The Italian studio Friv2Online is known for their retro beat'em up action Slaps And Beans, in which players beat everyone up on behalf of famous actors Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. With this project, everything is clear - it turned out to be original, hilarious and fun, while the studio's next game, the fabulous platformer The Darkest Tales, caused controversy and collected mixed ratings. I tell in the review why the friv game can be loved and hated.
I'll start with the good - The Darkest Tales captivates with its setting and plot. The voice-over tells a dark tale about a girl, Alicia, who plunged into an eternal sleep with nightmares. The Teddy Bear, forgotten in the toy chest, and the mysterious Sparkle, will have to save her – an unusual duet of a grumpy toy and a magical creature goes to the world of the girl’s dreams, where fabulous adventures “in reverse” await them.
Here it is worth stopping and mentioning another plus of The Darkest Tales - the Russian-language voice acting. This is the second indie friv game in recent times (the first was Unusual Findings) that received Russian votes, which will please any gamer. Let some complain that the English voice acting turned out to be fuller and more expressive, it's nice not to be distracted by reading the subtitles and fully enjoy what is happening on the screen.
Let's return to the adventures "in reverse" - this description most suits what is happening in the friv game. In your search for Alicia, you will come across darker versions of the heroes of popular fairy tales: in the girl's nightmares, Red Riding Hood hunts wolves and brutally cracks down on them, Sleeping Beauty suffers from insomnia and hates everyone, and The Little Mermaid looks like a sea witch, which was invented by Howard Lovecraft.
A separate chapter in this story is devoted to each unusual boss, and it develops in the corresponding location - in a bloody winter forest, on a giant beanstalk from the fairy tale "Jack the Giant Slayer", on a pirate pier... Each such level turned out to be darkly beautiful and atmospheric, you can see that the artists tried their best.
All this is going into a good story, which you follow with interest until the very credits. It can be called somewhat banal, but I don’t want to find fault too much for the reasons described above. I was pleased that the plot is accompanied by cut scenes, which you rarely see in an indie platformer.
Now let's move on to the part that turned out to be controversial - the gameplay. Almost everything that concerns him raises not only questions, but also irritation, which is why watching a gloomy fairy tale becomes less exciting.
The main flaw is the clumsy combat system. At the beginning, we are rewarded with the most dangerous weapon in the universe according to Alicia - halves of scissors, which makes the bear look like a Jedi, and the player is preparing to tune in to exciting battles.
But already in the first battle, all the charm is dispelled: you can only attack horizontally, which is why you will have to tinker with flying enemies and those located on a hill. The set of attacks is meager, there is a variety of weapons, but because of the combat system, they do not have any weight in the gameplay. Although the sounds of shredding scissors will definitely please.
Enemies also played a role in making you not want to fight. Ordinary opponents are boring and endowed with crooked animations, in the end they try not to outplay our bear, but simply to hurt him with unfairly huge hit boxes. One accidental touch spends a precious life, and if a crowd of enemies cornered, then this is certain death. The bosses turned out to be much more interesting, with their own style and behavior.
The unresponsive control turned out to be controversial, which is not very good for a platformer. The jump button and other actions do not always work, which is why you fall into traps, fall off cliffs and make other mistakes.
By the way, about the traps - they merge with the environment, and therefore it is difficult to notice them. Every now and then I ran into spikes that seemed to be part of the scenery, and more than once died because of this. In addition, the developers are clearly too smart with the size of the spikes, so it is not always possible to jump over them.
I consider the metroidvania mechanics superfluous - I absolutely don’t want to return to the places I have traveled, so as not to break away from the story. And with pumping, our bear becomes noticeably stronger, and he does not need additional abilities. By the way, about pumping - it turned out to be standard, according to skill branches. The hero can also take relics, as in Hollow Knight.
Not without bugs that create problems when passing through some places, distort sounds, make costumes invisible, and so on. This is fixable, but the release had to deal not only with dark versions of fairy tale characters, but also with technical malfunctions.
The Darkest Tales is a rather controversial platform friv game. On the one hand, we have a gloomy but charming fairy tale with familiar characters, a wonderful atmosphere and Russian voice acting, on the other hand, an infuriating gameplay.