Wake is an action platform game where player has to exit the ship. There are traps, puzzles, mystery and rewards dotted along its many routes to the oceans surface. Wake is the real good story of an engineer trapped on a sinking ship. This is the first game was I played from the developer (Boss Baddie) and I really like this game. And I think it's not just good! this is a great start in this genre. Thanks.

Wake pits the player alone on a sinking ship that got hit by a meteor shower. The goal is to find your way to the surface by climbing, swimming, and collecting keys and meteor fragments along the way. There's plenty of water and fire along with a few out of place security drones that shoot you on sight.

The graphics are blurry. The game menu is slow. The platforming is frustratingly painful, although the ship sway effects are kind of nice. It's not randomized so there's very little replayability. It works for one playthrough or two, but doesn't leave any lasting impressions although I did get a nice chuckle when I became a human flame.

Wake. What can I say about Wake. Well, I suppose I'll start with this. Wake is a game about getting off a ship that is filling up with water, and it's terrible. It's terrible in most aspects. For most people, Wake is a piece of crap that they will load up once, play for maybe a few minutes, and then quit. Yet, I like this game, and I find it funny that the majority of negative reviews here have drastically more play time than me. I don't see why so many people here would play a game for 3 or 5 hours if they hated it as much as it seems they do, but who am I to judge? I've beaten this game. Only once, but once is enough I feel. So, what do I think about Wake?

Well, first off, the visuals. By god, the visuals. You see those screenshots up there on the store page? You see how they look like someone was taking snapshots of the gameplay with a cheap camera? Yeah, that's what the game actually looks like in gameplay. I know it may be hard to understand exactly how they managed to make it look the way it does, but it does. I'm actually rather impressed to be honest. The game is so blurry and so dark, it's hard to imagine the creative process behind deciding to make it look like that, and it WAS a conscious decision. These developers have made games that don't have this effect, so it must have been a choice here.

Now, some may think that I think the visuals look incredibly bad from these comments, but in honesty, I don't! I actually feel this makes the game rather immersive. It's strange, but these visuals in motion, along with how the rest of the game feels, are actually rather neat in their own way. It's almost like a dream, a lucid dream I suppose. It really does add a sense of fear to the game, and a sense that, in a way, this isn't a game.

This feeling is helped drastically by the music. The music is the one thing in this game that I don't think anyone could describe as being broken. It works just fine, and actually adapts to the way you move through the environment. If you're in water, the music slows down, and as soon as you resurface, it speeds up rapidly again. It adds a great sense of tension, especially when you're lost and don't know where to go.

Being lost is a large factor in this game, and the game is randomized every time. You do have a map, but it's not much help, seeing as many rooms have different ways to exit them and climb higher, be it a locked door you need a key or an axe for, or maybe a ventilation shaft that needs the room to already be filled with water for you to get up it.

The controls in this game are... well, it feels a little like your controlling a car instead of a human being. There's a lot of sliding around, and you still move sort of slowly despite this. The ship you are on is also constantly shifting from left to right, which impacts how far you can jump in one direction or how fast you'll run. A bit of a confusing feature, but an interesting one at least. I sort of like it, it brings an element into the game that needs some form of attention you don't usually find elsewhere.

Wake is a charming game, but charming in the same way as a kind, nervous mother who wants to take care of you, but messes up everything she does and ends up feeling like a failure because of it, while you feel sorry for her and assure her that it's alright. That's Wake, and I love it.

I recommend this game under one stipulation. You buy it for a 1 hour experience and do not expect more than than that. Treat this game like "They Breathe". Not like an action platformer.

The sensation of being trapped at the bottom of a sinking ship. The utter seclusion and panic you feel as all is falling apart around you. These were real emotions that I felt during my first half hour playthrough of the game. Then I went in for a second time and wasn't nearly as impressed. The following is a list of problems that hurt the experience of this game.

