The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince

《说谎公主与盲眼王子》：8.1 / 10 （优秀） 单周目流程时长：5 - 7 小时 类型：横板叙事 ———— 在森林里，生活着一个凶恶无比，却很爱唱歌的怪物。 它就这样孤独地活着，没有朋友，没有同伴，也没有谁会愿意靠近它。直到某一天，一个小王子被它的歌声吸引，逐渐靠近，想要与这位拥有美妙嗓音的歌手接触。 怪物从来没有见过这样主动靠近它的人，一方面，它为此感到高兴，另一方面，它又害怕这名听众发现自己的真面目。惊慌失措之下，它划伤了王子的眼睛，盲眼的小王子因此失去了王族的资格，被关进了城堡深处。 出于愧疚，怪物用自己的歌声作为代价，请求魔女赐予它变成人类的力量。最终，它化身为公主，救出了被囚禁的王子，并牵着他的手，走向怪物遍布、危机四伏的森林深处，去寻找那个能够治好他眼睛的魔女。 以上，便是《说谎公主与盲眼王子》的开场剧情。可以看出，这真的是一个很传统的童话，但它真挚动人的剧情，也曾打动过无数玩家。 只不过，以如今的视角来看，本作也确实存在不少问题，而且问题 还 不 小。 先说说那个最显眼的问题——价格。每小时差不多25块钱的定价，哪怕放到一些线性3A里也显得极其昂贵，这也算是日区游戏的通病了。 如此高昂的价格，想必本作绝对是精华的浓缩，每一分钟都充满乐趣吧。 可事实恰恰相反，本作的游玩体验相当坐牢。作为一款横板闯关游戏，它的玩法深度甚至还不如一些4399上的闯关小游戏；细节方面也是粗糙的不行，某些逆天设计能给人气笑；来回交互的动画慢得急人，角色又是超级脆皮+杰洛特级别的抗摔能力，只要被怪物碰到，或者跳跃稍微有点失误，就会死亡重来。 于是，一段本该短小精悍的童话旅程，就这么被硬生生拖成了一段遍地尖刺的苦痛之路。好在，游戏内置了跳过关卡的功能（有时间限制）。可真要这么做，它就成了每小时75块钱的电子绘本，这么一看反而更亏了。 那么最后，游戏还能指望的，也就只剩下那个剧情了。 可说到底，这种几乎一眼就能看到结局的童话故事，真的能让人满意吗？ 还真能。 俗话说的好，决定故事好坏的，往往不是故事本身，而是讲故事的方法。而本作，就讲的温馨，讲的笨拙，也讲的足够动人。 可能是因为旅途中那些并不愉快的记忆，反而一点点堆出了真实的陪伴感。 可能是因为其出彩的绘本画风、动听的音乐以及传神的旁白，让这片森林变得像是一本引人入胜的故事书。 也可能是因为，童话本来就是这样温馨、这样笨拙、这样动人： - 一个是看不见任何事物的王子，一个是不敢说出真相的怪物。 它明明拥有锋利的爪子，明明拥有吃人的本能，却偏偏要笨拙地扮演一位温柔的公主，小心翼翼地牵着王子的手，陪他走进森林深处。 它想用真正的面目与王子相处，却又害怕那副怪物的模样，会再次吓到这个唯一愿意靠近自己的人。 于是，它只能继续说谎，继续牵手，继续把那些无法说出口的愧疚，藏进一次次笨拙的陪伴里。 可谎言终究只是谎言。 它或许能换来一时的同行，却无法换来真正的友谊。因为爱与善意，从来都不应该建立在永远无法说出口的歉意之上。 犯了错，就要弥补；伤害了别人，就要道歉。 所以啊，怪物未必永远只能是怪物。只要它愿意放下谎言，伸出那双曾经伤人的手，也总有一天，能够真正牵住自己所爱的人。 - 所以最后，我也原谅了它那糟糕的游玩体验，只能感叹一句： 这可能是一款比起做成游戏，更适合做成动画的温柔绘本。 ————

[h1]I Will Always Hold Your Hand[/h1] A short but deeply moving fairy tale with a bittersweet ending. The first thing that caught my eye was the lovely style, reminiscent of drawings done in graphite pencil on coffee-stained paper. Various creatures that share the same names as in our world have a slightly different appearance here. (For example, the main character has extra eyes when she’s in wolf form). There are plenty of diverse locations, interesting interactions with the surrounding creatures, and mechanics for the prince’s communication and actions. Some puzzles struck me as not as simple as they might seem at first glance. Nevertheless, with enough attempts, you’re sure to succeed. It’s nice that the game doesn’t get boring with repetitive patterns. These are some of the cutest characters I’ve ever seen. May they truly live happily ever after!

