The Forbidden Eye: A Short Game Review
I stumbled across this game on the ‘Browse’ page of itch.io.
It’s premise was simple enough: You’re at a remote gas station to fuel up both yourself and your car, but things get weird. It’s free, and the cover art looked promising enough for a quick game, so I downloaded it. I needed a little break from playing The Binding of Isaac after crashing in the middle of a great run.
I should note that, upon closer inspection, the generic font of the game’s title and the developer’s name is pretty funny.
Gameplay
Now, I should keep in mind that this game was made in about a week or so, and it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. The developer mentioned that they were in a rut, and “just wanted to release a damn game”. With that in mind, I will say that true to the developer’s words, The Forbidden Eye is a simple game. It is not particularly notable in its mechanics. It wasn’t like I was searching for a complex game, but it’s worth to bring up in a game review, I think. E to talk, left-click for melee attacks — this game does not offer anything particularly novel, but maybe its charms lie elsewhere?
The combat wasn’t too compelling either. Smack enemies with a glowing rod a few times, and they’ll fly across the station. Their attacks weren’t anything crazy either — you were allowed to jump and crouch, but really all the evasive maneuvers you need is to simply step aside. If you did get hit, the screen would progressively get pinker. Overall the fighting was a little clunky, although I did enjoy seeing the ghouls splayed across the gas station’s parking lot after a good smack.
The Rap Battle?
…
It is just what you would imagine. If you need visual and auditory aid, it was reminiscent of this video. I understood what it was going for, the rap battle’s existence in the game and its contents, but it personally fell flat for me. This can be said for the rest of the game — weird and random, but solely for the merit of being able to claim that your game is quirky and off-beat. Which leads me to the game’s dialogue and story.
Writing
To be fair — who looks for revolutionary writing in a five minute itch.io game? Not to say that there are not any gems on itch — it’s a great platform for small game developers! However, this game fell a little flat for me. It didn’t have much substance, and its gameplay did not make up for it. While I understand this game was meant to be simple, its humour and weirdness wasn’t too cleverly written nonetheless.
Visuals
The game starts you off right in front of the gas station. It looked promising, and got me a little excited for the game. Although I may not have enjoyed the actual game all too much, I did appreciate its setting and atmosphere. The Forbidden Eye’s little animations were pretty cute as well!
I personally love when character models in games are blocky. It’s an obvious heed to Playstation 2 games. The emulation of graphics from that particular era of videogames have been a very popular gimmick, but I think it is a refreshing break away from AAA’s hyper realism. The exploration of different art styles in games is something I dearly appreciate — titles such as Rain World, Sorry We’re Closed and Death of the Reprobate are gorgeous games.
My Conclusion
I can't say I’d recommend it. While the comments on the game’s Itch.io page were positive, I would suggest to wait for a youtuber to play it for their ‘Free Random Games !!11!!!’ video instead?
I’m sure Dissonant Void has better games under their belt, but this one simply was not for me.
