I've never experienced such a frustrating time with a game interface in my twenty years of being a gamer(that's right I started playing when I was three). One button to rule them all, the actions of the game. THat's right the entire game interaction is done with the left mouse button. Then there's the terrible fixed camera angles and frustrating navigation. You try to get the character to move to the next scene but if you don't locate the exact location of where to place the cursor in the game world, you just see a big red X and you can't navigate.
I spent two hours playing this game, to really try and give it a chance. I was turned off from the start for the above mentioned reasons, and then, things just got worse. Going back to the box description, it speaks of a vast campus for your character to explore, and too be honest, I only probably explored about a fourth of it. Why is that you may be wondering. Well, because this is the most fucking linear game that I've ever played, but it does it in a wannabe 3d setting. I say wannabe because aside from the terrain and the characters, the world possess no true 3D objects nor can you really interact with any of the objects in the game world, well except with a few of the puzzle elements, with your left mouse button of course.
Anyways, back to the game play. SO.. your given a chance to initally explore a decent size section of this school campus, but all the doors to other sections are locked, ect... I spent about oh 30 minutes going from one side of the campus to the other and then back before I found the story element that I had to do in order to progress any part of the game. I mean any part. It still gets worse. There are puzzles situated all throughout the game world that Lydia, the main character must solve. But get this, if you haven't followed the way the designer expected you to play this game to a T, nothing will happen. You can solve the puzzles mind you, but when you do, it tells you "You don't have the prequisites to continue. What a mind screw. That is the biggest tease in gaming history and one of the most frustrating things I've ever experienced. There was a puzzle that took me 45 minutes to solve. It was obviously solved as it was litteraly a puzzle, arrange all the pieces to form a picture type of thing. Anyways, I go to pull the lever to signal completion and turn on the schools water pump, and ... nothing.
I have one thing to say to the guys at The Adventure Company .. namely the designers Bruno Parenteau and Ben Thomas and that is this. It is a sin against humanity to create a seemingly openended world, and then expect gamers to follow completely linear interaction with every single interactable thing in the game world. For breaking this rule and forcing me to waste $30 US dollars and 2 and a half hours of my life that I will never get back you guys get the title of Shitiest Designers of all time and Keepsake gets the stamp of Worst Game Ever.
Oh and of course I can't get my money back, because I got it from Walmart, I can't even exchange it for a different game because you can only exchange it for the same game.
If anyone wants to know how not to design a game I recommend buying Keepsake. Any one trying to teach game developement should use this game as the example of how to ruin a good idea.
