Experimental Game Design

IndieCade Reviews

IndieCade Review: “We Are OFK”

by | Apr 28, 2024 | ,

“We Are OFK” invites players into the vibrant world of a group of queer friends navigating the tumultuous waters of L.A.’s music scene. Seamlessly blending elements of an interactive music video with a deeply immersive narrative, this game offers a raw and heartfelt exploration of the creative process, all wrapped up in visually stunning pastel aesthetics.

At its core are four central characters: Carter Flores, Itsumi Saito, Jey Zhang, and Luca Le Fae. Each member of this tight-knit, group of friends grapples with their own fears and uncertainties as they strive to carve out their place in the music industry. Against the backdrop of Los Angeles, their journey unfolds with moments of both triumph and vulnerability, offering players a chance to delve into themes of love, friendship, and personal growth.

One of the game’s most striking features is its choice-based dialogue system, which empowers players to shape the narrative according to their decisions. This adds layers of depth to the storytelling, allowing for a truly immersive experience where players can connect with the characters on a deeply personal level.

But perhaps the game’s crowning achievement is its interactive music videos. Here, players take control of the characters, immersing themselves in the game’s captivating visuals and infectious songs while completing various tasks. The seamless integration of music, gameplay, and narrative creates an experience that resonates long after the game is over, drawing players into a world where the boundaries between reality and fiction blur. As a huge music fan myself who is always looking for new ways to immerse myself into music, this game was mind-blowing with its audio and visual experience. Even just by the end of just the first two episodes, I found myself very emotional and rather invested in the narrative development to come.

Despite its many strengths, some players may find fault in the lack of facial expressiveness in the character models. However, the characters’ body language, dialogue, and vocal performances more than compensate for this, imbuing each character with a sense of authenticity and depth.

At its heart, “We Are OFK” is a celebration of creativity, friendship, and the power of vulnerability. Through the characters’ journey of self-discovery, players are reminded that it’s okay to lean on others for support and that true strength lies in embracing one’s true self. As the characters confront their fears and insecurities head-on, they discover that the pursuit of their dreams is worth the challenges they face along the way.

In conclusion, “We Are OFK” is a captivating and emotionally resonant experience that offers players a chance to immerse themselves in a world of music, friendship, and self-discovery. With its compelling narrative, engaging gameplay, and stunning visuals, this game is sure to leave a lasting impression on anyone who ventures into its world.

IndieCade Game Review: Atuel

by | Dec 7, 2022 |

Overview

Atuel is a documentary game about the Atuel River Valley in Argentina. Throughout the game, you learn about the history of the river and the culture/cultural practices surrounding the river through voiceovers done by local residents in Spanish. For English speakers, they provide English subtitles. I agree with the choice not to dub over the Spanish audio for the English version because if they did the testimonies of the local residents would not feel authentic. One of Atuel’s strengths is its breathtaking imagery. Atuel proves that a game doesn’t have to have photorealistic models and ray tracing to be beautiful. The game uses color and sound really well in order to bring out the beauty of simple models for the vegetation and landscapes. Overall, Atuel is a unique 20-minute experience that I would recommend to pretty much anyone.

Gameplay and Mechanics 

In Atuel, the gameplay and mechanics kind of take a back seat. The focus of the player is directed to the scenery and the stories of the local residents. The player moves around the world by controlling the flow of a river, then as fish in the river, as a cloud, as a fox, as a cloud again, as a bird, and finally as the river again. The movement is rather simple, (usually simple WASD movement with one or two exceptions), which allowed me to comfortably read the English captions while still moving around the world. Something interesting about this game is that the player does not control the camera in this game, which allows the developers to dictate the scenery the player sees. For most of the game, this works really well, but for the fox section, I found the way the camera interacted with the movement very annoying. At some points in this section, it felt like I was actively fighting the camera. I felt the camera wasn’t effectively showing me the path ahead and sometimes a rock in the foreground would block out a large portion of my screen. This temporarily broke my emersion and caused frustration in what was otherwise a really zen game. Another issue worth mentioning is during my first playthrough I got a bug in the section where you play as a cloud and have to put out a wildfire by raining, which caused me to restart the game from the beginning in order to progress. 

Performance

The game runs very well. I suspect that you could run it on virtually any machine, which is a big plus for a game meant to educate people.

Final Thoughts

Would I recommend this game? Yes, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a game. I feel like if you recommend a game to someone, they expect some sort of mechanics to improve at. To be able to get better and compete either against themselves or against others. Or they expect some open-world adventure where they spend hours exploring and learning the deep lore behind the world. This is not the case for Atuel. Atuel is more of an experience, and for this reason, I would recommend it as something you should do, instead of a game you should play.