The Bad Kids
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About the Game
Game Instruction
As an adaptation of the popular suspecse TV series, Cat’s Cradle, this game combines investigation, solving puzzles and reasoning with original stories, which can build a more Immersive and unique experience.
In this game, scenes are built by 3D technology, which will make a horrorable environment by using unique designing of colors, light and shadow.
This game will build new stories based on original setting and focus on the inner world of the character. Characters’ contradiction, struggle and liberation will be shown by more Imaginary ways.
Suspense Stories
You will play the part of Zhu Chaoyang, experience an unimaginable nightmare for ordinary junior-high students, and face the deep fear in your heart.
Deteriorated family, false friendship, greedy and selfish human nature, the game shows the coldness and cruelty of the adult world incisively and vividly from the perspective of a child. Can Zhu Chaoyang remain in innocent and kind after being soaked in darkness? You will uncover the ending by your own.
Original Gameplay
In this game, there are many different ways to play, including puzzles solving, exploration, investigation, logical reasoning and interactive performance, which aim to bringing different experiences.
There are rich exploration elements in in the 3D world. You can piecing up the hidden truth by looking for scattered clues and fragments.
The gameplay is closely combined with the original story. You will investigate the layers of mysteries that happen to Zhu Chaoyang, and excavate the truth of the story, finally face the ultimate confrontation with the murderous monster.
Through innovative stories, exquisite game scenes, and diversified interaction, you will obtain an unforgettable audio-visual feast in the game.
Written at the end
This is our first time to challenge a game adapted from TV series. In fact, up to now, our hearts are still full of anxiety. Our experience and strength will be seriously challenged, because “Cat’s Cradle” has a high popularity and influence in China. Worry and anxiety constantly haunt our team.
We spent nearly a year to watch novels and TV series intensively, investigated all the analysis and comments on the network, and finally determined our ction after countless iterations of the scheme. We will divide the game into 5 chapters: The preface, Chapter 1-mom, Chapter 2-dad, Chapter 3-friends and Final chapter. Through these 5 chapters, we want to express the family relations, family affection, education and friendship of teenagers in reality, which may make a realistic resonance with players. We hope to offer players not only the story atmosphere an entertainment of gameplay, but also some deep thoughts about the harm of original family during the growth of teenagers.
Hope you can like and support our game. Also hope to get your suggestions and feedback in the community.
Steam User 40
The Bad Kids is a horror game made by Chinese developers, Aluba Studio. It is based on a popular TV series in China called Cat’s Cradle and conveys serious themes through the eyes of a teenager, and overall has a rather intense tone throughout. However, the game is riddled with issues that severely inhibit immersion and even playability. I still enjoyed it, but note that the bugs are severe. The listed price is very reasonable, and only costs $AU11.99, which has factored into my recommendation, but it is a borderline one.
Pros
Covers mature topics that are lesser discussed in games
Very reasonably priced and is approximately 7 hours long
Complex and fleshed out story.
Mostly fun puzzles & minigames
Cons
HUGE issues with the English text subtitles. They skip automatically before they are even completely displayed.
Game automatically begins in Chinese, you must guess your way to find English
Manual saving is not functional.
Some puzzles in later sections are too obscure.
English translation issues
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Story
The Bad Kids has a complex story that slowly unravels to include many different characters throughout each of the five chapters. Each character raises concerns within the teenage protagonist, Zhu Chaoyang and makes him question himself and what he believes. Zhu Chaoyang struggles particularly with his relationship with his family. An over-protective mother who is controlling over his academic life, an estranged father who is barely present, too busy with his new family, bullying at school, jealousy, and a lack of friends. The topics the game covers, particularly the family themes were the most interesting to me. To display this struggle through the eyes of a teenager was interesting, and his pain was palpable. All these issues seem to bottle up inside the protagonist, with his darker side being portrayed through a dark being weakly resembling a fox. The concluding section can be more difficult to follow, and I do think it struggles to tie it all up. It also fails to explain the dark mysterious fox, leaving it completely to player interpretation. Overall, the story and psychological focus was enough to keep me interested, but I have not watched nor heard of Cat’s Cradle, so I cannot comment on the narratives authenticity.
Gameplay
The Bad Kids is predominantly a psychological horror game with a strong puzzle focus, like The Cat Lady. There are sections when death can occur, but they are typically rare. Mostly, gameplay consists of inventory-based puzzles where you must search to locate important items to use them elsewhere. There are also many minigames and puzzles along the way. Every confrontation with the “bad guy” turns into a mini-game such as quick time events, pressing space at the correct time to control your breathing, avoiding darkness and so forth. I enjoyed these minigames, despite some of them dragging on for what felt like slightly too long, they are mostly engaging and a welcome change. Majority of the puzzles were also interesting and logical, but some, I still do not understand and had to search up a guide, particularly those within the school. The game is not scary per say, but the sinister tones are present, especially with its psychological tone, similar to a grim visual novel.
