Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Dec 31, 2021

  I'm conflicted. It's worth a playthrough for how memorable it is. I enjoyed the art style, the world, and the game mechanics. But the negatives were really close to dominating my experience in such a short game. I actually appreciated that it didn't drag on too long like most games, but it didn't give a chance to showcase its own mechanics. Random tip before the negatives: Your blink commands are kept even after resetting. For example, if you use "setpos" for the aimbot and place it down again after resetting, it should still shoot at the same point. I didn't realize that until the last couple levels and it would have saved a lot of typing. The price is too high at $20 if you buy it full price. It's about 3-4 hours of content. The levels feel like they're a tutorial leading somewhere and then it just ends. The difficulty stays pretty consistent, and the final level didn't seem to require all your skills. I knew there were 10 levels from the achievements, but I was still hoping there'd be a surprise mission at the end. So many bugs. I felt like I was fighting these issues more than playing the game. <*> It froze and crashed 3 times. Maybe related to alt-tabbing. <*> "setpos" and "getpos" were giving slightly different results. Wasted 30 min trying to figure out why until it finally worked. <*> In planning mode it's easy to get stuck in walls/objects. Even after resetting the world it stops you moving along a certain axis permanently. Had to exit the simulation and jump back in to be able to move correctly. <*> In planning mode I'd trigger lasers because my body was apparently taller than the camera appeared.
• What

  Jan 14, 2023

  Good game.
• Ziggy_Barkdust

  Feb 20, 2023

  Actually amazing game. Its short, about 4 hours, but is very unique and creative. Every mission had new surprises and there were some good jokes. Buy it
• gamedeal user

  Jul 26, 2016

  Brendon Chung is the Quentin Tarantino of videogames. Brendon has impeccable taste and you can tell he devours all kinds of cinema, literature, and games looking for that special "something" in all of them. Whether it's the sound of breathing during a spacewalk from Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey", an interactable flushing toilet from "Duke Nukem", or just the term "cowboy" from William Gibson's "Neuromancer." This game takes these special "somethings" and combines them with Brendon's own world-building and story-telling to create something that is unique, refreshing, and exciting.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 26, 2016

  A fun hacking/stealth game, a little Deus Ex, a little Hacker Uplink, a little Monaco. Extremely stylish, with a great sense of accomplishment when you unlock a level's twist. You play a hacker/theif, given missions, each of which will have one more more objectives, you load these up in VR deck and practice running them in the shortest time possible. The missions themselves will have various puzzles to solve, many of which involve basic puzzles which you solve by telneting from your laptop to objects in the environment. The commands are very simple, but its the way you chain them together and time them with what is happening in the environment that gives the game its challenge. I cannot speak for long term challenge or game length, as I only have about an hour played, but it is very engaging and immersive and I can't wait to keep playing.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 26, 2016

  Been waiting for this game for years. Its smart, charming, and can be somewhat challenging. When taken in the context of the type of game this is, it represents everything that indie game development should be. Edit: In keeping with full disclosure, the game does ultimately fall short of its full potential by not combining all the challenging elements as well as they could be. However, this does not take away from what the game is, and brilliance of what the game did right (which is most of it).
• gamedeal user

  Jul 28, 2016

  This game had the potential to be great, but never realizes that potential. I kept wondering when I would leave the tutorial and get to the actual game - and 4 hours later it was over. Quadrilateral Cowboy's biggest problem is that it refuses to combine its different puzzle types into a sum greater than its parts, choosing instead to keep them frustratingly discrete. Each map introduces a new puzzle type, usually along with a new item, which is then used as the main puzzle on that map. Then you'll move on to a new puzzle type - usually with enough hand-holding that you never really need to think about the solution. Solve a puzzle once and you've solved it forever: the puzzles don't evolve, they don't get any more difficult, they never get revisited with a different toolset. My greatest difficulty in the game was in fact figuring out where I was supposed to go next and not how to solve each puzzle. (That and the bugs, which forced me to quit and restart the game again and again as game objects glitched out and became impossible to interact with.) The really frustrating thing about this is that, as I said at the beginning, it had the potential to be [i]great[/i]. Each individual puzzle element is clever, creative, and hints at the ingenious puzzles it could be used for - but never is. Stylistically speaking, it is also one of the most confused games I have ever seen: "Let's do an early '80s setting! No, let's do a William Gibson-style cyberpunk setting! No, let's do steampunk!". It has the feel of someone in the 30th century being asked to portray hacker life in the late 20th century without any research - and not in a charming way. The same goes for the graphics, which mix extreme minimalism with fancier effects in a way that feels less like a deliberate design choice than a way to save money on artists. A 4-hour game for 20 bucks is always hard to recommend. For a disappointing 4 hours, it's impossible. For now, save your money.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 29, 2016