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1: Rising water should cause players to feel a sense of panic. Unfortunately, the water is almost no threat to you as you are given plenty of lung capacity AND you can find plentiful air bubbles. In fact, there were a few occasions where I actually waited for water to rise so a platforming section would be easier. So the main enemy of the game is a flop.

2: I can't explain what's going on with this start screen menu. Sometimes it slows to a near hault and doesn't let you input anything, forcing you to reboot the game. (I did this three times in a row and the same thing happened). Sometimes if you let the animation in the background play for too long, the same thing will happen. I just don't get it...

3: The start menu music is very good and conveys a sense of foreboding, but the music that plays during the game I find very repetitive and unappealing.

4: The majority of the game seems to indicate that the devs were going for a serious experience. If this is true, then why are most of the radio transmissions trying to come off as humorous? Not to mention they keep coming up and stopping you in your tracks until you finish the message; Castlevania 2 style. This can be avoided by just not getting the radio, but with darkness covering the terrain most of the time, it's easy to pick it up by accident.

5: I actually like that there is no pause button in the game. It helps to convey the urgency of steadily sinking to the bottom of the ocean. I would like to believe that the devs made that choice on purpose, until I discovered that the radio transmissions pause the game when they come up. *headdesk*

6: This is more of a personal issue, but where does this game get off having so many trading cards to unlock? Not only does it take around 14 to craft a badge, but the 7 that the game gives you for purchasing it come at such a slow rate that you'd have to play the game for around 5 hours or more to get all of them. Sorry devs, but you are just way too big for your britches if you think people are going to play this game for that long.

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Like I said, buy this on sale one day or in a bundle and enjoy the experience for an hour or so. Maybe you can find enough enjoyment to play for longer, but I found myself putting the controller down after 3 playthroughs. I don't regret playing the game, but I do regret that it isn't better. This could have been something truly memorable.

I'm shocked. How bad a game can be? This bad. Graphics are absolutely horrible, blurry and laggy, even though on a high-end computer. Gameplay is awful and nothing you do makes any sense. I'm really horrified because it seemed nice on video. Stay away from this piece of garbage! Listen to what everyone's saying! Even the badges are ugly, geez...

Terrible. I had more fun writing this review than I did playing this game. Does that say enough?

Deserving of every negative review to date. Just an absolute terrible game. I'm trying to remap the keys because I don't like using my left to use the arrow keys to move around. It took me five minutes to figure out the "A" key was effectively "Enter" because you can't get to "config" without knowing so - I clicked every button until something took. I tried the original setup. Didn't like it. So I went back and tried to get to the keyboard remap a second time - it simply won't respond.

The graphics are poor - can't tell what is what.
And even when you do something right in the game, the response from the game is inconsistent.

A complete and utter waste of time.

I got it in a bundle effectively for free and if given the choice to get it for free and get the cards or recoupe the one hour I've played to date - I'd choose the one hour back to sit and stare at a wall and chew gum.

AWFUL !!!

What can I say to describe this game?
:slugpoo: comes to mind

Pro:
Steam Cards
Uninstalls easy
Good premis

Con:
Bad controls
Fuzzy graphics (on purpose)
Very slow initial load screen (on purpose)
Bad controls (It needs to mentioned twice)
Just not that fun
:slugpoo: of a game


Overall, if you get it free in a bundle try it out. If you like it seek professional help. If not, uninstall one you have the cards and play a better game.

Don't play this if you are prone to rage. I don't usually get mad at games, but for this game I made an exception.

It's a Semi-roguelike escape platformer, except the only thing that really changes is where some flames and blocks spawn.
It does have some interesting modes and options to chose from though (like the ship sinking in LAVA).

