It Comes In Waves

I picked this up on Steam rather than here, but wanted to come here and leave a comment about what a lovely little treat it is. I beat it on my first run, but it was a close one, I ended up crossing the gate with no water in reserve and something like 30% of my health slowly ticking down. The whole thing was tense and fun and unique, and it didn't overstay its welcome. Really nice. Bravo.

Work of art, my man!

Hello just bough and launched the game but when i read the first sign in the wastelands i couldn't exit the text box, so i couldn't go further. Do you know if it's a bug or if i'm just dumb ? 

btw the atmosphere in the first town is great i hope i will be able to explore the rest of the game!

FYI I am using the Itch desktop app and this game does not seem to be designated to work with Windows.  It's an easy fix, you just need to check the box on your end.  

Overall, I recommend. It's mostly a vibe, and while the story and text are vague enough, they combine with the desolation of the desert's sights and sounds, and the game's dog-eat-dog systems, to impart a particularly painful mood. What that might actually all mean would be spoilerful, so consider this the end of the spoiler free part of the review.

[SPOILERS]

The game opens in a town, where you are shunned by the villagers; you are not forgiven for something you've done. Then the game rewinds to show how we got here.

What's neat about this is it's the player's behavior in the rest of the game that is the reason for your shunning by the village, and it's also implied, your own guilt. You're plopped into a desert with dwindling water supplies, and you see sand-people firing blasters at each other in the distance. With the survival-game systems constantly ticking away at your water supplies, you might try to steer clear of the hostile inhabitants-- what are they fighting over, anyway?

But you see, the beauty of this games' systems is you can't steer clear of the desert-people, because you will run out of water and you will die, and there will come a point where you will have to kill to take their supplies if you want to stay alive-- all so you can carry out your precious mission. So that's what the desert-people were fighting over, huh?

I can't stress how cool that is. To recap: something like The Last of Us forces you to kill a bunch of people because the story demands it; you simply do not have any other verbs. It Comes in Waves' systems persuade you to do something optionally unethical, out of fear and desperation. TLoU shows us, but It Comes in Waves has us do.  Anyway I actually really like TLoU, I'm not trying to pick on it, but hopefully you are picking up on what I'm trying to say. This game tells a story through systems and mechanics and player actions, and I think that's neat. The text and art only contextualize the ludic themes.

All that said, I won't spoil what the true purpose of your mission is in this game; that final bit of context will probably stick around in my head for a while. I think you should play it if only so you can decide for yourself whether the mission was in any way redeemable or simply selfish.

tl;dr it's a lot of walking, but the long hike is worth the short play time

5/5!

Beautiful atmospheric adventure through a desolate wasteland.  Worth the money for the art style alone.  Short, as expected, but it's an artistic title more about the experience than anything else.

It's a strong foundation for a third-person survival shooter with the balance of HP and water supply which both keeps you healthy in the desert and converts to HP when you're hurt.  The blasters feel nice and snappy to use and I appreciate that they have an overheat system rather than scavenging for ammo.

I liked roaming the town to talk to people even if they didn't have much to say as it added much character to the journey.  Overall a neat and trim little game that knows exactly what it needs to be with no bloat or unnecessary mechanics in sight!