It is so meticulously and lovingly crafted that it makes the traditional linear storytelling method seem drab and extraneous. This is storytelling distilled to its finest form; it is a game that does not waste your time. Moving forward, I will not look at storytelling the same way again.
You should play this because it's an inventive story with three or four things you've never done in a game before, and because it suggests a future where games don't insult our intelligence with dull plotting, dire exposition, and endless cut-scenes. [Dec 2012, p.75]
I like analyzing games from a technical/design standpoint: Thirty Flights of Loving is a masterpiece. It masterfully paces the story, using fast cuts and transitions, environmental clues, and efficient level design. While there is little for traditional "gameplay", I often hear the line that Thirty Flights of Loving tells "a better story in 13 minutes, than some games do in 13 hours". It's exactly this feat which the game should be judged on. It's exactly the fact that the developer had in mind to make the most enthralling game (no matter the length) he could, that the game should be judged on. And, that he had the courage, bravery, and balls to resist lengthening the game artificially, deserves huge credit.
In every other medium, be it film, or books, the standard is to be as concise as possible. A 90 minute film which can develop the same amount of story and emotion, is always preferred to a 120 minute film doing the same. They criticize books or films having meaningless redundancy for scenes which don't have any significance or plot building. Only in videogaming is there a standard which says the Art needs to last longer. Just think about that, and if it is a rational standard to have. Try giving this game a chance to see what it means to break that standard.
Thirty Flights of Loving is a game that, just like To the Moon and Kentucky Route Zero, proves how powerful the interactive medium of video games can be in telling a story. Played from a first-person view, there is virtually no traditional gameplay, aside from being able to interact with the environment and explore its nooks and crannies. The soundtrack and the sound design are great, as well as its graphical presentation. The blocky characters, the usage of color, and the varied environments all mesh together into a game that looks quite unlike any other.
But yes, there is nothing the player really does in the game, at least, not in the traditional sense. The real reason to play this game is for its story and, more specifically, the way the game presents its story. By employing the mechanics of film editing and cutting freely between events and scenes without any sort of input from the player, Thirty Flights of Loving spins the classic yarn of a heist gone horribly wrong in a wholly unique way. Its non-linearity and hectic pace is a refreshing change from the banality of most video game narratives, and the player truly has to work in order to understand everything that's happening. While the game can be completed in fifteen minutes or so, the scope and depth of the story told is one that far exceeds its actual runtime. Multiple playthroughs are not only necessary but also inevitable.
Thirty Flights of Loving is certainly not for everyone. Many players have expressed outrage or frustration at the fact that the "game" isn't really much of one at all. Brendon Chung, the creator of the game, has himself described it as "an interactive short story". Ultimately, it does not matter. Thirty Filghts of Loving is a very important game, because it makes a legitimate attempt to tap into the vast potential for video games as a narrative medium. If that sounds at all interesting to you, go play Thirty Flights of Loving. It's an experience that you won't soon forget.
Like the very best narratives, Thirty Flights Of Loving relies on economy more than excess, and it races you breathlessly to its conclusion rather than herding you through an awkward gauntlet of false choices and bottlenecks.
Thirty Flights of Loving is as refreshing as it is alienating. The series of short scenes take you on a bizarre roller coaster ride, on which you unfortunately have little influence.
Thirty Flights of Loving gets off to a fascinating start before completely throwing any and all expectations you might form during its first few minutes into the wood chipper.
I think the expectations of many people on this were a little askew; I knew what I was getting into, that it only had 15 minutes of playtime and was rather a short story via the medium of a video game. And thus I was not disappointed, it was an interesting story where dream and reality meshed up, a story was told but in an unconventional way, with strong pictures and without many words.
Agreed, this is not really a game. This is a short story. Or their equivalent in video games.
- Cazy
7,3/10
Эта игра наглядная демонстрация того, что получится, если у амбициозного человека возникнет идея самому сделать кинематографичную игру. Игра длится около 10 минут, но создаваться она могла пол года-год, и это ещё с опытом предыдущих проектов автора и это очень печально, одному человеку практически невозможно сделать что-то годное.
Сама игра представляет из себя просто приколюшную инди бродилку с повествованием через окружение и внезапными, особо ничем не обоснованными, поворотами. Я вот так думаю сейчас, можно было бы сделать из этого какую-нибудь полноценную очень динамичную игру без диалогов длиной хотя бы в 2 часа, где игроку надо было бы постоянно куда-то нестись и быстро находу принимать решения, руководствуясь только повествованием через окружение, вот это бы мог выйти шедевр, напрягающий мозги.