Now for the rage:

The menus load very slowly.
You can't skip some of the tutorial screens.
You CANT PAUSE EVER unless you get the radio which then RANDOMLY keeps popping up and pausing the game while you are trying to make tricky jumps.
You can't restart a failed run quickly (basically the fastest way is to Alt-F4 and restart the game).
When you change screens you can sometimes get stuck going back and forth in a loop.
While losing the power is a cool effect you cant see fire in the dark (WTF?).
The post processing effect lags the game a lot and makes it even harder to see what's going on.
The ship rocks side to side, which is fine, but there's also a weird jumping gravity mechanic that does weird things like make you no longer be able to air turn, or dead stop over fire/pits, so you have to be EXTREMELY careful all the time.
You literally jump higher if you run downhill first because of the way speed influences jump height.
I'm not sure if it was related to the gravity/jump thing but sometimes I would just completely lose control midair as the ship rocked.

Imagine playing Mario brothers and then the lights go out while jumping and you stop in midair and fall straight down into dark fire and then you have this game.

If the weird jumping/gravity/air turn thing was fixed, and the unresponsive turning, and the dark fire, this would actually be a much more enjoyable game.

Feels like crap, resolution, graphics, lag in menu, annoying music, poor options menu, bad controls, no pause, no access to options while playing, bugs and random crashes. The only good thing about this game is Steam Trading Cards, but this is not about the game it self really.

I bought the Lunar Pack only because it included this game and Lunnye Devitsy for 0,99€ and both games give Steam Trading Cards, so by selling them (13 in total) I get back practically all money.

This game is kinda weird. So you're on this sinking ship and have to escape it and you're racing against the clock because the water is rapidly rising. Wow that sounds exciting.
Except that the water isn't actually a threat, but rather your biggest help. the water extinguishes fires and turns of the ships defenses and allows you to reach platforms you wouldnt otherwise reach. So once you realize that you will see that there's almost no challenge in the game.

Wake me when the menu loads.

- Skinny from the Fat B*stard (curator link)

Irritating music that can not be switched off as there is absolutely no any volume controll for sounds and music. Game refused to work with my gamepad SVEN X-PAD (Press "jump" to start a game and no respond from any button pressed at gamepad). I bought a game and can't play in it. It's really amazing!

Wouldn't recommend it even for my enemies, the menu is laggy, the music is repetitive and annoying, and you will get frustrated really, really fast while playing, there's no "pause" button and no in-game menu, and there's just no excitement at all!

after playing this game for a while, I got curious about the public opinion on the game. I was honestly shocked when I saw the top five reviews were all negative, stating points like bad graphics, bad controls, problems with the blur, crazy difficulty, jumping mechanic issues, and even a problem with a controller. I must be honest, I didn't find this game at all like this.

Let me address the issue I have. For this, I'm going to go into my gameplay experience, which will of course contain certain spoilers as to how the game plays out - but let's be honest, if you've read the steam description of "Navigate through the ship however you want to find your way to the surface above, but avoid the ship's corrupted security system!" there's nothing to spoil. I played the game initially on the easy setting as I wanted to get used to the game mechanics before I committed myself to the harder difficulties. I must say that I found the rising water to make the game rather hectic, which of course is as the developers must have intended. You're escaping a sinking ship, you're not going to cuddle the nearest daffodil, you have to move, and it's going to be a bit crazy. On the way there were hazards such as blazing fire, exposed electrical wires, the security system of the ship had sent out turrets attached to the walls and ceilings of certain rooms, a challenging mix. If you're hit by any one of them too much, you black out, and wake up with the rushing water at your feet. Your objective is the 3 holes in the top of the boat, that being the two big funnels, and one near the centre of the deck.