A cute and charming game, with super-frustrating controls. The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince's strong points are: story, music, character design. I managed to brave through a frustrating game experience and reach the ending just because I wanted to see how the story would wrap up, and overall I liked both the plot and the exposition. In fact, I might look into another game by the same studio (The Cruel King and the Great Hero), if the gameplay does not require real-time puzzle solving, I might consider playing it. Its weak points are: gameplay, controls. The core of the game is solving puzzles, but (especially towards the end) it is necessary to play your actions with a relatively precise timing. This becomes frustrating when the controls do not allow you to be precise, and one failure means having to redo the puzzle. I cannot count the number of times where the Prince just died because I failed a jump. Not to mention that when you die and you have to redo a puzzle, there is a short (but annoying) loading time to go back to the last checkpoint, and sometimes checkpoints might require you to do a long and boring walk to the puzzle you need to solve. Maybe it's just my configuration (I played on PC with an XBox bluetooth controller), but I managed to finish Hollow Knight (100% achievements) with the same configuration, so I am more inclined to blame the game. Level design is also a bit weird, sometimes I wondered whether it was the studio's first game design experience. At the certain point there is a level that you can literally skip by picking a fork in the road, with a sign telling you "watch out, this level is hard, but you can skip it by walking right". I played the level, and it was hard only because it was based on a written riddle (!) which was hard to interpret and almost impossible to guess with trial and error. I looked up a guide which provided a few clues before giving the solution, and I managed to solve it with the second clue. Still, a weird experience.

The premise is nice and the artwork is cute. I wanted to like this. But the presentation is awful and the gameplay is a complete slog. The story is presented as a narrated storybook. The prince and princess are shown in a variety of stills while the narrator explains things. The writing is fine for a storybook but does not work in a video game. The first issue is that everything is too wordy, spelled out in excessive detail, and spoken slowly. If you pause for each voiced line during the opening, it will take a full 20 minutes to get through. This is not a complex story. It does not take 20 minutes to explain the premise. After the game starts properly, there are additional storybook cutscenes. There is no attempt to incorporate the game itself into the story. The cutscenes could probably be repurposed into a perfectly coherent book with minimal changes. The events in the cutscenes could be implemented within the game engine for the player to actually *do* instead of just hearing about them. In terms of "show vs tell", this is almost entirely "telling" with little "showing" and even less "doing". (granted, things like "princess stops a monster that was about to attack the prince" would likely turn into a QTE, which isn't great, but it'd be better than a narrator explaining what happened) The gameplay itself is unpleasant. The early chapters are just a bore with trivial puzzles and lots of slow walking. I'm sure the prince's slow speed is deliberate to ensure the princess has to protect him, but in areas without monsters it's just another waste of time. One of the puzzles requires you to go back through the level and count the number of ornaments. You can't do this on the first pass because you have no reason to count stuff in the background. I'm pretty sure this requires backtracking to the very start, which I was not willing to do and just checked a guide. Fall deaths are immensely annoying. Again, I know the fragility is deliberate but it's just flat out not fun. It is very easy to slightly mistime a mushroom jump and have one or both characters miss the target ledge and fall to their deaths. The yetis are obscenely awful because they throw you just high enough to kill you, so you're forced to get it right the first time. One time I dropped into a small pit with a mushroom and somehow the prince didn't follow me in. So I tried jumping out to grab his hand again. The mushroom pushed me high enough to kill me instead. I gave up on what I suspect is the last chapter or even the last level. There is simply no way I'm going to subject myself to that torture. I wasn't having fun long before then, but I was willing to force through it to see the ending, because the story is interesting and I do want to see what happens. But it isn't worth that nonsense.

It's a cute puzzle game. Not really difficult (aside from one obtuse riddle involving numbers) and a bit slow at times.

好结局，在这充满了NTR以及猎奇的时代，能玩到这种治愈游戏，我还是满意的

Couldn't help but felt very annoyed because of gameplay issues here and there, but the characters (especially the Wolfey Princess) are adorable and the music and visual style are great. The game is very short, too, so if you have a little patience for the poor controls and collisions, it's an enjoyable experience, the story is lovely. I hope it'll get more attention eventually (and maybe some fixes for smoother gameplay?) [strike]Loved that the Wolfey Princess quite resembles Anri, also because of all this fairytale prince/princess stuff, but that's why a friend recommended this game to me in the first place.[/strike]

A cute fairy tale with lovely music, a classic children's book art style with cute/whimsical little creatures, and sadly, some weird stuff happening with gameplay related thingies. It's probably nothing, just some little things that would make it less clunky when playing, the prince sometimes dies because of nothing, also gets stuck because on some cliffs your hands stop holding out of nowhere, maybe you fall from a normal height and die, so you have to repeat the level over again from the beginning. It's these little things that are not a big deal once you get used to it, but still feels wrong. Also something that isn't necessary but would be very helpful, maybe a chapter selection, I had literally one petal and flower left when I finished the game... And no, you can't go back to get them, if you want to get all the stuff you gotta do it in one run. I mean it could be a choice and it's fine, but personally I'd like something similar. I really liked the narrator's voice, but the english translation doesn't have the full lines sometimes, so the narrator keeps talking and there's no text left. Besides all that, it's a cute short experience with a pretty message, nothing that makes you say "WOW!" but still, a nice game, if you're okay with these little "problems" then I definitely recommend it :D