Aspire: Ina's Tale Reviews
Aspire: Ina’s Tale is an audacious game that manages to create a remarkable world which you’ll want to explore. The incredible design is consistent for the duration making each area a joy to discover. Puzzles vary and offer a suitable level of challenge, however, the stiff movement in platforming segments hinders the experience. Whilst the game’s runtime is relatively short, this memorable stroll through a stunning gallery is worth your time.
Aspire: Ina's Tale is an enjoyable platform-puzzler with a great story and a relaxing atmosphere, but it's one drawback is its short length. If you know what you're doing or are pretty good at solving puzzles that involve platforming, the game should only take you a few hours to complete. If you don't mind that though, Aspire: Ina's Tale has a great story and a relaxing atmosphere that's worth checking out.
Aspire: Ina's Tale combines a puzzle platformer structure with a rich magical story and a beautifully designed world to create a fun, if brief, adventure.
Aspire: Ina’s Tale promises an epic journey and re-discovery of Ina’s power, but the game struggles to reach these expectations in its short runtime. Despite the unsatisfying exploration of the themes and setting within the Tower, Aspire: Ina’s Tale still delivers a heartfelt story within a truly exquisite environment. The puzzles are frustrating at times, but their difficulty leaves you feeling quite smart after completing them.
Overall, while it had its issues, Aspire: Ina's Tale was a delight to play through. The developers did an excellent job of crafting a beautiful and immersive world. The puzzles are challenging, and the brief narrative is engaging. So if you're in the mood for a highly unique puzzle-platformer, Aspire: Ina's Tale might be the game for you, provided you don't mind the incredibly short playtime.
If Aspire: Ina's Tale was a picture in a museum, you would look at it for a minute and then move to something more intriguing.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Aspire: Ina's Tale proves that logical platformers still have a lot to offer us. It is a pity that the creators did not try for a longer adventure, because you would like to play more and more.
Review in Polish | Read full review
From an "elevator pitch" angle there's something great about being able to cite popular and successful titles as a shorthand to describe other ones succinctly...
Aspire: Ina’s Tale is a cinematic action-platformer that focuses both on puzzles and establishing a beautiful world to explore. Do the puzzles and exploring make for a fulfilling experience? Find out more in this Rapid Review.
While there’s a little tidbit in regards to distinguishing between the UI and interactable objects, this dreamy environment of a game blends perfectly with the protagonist, Ina. Her movements are lavishing as she adventures to find hidden paths and regions to resonate with spirits to solve puzzles and move around objects to get to her goal. Whilst all these activities are enjoyable, the game’s focus is on delivering its main concept and the message is clearly portrayed to the player. The only downside would be that the entire gameplay could end in around a couple of hours, but it's well worth the time spent in accomplishing its content to the fullest.
Review in Korean | Read full review
Aspire: Ina’s Tale was an engaging and delightful experience. That being said, don’t expect it to be a necessarily happy romp, as most of it is quite melancholy. The ending might not have been the biggest surprise, but the journey was well worth it. The characters, tone, atmosphere, and music made Aspire: Ina’s Tale a memorable adventure.
Nestling nicely among the raft of indie gems, Aspire: Ina’s Tale excels with a gorgeous art style, subtle yet engaging story-telling and excellent musical score. While you can largely solve the puzzles without much effort, your journey with Ina will be a compelling and rich adventure. It may not hold the loftiest aspirations, but Ina’s dreams are worth embracing.
In conclusion, Aspire: Ina’s Tale is a well-designed adventure puzzle platformer with an emotionally descriptive musical soundtrack. The platforming and puzzle design is very good and contains some challenging moments, even for fans of the genre. The art style suits the game well with colour being put to good use to bring the different tower environments to life. This is no ‘Gris’ but that game is so special I knew that it was never going to be. It would be unfair to be put off by that though as this game stands proudly on its own two feet. I recommend this as a good use of up to five hours of your gaming time. Go and try it for yourselves.
Aspire: Ina’s Tales, ticks all the right boxes for a puzzle platformer. I don’t feel that the game quite lives up to other games in this genre but it’s a very good attempt from the developers. What works best is the beautiful art style, music and an experience that most certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome. However, the slightly awkward controls is a design that may not work for everyone. I enjoyed my playthrough and the developers have certainly sold me on their soundtrack. If you’re looking for a title to enjoy on the sofa with a blanket and a good drink with your headphones plugged in then Aspire is a good choice to make on Nintendo Switch.