LogFAQs > #979156697

Game #36 Complete! Life's 2 Short: Unhooked

Throw This Quote On The Back Of The Box: "I vaguely remember playing this, I think."

Final Thoughts: Bad news everyone! I played this one on a flight for a work trip, so you don't get a play-by-play like all the other games. Even worse news, this one is pretty unremarkable as far as indie adventure games go so I have only vague hazy memories of my time with it. I played it like a week ago now and I'm already missing chunks of some of the middle bits. The good news is it lasted the whole flight, which I never would've guessed after playing the first game.

On the positive side, this does feel like a whole game. Like, it's the length where I feel like you can sell this by itself and I'm not confused. It's not a long adventure game but there's at least a bit of meat on the bones here instead of a pile of just bones hiding a smaller pile of bones underneath it. In the first game, all the puzzles sort of solved themselves. There were like six things you could interact with in the game and item usage was automatic so if you didn't know what to do, it would take like eight seconds to try every single permutation in the game. I mentioned at the time, but it felt like something on Newgrounds someone made to make sure they could make an actual game. Sort of a test "do I understand how to make an adventure game" thing you throw together and it last for twenty minutes and its functional, so you're happy.

This one at least has puzzles. Things you need to figure out. More than six rooms. I know, imagine my surprise. You need to help out the four wives of Captain Toomanywives or whatever his name is, and each one of them has something specific you need to do, which requires several multistep puzzles to be completed along the way. I have no idea why this ghost is solving pirate relationship problems, but I guess after you solved the vampire's relationship problems last game you've started developing a reputation. Your goal becomes to help these poor women all free themselves from this toxic relationship, which is at least a better goal than forcing four women back into a toxic relationship with a two peg legged pirate.

But each one of these women have a thing you to do. One needs all the pirates to join their gym. One needs the beach cleaned up and the sea life to return. One...want's to open a cat cafe. They can't all be winners, okay? But then each pirate has some puzzle you need to solve to get them willing to show up, and sometimes getting the thing that helps the pirate has its own puzzle attached to it. Look, I know I'm just explaining "adventure games" to you guys, but the first game didn't have that! This is a game! An honest to goodness adventure game. WE DID IT EVERYONE.

...it also isn't a very good one.

The thing that comes to mind first when describing this is clunky. The interface is clunky, the puzzle design is clunky, the dialogue trees are clunky. Everything in clunky. There were multiple times where I wasn't even sure if I solved a puzzle or not. One of the characters here wants a beach cleaned and after picking up a couple of things their dialogue tree for the cleaning option was like "wow it looks great - great job!" But I wasn't done yet. I wasn't close to done. Another character shows up at one point to tell me I had gotten all the pirates to the gym, but the actual woman at the gym was still asking me to spread her fliers. So...which is it? AM I DONE OR NOT?

Here's my least favorite puzzle in the game: a pirate lost his boot and won't go to them gym until you find it for him. He tell me he lost it near the castle and lo and behold, there's a spot to fish right by the castle. Me, being well versed in hacky adventure game jokes, knew I could fish up a boot from this spot. I knew it immediately. And I tried to do it, no exaggeration, twenty times. And I kept getting fish that I would throw back. So I was like "well, maybe not?" But then I couldn't find the boot. So I came back a couple of other times. Still no boot. And then on my fourth attempt a couple of tries in, I got the boot. Doing the same thing I had done a hundred other times. There was no logic behind it, at least as far as I could tell. I didn't replace the bait with boot attracter spray or have to put super glue at the end or the rod or something. Was there some sort of story trigger? I have no clue but if there was it wasn't a logical one. And there wasn't even a reason for it because I had been able to fish for a while now and I knew instinctively that I was going to be getting a boot. Apparently I just had to try it a couple dozen times and finally the game was like "oh ok you've suffered enough" and gave it to me.

There's a lot of stuff like this here, where it has that big amateur energy to it. And the creator here is an amateur! So, fine. I get it. But it is as I said before clunky. The dialogue trees don't ever go away, so I would talk to someone and come back and still have like ten options I could talk to them about. And the dialogue in this game is very bland so I wouldn't always remember what they had to say. I kept repeating dialogues because I couldn't remember if I had the conversation or not and then the option wouldn't go away, so I was always like "...eh, maybe I forgot?" It is this sort of annoying system and something that was probably pretty easy to fix.

The biggest problem for me though is it just doesn't have the charm of the first game. There has to be at least like ten times the amount of writing here, but I still think the original game was probably better as a story. This all just felt generic and bland and I honestly was having a hard time caring about what was going on. Maybe I'm just being easier on the first game because it was so short that I wasn't really expecting these well developed character, but here there is more than enough time for them to breathe and yet I could not possibly care less about the cast of nobodies I'm forced to interact with.

So overall, it's a better game but not necessarily a "better" game. I remember that first game making me smile a couple of times and just didn't get that here. The game is longer and more substantial, but also clunky and charmless and just not really all that fun to play. We're heading in the right direction, at least, but just barely.

Should You Play It? Nah. Maybe if you're super into the indie adventure game scene, but I've played a lot of better ones than this and this is pretty forgettable overall

Final Score: 4. We get a couple of steps forward here and also a couple of steps back, and the final result is basically the same as the first game. I'd give the edge to this one ever so slightly because it feels like a full game even if it is much messier this time around.

Games Completed: 36/151

Game Rankings:
36) PLAYTIME Weird Alarm Clocks
35) HANA Spacetime Fantasy
34) Boogie Loops
33) Hidey Spot
32) Bub-O Collect
31) The Lushes Land
30) Nightingale
29) A Joke That's Worth 0.99 Cents
28) Recommendation Dog!!
27) Trickle Greenweed, Mermaid At Law
26) Whitewater Wipeout
25) The Botanist
24) Snak
23) DYG
22) Lost Your Marbles
21) Grand Tour Legends
20) Life's Too Short
19) Life's 2 Short: Unhooked
18) Demon Quest '85
17) The Fall of Elena Temple
16) Flipper Lifter
15) Questy Chess
14) Slitherlink PD
13) The Keyper
12) SKEW
11) Star Sled
10) Echoic Memory
9) Executive Golf DX
8) Omaze
7) Sasquatchers
6) Hyper Meteor
5) Castle Tintagel
4) Casual Birder
3) Zipper
2) Pick Pack Pup
1) Crankin's Time Travel Adventure