On the Peril of Parrots

On the Peril of Parrots is a Hamiltonian Path puzzle game; the goal, at least at the surface level, is to find a path through a tiled room that does not overlap. Recently, I had finished Blobun, another Hamiltonian Path game, and decided to come back to finish this one for comparison. And, long story short, the only-slightly-more-expensive game starring a lesbian rabbit-slime does everything so, so much better. Story-wise, this game is lacking. There's a narrative about programmers testing an AI after making it scrape the data of creative people off the internet that feels painfully relevant to modern-day political issues, but I can't be too upset because it's only told at intervals between sets of levels, usually consists of just three to six dialogue boxes of people talking, and doesn't really go into any depth farther than "corporations only care about what makes them money, and the right thing is to destroy something you don't understand before people in power try to abuse it for personal gain". It also feels like the game's title barely fits, as the only connection programming has to perilous parrots is that the AI in question is named P.O.L.L.I., as in "Polly want a cracker?…

I'm glad I got this as part of a humble bundle, because the back half of the game is a single puzzle that once solved means it's just dialogue (that repeats itself) to the end. This should've been maybe $2. And it could've used some more ideas to flesh it out. What's here is nice but...this ain't a $10 game.

On the Peril of Parrots is a puzzle game that can pleasantly surprise even those who first judge it by the screenshots: the visuals may be off-putting at first, but in reality, the game turns out to be engaging and fun. The player controls an AI named P.O.L.L.I, who is being experimented on and observed by scientists and an assistant. Between some puzzles, dialogues appear, adding a bit of story. The goal of the game is simple: turn all the white blocks on a level into one color and complete all puzzles while keeping a certain number of “cookies”. Cookies are used as a resource: they allow you to undo a move, reset a level, or even skip a level completely. No cookies = lose. As you progress, unique puzzle mechanics appear that slightly change the usual gameplay. The game has a good background soundtrack, and overall, it’s not a bad experience. Its low popularity is mostly due to the visual style shown in Steam screenshots, which doesn’t fully convey how fun the game actually is, so I think the developer should consider lowering the price to give it a better chance of being noticed. Follow Curator : [url=store.steampowered.com/curator/44793303-The-games-that-I%2527ve-played/] The…

I want to preface this review by saying that I DID enjoy this game! I think it was very clever, and the actual puzzles themselves are fun and range from very simple to quite difficult. However, I'm glad I picked this game as part of a Humble Bundle. I think I would have been a bit irritated to have paid full price given that once you figure out the conceit there's less than an hour of proper "game" before the endless arcade mode post-credits. Post-conceit the game is filled with repetitive dialogue and game play. I had really hoped that the devs would lean further into [spoiler]the AI gaming the programming rather than completing the task[/spoiler], but nothing really changed after the turning point. Again, it's a clever game that also includes a fun arcade mode at the end, but I would highly recommend waiting until it's on sale to purchase, given that its length doesn't quite justify the original $10 USD price tag.

I think the game has an interesting mechanic, you can choose to solve the puzzles or skip them entirely. In the end, winning the game is mainly about cheesing the scores. If you wanted to, you could complete the game in less than 10 minutes, even with solving most of the puzzles I barely got to an hour of gameplay (and that included playing the last chapter twice). I don't really think that the game is worth the pricepoint of 10 bucks. I got it on humble for way cheaper and still don't feel like i got my money's worth.

Honestly, can't really recommend this one. The sokoban tile painting game is fine. There are a few mechanics that build on that, but nothing you haven't seen before. The story itself is also rather lackluster, consisting of a rather unsubtle critique of AI scraping but lacking any real sort of integration with the gameplay. The thing that really bums me out is that this one feels like it had potential. Putting the rest in spoiler tags: [spoiler]The debug mechanic and the metapuzzle of using skips to manipulate your cookies is definitely interesting. However, I really expected there to be a third layer of gameplay after that. Otherwise you're just left with a serviceable sokoban puzzle generator.[/spoiler] Unless you can get this on a heavy discount, in a bundle, or want to support the devs, I'd give this a pass.