Mountain: Screensaver simulator “ZeeTee, what is this game?”
“ZeeTee, is this even a game? Why are you reviewing this?”
Well, uh, this is a mountain simulator, where you can look at your mountain and stuff. Let’s get onto the review though. Also keep in mind that it's been over 11 months since I last reviewed so I may be a little rusty :s.
Graphics are okay, but not really that great. 5/10
The mountain doesn’t look that great or realistic, and while I’m usually the person that doesn’t mind that, this is basically a mountain simulator game where there isn’t much interactive elements in it, so the enjoyment of the game when the graphics are meh is pretty limited. Which is disappointing, especially since the game does use a lot of computer resources for some reason…However, the atmosphere is decent, and does calm you down for the most part.
Neat little stuff about the graphics I noticed! Hey, the graphics does have some positives -Whenever you input a code to have snow or whatever fall, the mountain changes colors. It’s not much, but it’s a nice detail. The normally changing weather and time also changes the color of the mountain.
-Shaking the mountain has some nice effects. It usually cleared the mountain of clouds, and in some instances it has a pretty nice attention to detail. For example, if you shake the mountain during a meteor storm, the meteors are actually moves from their original path and goes in a more wavy path.
-Scrolling out reveals that the mountain is actually a planet in space :o. Also playing notes with the keyboard speeds up the rotation of the mountain (and time) and created a blue force field around the mountain which changes color at times. Pretty nice.
There isn’t much music, and the sound effects are simple. Helps set the mood though. 5/10 The music in this game… well, there isn’t much music. You can create your own by pressing keys on you keyboard (z-, and a-k), and the only thing closest to music in this game is when the season (I think) changes and the color of the leaves on the trees change. Everything else are just sound effects, which are nice, but simple (rain dripping, crickets, etc). The sounds of that does fade out when you scroll out, which is another example of nice attention to detail.
Most of the music is what you make. The music making capability isn’t that great though First of all, the layout of the notes on the keyboard is… eh. I mean, I’m no music expert, but it’s really weird. The bottom row of keys are lower notes, the higher row of keys are higher notes (if you unlock it), and the middle are middle notes. A and Z do not correspond to the same note, which doesn’t make much sense since with an asdfgh keyboard they’re the letters to the very left. Maybe the location of the keys make more sense with a different keyboard, but regardless there are other flaws with this music.
There isn’t many options for making music. There isn’t any percussion, guitar, etc. Now this would be fine if there were other interactive options, but this is the most interesting one and it’s not that great...
Addictive? What’s addictive about watching a mountain spin slowly? 3/10 First off, this isn’t really a game. There’s barely any interaction in it, and what little interaction there is in the game can be found elsewhere. The music part is nice, but you can get something better by just playing a piano or using an online piano. Honestly, you could probably get the most fun out of the game by watching a YT video showing off all the things you can do in the game. Or setting it as a screensaver, but people don’t buy games to be screensavers.
Other reasons why it is not addictive There is no story to keep you moving towards looking at your mountain. Yes, there’s objects that randomly crash into your mountain but the objects usually aren’t that interesting. There isn’t any event that occurs that is different than what you already know. You can create a doomsday scenario but defending against it isn’t that interesting. You just spam music keys to create a force field. And sometimes the object destroying your planet isn’t very interesting. The first time I triggered the sequence it was a white cube…
The only really interesting thing that happens is when you see your planet’s thoughts. They can be charming, but other games do it much better. In Animal Crossing, you can interact with the townspeople. There’s also other things you can do in that game that are also engaging, unlike this game.
What story? There isn’t any story. N/A Unless you count there just being a random mountain in space, there isn’t a story.
Barely anything to do and barely any interactive elements. 2/10 I already pretty much went over all that you can do in the other sections, but there really isn’t anything to do in this game. You might have saw me mention that there are things you can unlock, and that is true. But that is by typing out the musical keys to some well known songs. However, due to the position of the keys, typing them out by ear isn’t that fun. What will probably happen is that you will look up a guide to the key sequence. What you unlock in question isn’t very interesting, and looking at pictures of what happens will probably give you a good sense of what will happen when you type in the codes.
Not difficult at all. 1/10 The only way you can die is by triggering the annihilation sequence, and you can protect yourself by spamming keys. You don’t even have to spam keys that much, since just pressing one key at a decent pace is enough to create a force field around you. I know that there’s one story about how someone’s mountain died when he was a
sleep (maybe from a naturally triggered annihilation sequence), but if it’s an enjoyable game then you shouldn’t be able to just
sleep for hours to get somewhere, and I honestly wonder if it was sarcastic at all. There’s a lot of sarcastic reviews, stories, etc with this game.
Final thought: Not really a game, more of a screensaver. 2.1/10 You really shouldn’t buy this (yes, not even for 1 dollar which is how much this game costs on Steam)unless you are interested in the game because you want to see how much of a lack of interaction the game has. I will say that “playing” the game was an interesting experience, but also a timewaster where I had very limited amounts of fun. And for some of you (if any) that think that I am just hating on this game because it’s a simulator, let me just say that I do like simulator games. Most of the good ones have a decent amount of interaction, and actual challenge. If you neglect x then y (something bad) will happen. There’s also usually bonding or an incentive to treat x well. And while your mountain can die, there isn’t an incentive to keep it alive (except for the objects but you can input a code to get a ton of items anyways), and it’s really easy to keep it alive. Just don’t activate the annihilation sequence and you’re good. Anyways, those were my final thoughts on this game, and see you guys next review (also there’s no guide coming for this game. It doesn’t need one at all).
Graphics
5 Sound
5 Addictive
3 Depth
2 Difficulty
1