https://sodaraptor.itch.io/hypnagogia-boundless-dreams
A full-fledged follow-up to Hypnagogia, originally a free game made for the LSD Jam, which I talked about before.
Hypnagogia on gardenapple's Linux and low-spec-ish gaming
Hypnagogia 無限の夢 Boundless Dreams is a first-person exploration game that takes players on an adventure through a series of mystifying dream vignettes, each with their own unique theme and visual style.
Youtube trailer, TL;DW: PS1-style wobbly low-poly graphics + surreal (liminal?) spaces
Kinda. I think the style and the environments are cool, after all, they are the one selling point of this game, and are the reasons why I bought it. Everything else is a bit lackluster though. Hypnagogia does not have the fun platforming aspects of that era of gaming, instead relying mostly on walking around, talking to surreal characters and solving weird puzzles - again, good aesthetics and variety, but not inherently fun. There is an attempt at story-telling but it's just far too vague and nonsensical to matter to me at all - this game has more story cutscenes than the original free Hypnagogia but I'd prefer if they kept the story more minimal.
Another disappointment was the game's optimization. You'd think a low-poly-styled game could run on anything, but then they add these detailed water reflection simulations, which don't seem to be optimized very well. They do look fancy (they are proudly displayed in the YouTube trailer), and they do fit well aesthetically, but my laptop just slows down to a crawl on any level that has water surfaces. The "low" graphics settings seem to just barely influence it. The game does have a native Linux version, which is nice, I guess.
gardenapple - 2023-04-22
Game finished 2023-02-13