Hanging by Threads
Carlos Pamies
Confusing, exploration-focused, lets me be a tourist in a fantastic place.
What’s working for me
I’m immediately taken by the opening image of a city hanging by chains from two mountains.
Worldbuilding continues, and overall is good. I like this hanging city, I want to see more of it. I’m also pleased that on replay there’s more of the city to see - this is clearly a wide branching space. I feel like “tourism” is the strongest element of this game. I might return to this later and dig more.
The lantern trick is interesting. It’s probably good that it doesn’t last too long. I wonder how many people bounce off of the dark passage.
What’s not working for me.
Early in the game, I’m making a mostly uninformed choice about which object to take with me, given I don’t have any idea who my character is or why they’re traveling to Oban yet. This ends up being a theme: “Go left, go right” sort of decisions are common, and without any sense of a goal it’s difficult to feel the interactions mean anything.
The logo for The Fluffy Cloud is so modern! It doesn’t fit the image of the city that I’ve built so far, but maybe I got the wrong impression.
That was an abrupt end. Was I not supposed to click on the animated cloud? I played again and went another direction, and while the content was very different I still seemed to reach a very abrupt ending: I asked a man at a campfire a question, and then on the next page it’s like “You sit still. The end.” Is this a bug, or an unfinished game? If there’s a plot or puzzle I haven’t really found it in my first couple of attempts, so I don’t feel compelled to try again.
This work seems like it benefits from repeat plays, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to restart the game - it’s great that it saves my progress across reload, but now that I’ve hit an ending I can’t try again without opening devtools and clearing application storage.
Editing problems.
Right on the first page there’s a pluralization issue. “Once we all are out, the guide halt us right in front of the catwalk.” It recurs a few times.
Similarly there’s tense confusion on page 01.2 (“…I nearly trip on two occasions. On my next step, my cane get stuck in one of the intersections. I lost my balance for a second…”) and it’s difficult here to tell who’s speaking which line of dialogue.
On the third-ish page, the guide says “Pt 3:” aloud. I’m not sure how to pronounce this in my head.
No credited playtesters.
I like the setting and prose here, but I’m very confused! And there’s some friction to just exploring.