Horace (2019)

What a journey this was

Came across this game in a eshop sale youtube videos so I decided to check it out. Fully written and developed by just 2 guys.

One of the best Indie Games I have ever played, if not THE best A love letter to 80s/90s pop culture, full of references to movies, videogames, books & music of that era

Witty, humorous and heavily story telling driven, the first hour may put some people off as there's very little gameplay, but you won't regret giving it a chance past that A 2d Puzzle platformer at heart, and a fairly challenging one at that, the game doesnt stop surprising you in the 15-16h it takes you to complete it as it keeps adding gameplay elements such as Metroidvania, rythm game & shmups

Fun fact, Paul, one of the devs, is also a super nice guy, he runs the game's twitter page and we became good "friends" as of late.

Available on PC and Switch, do yourselves a favor and play this game if you can. You will not regret it.

Story 10/10 Gameplay 9/10 Fun Factor 10/10 Overall 9.5/10

EDIT - Death count: 1255

Intro

Horace is an 8-bit platforming game in which the twist is that the shoes you get after the intro let you walk on objects/walls and change gravity to fit your perspective. For instance, you can walk 'up' a chest and jump to what is now 'down' to get to the other end of the room. There are other games with similar mechanics, but it works decently here. They also want you to collect junk, which i don't see the point of, though i only played for an hour.

Review

Horace also has a really really really really long backstory that takes about 45 minutes. No, i'm not joking. Other than the excessive length it's alright, there were some decent jokes and references. But it takes 2-3 times as long as it should. And i did roll my eyes at some of the references (like 2001: A Space Oddyssey).

The gameplay is neat once you get the magic shoes, but unfortunately they added a timer (rising water) and i just don't care for that kind of thing. Still, if you like platformers you might enjoy this. Just note that you can enable allowing skipping of cutscenes in the options menu. Also if (or rather when) you rebind the keys, remember what you picked for shields because it unpauses cutscenes but the game will show the default keybinding instead.

Horace - First Impressions

Oh man I only meant to play an hour of this game to try it out but I got really wrapped up. A lot of the appeal here is the charm, the soul and heart of this game just oozes through the music, art, and writing. It's very comfy in that respect, probably not something you can play for extended sessions without getting bored (as the platforming is rather simple) but man what a delight. It's good, definitely worth picking up. At the very least I recommend watching the trailer and from there just imagine it's exactly as you expect would come after that trailer.