| Developer | Publisher | Platforms |
|---|---|---|
| Aviary Studios | Aviary Studios | Microsoft Windows-Xbox Series X/S-Xbox One-Nintendo Switch-PlayStation 5-PlayStation 4 |
The Gallery is an FMV game. FMVs were highly regarded in the past when the graphics of video games were not very realistic. of course, these types of games have their limitations. For example, real pictures and videos are usually used instead of 3D or 2D items and animations. Therefore, since all images are pre-recorded, something like the free movement is impossible.
These games are ideal for adventure and puzzle titles. Fortunately, some valuable FMV games have been released in recent years. One of these games was recently published under the title Immortality, which was highly praised by critics. Immortality has shown much creativity that you must experience them closely to understand the game. But The Gallery is too limited to be able to call it a game.
The truth is that we are a gaming media. We want to talk about games. But in our opinion, The Gallery contradicts the concept of the game. First, because the interaction with it is minimized, which a gamer usually does not want. Second, the game does not have one of the most basic elements that make such a product a game, that is, the condition of victory. To clarify what we said, let’s first explain some game features.
This game follows two different timelines forty years apart. One happens in 1981 where the main character is a woman and the other is in today’s world where our protagonist is a man. These two stories are quite similar but complementary. You can’t do anything special during your game time other than binary decisions.
It means that the story is played for you like a movie, and you can only decide between usually two options at certain moments, which affects the continuation of the story and the relationships of the main character with others. It is because of these numerous choices that you can witness eighteen different endings by playing the game several times. For decision-making moments, you can choose to pause the game or just have a short time to maintain the excitement of the narrative.
As you can see, in this game, unlike Telltale games titles, you do not have any meaningful actions with the game, and your choices are much more limited. This makes you feel like you are experiencing an interactive movie. This is not bad in itself, but this is no longer a game. Especially since, as we said, the condition of victory has no meaning here.
In a video game, if you are killed in the middle of the action, usually you see the Game Over scene and you have to continue from the last save point. But in a movie game like The Gallery, even if the protagonist dies, you have not failed, but you have just seen a story with a heartbreaking ending. This makes defeat or victory meaningless in The Gallery. We can’t say that The Gallery, which we don’t count as a game, has gameplay.
With all that we said about The Gallery not being a game, we cannot ignore its cinematic attraction. The directing is unique for a low-budget European film. The young director of this title, Paul Raschid, has managed to create a really good piece of art with a bunch of young actors, limited locations, and low-level special effects. Especially because implementing a story with various choices is much more difficult than making a linear two-hour movie. We hope Paul Raschid moves more toward gaming in his next work to satisfy both movie fans and gamers in almost equal amounts.
The review code was provided by the publisher
| GAMEPLAY | ART | VALUE |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | 90% | 70% |