The Gone North team is based in Stockholm and the narrator of the game sounds like Sweden's answer to William Shatner, with all the unexpected syllable stresses that entails. There are other problems with the voice acting - some with delivery, some with sense. My fault for messing it up but having a variety of voice lines for that fail state would have made the experience far less grating. I kept messing it up and she delivers the same smug "Told you you couldn't do it" every time. For example, there's a segment which her character dares you to complete without using the hook. It didn't stop her from being incredibly annoying along the way, though. I liked Maddie as a character, and I enjoyed the conclusion to her story arc as she tags along with you. However, her skills aren't valued by her village and so she feels like an outsider, especially since her friend - your uncle - has disappeared. She's adventurous and skilled at building technology using the mysterious crystals which litter the world. The main companion is Maddie a kind of half-frog, half-child. The segments you'll find in the time trials are still there but now interspersed with exposition and interactions with other characters. When playing the main game you're not nearly so free to move around. Beautiful grapple beam playgrounds, although ones which would benefit from clearer signposting. Gone North Games aren't entirely oblivious to this either and, once you complete the game, the extras menu offers up something of that kind - timed levels stripped of any narrative. In this you start to see ASAMU as having the makings of a compulsive time trial game. At a later point in the story, zapping glowing crystals with your glove will offer extra grapple charges so you can whizz about for even longer without landing. Traversing the spaces is the best part of the game - when it works it's an absolute pleasure to be sailing from grapple spot to grapple spot.
The controls are intuitive - using the mouse buttons you charge the suit's jump ability and shoot out grapple beams, and hitting space activates the boots. Later on you'll also find some jet-propelling boots which you can use to boost across greater distances.
You trail your uncle through these environments using a fantastical suit that features a magical grappling hook and shock absorbers which stop you hurting yourself on landing. The actual game is a first-person platformer set in a world of floating rocks. The story begins as the child version of the narrator enters the garbage disposal dimension rift thingummy to go looking for him. A blackboard in his abandoned house reveals that he has built some kind of waste disposal system possibly powered by starlight. Said uncle is a brilliant scientist - a whimsical and even-tempered version of Uncle Quentin from the Famous Five books. A Story About My Uncle is actually a story about the narrator's uncle told as a bedtime story to a small child.
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