With the Steam Summer Sale coming to an end, I finally decided to actually spend a bit more on this sale. One of the titles I picked up was Pretentious Game, which at first glance (and from the trailer) reminded me quite a lot of Thomas Was Alone. What followed was a somewhat emotional experience.
In Pretentious Game, you play as blocks. Despite them being blocks, the story behind it is incredibly relatable. You will go through the highs of doing anything to get to the person you love, the person you just married. You will go through the lows of cheating in relationships and losing a loved one to a drunk driver. You will experience siblings working together, using their different strengths, to overcome obstacles.
The controls are pretty simple, though they can be slightly annoying. You mainly move using either the arrow keys or WASD, though you will occasionally need to use your mouse to click on some various things. Elements are introduced in the first chapter, such as clicking on a block to make it stay still, but are very underused in the current remaining chapters. The sudden need to use your mouse to click on things felt a bit jarring, especially as I tend to do most keyboard games with my right hand.
The music is simple, though I eventually just tuned it out and wasn’t even paying attention to it as the levels went on. The sound effects work as needed, and you will have to rely on them – along with subtle visual cues – to get through a level or two.
Graphically, the game definitely just screams flash player title – which it should. The title was originally made for flash player and later ported over to Steam (and I believe mobile devices). They don’t need to be much fancier though – the message still gets across very loudly, and I was definitely on the verge of tears at the end of chapter 3.
Difficulty wise, Pretentious Game seems to vary from chapter to chapter. There are some difficult parts in chapter 1 – though this is mainly only if you are impatient like me. Chapters two and three weren’t too difficult, they were mainly focused on telling the (incredibly emotional) story. Chapter four, however, made me almost want to just quit the game and never come back. Some of the timing on the jumps were starting to make me really frustrated because the difficulty had spiked up so much.
Overall though, I would recommend Pretentious Game to those who either like platformers or good stories. At the time of this review, only four chapters were available, though the game promises “more to come soon.” However, just based off these four available chapters, I can definitely recommend it and look forward to what may come in the future to this game. Knowing what I know now about the title, I would likely have paid full price for it.
Pretentious Game Review Score
4/5