  [b][i]Quadrilateral Cowboy[/i] is a story about having those youthful, exciting, and often dangerous experiences with a really tight-knit group of friends as you journey through life together, and then growing old to reflect fondly on those memories.[/b] It is all very beautiful to experience. [b]Half the game is a story that unfolds, and the other half is puzzle solving.[/b] The tale is quite moving, and the puzzles are very reasonably difficult, and quite rewarding. If you know Chung’s work, you know what to expect as far as the ‘experience’ or flavor. Otherwise, here is a test to gauge if you will like this game. If two of the three apply to you, then I highly recommend you buy it: 1. You have enjoyed other Blendo games, specifically [i]Thirty Flights of Loving[/i]. 2. You enjoy ‘hacking’ or logic puzzle games such as [i]Duskers[/i] or to a lesser extent [i]TIS-100[/i]. 3. You are a fan of Wes Anderson films, or follow any director (for that matter) that has a very potent flavor or style. I didn’t mention the price tag, because it still remains to be seen how the Workshop and future updates will change the play content. Two days after release Chung added update 001 which added some cool things. Also to note, the cryptic three digits there. Will there be hundreds of small updates over time? Not sure. [b]Mileage will vary, but if you enjoy the game, there is quite a bit to explore.[/b] It won’t be difficult to get at least 10 hours out of what is here now. Right now, you can experience the storyline (~5 hours), replay with commentary (~2 hours), and then race the high scores or mess with mods (I’m not sure what kind of hours this will add – likely depends on you). [i]Essentially, you have a variety of technologies to accomplish ‘hacking’ based tasks.[/i] The whole thing is played out in 1st person mode, where you solve puzzles by using computer code. The learning curve is nowhere near as steep as others in this genre. In fact, most found the puzzle difficulty underwhelming. I did too, but honestly, it was almost refreshing to be able to finish it without banging my head off the walls for days. While a common complaint is that [i]Quadrilateral Cowboy[/i] is too short, I actually may *slightly* have the opposite feeling. Debatably, what made [i]Thirty Flights of Loving[/i] so magical is how quick of an experience it was. It packed sooo much in, in so little time. Now, [i]Quadrilateral Cowboy[/i] doesn’t wear out its welcome, but I totally understand why the base game length is what it is. [b]Pros:[/b] +Beautiful Blendo style that throws you into magically wonderful storytelling like no other game can +Awesome mix of first person and ‘hacking’ or logic puzzles +The details are often in the simplicity of Chung’s storytelling; the feelings can have so much impact with such minimal graphics/sound/tech +Unlike other games in this genre, this title can totally be finished by nearly anyone (instead of just those who have ample experience with logic code) +Updates are still being added [b]Cons:[/b] -There are still a few bugs that are being ironed out -Some will see the price-to-hour ratio to be a negative; I still say ‘lets wait and see’, but overall I’m more than happy (I would have spent more, but I’m a huge Blendo fan) -The first half of the story and the end was definitely stronger than the later portion of the game; [spoiler]the portion where you enter ‘team play’ and the bits in outer space were odd and I’m still not sure how it all gels together story-wise[/spoiler] -Some of the magic that made [i]Thirty Flights of Loving[/i] was in its brevity; [i]Quadrilateral Cowboy[/i] does not overstay its welcome, but makes me question how length of game plays a role with such potent storytelling This was my most anticipated title of 2016. Do I think it is game of the year? Too soon to tell. It certainly lived up to my hype, which says something. [b]If you are an avid indie game fan, this is a must-play. Nobody makes games like Blendo. Period.[/b]
• gamedeal user

