Distortions Review

The Man Eater

I bought it on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/772500/Distortions/

Official webpage: https://www.amonggiantsgames.com/

It is very hard for me to write a review for this game. It would be necessary to read and quote some of the greatest doctors who reserches arts and semiotics. Barthes, Bakhtin among other giants, so I could write something minimally worthy of a masterpiece such as this game.

From gorgeous cut-scenes to the game's mise en scene, the developers use several techniques to make a beautiful and surreal story. There are so much tecniques, from games to films, that it is hard to make a list of all its sources. It would be hard and useless, since unlike nostalgic games (such as Evoland, Horizon Chase and Songs for a Hero), the references we find in Distortions are subtle allusions that does not serve to the reference, but to the story and to make up the enviroment.

For this reason it is also hard to frame this game in a specific genre. Distortions changes from one genre to another, sometimes it is a exploration game with the camera in the back, sometimes it feels like a first person horror, and sometimes it is a side scrolling platform game. Sometimes it is as peaceful as Dear Esther, sometimes it is as tense as Alan Wake.



Its story is open to interpretations (or as the common sense says, open to theories). Any sinopsis I could write here could come to a spoiler. Its story is told not only on the cut-scenes and gameplay, but also in some journal pages we keep finding as we play. Summing up, its story is about a girl who wakes up in this dreamlike world without any memories about who she is and how she got there. A lot of the mistery is to find these answers.

PROS

• First of all: it is possible to change the key bindings. It might sound unimportant, but if you are left-handed like me, you know how it is when you need to play a game that the controles are right-handed only.
• The controls are very responsive and dynamics.
• This game is very well optimized in the sense that if you change the game settings, the performance will be improved. It also might seem unimportant, but I played a lot of indie games that the performance is crap regardless the settings.
• The story is awesome and surreal. It can gives enough subject to interpretations, chit chats, discussions, fanfics (I hate this word) and etc.
• Both the gameplay and the cameras aren't fixed in one genre. As I said before, it is has elements of adventure, action, horror, stealth. It's very experimental.
• It is unexpectedly chalenging, but it is possible to beat. When we start to play it looks like it will be another walk simulator (another word I hate), than a series of action pops in, lots of trial and error which adds dynamics to the game.
• Its visual art is awesome.  I has lots of scenes that make us speechless. The enviroment is its highlights.
• Both the licenced and original music are also terrific. 
• It has the uncommon merit of use licensed music to make up the enviroment (in such a way Braid also does). This licensed music can't be bought with the game, but you can buy it on Labirinto's Bandcamp page. https://labirinto.bandcamp.com. The game uses music from the albums Anatema e Kadjwynh.
• I also like the fact this game avoid some soundtrack tropes. And this trope has a name: orchestra. Don't get me wrong. I love orchestra, but nowadays they are overused. Since this game the main character in this game plays violin, it seems obvious that we would hear an orchestra, but this doesn't happen. It has a lot of electric guitar, electric basse, acoustic guitar drum kits. So, when you hear the violin you will really listen to it.
• Furthermore, another trope that are used in games nowadays is the use of complex music pieces that will help the environment, but the player won't remember it (lets face it: you cant hum Assassin's Creed theme). Distortions goes in the oposite direction: the main theme helps to create the enviroment, is simple and it is easy to remember.

CONS

• Bugs. Before I speak about this, I want to say that people from Among Giants were very attentive and helpful. I send them each bug I found and they really did what they could to fix them. I also did not find any bug that crashed the game or prevented me to beat the game. That being said: yes! it has bugs. Some of them makes the game harder, some of them breaks the mood. Unfortunately, since this game didn't sold well at its release they couldn't raise money enough to keep fixing it.
• The extreme camera experimentation results in some issues I hadn't seen since Play Station One.
• In my humble opinion the footsteps sounds are very annoying. It was painful to play it using earphones. I recently played the game on the TV, but it didn't help.
• Using a controller might be a pain in the arse. Unlike the keyboard, it is not possible to configure it. Fortunately we can rebind it using Steam Big Picture, so I created an alternative setting: steam://controllerconfig/772500/1891172108
• Since it is mainly an exploration game, it was kind of anticlimatic to face some invisible walls, especially when we are exploring the lake with the boat.

The boat itself is kind of boring in my opinion:

• The lake/sea itself is very odd. It has some waves and it seems to be well made, but the boat goes by the waves as it has none. It just slides straightfoward two-dimensionally as if it was an ice rink. For exemple: Submerged is a lot better than Distortions when we compare the waves. In comparison to Submerged, which has a really dynamic sea, Distortions gets boring here.
• Even though the boat's controls are very intuitive, it is was very broing. Again I compare to Submerged, which its boat is very fun to ride. Distortions is at the wrong side of the gameplay.
• The sea sounds are also very weird. Sometimes it is perfect, sometimes it sounds like a water from an open faucet.

FINAL THOGHTS

In my humble opinion, Distortions is a masterpiece. It surely has some issues, but they don't match the bright side of the game, so these issues are mostly passable.

To be honest, I think the major issue was that this wasn't made on Unity or Unrea. If it were, I think some issues that prevented it to sell well at its release could easily be overcomed:

• the bugs fixes and the portability to Linux and Mac would be a lot easier;
• it would be possible to add collectible cards and achievements;
• and, why not?, it could be easier to some fan translate the game to its native language.

I'll retake here a concept created by Brazilian Modernists such as Tarsila do Amaral. I would say that Distortions is an Ababoru: a man-eater. This game eats from multiple sources and then throw up something entirely disgested and new. I can't say that these are the game sources but I can easily find elements that Eric Chahi, Fumito Ueda, Hayao Miyazaki, among others.

The team who created this game learned by watching the best. It is possible to find elements from everything the game History already did, and a bunch of elements from cinema.

We just can feel the passion.