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It’s always a pleasant surprise when a game that looks and feels in line with titles you’ve struggled to enjoy in the past breaks through by delivering the goods in some way, and that’s the best way to sum up how I feel about Barn Finders. First-person repair sims, walking sims, and mundane activity sims just have never cut it for me, getting too monotonous or hyper-focused on minutia for me to find any joy in them. The first move I think works with Barn Finders is that it dabbles a little bit in all of these sorts of areas but generally tries not to linger in them too long. You’ll find things that need to be cleaned and some that need to be repaired, but you won’t burn much time on those duties. To be certain you’ll be doing a fair amount of walking around different environments in search of hidden treasures, but there’s just enough variety in the places you’ll visit, and the puzzles you’ll need to work out when you get there, that it comes together pretty nicely in that area as well. Oh, and I forgot to mention the best part, the game is just freaking oddball and at times inappropriate, serving up aliens, bodily functions, MIB-style G-Men, and all sorts of plain oddities you’ll gather to resell to people after trying to haggle the price up. By no means is it rocket science, and saying the controls can at times be wonky is absolutely a valid complaint, but for the very first time I felt it important to note that this sort of game has managed to chip through my wall of cynicism (well, and actual negative experiences) to prove there can be flavors of these oddball sorts of sims out there that even I could appreciate as worthwhile for a diversion.
Justin Nation, Score:Nindie Choice! [8.0]