This, I must be honest, is a fantastic scenario. It's executed well for a 2d game. My complaints? Not much. It took half an hour to clear on easy, after which I moved to Medium and found that some more hazards and such were made available to navigate around. Either that, or I was just lucky enough to not run into them on easy mode. After attempting hard, I must say, this is were it actually got difficult. Resources were scarce, puzzles were abundant and the rising water was quicker than in the other two difficulties. It was indeed a hectic experience. The difficulty is definitely within its bounds, contrary to what most other reviews seem to suggest. Furthermore I didn't have any trouble with the blur, but that's able to be turned off anyway in the settings under the label Post-Processing. My controller worked perfectly, it's a standard USB XBox 360 controller, nothing too extravagant, nothing insane or problematic. Is it an optimal gamepad for everything on steam? I think so - Borderlands 2 works fantastically with it for example.

Jumping mechanics were also complained about in other reviews. This will take some explaining. You're on a sinking boat, bobbing and rocking as it slowly descends into the ocean. As it rocks, your movement will act accordingly. Think for a moment. You're running up a hill and jump... Not much air time, right? You fall onto the higher ground quite quickly. Now run down the hill, and jump again. Your jump lasts a lot longer. You jump further, you land later. It's common sense. So there's a big gap between you and the door... but you just can't make the jump, the platform is slightly higher than yours because of the ship's current rotation... So you wait for the ship to rock to the other side so that platform is lower, and jump again. Congratulations, jump complete. It's physics. And it's well executed in my opinion.

One other complaint was with the graphics - do you not look at the screenshots on this page? This is what you're getting! This is a preview of what you'll be playing if you buy this game! Come on people, this is basic stuff, steam is doing you a favour here, at least look at what you're being offered! There MUST be something wrong here. I personally find these screenshots a good representation of how the game looks during play, so I completely regard this as a null and pointless complaint.

There is one final thing I saw in the complaints though. There is no pause function. I personally view this as a 50/50 thing. Yes, it would be nice to pause the game. However, I think that being able to pause, walk away and come back later goes against the developer's intention of a hectic game where you're meant to be frantically trying to reach the surface. Think about the scenario for a moment. You wake up on the bottom of a sinking ship, the water's rising, you have to escape, you open a locked door, find an axe, break through a wooden door, then it hits you! OH MAN, GOTTA FEED MY TAMAGOTCHI PET.

I'm going to put this simply. If you can't be committed to play this for half an hour straight, you likely won't beat this game, even on easy. It's not huge by any means, but it lasts longer than your typical game of tetris. If you're looking for a game you can beat in 5 minutes, this is not the game for you, and I highly doubt you'll find anything like that on steam. You're on a page for a game that will last about half an hour on the easiest setting for one playthrough, and if you're an achievement seeker, you got plenty more playtime ahead of you in total. This is not pong, or snake, or angry birds, it will take a while. Granted, I see the issue, sometimes something unforseen happens. A guy knocks at your door, the cat knocks over your neatly arranged collection of "The Chronicles of Narnia" books into the fish bowl, or the baby begins throwing his food around and crying because he doesn't understand the meaning of waste, and you gotta put down your controller, sort that out and come back. Yes, a pause function would indeed be handy to have, and maybe they should have a setting at least to enable / disable pausing. Although I halfheartedly want them to throw in a steam achievement labelled "I wanted to hug a daffodil" for using it.

Do I recommend this game?
DEFINITELY. If you're a regular gamer with some free time and enjoy this kind of thing, go for it.

What would I rate it?
8/10, it's a brilliant game, but not everyone has half an hour straight to play a game.

