A week in the life of a sad gamedev - Let's play Behind Closed Doors: A Developer's Tale (Part 1)

Channel:

Vervexx

Subscribers:

2,470

Published on May 18, 2022 12:15:00 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be7M0BAsMkI

Game:

Behind Closed Doors (1988)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 55:01

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3

This is the first part of my let's play of the indie game Behind Closed Doors: A Developer's Tale following the adventures of a gamedev getting stuck a video game (I didn't get to record that part yet for the reasons mentioned below).

Here's the review I posted on Steam if you want to get a better idea of what I think about the experience so far.

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I want to start this review by saying : thanks to the dev for offering me the chance to review the game before launch, I had a lot of fun and I feel that after playing for about 2 hours, I can safely say this game has potential.

However, I can't really recommend it in it's current state for a few reasons that I'm sure can (and will be) patched up once the game is released. I'll start with the positive and finish by the small problems.

From what I've been able to play so far, the story is fairly interesting for an indie game even if it's quite slow in its progression.

In the first part, you play as this game dev guy that has to go to work (even if he doesn't want to) and discover his daily routine which mostly consist in waking up late, talking with his pregnant wife, eating breakfast, brushing his teeth, then going to work (mostly consisting in responding poorly to emails- I don't honestly get why he's so mean but hey, that's his personality I guess - & developing a fairly simple platformer).

That part was fine & mostly played as expected. The routine part wasn't too much of a hassle and I enjoyed discovering the daily life of our protagonist. I didn't really enjoy the platforming part due to the simplistic and quite rudimentary gameplay making it a bit hard to finish the levels but that wasn't a major problem. With a bit of patience, you always end up making it however, I don't totally think that part was necessary but I didn't hate it like some others reviewers have.

However, the real problem comes with the second part of the game where the gameplay totally changes and becomes a bit more arcade with run & gun elements. I don't want to give too much information about the plot but basically, you end up in that series of otherwordly arenas where you have to shoot/avoid slimes running after you and survive for some time. The concept is great but due to some bugs (mostly the lack of aim), you really have to get lucky & it becomes nearly impossible to win, even with some skills which is why I stopped playing.

In conclusion, this is an interesting and promising little indie title with a lot of good elements but it needs a bit more work before I'd really tell someone to go and try it.

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Here's the official Steam page in case you want to check it out : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1372940/Behind_Closed_Doors_A_Developers_Tale/

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