➤ Looking for Fred 🎮

A Story About My Uncle is a three-dimensional first-person platform born in 2012 as a university project distributed for free. Immediately capable of attracting attention, it has gradually evolved and is finally ready to land on Steam as a commercial product.

But the commercial title Gone North Games has very little, at least in relation to the hottest trends in the modern videogame, starting from the narrative formula that sees a father, the protagonist, tell his daughter about his search for his uncle, a mysterious inventor and adventurer. It all begins with the discovery of a sci-fi suit lying hanging in the closet of the late Uncle Fred. The peculiar dress seems made especially for the protagonist who, in the grip of curiosity, wears it and throws himself headlong into an adventurous journey. From here on A Story About My Uncle is all about jumping huge distances with the help of the suit's propulsive thrust which is enhanced, during the first stages of the game, by a magnetic grapple with three charges and a jetpack with a decidedly reduced autonomy. As you may have already guessed, the challenge of A Story About My Uncle is all about finding the right way between unlikely holds, orbiting rocks and bottomless precipices.

A Story About My Uncle turns the search for a lost uncle into an adventure full of mystery and magic

Dying is part of the game

The gameplay of A Story About My Uncle revolves around mechanics that we have already seen in different three-dimensional platformers but the difference, in this case, is linked to the huge spaces of the Gone North Games title that enhance the extraordinary movement skills of the protagonist. The great leaps, this is obvious, require a fair amount of precision and the way forward is not always evident thanks to an excellent design work that evolves from level to level. But it is precisely in the most complex situations that a sudden intuition or a miraculous evolution give us the greatest satisfaction and make it clear how well the formula of the title, supported by reactive controls and precise movements, works very well. Of course, it often happens that you find yourself hanging in the air with the grapple unloaded and no idea which direction to take. And in these cases, things often end with a dramatic flight into the void. But failure can prove useful to understand the distances that separate us from the next platform and sometimes a violent death allows us to see a visible foothold only once we have taken the leap. Dying, in essence, is part of the game and the numerous checkpoints avoid potential frustration by keeping the experience streamlined and enjoyable despite some steps being decidedly complex.

But it is also the desire to explore that keeps the desire to overcome the most complex puzzles high in a title that tickles our curiosity by continuously feeding its own narrative component. In his travels, Fred, the uncle we follow in the footsteps, has encountered mysterious creatures, discovered mysteries and even left some clues to help us find the right path. All elements that we find on our path and that, between clues and dialogues, represent a good slice of the experience. Part of the dialogue is optional and can be avoided simply by going straight but if the fairytale dimension intrigues you, the advice is to waste a few minutes trying to get in tune with the game world. In all this the indie nature of a product remains evident from which it is not possible to expect the finishing touches of a triple A title. . Furthermore, we must admit that the splendid initial setting, the uncle's house, is the most well-kept while the rest does not reach the same aesthetic quality. Yet, despite the often anonymous textures and the not exceptional polygonal size, the levels are characterized by vivid colors and suggestive lights that make everything pleasant to look at. When the depths of the earth open up to the starry sky, the emotion is strong and this means that those who have curated the artistic sector have done their job. In addition, the post processing is not bad, the excellent narrator supports the narration very well and there are small aesthetic ideas to further embellish the experience.

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

OS: Windows 7
CPU: Intel Core i5 4440
RAM: 16 GB
Video card: GeForce GTX 770

Minimum requirements

OS: Windows XP (SP3), Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7, Windows 8
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Athlon X2, or equal at 1.6GHz or better
RAM: 2 GB
Scheda video: DirectX 9.0c, Shader Model 3.0
Disk space: 2 GB

Recommended Requirements

OS: Windows 7, Windows 8
CPU: QuadCore 2.0 GHz+
RAM: 4 GB
Scheda video: DirectX 9.0c, Shader Model 3.0, 1 GB VRAM
Disk space: 2 GB available space

Comment

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8.0

Readers (12)

8.0

Your vote

A Story About My Uncle is a perfect blend of first-person platform mechanics, exploration and fairytale narrative. The dynamics of the gameplay are not new and do not reach the levels seen in the Portal level titles but find their own uniqueness in combination with huge spaces to be crossed at great speed. The only unknown is the longevity of the experience which strongly depends on both the haste and the skill of the player. But by looking for every secret and measuring yourself with the time trial, it becomes possible to easily exceed the average duration of a today's title.