A Cure for Jessica

Now, I didn't hate the way the game was telling the story, as far as walking simulators go you can do a lot worse, and I have to take the low price into the consideration, but playing something so rushed is also not a good use of my time. I am not here to complain about the game, I just want you to see the issues with the experience from my perspective, and hopefully, you can take a few steps toward making something more* compelling. I actually didn't have many problems with the narrative, the voice acting was decent, I only wish you had more optional tasks to add extra context for the relationship, just more things to do in the station. For example, I like what you did with random tasks like going to bed and looking at pictures, just need more of that. One big problem I see in this genre is just having huge maps that don't have many points of interest, it only exists to collect a few items instead of creating some unique locations that would be relevant to the character. To be fair, the character often comments on her memories, but when you inspect the area, there is nothing there, and I get it's post-apocalyptic, but you should still create some unique assets to spike my curiosit…

[b] A Cure for Jessica by Bern Games (PC 2022) [/b] A rather shallow 20-minute walking simulator where your simply required to find 3 vaccine components and 7 flowers and then finish the game. The game was developed by a Portugal Indie developer named Bernardo Argencio Fernandes and this is the first of his 2 games ever produced so far. There is actually a famous Portugal movie developer with the same name, but I don’t think it is the same guy though, due to the paper-thin amount of creativity presented here. We play the role of Dr Olivia who is desperately trying to keep her infected daughter hidden from the current reigning government who are trying to eradicate the X – Lan virus through extensive bombing campaigns. In fact, it was one of these campaigns which caused Jessica to get infected in the first place, as her dog Max became frightened, ran away from the lab into the Utah wilderness and got himself infected. Similar to rabies, Max became increasingly aggressive and bit Jessica transmitting the virus into her blood stream. With no cure yet available, Dr Olivia was limited in options, she somehow decapitated her daughter and then kept her daughters head in a state of stas…

This is a good-looking but shallow walking sim. I'd rather give it a neutral review, but seeing as there already is a negative one (that I pretty much agree with) I'm going for a limited recommendation. TL;DR: Look at the price tag and decide if you're willing to spend this amount on an hour (or optionally longer) of walking around in the kind of landscape that the trailer and the screenshots show - because there isn't much more to it than that. The trailer actually reveals almost all there is to do in this game apart from walking around in search of two types of items, and I guess also most of the backstory. Starting up the game, I immediately got a bad first impression from the claim that it "can be completed in one sitting". As I suspected, this really means "If you can't complete this game in one sitting then too bad for you" - there's no save of any kind. This is also already a good indication that the solo dev doesn't know much about children or parenthood, which is unfortunate considering that's what he chose his game to be about. Not that it makes a lot of sense in other areas. Examples: With a narrator that obviously addresses the audience/player, she could have at …

I really wanted to like this game. I enjoyed the voice acting. I thought the atmosphere--both the art and music--was beautiful. I was beginning to piece together the story. I was feeling sorry for the main character. I wanted to help her succeed in saving Jessica. But good lord, the walking is the worst part. One minute you can climb the world's steepest cliff and the next you're getting caught on a cactus. I ended up clipping on the building and getting an awful buzzing noise for about 5-seconds before it realized there wasn't an invisible wall in my way. I found myself wandering without a lot of dialog as I was constantly backtracking or unsure of where to go next. Normally this wouldn't be an issue but I very quickly lost interest in the game because the story lines were few and far between thanks to my climbing misadventures. I feel like this game is supposed to be story driven but the clunky controls really got in the way for me. I wish I was a more patient person but I'm not. So unfortunately I cannot recommend this game nor will I be able to finish it. I hope the developer considers adding additional tasks and/or marking the safe paths so it's a little easi…

I loved the game. If I had any gripe, it'd be the short duration of the story, which isn't much of a detraction since the existing content is wonderful. Hopefully the creator does more work!

I very much enjoyed this short walk through a sad future, brimming with hope.