Reviews - The Network

Seems to me just another game deliberately trying to be quirky by having weird, stylized art style and no instructions. Lack of graphics options is annoying, especially lack of resolution select; the background grid has tearing on it at least for me. Solved the first level, saw 2nd level was pretty much the same. Gave up.

Overall, looking away from the issues with this game, it was enjoyable to play. The music was actually pretty nice, which for me is a thumbs up because I generally don't like that type of music.

The gameplay was also okay. It's simple and easy to get into. The controls felt pretty smooth as well. Automatic saving after every level (while the levels only take a few minutes each) also meant that you can pick up and put down the game easily whenever you want to kill some time.

However, the game is not without its flaws. There are several things that could have been done better.

- As mentioned in another review, the text speed could have been faster or a way to skip text would've been nice, since text goes rather slow and you always have to wait for it before proceeding.

- There are also levels where you need to need to wander around the level and look at a number. The game however doesn't explain to you that you need to type in the number - for example in the first level of this type, you need to press "8". I noticed several comments saying that they couldn't get past this level cause they don't know what to do. These levels feel strange during play, but do make sense once you reach the end of the game.

- Also, when pressing escape to pause the game, the pause menu would only appear some of the time - most of the time the game simply froze until you pressed escape again to resume play.

- Some sort of animation/rotation to the player ship would've made its movement feel more realistic, rather than being a static image in the middle of the screen, with the rest of the game moving around it.

- More options, at least being able to set the resolution, would've also been good.

In all, these issues make the game feel like a high school student's class project. I rate this game a 6 - above average - because I did enjoy playing it, but I feel that the games flaws hurt the experience a bit. With some improvements and polish though, this game could have been great.

A bit disappointed. There was no way to choose what screen resolution I wanted to use – just a choice between 16:9 and 4:3. There is really bad ghosting when I play for some reason – two of everything, and it is very laggy. I’m able to play games like Crysis with at least 20 fps, so I know my computer isn’t the problem. The introduction was far too long, with text slowly appearing on the screen. I’ve only started the first level (because of the ghosting), but the importance of the nodes and hub have not been explained. The game cursor doesn’t match up to my Windows cursor. On the upside, the graphics look good and the soundtrack sounds promising.

Improvements:
An ‘options’ submenu is vital – most games let you change the screen resolution at least, and usually mouse settings, game specific options etc
Include a pause menu (for me, pausing just freezes the game)
Fix ghosting and cursor bugs
Double the speed of the text appearing in the intro (at least double)
Give users a reason for what they’re doing (i.e. what are we shooting?)

All in all, I think this game could be great with some more work.

After some minutes of frustration my eyes still see nothing but 8 and no way to complete the level. Thank you.

Très bonne idée, très bon concept, sublime mise en abyme. Malheureusement, c'est très répétitif ! :) Néanmoins l'idée et la réalisation sont réellement à applaudir.

Okay. My first thoughts were something along the lines of "What the ****. Not another one."

But for some strange reason, every time I load the game up I do indeed sit there and keep playing for way longer than I expect too. So it's good.