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Review: GenerativeCity Freerun

At a Glance

ESRB Rating: NR - Not Rated
My Rating: Everyone
Genre: Walking Simulator
License: Commercial
Fun-O-Meter:
Release Year: 2016
Review Published On: July 9th, 2016
Played on: Thaddeus

Available on:

Windows
Linux
MacOS

Available from:

Itch.IO

Areas of Concern:
  • Swearing (in the readme file)


How to Save and Pause:

There isnt one. Of course, there isnt anything to save either, as theres no score or goal beyond finding the red cube.

Time needed per session:

Each round will only take a few minutes, so this game can easily fit into anybodys schedule.

Does this game pose issues for Christian players?

Maybe
This is more of a tech demo than a full fledged game.

Screenshots

[view screenshot]
Looking over the rooftops

[view screenshot]
Found it

[view screenshot]
Unwinnable by design



Game Overview

There really isnt much to this game, but it turns out to be a fun little diversion from the more serious games out there. At its heart, its just a tool to generate a generic city using a number of building designs. This isnt really all that interesting, so to spice things up the developer added a way to play a sort of single player hide and seek.

Every time the city is generated, a red cuboid object is dropped into the city. Your goal, if you want to call it that, is to walk, run or jump around the city in order to find this object. As soon as you come into contact with it, a new city will be generated and the cube will be hidden once again.

While its sometimes easy to spot the cubes bright red color against the plain white cityscape, there is another cue that will help guide you to it. When youre near the cube, youll hear what sounds like a choir singing. The closer you are, the louder it gets, and the stereo sound effects let you hear where the cube is in relation to the direction youre facing. Headphones can emphasize this difference, making the game easier.

Also, if youre rather just wander around the city, theres nothing to stop you. Finding the cube is pretty much the only bit of gaming here, but it can be fun seeing how far you can climb or just looking around at the buildings that have been created for you.

All in all, this is a neat timewaster; its not fancy, but it can still be fun. Also, since theres no time limit or dangers of any sort, this might be a good way to introduce someone to first person controls -- just wander about and search for the cubes until youre familiar with using WASD and the mouse.

Points of Interest

Explore a new city every try

Each time you start the game, catch the cube or request a restart, the entire map regenerates with new buildings. While theres only so many variations of buildings to see, you can be assured that every street you wander through is entirely unique to that iteration of the games world.

That said, sometimes the cube will spawn someplace where youre not going to be able to reach it. To start a new round immediately, all you need to do is press the N key and the game will start over.

Building spawning is a bit fickle

Buildings are often created so close together that they merge and form strange designs that no sane architect would think possible. This can keep things from getting too boring, but it comes at a small price. Sometimes when buildings overlap, the game cant really tell where the player is standing, and this causes the player to fall through what looks like a solid roof. Fortunately, youll end up standing on the roof that was underneath it, but clipping errors like this are usually not considered to be a good thing in games.

Not every map is solvable

One of the downsides of the simple map generation is that when the cube is dropped into the city, the game doesnt check that the player can actually reach it. This means there will be plenty of times where you cant win and have no choice but to start over by using the N key.

Concerns and Issues

Mostly harmless

Wandering around an empty city with nothing aside from you and your footsteps can be a bit creepy, but theres really nothing here to worry about. You cant get hurt by falling too far, and there isnt anything you can do to damage anything in the city. This games environment is incredibly sterile and harmless.

On the other hand, the games readme file contains a number of swear words.