Blanc Review (bolonha)
Too short and not sweet enough.
The Style
Blanc advertises itself as "artistic", with graphics resembling drawings come to life in handcrafted fashion. As with any type of art, this is just a personal opinion - it doesn't really stand out and isn't captivating either; it's black and white with some shaders, come on.
The gameplay
Most of the game is a walking simulator, unfortunately, with a few sections where you have to work together to progress. Even in those sections, the game falls a bit flat since the fawn could basically do everything on its own. The main function of the fawn is to boost the cub up to ledges that it can already reach itself. Sometimes the cub has to chew a rope or pull some object in order to progress, which apparently the fawn is incapable of doing, but none of those parts are puzzles of any sort, it feels very much like a gameplay device to justify the co-op aspect.
The ducklings section is cute at first, but then you have to do the same thing again and again and it just turns annoying. Not particularly difficult, just a chore to do. The rest of the game is just running, jumping and (ocasionally) sliding.
The Story
Games like these are an easy tear-jerker for my gf, but even Blanc has too much of a blank (pun intended) plot. The main conflict is about these 2 animals that must find their way back to their families by following their tracks, and then nothing really happens in between. They mostly walk and platform their way there and meet some other animals in the way, which then walk with them as well. The game has no interactions or side stuff along the way, not even a simple "bark" button or anything of the sort. I wish I could say more, but there's really nothing more to it. What I can say is if I had a dollar for each time another animal character followed the main characters on top of a pipe and then part of the pipe happens to break when the other animal is walking on it, causing them to take a big fall looking like they died and then they luckily get back up again fine, i'd have 2 dollars. Which isn't much but it's just cheap to happen twice in such a short story.
In conclusion
Very bold price tag for such an undermining game. I knew from the reviews it would be short (beat in 90 minutes), but it was very unimpressive all around. I can at least say it ran well and I didn't encounter any bugs.