Acheter Aura: Fate of Ages (NA)

Si vous êtes en manque d'un Myst-like, que vous n'avez rien contre des personnages visuellement ratés, mais que vous adorez vous plonger dans des décors somptueux, résoudre des énigmes très complexes, et savourer une atmosphère unique, vous ne devez surtout pas passer à côté de ce jeu. Une merveille graphique (hormis les visages des rares personnages rencontrés), Aura réserve de longues heures à réfléchir, prendre des notes, et parcourir des mondes variés aux machineries surprenantes toujours plus complexes à comprendre et activer. Un jeu d'aventure plus destiné à un public d'habitués au genre qu'aux néophytes, de part sa difficulté générale, mais qui peut se finir malgré tout, avec beaucoup de patience et d'observation.

Jeu qui ne vous ruinera pas, mais qui est relativement complexe.
C'est un myst like avec des énigmes pures et dures certaines plus faciles que d'autres mais en général plutôt difficiles.
Autant dire que sans la solution sous la main en cas de blocage il y a de grandes chances d'abandonner (on ne comprend pas toujours les liens entre les différentes actions à faire)
Passe le temps, pas toujours très logique, et les décors peuvent "parfois laisser à désirer", on se perd un peu dedans.
Néanmoins j'ai aimé l'ambiance du jeu, et les casse-tête originaux.
Je ne connais pas très bien ce genre, j'étais restée sur des souvenirs de "the daedelus encounter" pour ceux qui connaissent.
Donc pour le prix et ceux qui aiment réfléchir sur des énigmes un brin techniques, je recommande.

Persdonnellement je n'ai pas compris ce jeu, de plus le déplacement fait mal aux yeux.

The best way I can describe this game is it seems to have been designed and written by someone who saw some screenshots of Myst, and then had someone give them a rough description of it and Adventure games in general. The puzzles are simplistic and don't seem to relate to the story progression, which is rudamentary, at best. While the Myst series has extensive backstory that's hinted at and expanded on throughout which gives you the sense that you're only seeing a brief snippet of a larger history (and the end of it, at that). Conversely this game briefly mentions a backstory and then doesn't expand on any of it. The voice acting is pretty terrible and NPC interaction felt very mechanical. Myst had the right idea in keeping NPC interactions to a bare minimum, the technology simply wasn't there to be able to do anything with it, but this game was released ELEVEN years after and, while Myst felt like it was a decade ahead of its time, Aura feels like it was released a decade too late.

I was only able to get through to just past the statue scene seen in the sample screenshots above before I got bored. So perhaps it gets better after that, but I doubt it. There is a sequel, and even a third one on its way, so clearly some people like it.

Love it Puzzles are semi hard but once u figure it out its like wow im a idiot how did i not get that the first time ^^

Bon aller j'me permet une tite évaluation en français.

Comme dit dans d'autres posts difficile de ne pas le comparer a Myst.
Etant donné que le perso explore des mondes parallèles et que le jeu s'appele quand même "fate of the ages", on se rend vite compte que le contexte n'est qu'une pâle copie de celui de Myst sans en frôler ne serait-ce qu'une seconde la profondeur.

Seul l'aspect fantasy cliché s'en démarque un tantinet.

Après, les graphismes et les animations (outre les personnages) sont somme toute assez beaux.
Et le jeu est entièrement traduit en français (voix comprises).
L'ambiance, malgré les sons complètement aléatoires et les musiques parfois hors contexte, n'est pas trop prise de tête et on se laisse porter par le jeu.

Malheureusement le scénario est quasi inexistant et la durée de vie horriblement courte (fini en moins de 6h).

Si vous aimer ce genre de jeu pour la qualité du scénario ou la difficulté des énigmes, celui-ci n'est pas pour vous.

Je suis donc obligé de lui mettre une note négative alors qu'au fond j'ai passer un bon moment en y jouant.

Je recommande ce jeu car ça reste un bon jeu d'égnime, certaine sont assez dur, d'autre sont très facile, mais les résoudre est divertissant.
Seul très gros point faible : l'histoire, le backround et l'immersion très faible. Même pas un livre ou une page pour t'expliquer l'existence de telle ou telle monde, les personnage ce contente de balancer 3 phrase comme les PNJ de mmorpg ("hé, tu pourrais me ramener 7 truc, je t'offre un bidule pour ta quête en échange").
Donc je pense que Aura est un bon jeu même si l'on ne prend pas tant de plaisir que ça à parcourir les mondes.

