The nicest thing I can say about A Story About My Uncle is that I like the idea. Building a first person platformer around a grappling hook works for most of the game's extremely brief runtime. But to talk any longer on the game I turn into a nit-picky asshole.
A Story About My Uncle follows an unnamed protagonist who is, you've guessed it, looking for his uncle. The story is framed around a bedtime story the protagonist is telling his young daughter, who wants to hear something fantastic. He tells his daughter about the last time he saw his uncle, an inventor and adventurer who would sometimes leave for extended periods of time, but had been gone longer than usual, and had not sent him the usual postcard he expected when his uncle was away. The protagonist quickly finds a junk transporter (that is, literally - a teleporter for trash) his uncle was working on and is transported to a fantastical world of small floating islands, and odd frog people, and . . . general whimsy? A Story About My Uncle is anything but a story about his uncle. It's hardly a story at all. It's a mcguffin to get this kid in a fantastical world that looks like platformer levels. I'm actually confused as to why they tried at all with a plot here, since I found it far too twee to really enhance the game in any way. There isn't much of a conflict, virtually no resolution, and everything in between feels like they were meeting quotas for plot rather than having plot. There just isn't a purpose for it here, a damning thing given the title of their game.
It's obvious from the outset that these are new developers making their first game, and that what they really wanted was a significant sounding title to garner interest, and I can't really blame them. A Story About My Uncle is an enticing title, one that brings to mind familial relationships and coming of age without the potential intensity of it being about a mother or father. It's the uncle, usually depicted as weird, creepy, or the exciting counter to the father figure. While it is disappointing that the game doesn't follow up on any of these potentialities, nor does it fill in the gap that anticipation would bring, it is obviously not the focus.
The focus is the mechanics, the first person platformer mentioned before. The grappling hook is a neat mechanic, one that creates a sense of flow especially through the fourth level. I found myself experimenting with ways in which I could bypass parts of the level using my abilities, and this sort of platforming freedom is really fun. But that's the most you get out of this game, unfortunately. The level design is jagged, it feels. There are five levels, with the first one being a glorified tutorial, the second one a semi-explorable village with mild platforming here and there, the third level your first true level, the fourth level playing with multiple routes and a new mechanic, and the fifth level your final challenge. There's something dry and imbalanced about this sense of design and structure. It feels smooth up to the fourth level, but then feels like it rockets to an ending that asks quite a bit more of you than it has before. The final challenge has its moments, where you find yourself swinging quickly around difficult obstacles and the game holds your hand far less as to which is the correct route, but with it comes demanding control of physics and space, something you've only had to toy with here and there up to this point. The sudden ramp in challenge is a mild criticism, but the dissonance between the childlike story and the sudden shift towards a more experienced gameplay feels disingenuous, or at best confused. Who this game is designed for is a matter of debate, as the final level and the game's title would make me think an older audience, but the story within feels like anyone over the age of ten is going to roll their eyes.
The crux of the issue, and a bulk of my review, can be summed up in one sentence: A Story About My Uncle feels like it is a source engine mod from the late 00s pushed as a full release. It feels amateurish, in its design, in its writing, and in its inability to capitalize on its mechanics. It's fine. It presents an idea. It is absolutely lowest common denominator for "okay", and if that's the worst criticism I have for you, I guess you've done alright for your first game, but it's hard not to wish this had become something better, a game with something to say or with more refined mechanics that really let this concept fly. As it stands, it was a relatively fun mechanic wrapped in an unappealing package and a rough pace.
6.0
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