Cibele

Hmm this is a tough one. The story was underwhelming, the "gameplay" is atrocious. [h2] Only good to relive a very specific type of time in your life [/h2] However, I enjoyed one part of the game enough that it could be a recommend. During the gameplay part (which consists of just clicking on a monster once and then wait until it dies), there is actually an important wrinkle that makes things slightly more complicated: I don't think it branches the story in any way, but your absolutely ♥♥♥♥ of a e-boyfriend gets mad if you're not focused on dealing with the mobs. The problem is that a bunch of friends are writing to you while playing, and if you don't check your other apps simultaneously, you'll miss out on story beats. So either you keep your bleurghfriend happy, or you lose all your friends. The way this was implemented was so true to how playing MMOs is with an SO or needy friend and I truly enjoyed it. I loved trying to answer all the chats and read all emails, while also making sure your assy assfarty boyfriend is content. Again I don't think it affects the story in any way, but it worked so well as a simulator that I was engaged anyway. Unfortunately, as mentioned, the story itself is really lacking, so the contents of the chats are vapid and meaningless. But I recommend if you just want to play a "Playing MMOs with your abusive SO"-Simulator.

meh

Cibele es un juego que trata más bien sobre la experiencia subjetiva de como la protagonista se enamora de alguien mientras juega a un MMO. Por lo tanto, trata de revivir un poco la experiencia que algunos habremos vivido en esos años entre la adolescencia y la edad adulta en los que conoces y conectas con alguien online. En principio la idea es buena y la historia me pareció bastante interesante, pero el juego tiene dos problemas principales. El primero es que tiene varios fallos técnicos gordos, en varias ocasiones no me cargaban las cinemáticas y tuve que volver a jugar secciones enteras del juego. Teniendo en cuenta que el juego dura aproximadamente una hora, eso significa que acabé rejugando mas de la mitad del juego. Además, para colmo la cinemática final tampoco me cargó y tuve que verla por YouTube. En segundo lugar, estas secciones de "gameplay" del supuesto MMO son bastante aburridas, sobretodo si las tienes que rejugar. Quizá si la historia fuera un poco mejor, o el final un poco mas satisfactorio, podría compensar todos estos aspectos negativos. Pero al menos para mi, no es el caso. Una pena, porque desde luego que es una idea original y con mucho potencial, solo que mal ejecutada.

I don't think it lives up to its own potential, but I still appreciate it for what it is. Another reviewer remarked on the game making them reflect on their own experiences growing up with online gaming, and I felt the same way. It can't be denied that it is at least somewhat compelling, but I feel that it could have done more. This is less of a "game" and more of a "minimally interactive movie" / "short story told through the medium of 'video game.'" It's worth checking out, but don't let expectations drag your experience. It's an artistic expression of a very real and vulnerable experience which its composer brings her full Self forward to perform and express, and this takes far more courage to perform than any courage it takes to drag it all down in an anonymous review.

Unfortunately this game wasn't for me. Cibele is a heavily story driven game, which is exactly why I purchased it, I only really play games for the story, my issue is that the story here is not good. I was able to guess every single beat before it happened, which left me bored the entire time. Not to mention that the "gameplay" between chapters was mind numbing. No part of this game worked for me, but I think I will check out the games that this developer makes in the future, I think there could be potential with some better storytelling.

Horriblement ennuyant.

I love that indies make such *weird* stuff. This game is definitely unusual. It's a walking simulator, except, instead of walking setting the pace, beating up grindy mobs in an MMO sets the pace. So, as the pacing mechanic, each act has you control your character to team up with your romantic interest to kill multiple small mobs, in order to be able to attack a boss, which you have to fight three times in each act to kill it. While fighting, you also hear the audio of voice chatting with them as you play together. Interspersed with this are text messages, emails, and images sent to you by friends. Through this multimedia approach, the story is told. It's not a great or deep story. It's just the story of someone's first online relationship, banal as that might seem. There are reviews saying this is the worst game people have ever played... and I can totally see that, if they were expecting a game. It's not a game, really, any more than any other walking simulator. So as a game, it's utterly lousy. But, as a story, it's also a genuinely lousy, tedious, bland, banal story. The plus side? 1) It's relatively short, maybe a couple of hours of clicky grind at worst. 2) It's an interesting approach to storytelling by an indie game dev, and I love how out of the box the thinking was with it, even if the implementation was pretty awful; bland, tedious and buggy. There's no "save" option, and when it crashed in the middle of the third act, and I restarted it, it had be restart from the beginning of that act. 3) It's allegedly a "based on real life", and I felt that believable. The art, photos, dialog, etc feel "real" (because they are without exception utterly crap, as real life typically is), as if the developer just took images from that time from their hard drive, and used them as the game's graphical assets. That makes the game feel somewhat voyeuristic, like poking around someone's hard drive or email. That, the "slice of real life" aspect, is what just barely redeems it. So, it's a terrible game, used to deliver a terrible story, with terrible assets (apart from the music, which is not my thing, but at least not technically awful). A lot of its sales are probably from the "nudity" tag (there's no significant nudity: a little cleavage but no nipples or genitalia). It's about as devoid of eroticism as a soap opera, and I don't mean the fun Latin-American kind, I mean EastEnders on its most boring days. AND YET... I don't regret the time I spent playing/watching this, because from a game design point of view, it was a really interesting idea, and because it felt like someone telling a simple story about their own life, in a heartfelt way. Sure, it's not a "five stars, 95%, must play" game. But it's also not a "700 hour commitment" game. It's a casual, indie narrative game, and within that niche, it's more "okay" than "bad". So, cautiously, I recommend the game.

not good