Presentation
Wake is the type of game that seems promising at first and keeps you entertained for a while, but fails to deliver once you got the idea behind its concept. That concept is as simple as it can get: you are on a ship that is slowly sinking and the only way to escape is by climbing all the way up to the top where the three exists are located, avoiding fire, debris and for some reason automated machine guns that will be shooting at you on your way up. Besides that, little is known about your character, what sunk the ship or why are you the only one inside it and even though the game doesn't give you any direction or indications, your purpose is pretty obvious, but on your way to the exit, you might encounter some difficulties. As you make your way up to the top the only thing you know is that you must head upwards and to help with that you have a map of the entire ship meant to display all the chambers, notifying you of the one you are currently in and giving you a sense of direction to where you should head next depending on where the hallways from one chamber to the next one are located; however inside the actual game that isn't executed as smoothly as it sounds, as most of the doors leading to those hallways are locked and the only way to unlock them is by using one of the keys you collected to unlock the terminal which will most likely be placed at the other end of the chamber, so until you memorize the layout of those chambers, which differs each time you restart the game, but not in a definitive way, you'll have to needlessly move from one end of the chamber to the other and repeat. There is no actual story to follow as the game takes an arcade style, focusing more on replayability, but for a game that centers around that the radio transmitter messages that will randomly pop up as you make your way up top are a futility as they only state obvious things such as the alarming amount of water around you and there is no way to disable them either, so you will have to skip those each time you replay the game.
Rating: 4

Gameplay
Your most useful tool, at least until you familiarize yourself with the ship is your map, as you will constantly use it to orientate yourself and find the easiest way up top, but at the same time it can become your worst nightmare as the doors or terminals aren't marked, so making your way to where the hallway of a chamber appears on the map will send you back to where you came from most of the times simply because there is a locked door between you and that hallway. Aside from that, your most useful items will be the axe which can be used to smash wooden doors, opening up new routes out of a chamber and the keys which are used to unlock terminals for electronic doors. There are three levels of difficulty, but that isn't where the challenge is supposed to be, as even the most inexperienced player can finish the game on hard as by default if you die, instead of having to restart the game the water level will simply rise all the way to your location, but even if it does get above your level your character can swim just fine, so as long as you have the patience to find a way out, you shouldn't have any problem escaping. The real challenge comes in the form of achievements, as they will put different conditions in which you have to escape, such as avoiding water entirely or escaping without collecting any keys. Those challenges might keep the hardcore achievement hunters around for a while longer, but even if they manage to do that, the game is still a half frustrating, half boring experience. No matter how many times you change the condition under which you have to escape, the way up there is always the same: avoiding machine guns and fire, struggling to jump from one block to another because the jump mechanic only works when it wants to and finally escaping through one of the three exits just to see the same ending. On top of that the game has a large number of technical issues, starting with the menu that takes way too much time to load, random crashes or the classic character stuck in the environment cases.
Rating: 4.5

Graphics
Just like Lunnye Devitsy, Boss Baddie's other game included in The Lunar Pack, Wake also launches at a fixed resolution and apart from choosing between fullscreen, small windowed mode or large windowed mode, there is no way to change that. Once again, playing in fullscreen becomes an issue on bigger displays. The effects range from horrible to even more horrible as they often disturb the eye more than they please and apart from telling you where the fire is or in which part a machine gun is shooting they really are useless to the overall design. The ship might not be the largest map and it doesn't need to be considering its purpose, but for a ship that has over 15 different chambers, it's shocking to see that the only thing helping you differentiate one from another is the wall colour in the background.
Rating: 3.5

Audio
Wake sounds just as bad as it looks, with effects for basic things such as jumping or pushing objects around sounding mediocre and in the heat of the running, feeling even absent. Machine guns shots sound just as bad, with obvious tonality issues and the water sound effects that are just not there. Even worse, this game features possibly one of the worst soundtracks in the gaming history, with the same annoying song playing in the background over and over again, and no way to turn it off, but I guess since the effects are just as useless you could just play the entire game on mute.
Rating: 1.5

Extras
Getting to one of the three exits shouldn't take longer than 5-10 minutes, but considering you have to familiarize yourself with the map first, your first playthrough will probably take around 30. Once you get that over with, it really depends on how many achievements you're aiming for, since that's your only motivation to replay the game on different scenarios, but even so earning each one of them shouldn't take longer than 4-5 hours.
Rating: 3

Verdict
Wake is an arcade game, even though it is not aware of that, trying to force obvious story bits on you, but it is a very bad arcade game, since it is boring more than challenging, and frustrating more than enjoyable, making it a bygone in your library of games once you got the idea and got bored of hunting for the remaining achievements.
Rating Overall: 3.3

Super fantastic game. The first time I played through it was one of the most intense and atmospheric experiences I've had with a game. Lots of replayability here too because of the non-linear structure of the ship. Turn down your lights and prepare to be immersed. I highly recommend it for the price.