Но всё равно игра неплохая, тут уникальный способ повествования истории (дробление) и игра не тратит ваше время впустую) В конце концов, игра дарит кое-какие эмоции, а это самое важное.
p.s. Кстати, все жалуются, что она очень короткая, но после прохождения в меню ещё ставноится доступно перепрохождение с комментариями разработчика и предыдущая бесплатная игра этого разработчика Gravity Bone.
Thirty Flights of Loving continues the spirit of Gravity Bone in that it is a trippy experience that you won’t always know what is going on but want to know more and push on. Where it falls short was that unlike in Gravity Bone there wasn’t as much actual gameplay. In Gravity Bone I had to find items or people; plant devices; spike drinks; etc. In Thirty Flights of Loving it was a much more straight line of keep going straight and watch what happens. You were more a passenger than a participant. That being said the game still had a very good way of telling a story in a short time. It cut to different parts of time out of order and still manages to give enough info so you can piece together the narrative. There was also a great use of comedy and made me think of No One Lives Forever in this regard. The lighting was well done as was the clean and crisp objects. The people were poor but it was also a stylistic choice. The music was great and in the absence of dialogue helped tell the story as well. The end credits sequence was very original in that you are walking through a museum and the different art pieces are the various credits.
I played Thirty Flights of Loving on Linux using Wine. It never crashed on me and I didn’t notice any glitches. There were two options for texture filtering; four options for AF; nineteen other graphics options and a vsync option. Alt-Tab worked. You could manually save at any time and had nineteen save slots.
Game Engine: id Tech 2
Save System: Manual (any time)
Disk Space Used: 175.4 MB
Settings Used: All Highest; 16x AF; 1080P
GPU Usage: 5-25 %
VRAM Usage: 481-524 MB
CPU Usage: 5-9 %
RAM Usage: 1.8 GB
I still found Thirty Flights of Loving a good experience but I wished it had more to do. I finished the game in fourteen minutes and paid $6.56 CAD for it. I would say the value was fair and it was enjoyable albeit a little less than Gravity Bone.
My Score: 7.5/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 20.3.4 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 20.2.1 | Mate 1.24.1 | Kernel 5.11.2-1-MANJARO | Wine 6.3 | DXVK 1.7.3L-03f11ba
TFOL seems to be a very controversial game when it comes to reviews, as it's a very "iffy" game, if you can even call it a game. I would call TFOL an experimentation, a prototype; a look into how storytelling can be changed. Saying that, I understand what Blendo was going for, they were attempting something new and trying to tell a story in under 20 minutes, but honestly it just didn't work. Maybe if they did something different this technique could've worked but it's just not polished enough and it feels broken or incomplete. There's even a couple random scenes that have nothing to do with the story they're trying to tell, like why do I need to know how wings work? I learned that in highschool and I didn't care then either. I just feel it's irrelevant and was simply to add a couple minutes more to the game so people can't say that it's less than 20 minutes (took me 24 minutes to complete both games (Gravity Bone and TFOL)).
What I'm getting at here is if a developer wants to make a unique game, or an artsy game, throwing a couple stylized 3D models together in a few random consecutive scenes is not the way to do it. I love art indie games, I'm almost ashamed to say it since so many people hate them, but I like the art subgenre game that's been somewhat popular in the past few years (I loved Dear Esther). But TFOL doesn't do it right, and that's why I'm giving it such a low grade. I don't understand how the critics can rate it so high, call this what you will, but I think there's a small possibility that the critics were paid off, and some users jumped into the critic bandwagon (which happens pretty often around controversial games) and gave TFOL high scores to show that they weren't "too stupid to figure out the story." I understand the story, and I still think TFOL is a bad game. While playing it I could sense a fresh breath of air hiding under the badly put-together game, but until that refreshing feel surfaces, TFOL remains a complete mess. Hey, at least Blendo didn't make the character walk really slow to extend the length of the game.
In short, these could be some reasons this game is rated so high:
•Critics paid off, users jump in bandwagon
•People want to pretend they understand it, even if there's nothing to understand
•Purchasers can't face the fact they got ripped off, trick themselves into thinking it's good
•Developer needed some cash and had an incomplete prototype laying around
•Definitely not because the game is good
This is not a game and whatever this is supposed to be I must admit I didn't find it very artsy neither.
The story is confusing (what's with the wedding scene?) and the graphics are not so interesting.
I don't regret the money I spent for this (less than 2€ on Steam) but I surely regret those 20 minutes I spent running it.
SummaryExplore the world of Thirty Flights of Loving through a first-person short story. In this sequel to Gravity Bone, take a deep dive with high-flying schemers, lovelorn criminals, and more stray kittens than you can shake a stick at. Saddle up, gunslinger.