Grappling onto objects hundreds of feet away, catapulting through the air toward them, and swinging from one hold to the next yielded stomach-dropping encounters that were ultimately satisfying to complete.īut there’s a certain sense of clumsiness and a lack of precision inherent in first-person platforming that often makes for frustratingly difficult areas in the game.
From the very start, the game does a fantastic job of teaching basic mechanics and building on them throughout, following in classic platformer design by constantly increasing the difficulty of each new area to test a player’s newly-acquired skill.īecause so many of the land masses in this world are floating, there’s plenty of room for both gross error and pure exhilaration. Using an “adventure suit,” the young boy is able to jump exceptionally high and long, avoid taking damage from high falls, and fire a laser-like grappling hook from his palm. It’s within this world that the game begins to incorporate both its highest and lowest point: platforming. While searching the house for him, the young boy finds a unique adventure suit and is mistakenly transported into another world after a mishap in Fred’s attic. He sits her down and tells her about the time he went to visit his eccentric Uncle Fred as a boy, only to discover him missing. Instead of a grandfather reading a book to a sick grandson, however, A Story About My Uncle is a father’s attempt at a bedtime story for his tired daughter. Like The Princess Bride, exposition is delivered as an adult tells a story to a child. It’s a short, whimsical ride only hindered by the design flaws inherent in the first-person perspective. It takes place in a bold, ethereal world made up of floating cities populated by amphibious people, is traversed by catapulting one’s self across wide divides through the use of a laser grappling hook, and embraces magical realism in the same charming way as Big Fish. At its best moments, A Story About My Uncle evokes the same feelings as those of classic children’s literature.