TL;DR
It was a surprising experience - in both positive and negative ways. Worth a shot if you like virtual photography and janky indie games.
This game is something I’ve been eyeing for a few years now but never really committed to actually playing it. I finally managed to snatch the game on sale a few days ago and decided to give it a go.
Umurangi Generation is a short indie title about photography in a “shitty future” as the devs put it. They really aren’t lying about that.
Gameplay is pretty fun though FAR from polished. There’s a lot of movement and physics jankiness, like getting stuck on or walking through geometry, launching in the air when climbing certain parts of levels etc.
Photo grading (one of the core features of the game) is pretty wonky, with colorful shots often being graded as not having enough color, dull photos being scored as colorful and game treating certain objects as if they were in the frame even if they are completely out of view. The last one is particularly important as the game lowers your score for taking pictures of specific items for example.
Oh yeah, you also can’t adjust mouse sensitivity properly for whatever reason. All that’s available are a few presets instead of full control with a slider like in any other game.
Story is shown, not told (there are no dialogs at all in fact) - first through background details (like newspaper clippings and whatnot) and then directly by what’s going on during the levels. I was going to write it off as “not that important to the game but still an interesting puzzle for those who want to hunt for the details” but after finishing the game I can safely say I was wrong. Heck, I was surprised how emotional the latter half (and especially the final level) felt to me.
It obviously won’t be the case for everyone but I ended up liking it way more than expected.
Visuals are rather simple and minimalistic but not in a bad way - they have a cohesive style that works well with game’s atmosphere. Soundtrack is also filled with some fun bops and the only negative I can say about it is the fact that some tracks feel way too energetic compared to what’s going on on screen.
Levels are small, simple and offer a decent variety. They could use some polish and, maybe, a bit more details in places but overall they aren’t bad.
Despite being far from perfect and even feeling like someone’s first game project, I can’t help but appreciate this title. It’s simple, engaging and has a pretty strong direction. It’s definitely worth a look (especially for the price I paid for it). It’s also short, sitting at around 2-3 hours, so you won’t have to worry about having to sink a lot of time for it.
Sorry for the stream of consciousness. I’m still fresh after finishing the game and haven’t fully organized my thoughts but I thought this could interest someone in the game (it’s on sale on Steam for another day or so).
Edit: Brainfart correction.
I mostly disregarded the gameplay (aka grading of pictures) and just considered it an exploration game: find the locations and also the environmental storytelling bits. And I highly enjoyed it for that.
I sadly was spoiled regarding the story, so I didn’t have that “wait, what exactly is happening here?” Moment. But nonetheless, the atmosphere really fits its name and considering how the real life is going, I sadly predict it’s going to be more and more relevant. But same as you, the last level hit me hard. I consider it good game design, that the game really trained you well, so I immediately understood what I needed to do to end the game. And it kinda felt natural, because it is the only thing left to do at that moment.
Fair enough. While it doesn’t really affect the game I decided to mention the grading system since it’s pretty much a part of the photography loop. As much as I would like to say otherwise, I still have a problem with not being able to completely disregard scoring systems in games. It’s especially weird since I don’t really care about them post the summary screen. I don’t go back to improve the score, brag about it or anything like that. I agree that the exploration approach is the best way to go about the game.
I was really surprised with how much the second part of the game made the whole thing work for me. Early on I thought it was fun and had some interesting lore but that was about it, something was still missing. Only after things really got going everything clicked into place and I started to fully appreciate everything before and after that point. I wasn’t spoiled but I did expect something like that to happen. What I didn’t expect was for the game to just go all in like it did.
That’s really the core of what I like about indie games - they can be janky, ugly and broken but when they work, they can make for some truly great experiences.
The soundtrack was made by youtuber ThorHighHeels, maybe some of you have heard the name before.
I did, though not in regards to music. You can imagine my surprise seeing that name during the credits.
Very nice! Thank you for reminding me of this game, I also wanted to give it a shot a few times before. Maybe I will now ;)
I highly recommend it, if you can overlook bad execution as a price for a great idea.
As said, the gameplay itself is not the best, but the environmental storytelling and atmosphere is great!
It’s an interesting experience, that’s for sure.
