Renoir

Detective James Renoir has one last case to solve - his own murder. As a ghost, he needs to navigate through familiar locations in search for his faded memories to uncover the culprit and to be able to rest in peace. [i]Renoir[/i] is a puzzle platformer game with nice Noir visuals and horrible unresponsive controls. So the visuals are rather nicely done - but you can't go wrong with black&white. There are four locations to walk through - cemetery, police station, city hall, and monument. Although they are different they still feel the same so you actually stop paying any attention to your surroundings and only concentrate on the puzzles. The music, if there is any, is fine, fully in Noir setting. But most of the time there is only silence and the sounds of your footsteps, switches, etc. The voice acting would be good if you could actually hear it. The sound of Renoir's voice seems to be rather sympathetic but has a horrible echo (to make him sound like he speaks from the afterlife) that makes him hard to understand - without the subtitles, you would be pretty much left in the darkness. The story is… weird and doesn't make much sense honestly - my biggest problem is with the "love…

I am 32 years old. My ex-wife and I have a daughter together, and we adopted our son together. Both are now 4 years old. When we were going through our separation, I felt lost and unhappy. I was self-destructive. One day, I was so angry with everything spiraling out of control that I punched a concrete wall in a moment of overwhelming emotion. This resulted in breaking my fifth metacarpal in my right hand—the hand I worked with, played games with, and used to carry my children to bed—the hand I desperately needed to ensure I could continue providing. Upon learning the severity of the self-inflicted damage, I became almost suicidal. Keep in mind that just a few months before this, I was the happiest man, with no history of depression or anxiety. I had never experienced anger outbursts, nor was I the type to break down and cry, but I was in a tough situation that truly prevented me from seeing the light on the other side. With nothing better to do, I looked for a game I could play WITH ONE HAND while recovering. Somehow, I stumbled upon this game and read some of the comments. I decided it was worth a try... I must admit I didn't beat the game, nor did I play as much as some of y…

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controls kinda suck

Terrible controls, incredibly unintuitive. No useful way to remap them or use a controller. Sluggish and infuriating character movement. Repetitive puzzles that you can quickly solve in your head but then have to slowly record over and over to get the result. If I didn't get this as part of a bundle I would have refunded!

I bought Renoir on sale, especially because it was affordable and for the sake of its visual style. On my first try I did not enjoy the controls and uninstalled the game, only to return back to it three years later. Well, this has been a enjoyable experience for me. Theme music, voice acting, cutscenes, the story and puzzles were all quite decent. I played it with patience, a few levels each day, well you need patience because the characters you control walk, run and climb rather slowly and on certain levels you need to try many times. The criticisms towards the clunky controls is right. I configured the controller by myself on Steam and still, for instance, even grabbing a ladder or entering a door required precision. All in all, except poor controls Renoir has been real fun for me.