Albert and Otto - The Adventure Begins Reviews
Albert & Otto is a decent puzzle platformer with some interesting ideas. It's a bit rough around the edges, but hopefully this has set the stage for some refinement if a second episode is ever created. Check out Albert & Otto if you desire a short but intriguing puzzler and can power through some awkward platforming.
Albert and Otto adds a new title to the platform genre, with blends of ingenious puzzles. Although they are neither too difficult nor too difficult or inspired, there are moments in which the game rises in difficulty, breaking the slower pace of the rest of the adventure.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Cut from the same cloth as Limbo, Nikola Kostic's puzzle platformer Albert and Otto exudes a strange, otherwordly charm. It's equally fantastic and frustrating, with the experience hampered by it being not quite as polished as it should be.
The first episode of Albert & Otto finds difficulty moving between the demanding world of mechanics-focused platformers and atmospheric dives into subtlety and tension. With three episodes left, Albert & Otto has time to find an identity, provided it also hastens its pace with more inventive puzzles and dependable platforming.
…for a guy with a wife, a one year-old, two cats and a full-time job, Albert & Otto is not striking the right balance between mindfulness and just actually cluing me in as to what's going on
It's been a long time since I've played a game I've liked as little as I liked Albert and Otto - The Adventure Begins. The sum of the problems found within this game can be no accident; mere chance or just bad luck couldn't possibly result in something so diabolical. It's almost as if the game was developed in some kind of bizarro world where frustrating gameplay elements were cherry-picked, pored over like fruits of anguish, their ripeness gauged by the bitter distress inherent to them. The result is something too hard for casual players, too frustrating for dedicated gamers, and too uninteresting for everyone else. It's a mess, and I couldn't recommend it to anyone.
I have really enjoyed my time in the world of Albert & Otto. It’s a hard but fair platform puzzler with some great level design, innovative sections, great visuals and a cracking soundtrack. It does feel a trifle short, but I hope it sells well and allows the development team to create further episodes in the future.
Even though I died way more than I thought I would, I still had a blast playing K Bros Games' title.
For all its crooked edges, Albert & Otto is still worth venturing into, if not for the great atmosphere alone. It is a rewarding romp, as many difficult platformers are, but the lacklustre puzzles and cumbersome shooting, both of which are definitely a priority in this game, drag it away from greatness, and leave it grasping for any semblance of stability. Hopefully, further down the line, Albert & Otto will come into its own, but this is a rocky beginning for the episodic puzzle-platformer.
The cinematic platformer had a very simple formula to follow and it isn't hard to make an appealing game in this genre. There have been so many over the years and the recent influx of independent developers doing their take on the whole 'kid in a nightmarish world' sub genre, there are more options now than ever. This should be at the very bottom of that list of options as it feels more like a Chinese boot-leg than anything of artistic merit. Dull, buggy, unpolished and, most of all, Albert & Otto is criminally derivative - its best quality is that it is over in about 90 minutes.
Despite the frustrating jumps, the split-second timing and the memorising of the bosses movements, I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Its gloomy aesthetic may look a lot like other titles out there, but there is enough under the hood to make this game it's own. As far as I'm aware, this is the first of four episodes which is clear by the length of the game – it took me just over two hours to complete
Albert & Otto was to be the first part of titular heroes' adventures. It failed on many fronts, it failed technically, it failed as a story telling device and it finally failed as a game. Style is not enough, when the core gameplay mechanic – controls – is done bad in the game that exclusively relays on it.
Review in Polish | Read full review
It takes a lot to stand out in the world of puzzle-platformers and unfortunately Albert and Otto – The Adventure Begins gets lost in the crowd.