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| Your guess is as good as mine. |
I was
planning on giving the blog a rest for a little bit, but a new Jake Clover game
came out so I eagerly went and downloaded it here: http://gamejolt.com/games/adventure/tandoor/20755
I figured,
why not throw out a quick review of it? So here it is.
Rating: 3.5/10
Verdict: Jake Clover is an incredibly talented
guy and he’s one of my favourite indie developers but I can’t recommend Tandoor
because there just isn’t a lot here outside of some interesting design choices
and some possible deeper meanings.
As I
stated in the Verdict above, I am a big Jake Clover fan. He releases a bunch of
games, and pretty much all of them that I’ve played have been at least an 8 out
of 10. Nuign Specter is a Top 100 Game of All Time for me. Unfortunately, every
artist craps out a turd, so to speak. So it’s with that I move onto my review,
my first 2014 game and also my first disappointment.
If you
haven’t played any of his games, they tend to be weird, symbolic and weird. Did
I mention weird? I group him in with other developers who are creating their
own path, such as cactus and Jack King-Spooner. He has an art style that seems
sloppy but really isn’t, as it’s got its own twisted beauty that perfectly fits
the universes that he creates. Most of his games are a little light on game
play but a lot of these short indie games are. It’s his powerful vision that
drives everything forward and it’s almost always a joy to experience.
Tandoor
follows his own formula. You can expect to see some weird shaped creatures
(including the one you play as), and there is a simplistic but effective world
built here. Birds fly through the air, and there are these big blue things in
the distance looming over everything. The game is light on music but the lonely
wind blows and you realize that you are mostly alone.
You drive up to a desert, get out
of your car, go into a building and pick up a shotgun. From there you travel
into said desert, killing distorted enemies and what I can only assume are
humans. The idea of “stop, get a boomstick, go into the vast desert and become
a murderous psycho” is one that appeals to me. I’m not sure what that says
about me. Actually I do, I just can’t admit to it because I’ll get thrown in
jail.
The gameplay is apparently
endless, if you go by what Clover says himself. I’m not one to put an artist in
a box… in fact, seeing as how I’m going to eventually write, I try very hard to
look at author intent over everything. It’s why I may be more forgiving than
others in a lot of cases. However, with Tandoor, I feel the endless desert was
just a bad idea. I walked around for a bit and then when I read that it was
endless I just quit. I had no purpose. You can usually look forward to seeing
how Clover is going to finish everything off, but I feel the lack of climax hurts
the game. With that said, I can never begin to say I understand everything that
he is trying to do, and the infinite nature of the desert could very well be a
statement within itself. Even as I write this, I want to be more forgiving
because I sit here thinking of possible metaphors. However, despite that and the
fact that you can go first-person and shoot things, it doesn’t save Tandoor
from feeling a little more pointless than his other games.
I
originally gave this game a 2 out of 10, but I knocked it up a bit because
there are design choices I admire, and they’re simple. Like Nuign Specter, your
gun is loud and unnerving. I absolutely love how abrupt and earth shattering it
is, like you know, an instrument of destruction that can drastically alter a
life should be. Like I said above, I like the atmosphere that Tandoor creates.
Then the other reason I knocked it up to a 3.5 is because I’m a sucker for
challenging and odd symbolism, in which Tandoor may have.
In
the end though, I feel this is a misstep for a developer who I greatly admire. But hey, check it out since it's free, and maybe I'm an ignorant ass who "misses the point." Try it for yourself, and support talent.
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