doing some platforming and shooting, physics based challenges, it's then like "here is a riddle"/"here is an observation puzzle". It seems like you aren't introduced to these mechanics and are just thrown something left-field and are supposed to just understand it. There's a few minigames such as instances of a mechanical version of Flappy Bird. The first instance was good, but the others were poorly lit and the shadows/darkness made it hard to judge where the obstacles were. The “spot the difference” minigame always seemed to have 1 hard to spot change, then there seemed to be some lighting artefacts (maybe like a glowing dot) which was misleading.

Another jarring scenario was when you coax a monster out of hiding, and blast it with your flamed projectiles - but despite it being behind a waterfall, the fire doesn't get put out by the water. Is the fire even necessary? aren’t the projectiles enough? Additionally, you coax it out with what looks like a bowling ball that you push into a wooden groove. I expected the monster to drop the ball and smash the wood, but it didn't. Why use a heavy object on a weakened surface when it isn't relevant? It was a complete subverting of expectations.

Another example is where you fire a projectile up and off screen and if you have the correct angle, it will fall back onto the screen further to the left. It's the first and last time you do this, and you'd only know to try it by the positioning of the torch. Even though I was firing upwards, most of the projectiles seemed to be hitting the ceiling, but then occasionally I heard a delayed sound as if the projectile was hitting something further above. It was only that fact why I kept on trying; then I thought I saw particles out of the corner of my eye further to my left. An obvious fix would be to lower the ceiling, or zoom the camera out so you can see what you are shooting up to. I have to assume there were two gaps or some kind of curved tunnel.

This reminds me of another point, that most screens don't have clear indicators that there is an exit. I often just ran to the edge of the screen to test if there was an exit. Having more signs, doorways, lighting, or removing foreground objects that cover the screen would be a better indicator.

When you rescue the dog, the (talking) dog asks you if you have met a certain character, and then going to said character doesn't trigger any dialogue at all. You would fully expect to be signposted to your next objective when completing a major objective like that. It took me a while to realise the dog can dig in certain locations. This was used maybe twice then forgotten about for the latter half of the game.

There's some voice acting that has been (mainly?) provided by Youtubers. Jacksepticeye voiced a character, and later on you meet PewDiePie voicing his namesake Felix.

After you use the slingshot across some flames for the first time, you then have to backtrack through the previous areas, because now there's lots of flames around for some reason when there weren't any before. You weren't prompted to go back other than you needed 300 currency to progress to the next area. However, when I only had maybe 80 or so, I thought it would probably be one of those games where you are supposed to help the character out in order to lower the fee because it seems extremely excessive. After backtracking, I collected everything I saw and ended up with something like 308. So I imagine some people could get stuck here if they miss something. There is a mini-game where you shoot balloons which seemed impossible with a controller because I couldn’t react in time. It was challenging with the mouse, so I’m sure some players could get stuck here. It seems mandatory to complete as well unless you can grind out more currency elsewhere?

The final area that you backtrack to sees you goading an enemy to drop a projectile onto a see-saw. Not sure if it made sense but the explosion is what sends you flying. The main problem I had with this is that you have to wait several seconds before he drops another, and it was unreliable if the projectile bounced into position. You have to repeat several times in order to reach all collectibles which is painfully tedious.

The platforming is generally okay. There were a couple that were hard to reach and I wasn't sure if you were supposed to reach them that way. There were a few instances where you miss a jump, fall down to the ground below and have to backtrack several screens to retry.

Falling down to your death is instant respawn, but losing all your health requires a sequence, and fairly long load screen. There's not many threats in the game though. Mainly the flying enemies that drop the occasional projectile, then 2 instances of an enemy that charges at you, then the final boss. One of the instances of the charging enemy is straight after you come out of a cave and don't have much time to react. There's not much space to jump around on either, so it's easy to die here. For some reason there isn't a checkpoint when you come out of the cave so you have to run through several screens again to try again.

There's some decent gameplay here, but there's far too many instances of poor game's design where your expectations are subverted, or you are misled. When puzzles are the main focus, it's important to get it right.