To Hell With the Ugly

positives

+ rightly nominated by the independent games festival, the art is fantastic, if in a sort of pastel corporate memphis way. the enduring commitment to the orange color tone is fairly impressive

+ the game features minor puzzles, but the visual ones are intuitive and assist in building the story in a diegetic way, such as putting back together a case report. this initial phase of the game builds a genuinely interesting mystery

neutrals

o the game is somewhat short. nothing wrong with that. it sustains attention and then it wraps itself up within a few hours. i'd prefer more games be like that

o the game features a few varied if superficial types of gameplay to keep things fresh, such as combat and stealth, but these are largely linear experiences that are short-lived, very easy, and sort of end up becoming a distraction from the narrative

o cartoon butts and titties

negatives

- for a game adapted from a novel, the themes are inelegantly presented. basically the central conceit seems to be the imperfection of beauty when normalised, but this is not explored until the twist ending of the game

- speaking of, the ending is pretty abrupt and lackluster. in short, it's a feel-bad ending where the characters decide the villain is correct and compromise the entire narrative thus far to embrace a sort of hot people dystopia

- actually, all of the above points seems probably explained by the fact the developers probably ran out of time to wrap up the game. them's the breaks i guess