Et je suis d'accord avec certain, l'histoire d'Aura ressemble à un copié-coller en moins bon de myst.

It's hard not to compare this to entries in the Myst series, specifically Myst III: Exile and Myst IV: Revelation. This is mostly due to the fact that numerous elements were borrowed from each of those games and made just different enough not to seem as though Streko Graphics had done little more than create a Myst clone.

While this is a perfectly serviceable adventure game, it's not without flaws (some major, some minor depending on how particular the player is).

(A technical aside - some bugs do exist within the game and may likely go unpatched given the age of the title, including a crash to desktop when attempting to delete a save through the in-game menu)

The age of the title means that it hasn't held up well over the years, so all the modern visual comforts and relevant settings that accompany them are absent. No true widescreen support and no option to run windowed being two prime examples. The extent of the video settings go as far as color depth options and a few standard definition resolution choices.

Going hand in hand with that, most of the 3D modeling in the game is standard fare for the time this title was originally released. Some of the characters look absolutely ridiculous at times and move in a rather wooden manner. Something that certainly allows one to appreciate the advances in that technology at present.

As to the plot, what's there is a fraction of a whole. This isn't made clear here on the store page but this is the first part of a series which means the story ends on something of a cliffhanger.

What story that is present isn't all that compelling and lacks depth, especially when it comes to the characters it introduces.

Unfortunately most of the voice acting in the game is substandard, delivered in monotone with no real inflection toward emotion (perhaps best exemplified by the blacksmith character who does nothing but shout in his brief interaction sequence yet still manages not to sound angry while doing it).

Gameplay is typical of the adventure game type - click to navigate a pre-rendered landscape and interact with points of interest. A majority of the puzzles are simple and can be solved without use of a hint system or walkthrough. Only one puzzle in the entire game is randomized, frustratingly to the point where it becomes less a traditional puzzle and more a mini-game of chance as to how many tries it takes before the correct sequence is found.

Don't be fooled entirely by the simplicity though as there are a small number of puzzles that present a challenge in how they can be solved.

The music and sound design are a mixed blessing somewhat. Most of the game's soundtrack consists of pieces of music that have utterly random ambient noises and sound effects dropped within the middle of their loops. This leads to awkward moments at certain points in the game where something like a door knock can be misinterpreted as a cue that a door nearby needs opened.

Likewise there are questionable moments of music used that betray the atmosphere of the game at certain times. Several dramatic stings are completely out of place in the likes of a small mirrored chamber or a well lit, spacious room.

The pre-rendered environments in the game are quite possibly the best done aspect of it. Seeing flecked paint on aging wood or an expanse of snow covered land watched over by a cadre of planets is nothing short of wonderful.

Taking Aura: Fate of the Ages for what it is, would I recommend it? In general, no. While it is not entirely horrible, there are better examples of the adventure game to play (be it Myst or otherwise) that accomplish exactly what this game does (if not more).

However, if you've exhausted the number of adventure games (scarce as they come these days) available to play then Aura: Fate of the Ages is (possibly) worth a few hours of your time. It likely won't climb to the top of your "best of" list but it's definitely not a total failure of the genre either.

First off: MAJOR plot spoilers but no puzzle solutions. That said, unless you subscribe to this specific theory, the plot doesn't have a whole lot of weight or emotional depth, at least from where I'm viewing it. It's a silly game and that's absolutely fine. I bought it because I wanted six or seven hours of mashing every single object I picked up into every single interactable location I came across, and it did indeed give me that, plus some rather ingenious brainteasers (triangle/circle lock puzzle, I'm looking at you).

But. Um. So. There's a weird thing about this. I played this with a group of people, and we all found it rather silly, and some of the Moon Logic Puzzles are frustrating, but we cheated, because the point was to have fun, and we got about halfway through (I just finished it on my own).

And.... about at the point where we discovered the main character's name was Umang and he looked like a white guy with a vacant stare, and that the "Sacred Rings" looked exactly like a gyroscopic physics toy, we collectively decided to stop taking the game seriously, and we made it our headcanon that he was, in fact, a patient at a mental hosptial, and the other characters were the doctors trying to help him, or other patients, and all these puzzles were little tasks they'd given him to help him reconnect with the physical world and keep him occupied, so he wouldn't hurt himself or others. It kept the occasional non-intuituve answer from seeming pointless, and as time went by it got more and more fun to point out, you know, "More evidence for the asylum theory!"

