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Friday, January 11, 2013

The Kite (2012)

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This is a short point & click made in Ukraine. It certainly feels distinctive, especially due to its original art style and very rough translation. As such, the dialogue is exceedingly broken. You can guess that perhaps the original version would be more graceful, but still, this is a game that tries to impose its message, that of domestic violence and its consequences on children, in the rawest fashion possible. As such you play a mother who (for the most part) searches for her son (whose kite, from the title, is his favourite toy). While the art style is fresh and original and the score (all "Ludwig van") is quite adequate, the gameplay just didn't seem to click. While some of the puzzles were certainly interesting from a visual perspective, mechanically they just felt tremendously silly or even embarrassing in such a dark story. Perhaps the intention was to drive home the point of utter desperation but for all the sense of urgency the mother seems to exhude in the need to find her child they end up feeling extremely mechanical and contrived, to what should have been a more emotional response. On the other hand, the game is very short, taking between half an hour to an hour to finish depending on how well you do at puzzle-solving. Worth it for trying to tackle something different, but could certainly use more polish.

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It can be played here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-kite/d ... glish-v12e (Desura)

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