  Aug 1, 2016

  Great game mechanics, great visual style, great everything really. Never played a game quite like it. I just wish there were more levels maybe with more than one or two solutions. Can't wait to see what people come up with in the Workshop.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 2, 2016

  This one is a doozy. How do you talk about a game you had a ton of fun playing, but felt completely underwhelmed by it? I guess the best way to start is with the stuff that it does well, and it indeed does it incredibly well. So whats the game about? You are part of a 3 man(woman) crew who takes jobs and contracts of the illegal sort. You are a thief so to speak. A highly efficient thief. Not the kind that hides in the shadows and kills stealthly or parkours around the rooftops, but the kind that hacks security defenses, opens tightly locked doors, and deactivates lasers. Yes, you are a hacker. But where the games excels in this department over other similar premises, like Watchdogs, is in the way that it makes you feel like a hacker. Your biggest asset in this game is the laptop you carry with you and the way the gameplay around it works. You see, you have to manually place the laptop on surfaces and type in the command lines yourself, for example, opening a door will require you to type in door2.open(x), x being the number of seconds it will be open. This might sound tedious and annoying, but I assure it goes a long way to make you feel like a pro doing heists in the fastest time possible. Typing a long line of commands, and seeing the world unfold the way you want it to and reaching your goal perfectly is a great feeling. You then will get new gadgets with each subsequent new heist, stuff like a remote bot you have to connect to a small crtv and type in the inputs you want it to do, or a turret that you have to pitch and move on your laptop. These are all fun gadgets that give promises and foretellings of how complicated the heists will turn out in the future, with the simple idea of having to manage them all at once being a sign of things to come. And this is where my biggest problem lies with this game. It never comes. Those hard puzzles where you have to take everything you learned so far to task and being able to manage every single gadget so you can get the objective and flee undetected do not exist in this game. Every heist gives you a new idea and mechanic, only for it to be abandoned in the next heist. There is even one point where the game gives you a heist where you need to control all 3 characters simultaniously to achieve the objective, which is great, only to abandon that idea the next heist, by giving every single ability to one character. The only heist where I can say your skills and understanding of the game are truly tested is the phenomenal last level, where you will constantly realize your mistakes and have to restart the level once again to do it just right, and it feels amazing. And then the game ends. My comprehension of how game development works isnt the best, and I understand that this is a one man project. But I expected more from this title, knowing how long it took to be made. There is a Mod section in the menu of the game, and while it makes perfect sense for it to exist, since this seems the kind of puzzle game that put in the hands of talented players could create amazing and incredibly complex levels, looking back at it now that I have finished the game, it just screams "Lazy" to me. You need to earn those talented players first, before you ask them to make levels for you. Its odd, because I absolutely love Portal, a game whose puzzles are very easy and the whole game feels like a tutorial, same as this one. Maybe its because Portal carries itself with its pacing and sense of world, and the amazing character of Glados. Which isnt to say that Quadrilateral Cowboy fails in this department. It has such style and aestethic, the kind I absolutely love, and it conveys so much about its characters with just a few short scenes and moments. But unfortunately, it wasnt enough for me. The price it asks is too much, buy this on sale. It feels like the game is struggling between being a narrative experience and a substancial videogame, and while the former is very good, the latter is definitely missing. If you value style over substance, then you might enjoy this very short and sweet experience, because the time I spent with it was very enjoyable. But if like me, you expect a slow increase in difficulty and the game demanding more of a player's skills as it goes along, you will not find it here. Its almost as if the dev of the game is simply giving you the tools to create a better game, and giving you a tutorial for things to come. If those things do come, I will gladly come back and enter this world once again. But if not, what we have for now feels unfinished. Im having Superhot flashbacks all over again. That was a game that also had a great premise, ended very fast, and had an absurd price tag. But at least Superhot had an Endless Mode where you could spend hours in if it was your kind of stuff. Sadly you wont find that kind of extra content here, unless you get into beating the levels again as fast as possible. Thing is, the levels are so easy, there really isnt much space to improve on your score...