Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Jan 6, 2023

  my eyes hurt
• sdumitriu

  Mar 26, 2023

  7/10. Spot the real fake among illusory fakes. What is it: A perception game testing how hard/easy is it to trick your brain into seeing things that aren't there. Based on famous trick images, each level hides a real difference among a collection of "fake" things, e.g. an actually moving object hidden among still objects that just seem to be moving when you're not staring straight at them, an actual gray dot in a grid with "phantom" dots that only show up in the corner of your eye, a longer or shorter line among lines that just seem to have different sizes, etc. Each illusion has increasingly difficult levels, with a bonus infinite random gauntlet with extra hurdles in the way (moving spotlight, extra moving circles or lines obstructing the screen). The difficulty is adjustable, from quite obvious to barely noticeable, so even though the game isn't too long (about an hour playtime on the easiest difficulty), you can keep on cranking up the difficulty until you become a master of perception. How hard is it: Adjustable, from obvious to nearly impossible. How long is it: 18 levels + 2 summary levels, each with 5 sub-levels, plus infinite mode. A quick playthrough on the easiest difficulty shouldn't take more than an hour, but finishing on the hardest difficulty can take many hours, and as a perception training tool you can keep on playing forever. Level design: Good, the author managed to make the classic illusions progressively more engaging. Quality: Good option of controls, clean UI, I didn't encounter any bugs. The text-free settings are a bit confusing: I thought the happy/sad slider was a "rating" tool, so I thought the game was too easy after I rated it as "happy". Worth the price: Yes. Most positive aspect for me: Great perception training tool. Most negative aspect for me: The obstacles in the last level are occluding too much of the puzzle, turning the game from "spot the difference" to "wait until the difference is not completely covered by thick bars to even have a chance to spot it".
• gamedeal user

  Aug 21, 2020

  I'm the developers brother. I placed this review on my own intention. He did not ask me to. Illusions are a fascinating phenomenon. I've played multiple Escher-like games, but never really a game quite like this one. The game's design is simple, which I think really fits the illusions. The gray-scale makes the game playable even if you're colourblind, which is awesome. By playing you not only learn about certain illusions, but you learn to feel how the illusion is trying to bedazzle your brain. By cleverly finding an anchor point you can overcome the levels and be champion over all the illusions! Overall a great game. Original and well executed. Such a game ain't easy to make. (If this review seems a bit glorified, this is my honest opinion. I'm proud of the game(s) my brother put together. )
• gamedeal user

  Aug 21, 2020

  Hey, I personally know the developer. Despite that I will give my honest opinion in this review. Let's start with some things that could be improved upon. Playtime: For each level you beat you earn an achievement, and I earned all achievements in 1 hour 22 minutes. There's also an infinite mode for each level, though, so if you really want to challenge yourself you can test yourself there and possibly rack up a lot more hours. Difficulty: I can envision some people might argue this game is too easy. The developer explicitly told me it was a conscious decision to not make Fake Illusions very difficult. Which I understand, as it makes the game more accessible. Which brings me to the second part of the review, namely the things Fake Illusions gets right. Accessibility: As mentioned above, the relatively low difficulty makes the game very accessible, but that's not all. The game is designed in such a way that it's always clear what you should be looking for in a given "puzzle", for lack of a better word. Creativity and ingenuity: This seems pretty self-explanatory. Using optical illusions in a game like this is very unique, and the way Auroriax pulled it off is very clever. Things also get mixed up from time to time to make things a little more challenging. Education: Aside from being a fun way to tease your mind for a bit, Fake Illusions makes you intuitively develop an understanding of a wide variety of optical illusions, along with a means to see through them. All in all a well-designed game based on a creative concept that I can definitely recommend trying out if you're interested in optical illusions.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 25, 2020

  What an unexpected little game! This brief game has the player spot what's different in a series of different types of optical illusions. Each stage starts off basic, then the optical challenge increases. A game based on optical illusions is not something I would have thought of! The game is quite short, but I'm happy to kick down the equivalent of a pint of beer for the interesting experience and novel idea for a quickie game. Some stages are easy, and make you want a time challenge. Others will make you a bit cross eyed as you figure out a mental method to quickly identify differences in a level. One point of criticism: the desire to have minimal text in the front end and options menu, while well intentioned, leads to a bit of uncertainty on what some things do without having to experiment and guess. An idea: On the challenge stage, an interesting twist could be to have the occasional screen where there are no differences (and a button to click if the user decides that's the case). Perhaps, combined with a timed mode challenge, this could be appropriate on the easy/medium difficulty illusions.