Ratings and Reviews by Max Fog

For this next review, I began playing Teatime With A Vampire (which, along with Romance the Backrooms, could do with some reviews) - before realising it’s a lot more NSFW than I expected, so I pulled back, and I went for this game, which although I'm sure TWaV is good, I prefer this game for the above reasons.

Look Around the Corner is a much smaller, easier and simpler game than a lot of the ones I have played or like to play. There was not much to do, giving it the feel of a limited parser game. It wasn’t - you still got all the verbs (or the ones that I tried). It starts simple - waking up, light shining round the corner off to the north, and let to explore. Exploring involves simply going north and then east, over and over again as you get all the responses - of which there weren’t as many as I would have liked. However, there is a way to win. After realising that I should probably be listening to the song instead of 11 5 18 12 1 14 14 by Yann Tiersen. I quite liked the song, but it was there that I got the answer to winning the game. It’s a short, one-move, and just a little unsatisfactory ending, but it does the job.

I would say that, for sure, the best bit was the false ending (looking round the corner). I would wish there were more of them, though. For a game of this limited size, it's pretty good. It doen't quite match the mark, however.

This game starts with you, tied to a tree, with two trolls going to steal the diamond you are carrying. From the start, it has some simple yet nice puzzle ideas, but it feels like they are underhinted or unclear why you would think of that - for example, GET ROCK WITH BLANKET. I will skim over that, though, because I have been guilty of doing so as well in my game.

The game is mostly polished, with a few guess-the-verb moments, but I like the idea. Although one bit that irritated me was when I made a ladder, and then tried to drop it next to the wall to climb over, and it wouldn’t let me, and it turned out that I had to drop the ladder on the hill and use it as a sled, which did not feel hinted at all!

Some other problems involved problems with movement. For instance:

➢ e
There is no route to the east, only east, west and up.

Mostly it was an okay game, although I admit I had trouble enjoying some parts. AlsO note that the Game Over text goes over the room name in the map, but never goes back to the room name, so you end up with a lot of rooms called “Game Over” on the map.

This was a strange thing to experience! It’s about a humble librarian’s assistant’s intern finding a strange and special book. Much of the game is in a weird cafeteria… at the bottom of the library? With alchemy and … fight scenes. Against an elevator bouncer called Jorge.

There are some fun bits, including alchemy, but there were bugs as well. After playing through multiple fight scenes with Jorge and fainting every time, I woke up to no text on the screen. Just a status bar and background image. And no way to get out.

Also, if you’re doing alchemy but are only holding one ingredient, once you’ve placed in that ingredient you are stuck in a forever loop you can’t escape.

I would play through any sequels that are made. It’s actually a fairly fun game, where background images actually are fairly good and sound effects (although weird) actually contribute (I don’t often play with sound, but of the ones I have played with, I think only DOL-OS is better for me).