Reviews for The Cloud

[GregMustache]

Small suggestion: don't center your game about the tragedy of clinical depression if your main character's only dialogue is interchangeable with Linkin Park lyrics, and the gameplay involves deliberately avoiding happiness.

As depictions of depression go, this is... pretty gross, actually. It's presenting a depressed person, acknowledging that they're depressed, but then everything they say and do is based around these overwrought metaphors about clouds and darkness and monsters and other stuff you find in a moody teenager's poetry blog, and actually making an effort to reject positive thoughts and happiness just so they can stay depressed. Given how a lot of people treat mental illness as just being "a matter of staying positive", this presents a horrible image of people with clinical depression as just being sadsacks who are only miserable because they want to be.

Botched message aside, the game itself is not great. Finding the Tuesday door took forever, the BGM loop is shrill and annoying, and I never had to use the Dash function in the minigames because I could pretty much just stand to the far side of the screen and occasionally move, and the eye animation was so much more detailed than the rest of the game that it came off kinda uncanny-valley levels of creepy.

JackAstral responds:

I appreciate what you're saying, but this is just this one character. It's about a teenager who feels depressed and has comfort in feeling that way. He rejects help, and instead slides deeper into the feeling until he decides to end it all. He lets negative emotions control him, while rejecting anything positive. It's not suppose to represent every possible type or form of depression or anything- though I've done more vague projects that do. This is just one individual story and experience, obviously something like this is different for different people

And that linkin park dig was brutal, ha ha. I don't mean to come off as emo and whiny :b

[erik5403]

Ugh sorry Jack-senpai for that message. I was angry as shit for the game being such hard. I rate this 3 stars instead of 0 stars,to make up for that message. Sorry again,Jack-senpai. I will remain being a big fan of your universe 08 series,even if you block me. :D I will remain a fan of your series.

[Oczek]

Wow, if this game was a test with a reward at the end then i failed it.
This game is remarkable because it seems to do almost everything wrong
. First thing I found wrong is the font. It's ugly, it's unreadable, don't use it anymore. The music loop is short, but there is nothing wrong with it, just wished there was more of it. The graphics crossed the fine line between "simplistic" and "ugly". The gameplay is repetitive, unfun, and it does not give any reasons for player to continue, I guess it fits cosily with the 'message', which is in my opinion so bad it's even harmful, because you seem to try to portray depression not as a mental disease it is but as trying consciously to stay sad. I'm talking about the real, medical depression, not the 'I'm kinda sad must be depression' thing that's popular lately. Not to say about the completely done to death, emo feel the game tries to have.
In short, the game is terrible, but it gives a lot of points for people to see what NOT to do when trying to make an 'artsy' game with a 'message', so it's not completely wasted

JackAstral responds:

It's more trying to say that you should seek help before it's too late. This is just a character in a story- it's not suppose to represent everyone's individual experience with something like this

I get what you're saying though, thanks for trying it out anyway

[Topher53]

I WOULD have given this game 4 stars for repetition, but since it fits so well w/ the theme of the story, I applaud you for it. I especially enjoyed the colorless world w/ darkening level play as you go! Great work on an internal look at a serious issue. Saturday was a whole lot harder. Was that intentional?

Hint: If you're having trouble dodging, try picking one spot and sticking to it.

JackAstral responds:

Thanks! And yup! Each day in the week gets harder, until the main characters final one alive

[nosurrender]

This is kind of backward. I don't know if that is your message, but the game makes it seem like you think depressive people are counciously struggling to stay in a sad and depressive state. If you are depressed, its because you are deliberately and relentlessly dodging the goodies that fall on you daylong. Like what he want is to kill himself and you must actively avoid happy toughts all day so suicide finaly get to be the only remaining solution in his head.

"oh no! my skills at avoiding happiness weren't good enough. I failed at being depressive and suicidal. Game over"

JackAstral responds:

It's more trying to say that you should seek help before it's too late. This is just a character in a story- it's not suppose to represent everyone's individual experience with something like this