Apartment Story Review (dazed and confused)
There are aspects of this game that I really liked - the attention to detail in the apartment furnishing, the lighting, and the music were all great.
Other than those things, this game really didn't hang together for me unfortunately. I like the idea of having Sims-style bars that you have to manage, but was disappointed with how little effect they had on the game. There are a couple of nice moments when narrative events impacted them but I found they didn't add much to the overall experience. In general the lack of reactivity present in the game makes me feel like there is a lot of wasted potential here.
I appreciate that adding bespoke reactions based on the current game state is costly, but I think Apartment Story just serves as good example that games are not suited to the type of storytelling seen in linear media. There were multiple occasions where the seams of the narrative scripting were visible, with the game waiting for me to do the exact interactions it wanted in order to progress, and I don't think it dealt with any deviation from that well. It feels like this would have worked much better as a short film or written story.
I'm quite tolerant of bugs and jank, especially in small indie titles, but I found there were enough of them to get in the way of my enjoyment. The lo-fi animations, while charming, did undermine the tone I feel the game was going for.
Pacing wasn't great and there were long stretches of time where I felt like I was just waiting around for stuff to happen. If the waiting was intentional, it didn't work for me. The level design in the final scene was also confusing and kind of killed any impact the narrative may have had at that moment.
Despite writing about the things I didn't like at length, I'm going to give a thumbs-up. I think it is really important that games keep trying to push the boundaries of what types of experiences they can give players and I think Apartment Story is an ambitious attempt at doing so. I'm looking forward to seeing more from the developers with the suggestion that the next thing they make is scoped a little bit more appropriately for their budget.