The Portal Pirate (Demo) ★★★☆☆

Where can you buy?

• Available on Steam

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Explanation to Negative Feedback

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Game starts in French

I don’t know how to read French. I took Spanish when I was in school, and I don’t know how to read that language either. But the title screen comes up in French and I thought that was a little weird, and wasn’t sure if the game had been translated to English yet.

I chose the first option, which was luckily to play the game, and from there I could figure out where the preferences were, and that’s where I saw the English choice for the language.

If they don’t want to initially begin the game in English, I kind of wish they’d have a start-up screen asking us which language we’d prefer. Otherwise all the text looked like multiple chapter names (which they were not).

There’s also at least one section in the game that says something in French due to not being translated correctly, and you have to write something in the space.

And then in transitions and at the end of the game, there’s French.

AI involved

The Steam page states this:

Some assets of the game (including illustrations, music, and certain code elements) were created or assisted using artificial intelligence tools, then manually edited and integrated.
The story, writing, ideas, staging, and the majority of the code were designed and created by the developer.

Sarah is a cardboard figure

There’s something not right about Sarah, and it’s the fact that she’s got no expression on her face, staring straight into the void. I’ve seen cardboard cut-outs with more personality than what she’s showing in this game and it’s a little disconcerting.

I mean, not all the characters witnessed have expressive artwork to them, but there’s something about her standing stiffly, body angled straight at us that throws her off-kilter from anyone else.

She looks like she’s being mind-controlled.

This is, at least, what I gleaned from the prologue. She becomes a little more animated in her character design when chapter one hits.

Actually, her character image changes from prologue to chapter one, which is weird.

We don’t actually pick up trash

I thought this was going to be interactive fiction–a visual novel blended in with some kind of gameplay mechanics, and maybe that’ll be so after the full game release, but they didn’t implement it into the demo.

Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but we have a trash counter at the top of the screen and can see bits of trash in the background, implying we’ll be picking them up.

But we don’t.

After some conversations about how lame it is to pick up four pieces of trash and complaining about how we’d rather have the task of scrubbing graffiti off the wall (which, no thanks, that requires a lot more effort), the screen transitions and there’s no more trash and no more counter at the top of the screen.

I just don’t know why you’d have it there if you weren’t going to bother with doing anything with it.

There’s some extreme paranoia

I feel kind of bad for saying it, because I know people can have high anxiety, and I’ve had bouts of it too in my life, but not in the extreme range, and our character is in the extreme range, and it’s seriously frustrating for me to get through.

The writing for our character is great.

There’s absolutely nothin wrong with it, because her anxiety is kind of justified, but good lord child. It’s like she wants to set up a fallout shelter and she’s doomed and oh my gosh she can’t sleep because if she sleeps something will happen and she won’t be awake to make sure it doesn’t happen and if it doesn’t happen, oh golly gee, what’s she to do.

I wish someone would slap her.

And I have to be this character.

It’s a lot. I just want to make that clear, if you’re prone to anxiety, you might feed off of her a little bit.

Confusion between Sarah and Sofia

This might be a me thing, but I find it really difficult to remember who we are and who the other girl is, and I think it’s just because the character’s names are similar. I mean, the names have different colors to them, so we can differentiate, but I can never remember who we actually are.

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Explanation to Positive Feedback

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Art direction

I know this game uses some sort of AI for illustration purposes, but I like how they didn’t use the generic artwork that you typically find in AI-rendered games. Instead, it reminds me of the art style in Mirror Atelier, which is a kind of painted blotchiness to the background and a sketched style to the characters themselves.

As if someone hand-drawn the characters and then colored over the sketch.

The background has that old sort of feel to it, as if it’s been around a while and the color has kind of dated itself with a yellowed tint.

Jules seems more expressive than anyone else

And while it’s nice, I also find it really weird considering he definitely doesn’t look as human as everyone else. Our character doesn’t even acknowledge how odd he looks compared to the other students we came across, making him kind of a red flag.

Is he giving us a false sense of security by having a sort of shy, softer edge to him than the others? Do we not actually see him like how he’s portrayed on the screen? Is this normal?

I’m thrown off by him, honestly, but as a character, he’s kind of the first one with a bit of life to him, aside from Sami.

Choices matter

At least in the sense that you receive points from characters when you make a choice they like and lose points when a choice isn’t in favor with someone. What this all amounts to in the end, I don’t yet know.

At the end of each chapter, it seems each of your choices are portrayed and what they consisted of.

I like the choices at the end of chapters when it shows a percentage of what all other gamers had chosen as well, but this game I don’t think will do that. Instead, it’s either going to be more along the lines of The Council, which shows what parts you excelled and failed and missed, or it’s simply going to give you a recap as if to say, hey, you chose these choices, and this is what they did.

Reminders, more than anything else.