Potato Thriller

I doubt anyone is going to see this because only a handful of people on this site have logged the game. However, I feel as though it is my calling—my life's purpose—to preach upon the mountaintop to the empty crowd below about how absolutely genius this game is. 

Firstly, to label this thing as a game would be an insult. It's an experience. It's an absurdist, surreal masterpiece much like the works of Mexican-Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel.

Every single aspect of this game is purposefully chosen to be the way it is. The voice acting? Almost nonexistent. Most characters are voiced through TTS. Some minor characters (most notably: the news reporters) are real people, and the inclusion of their real human voices make such a drastic and impactful difference. The writing is masterful. It makes the most of its medium and the medium from which it is communicated (TTS). The characters are brilliantly designed: walking noses, a potato man, a haunting lemon woman, the list goes on. The way these characters interact through the writing is a joy to witness. 

There are so many twists and turns, the game is randomized and individualized towards your current run. You can finish the game and replay it and you'll play through completely different levels (the minigames). There are so many different mechanics that you might miss during one run and discover in another. The fact that the game manages to achieve this while simultaneously staying true to the plot is insane.

The first time I experienced this masterpiece, I had a friend watching me as a play. We were both hysterically laughing, tears falling from our eyes. We were shaken to our core. I will never forget this game. I cannot praise Samer Khatib (the mastermind behind this masterpiece) enough.

Presented as a parody of horror game, potato thriller thinks it's funny, but it's not. It is not because, while happy with their teenage joke based on old potato that farts in an elevator, the developers have forgotten the fun ingame of the player. The whole game is affected by a false rhythm, due to extended dialogues, with synthetic voices that leave several seconds white between each replica, as well as an avalanche of time of loads too long, which sometimes come intercalate between two replicas, which is quite incomprehensible and unjustified given the graphic poverty of the title. When, by chance, between two cinematics as captivating as an ARTE report on the jar of pickles, comes our turn to play, it is clear that there is nothing exciting to do. We start the game in sight to the first person, in a repetitive sequence to the P.T. The scripts give the impression of having trouble triggering – which makes you turn even more in circles than necessary (since you have to turn in circles anyway). After this first half, we change characters, and the view then passes to the third person. Forget the horror parody, you are now in a zero action game, with an ugly character that looks like a PlayMobile, and where you have to avoid traps and short noses (you have read me well). The humor as much as the gameplay is lumbering, uninteresting, and frankly immature. It must be acknowledged that an effort has been made on the scenario which – all incredible as it is – is well-tied and has some reversations. But how to appreciate it at its fair value when all the cutscenes and dialogues make you want both to switch to X2 speed and to rip off your ears? Without revealing the content, you should know that the final sequence lasts almost 20 minutes (!!!) where the protagonists are laboriously exchanging the poor replicas (always with Mono-string and unpleasant synthetic voices), where the staging is at of the daisies (some characters are not even animated) and where there is nothing to do. There are trollesques games that work and where the Player enjoys participating in the delirium – Plug & Play en est un –, mais tous ne peuvent pas réussir et, à mon goût, Potato Thriller fait partie des ratés; because of his false rhythm, his soft knee gameplay in the second part in 3rd person, and his unbearable dialogues that will chase you from beginning to end.