Reader reviews for The Uncertain: The Last Quiet Day

The graphics were nice enough… although… they lacked a bit of detail that I might expect from a 2016 game. It looks like it could be a decade old… they somehow reminded me of Portal. Not much lighting or shadow detail. They were beautiful and HD, but for some reason still left me unimpressed.

The controls were a bit clunky. Left-shift was for running, but that is never explained in the game and the walking speed is painfully slow. WASD is for navigation, but when you change rooms and change perspectives, the directions corresponding to the keys change… it’s a fixed 3D perspective. These controls are similar to those from Grim Fandango, just not a great implementation.

The puzzles… there are a few quick-time events… the most annoying to me was a circle you had to shoot red dots off of. This was a… code(?) to deactivate a machine. There was also a car chase, but it was relatively easy and forgiving. But none of the puzzles were particularly well-integrated into the world. They were almost all just artificial constructs to give the player a challenge or sense of involvement. One involves de-scrambling numbers to find a combination. Another involves recognizing musical notes.

Linearity… Some items can’t be clicked on or picked up until you need them. You can only converse with each individual once. You have up to four conversation choices, but if you pick one, you don’t get to hear the others so sometimes you miss bits of the story. Every area can’t be exited until you are done with that area and cannot be re-entered once it is exited. You never really have more than one choice of what to do or where to go.