They left off on the world of Knockoff Skyrim in the Clouds, and I kept going. And I kept finding more and more places where the asylum theory fit. The children left alone after their mother died. The nonsensical way the puzzles and worlds are connected. The way the Grain of Life connects to the Stardust. The fact that everyone who helps you can only help to a certain extent, even though they are supposedly the masters of their realm - one even says, "The rest you will need to do on your own." The way Umang is pushed over and over and over to journey to these lands, and the way he is eventually pushed to, quite literally, travel to an alternate reality. And it makes his reaction to that all the more poignant.

(The only wrench in this plan is the Generic Evil Guy (TM) who gloats over his sequel hook/plot device, but I'm ignoring that because it's literally the only thing that stops this interpretation from flying like a paper airplane straight into the back of the teacher's head. And I haven't played the second one, or the third one if that exists yet, so I dunno, maybe I can make something up.)

Let me put it this way. On its own, this is a more or less stupid game with a hysterically funny plotline at best and a clunky, boring one at worst. Whoever came up with the proper nouns in this game should be forced to redraw all the characters as though they actually come from the cultures in which their names originate - for instance, I don't know that many blond white guys from India, and yet Google tells me that is where the name Umang originates. The graphics are as advertised: from 2007. The music is on a loop that's not long enough, and the audio transitions and voice acting are about as smooth and skillfully executed as me getting up before noon on a Saturday. At one point, if you fail to do several things in the correct order, you are treated to a blacksmith wearing some kind of flexible metal (?) staring at you/Umang with what appears to be unrepentant (though restrained) lust (??), and you are allowed to repeat this five-second cutscene as often as you like (???). I turned all the sound off partway through and substituted in the Pacific Rim soundtrack, which by total chance played "Mako" at exactly the right moment to give the ending cutscene a beautiful, ethereal, almost transcendent feel.

On the other hand. I love what I was able to make of this game. I love that I can share it with everyone else, and that the narrative was free enough that this is a viable interpretation. I love the puzzle solving and the fact that for the most part, there was a great balance between the amount of effort I exerted to solve the puzzles (at least, the ones I didn't peek on) and the cutscene, item, new area or plot detail I was rewarded with (this is definitely a game for people who like shiny things).

Overall - if you'd like the game to carry itself and take itself seriously, don't play this, because it's not what you're looking for. If you'd like to solve some puzzles and maybe laugh a little at the absurdity of what's going on, at least at face value, and then find meaning in your own interpretations - then this is perfect. I wish you good night, good luck, and a good imagination.

As for the accusations of this being a Myst knockoff... I've never played it, but thanks for the game recc!

I got the game because the screenshots reminded me of Myst 3 & 4 and I was hoping it was similar. It doesn't bother me that they cloned Myst's visual asthetic. They seem to have put a decent amount of effort into that. What bothers me is that that's ALL they seem to have put effort into. the NPC's speech has at best forced emotions and awkward dialogue, the plot is a forgetable mess, nobody has facial expressions, and more than a few of the puzzles are counter intuitive 'guide dang it' moments, (case in point; in the second area, you have to backtrack and ask an npc what the solution to a puzzle is, which you wouldn't think to do, cause you JUST spoke to him and there's no logical reason for him to have not already told you if he knew.)

This is a passible point and click puzzle game. It isn't overly challenging, and the story is...well, it isn't bad, really. The last stage was probably the only one that really seemed worthwhile. The first area was okay, if somewhat opaque and containing a fair bit of pixel hunting. The other two were strictly "meh." This isn't as good as Myst by a fairly long shot. The characterization is barely there, and the dialog was pretty wooden. Further, there really isn't anything that is amusing enough to replay; the 7th Guest and Myst series both had puzzles and environments that were out and out fun to explore; Aura is a one and done, in my opinion. Buy it on a sale or as part of a bundle, maybe, but skip it otherwise.

Aura: The Fate of Ages is a puzzle adventure in a 3D environment. Basically, you jump from one room to another finding clues or items to complete puzzles of different challenge with the rooms being pre-rendered, quite beautiful backgrounds to your current point of view which you can turn 360 degrees sideways and almost as much up and down.

