(Author’s note: this was originally written in my Tumblr! I am just importing some reviews and articles I made. Enjoy!)
Hello! I’ve been hearing so much good stuff regarding Horace, and I decided to play it! And now I have. Because of this I have: thoughts. See thoughts after the cut! I will be posting some SPOILERS, but I’ll try my best not to spoil anything too big, though I do get into the story a bit.
Oh also warning: the game has some flashing scenes and some graphic scenes so be advised
PREAMBLE
Ok so going in: Horace is a trip. What I’ve found is that it’s a mishmash of a lot of things thrown together in a semi-coherent way. What I can certainly say for it is that it has ambition. It took 7 years to make! It’s 14 GB worth of stuff! There’s so much story! It’s about Horace, who is a Robot, trying to be A Real Boy. I’ll just discuss this game piece by piece, then put up a summary in the end. This might be my format for future reviews. I need to write more of these tbh!! Anyway, let’s go:
GAMEPLAY
Ok so: how can I describe Horace? Starting out, it felt like a platformer, but as I went on, it felt like an insane mishmash of other games. Like a platformer with a bunch of minigames thrown in.Â
Let’s talk about the platformer part first. At the start, you’re at the learning part. Basically learning to be a Real Boy! After an Event, you then get gravity defying powers. The running, jumping, and walking on walls is the heart of the platforming, with more powers being given to you as you play on.
I just want to get this out of the way: the platforming felt janky and tedious as time went on. I try and get through a room and I get nicked by a stray buzzsaw or something! Maybe it’s just the nature of platformers, but it just felt annoying to have to go through again and again. Eventually you get free shields the more you die in a room (they pop up by where you start out) making it easier to get through the stages, but it’s still grating nonetheless.
As I went on through the game, there were also some minigames that I had to play. They were mandatory to get through more of the game. Most of them were references to other games, there was a racing game, some Pong, a Breakout thing, etc. There were some minigames that I had to clear that kind of threw me off, a more egregious one in my opinion being what i will dub the Trippy section, a game-within-a-game kind of thing where you have to clear a gauntlet of minigames, which are in themselves references to other games. All while this is happening, the screen from which you are playing in in-game… is constantly shaking, like a DVD logo screensaver? It was very annoying. There were whole chapters dedicated to just minigames, even.
All in all, it feels like Horace gamified a lot of things that didn’t need to be gamified. Maybe this was in service to all of the references, but I… didn’t get or appreciate all of them? I dunno, I might not be the target audience for it, but what I do know is that 1. the platforming ended up being too hard and tedious, and 2. there were too many minigames!!! There’s so much going on, it tries to be a platformer, a metroidvania, a first-person experience, an arcade, and it’s just So Much
GRAPHICS
Horace’s art is mostly pixel art. And quite frankly it’s pretty beautiful at times! There’s something to be said about the intense colors staring you down as you navigate this platformer. Really accentuates the intensity at times, and like… can be serene?
There were some unexpectedly graphic parts though, like… I saw a wholeass skeleton at one point. They don’t figure in heavily but there are some intense visuals, some trippy inclusions, glitchy stuff too. I’m not sure if I vibed well enough with these in the graphics sense and in the story sense, however. Made me somewhat uncomfortable, like the devs could have implemented their vision in a better way…
Overall though, the graphics were mostly fine.
MUSIC
The music… I don’t really have much to say about it, other than it was too tense at times? It does fit the vibe of the platformer, but I wouldn’t go back to the songs and listen to them on their own. Though there was a point that I was hearing the songs at idle moments, but I think it was mostly due to my own frustration lol, with repeating the levels so many times just to clear through them…
Another comment I have, not specifically about the story but about the narration, is that the robotic voice that narrates the game gets grating after a while. Imo this game would have benefitted so much from voice acting.
STORY
Ok so this is the main draw of the game. Every time I read a review of it, they were praising its amazing story. And now, having experienced it…. it honestly left much to be desired?
Don’t get me wrong, I understand it. I get the story beats. Robot child, being raised by benevolent family, suddenly father dies, then robot breaks down both mentally and literally due to the stress, he wakes up to a war ravaged world because robot apocalypse apparently, and now he’s on a journey to find his old friends. Along the way, hijinks ensue! And a lot of Traumatic Things! Like, that’s interesting to me on paper!
But the way the story is told just feels wrong! When you get to the main town you’re forced to play a couple of minigames to get money to travel further into the story. There are some scenes that were gamified when they didn’t have to be, a couple of music sessions turned into rhythm games (though short, but jarring), games-within-games (like the aforementioned Trippy section) that you are required to clear, two whole chapters that are just minigames… do you see my point here?
There’s too many minigames! While sometimes it was interesting how they were implemented, the sheer volume just got to me. It was definitely a decision by the devs to tell the story through these minigames as some form of immersion, but in my opinion they don’t work imo, and in fact they just annoy me and break my own immersion, mostly because some of the time they take a while to complete.
There were separate experiences, sudden dream sequences where you’re flying and have to go through hoops… but the series of dream sequences don’t seem to have any payoff, it’s just A Thing That Happens. There’s a couple sections where it’s suddenly surprise first person, and that’s jarring and it gets kind of eerie after due to story reasons. These decisions are interesting, but ultimately I don’t think they serve to tell the story that well.
And like… some events are rather too graphic when set against the cheery tone set in the beginning. I’d understand dark, but not surprise blood and gore dark! And I’m surprised to see flashing lights scenes. It made me a bit uncomfortable and concerned for people with epilepsy who play and don’t expect it.Â
Actually, like.. the whole tone of it. It starts whimsically, then shit gets serious, yet still whimsical, then it gets real serious, and then there’s some shit out of left field and I really DO mean left field like shit you won’t expect, and then a few Experiences that I’m still nauseated about (like dizzy nauseated not like morally nauseated), and then a bunch of twists? It just feels… so incoherent at times.Â
Overall, I was expecting a great story, and I am left feeling disappointed. It had the makings of a good story, but it fell short in its efforts to be so many things at once!
SUMMARY
If you have not noticed by now, I really do not vibe with this game. The graphics are okay, the music is okay but tense at times, the gameplay is tedious and a slog, and the story? The way it’s told is just so incoherent. There are too many minigames, too much gamified things that didn’t need to be gamified, and too many themes.
I feel like this game was made specifically to cater to a certain era of gamers who grew up with games that are hard to maneuver, with janky controls because of hardware limitations. It serves to tickle their nostalgia while trying to have a good story. If you’re that kind of person, maybe a person who enjoyed games in the 70s or something? And a person who maybe lived in Europe? Maybe you’d like this game. But that’s not me, maybe that’s just the reason, that I’m not the audience for this game, but at the same time I came in at the very least for a story, and I come out of this experience mourning the loss of my time.
If you enjoy platformers like I Wanna Be The Guy, then feel free to play this game. But otherwise? Don’t waste your time, there are other games that tell their stories better.