After being distracted by work, I decided it is time to go through a bunch of the smaller titles I picked up last year. Planet Of The Eyes was one of those games.

It starts off slick. With gorgeous visuals. You are a robot and have crash landed onto a planet where you need to survive, and the only voice you hear is those from dropped audio logs. Then the game threw some timing bullshit at me and I quit in protest.

I'll cover the main issue I had in the final section. But the rest of the game is rather nicely done. Clean stylish visuals with a camera that zooms in and out on scenes to show off the planet's vistas.

Background and Foreground elements have a slight parallax to them, making it easy to distinguish what you can interact with. And the overall design of such interact able objects feels intuitive. Being able to quickly pick up the controls without looking with only a few seconds of experimentation and only a single tutorial text line telling you what you need to do.

Background music really blends well into the game, giving a good sense of mood. While there are few sound effects, they are decently used and inoffensive.

To play the game? For the most part, walk right. There are deliberate slow scenes where it is just you moving the character and occasionally doing a tiny little jump. While most of this is just to show off the scenery, or give you time to listen to the audio logs, it does help to make the planet feel large and empty.

Early on you are introduced to the first use of physics by having to avoid a large rolling boulder. It does feel like it is deliberately there to crush you on the first attempt, with a nearby spawn point, but this is the only place in the game where that happens.

After this you discover platforms effected by weight and push-pull mechanics.

The downside of the slow and gradual pace of the game is the lack of difficulty in any of these sections. It is nice to be able to progress in this genre without banging a head against a wall, as the solutions are obvious to any one who has played this genre before. Though I would of like to see some more challenging sections.

Except for that one part. In what I assume is the late game by responses given to me you have a single puzzle that caused me to stop playing the game. If I'm wrong and there is an item to assist in it, I'll still quitting as exploration turne dup nothing.

Here is a section with a ledge too high to jump on just outside of the screen to the right. Standing at this lit section will fill the area with water. Once it reaches the max height of water, I assume you are to quickly swim over to the other side, possibly using the pipes to swing faster, and grab the ledge.

I can get close to this. So close that even a half second extra time would of allowed me to progress. But no luck. None.

Devs, don't pull this type of shit on your players if the earlier part of the game has NOTHING like it. It is pure and total bullshit. And you know it. If your game is slow and forgiving, DO NOT include precision timing as a puzzle.

Oh, I tried. For ten minutes I tried to get past this section. I even went exploring around the cavern to see if there was a heavy object I needed instead. I found nothing I could move into place except my robot. In the end it caused me to rage quit out of the game. I don't see myself returning to it ever again.

It is nicely made and presented. I love the style the game is using, and the controls do feel responsive.

But that one section I mentioned? I can't forgive that. This type of thing easily ruins games, and I've never seen any decent justification to it.

So, my final thought is a soft pass.

Game Acquisition: Humble Monthly (August 2016).
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 29 January 2017
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10
Processor: 2 GHz
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: Videocard bought after 2009
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage: 500 MB available space