It took me some time to get into the mindset for the puzzles herein but once you found that the main obstacle is the own failure to find interactive pieces/ways in the rooms currently available.
One such piece was an admittedly quite big leaf that I had to collect from a forest ground and couldn't for more than an hour. Another was a lever basically standing vertically with the player's point of view almost directly above it.

Still the game is fun. I like that puzzles tended to discourage brute-forcing (with often more than a thousand combinations possible) and that, with the exception of two of them, I could think them through before solving them.

Even though the graphics seem a bit dated I recommend the game for providing a few hours of challenging puzzles.

It's an awkward, near-unplayable Myst ripoff. It's got beautiful prerendered scenery, yes, but that's about as close as it comes to the former. The puzzles don't come together logically with the gameplay and story (I spent half of my time with this game alt-tabbed out to check with the walkthrough). The music is insipid and repetitive (the sound design on this was as a whole amateurish). The voice-acting is bad to the point of near-hilarity. The story is uncompelling and the dialogue poorly-written.
3/10 -- and it only gets those points because it somehow kept me playing all the way through. I must have been way bored.

This is a very good Myst clone combining sci-fi & fantasy environments. If fact, I was very surprised to see this was not made by the developers of Myst because the similarities are so striking. The story is weak and the storytelling is worse, but the puzzle adventure aspects are superbly done and make up for those shortcomings.

Bought this game to play with my girlfriend. We both thoroghly enjoyed it, some of the puzzles had us both thinking of soloutions for what seemed like hours but it was an entirely enjoyable experience. Only wish it was a bit longer (Expansion maybe? wink wink nudge nudge). Great Puzzle game.

If you like games that make you think, this might be a good option for you. If you prefer to stick to things that let you point and kill, not so much.

This is a terrible Myst Clone. I thought I would enjoy it because it was still a MYST clone, but it is so poorly executed that it is never any fun. The aesthetic is bizzare and incoherant. The voice acting is dreadful. The worst part is the game's "puzzles". They mostly involve a very loose connection between colors and shapes and usually involve pixel hunting for the one little thing you need to combine in your inventory to make a magical whatsamawhozits to solve the puzzle. You literally cannot figure out some puzzles because they make no sense. No useful hints in game, just a lot of frustration. 0/10 Do not pay money for this.

This game wants to be Myst, but its hands are too heavy. The solutions to puzzles often feel unassociated with the puzzles themselves, which is not ideal.

From the fact that the movement is slow and choppy and the whole limited movement in the first place to the whole not even being able to have an inspect option on the numerous uninteractable important looking things and the poorly placed interaction points (the middle of a set of scales rather than the weight part? Seriously?) This game is a letdown in every aspect.
I'm sure some will try arguing "hey this game is ten plus years old" Guess what so are fable and postal 2, Planescape: Torment is even older and all thos games have much more complex interaction systems and more stuff actually using memory so arguing the age of the game is pointless since it could have been done much better even then.

I would argue it would have come across a lot better being made more in the style of monkey island 1 which was a lot smoother a lot older and a hell of a lot more fun to play, Crash Time II is more worthy of time and money and you've seen what people have said about it (actually the failiures of that game are actually funny and the gameplay is fun to screw around with for long enough to justify buying it).

If you're after good point and click adventure games on steam check out the catalog of games Daedalic Entertainment have, literally ever one of them is entertaining and worth putting the money towards if you can afford to.

This review is still early impressions. If I ever get the nerve to finish this then I will edit it with end game impressions.

At first glance this is a Myst clone. No doubt about that. But the differance between Aura and a good adventure game like Myst is that there is immersion and substance to what you're doing and why. Aura gives you a brief introduction then plops you into its world with no idea what you're supposed to do. It's another 360 degree panoramic adventure game like Myst III and IV and there's nothing wrong with that. Where Aura gets it wrong is that there is no logic to some of the puzzles. They're just there for the sake of a puzzle to impede your progress. There is no dialogue besides the introduction. No lore explaining anything besides the introduction. You have a desire to get the rings of destiny or some such but while in the game you really don't know why you're doing certain things becasue nothing is explained.

The game does give you hints in the form of a journal which gives you a very 'basic' understanding of how to proceed. The immersion factor is Aura's biggest weakness. The background music is just awful. It's a mixture of metal and synthesizers. For a fantasy adventure game it doesn't fit AT ALL.

For 5 bucks I guess this is worth a buy...only if you're fan of Myst. But good luck trying to get immersed in Aura's world. I didn't enjoy it at all.