I bought this game recently for 99p because it was cheap and it looked like an interesting game, however i have tried to give this game a chance but i really don't find it enjoyable at all. Maybe it's just not running well on my laptop but for some reason the controls sometimes don't respond well and your character can feel rather stiff to control.

A platformer with:

-- Wonky play control (wall-climbing is flat-out ridiculous, and swimming can be finicky)
-- An absolutely horrid front-end UI (just to pick three random flaws: 1) the main menu takes something like ten seconds to fade in and fade out, 2) the How To Play screen is another thirty useless seconds that shows up every single time you try a new game, 3) you literally cannot return to the main menu once you're in a game unless you quit all the way out and re-launch)
-- Bad play mechanics (the lights randomly flicker on and off without rhyme or reason, even when there's a giant fireball in the same room - I'm not exactly what you'd call a Light Scientist or anything, but I'm reasonably sure that it is actually impossible to have a giant fireball AND a pitch-black room at the same time)
-- Repetitive music (a sort of cool, crunchy industrial guitar riff that gets repeated over and over and over and over and over and over again, lasting little more than a minute or so each time, until eventually it's not really "sort of cool" anymore)
-- Absolutely horrid play mechanics (you cannot pause the game. Let me repeat: Pausing - a feature near-standard in single-player videogames since, I dunno, a bit after Pitfall - is not implemented. Let me repeat once more, this time using caps-lock, for super-emphasis: YOU CANNOT PAUSE THE GAME!!),
-- Simply godawful play mechanics (random radio "cutscenes" pop up at odd moments, explaining the stupid backstory nobody in their right minds gives a sh­it about - this also doubles as a "pause" function of sorts)

and of course, to top it all off,

-- Utterly putrid play mechanics (have I mentioned the wonky swimming controls? I really hope I haven't, because I'm sorta running low here and really don't feel like starting the game up again to find something else I don't like about it).

I ripped the other game in the "Lunar Pack" (Lunnye Devitsy) for being a pretentious, uninspired exercise in pointlessness, but compared to this game, Lunnye Devitsy is an absolute masterful fusion of gameplay and art.

Well I found it. My worst experience on Steam so far. Which is, like my other bad review for Ace Patrol, less about the gameplay and more about the state of the game.

The game is simply erratic. The first time I loaded up, I couldn't access the menu at all, because it wasn't there. The only button that worked was ESC, only if I held it down for several seconds. Loaded again, I got a menu but couldn't use it. Closed and plugged in my game pad. Now the game took minutes to get to the screen, and still barely worked. I was able to get to config, but couldn't get anything to work, pressed "B" and it took me back to the menu. And it was suddenly working. That time.

The game runs at low res with a lot of post-processing. There is an option to disable post-processing, and I recommend it. The game actually looks awful with it. All of the details in the graphics are obscured by it. But it does not actually fix the real problem. There is a massive blurring effect that not only effects the game's graphics, but all of the text and visuals as well. All in-game text, including the menus are blurred and much of it is illegible.

Should you actually manage to get into the game, you'll find that the controls are erratic and don't always do what they are supposed to do. For instance, there is a crucial climb ability, but it only works some of the time, even when done the same way each time. Or in the same climb.

And to make it all worse, running the game full screen actually runs at a low res with the Steam overlay. Any messages that popup will not appear off in the corner. No, they will take up the entire bottom half of the screen almost.

If there is a good game buried in here, I will have a hard time finding it. I hear there is manual tweak to remove the graphics effects, and I will look into that. In its current state, this game is unplayable.