Issues with English translation & subtitles
Mostly, the English translation is serviceable, but it does have many errors and spelling mistakes. However, it is not laughable nor confusing. The game is filled with text, and majority of it is completely fine. Where the game entirely suffers, is its strangely quick speed of subtitle text. It skips automatically, but it also sometimes skips before the text is even displayed, or within half a second, not letting you read it. This is simply infuriating. It is a narrative heavy game, but I missed half of the ends of every sentence because I did not read it in time. I am a fast reader, and the game became a game of speed-reading, to try and finish the sentence before it disappears. I think this may be due to translation issues, perhaps the timing was misjudged as it differs in the local language. Regardless, it borders on unplayable. I cannot recommend this game to anyone who is not an exceptionally fast reader (and does not speak Chinese).
Visuals & Sound
Once again, although colourful, the visuals did remind me of The Cat Lady, mixed with visual novel and comic book styles.
Characters are not fully voiced, but often do speak parts of sentences in Chinese. I liked this, and it helped grasp the tone better, but sometimes there was an awfully loud static noise that would burst through completely randomly.
Technical & Stats
This game was played using mouse and keyboard, and with the following PC specs.:
AMD Ryzen R5 7600x 5.4 GHz
32GB DDR5 5200 CL36 RAM
Radeon RX 6800 XT
2560x1440 resolution
NVMe 3.0 SSD
Windows 10
Bugs & Issues: No performance issues, but there are ample issues with the English translation. The speed of the subtitles is automatic and sometimes skips sentences completely. The game launches in Chinese upon initial startup and there were random bursts of loud static. Manual saving also does not seem to work. I played this mostly in one go, but when I did try to save and quit, I lost half of my progress. Only the automatic saving seems to work, which is unclear.
Playtime: Approximately 7 hours for one playthrough
Controller Recommended? Player choice.
Replayability value: Not really. There are at least three different endings, but no chapter select options, and it appears that the branching paths only start from the last two chapters.
Conclusion
The Bad Kids is a horror game based on a popular TV series and features gameplay similar to The Cat Lady. However, its horrendous automatic subtitle speed results in missing half of the text, and borderlines making the game playable. Overall, its story is interesting and its standard horror-puzzler gameplay is fun, delving into the psychological consequences of the happenings around the protagonist. Combining this with its very affordable price of $AU11.99, I have marginally recommended it, but note that the text issue is still a major downfall.
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Steam User 18
This game is like a traditional 2D side scrolling game with some quick time events but mainly it's interesting puzzles, some bad number puzzles. But all of this is held in place by the great story and real life commentary.
I am playing in enlish of course :
Pro: great atmosphere and dialogue, great social commentary, great graphics, great price, probably 10+ hours
Cons: long dialogues, some puzzles are boring, the game goes backwards to find out what you did, sometimes too dramatised
Steam User 14
---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☑ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☑ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☑ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10
The game is based on detective novels and TV series that I like a lot, so I have a bit of hope for this game, and... it makes me quite impressed with the new narrative style compared to novels and movies. Although the puzzles in the game are quite difficult, and there are a lot of bugs in the game (the publisher is still working on fixing the bugs), it is still a visual novel worth playing and the price.
Steam User 7
I really wanted to like this game. I really did. But I lost interest about an hour in. It is just so boring and repetitive so far.
UPDATE: After finishing the game and making it through the first hour and a half, it actually picks up and gets more interesting. I'll admit to jumping to conclusions initially. It's an interesting little story, and I enjoyed it now that I've made it to the end.
Steam User 4
This game is immaculate. Right from the beginning you're hooked on how the story develops and how to escape your home with your very controlling mom who won't let you have a say in anything. The psychological elements of helicopter parenting is executed perfectly here. It made me so uncomfortable and I felt like my character was still being watched even while the mother was at work. The atmosphere is filled with this impending depression and doom by having to repeat several copies of the same days by making "mistakes" that your mother keeps adamantly telling you to "get it right" and behave. I don't want to give away too much more of the plot in case whoever is reading this hasn't played yet, but PLEASE give this game a try. The puzzle solving elements are very engaging as well as who you can trust as your so called "friends"; whether or not you doubt them as being on your side. 10/10 on everything. I would love to see updates on this soon.
Steam User 2
No spoilers review: I finished playing this game last Tuesday on my stream, finally, phew. I'd say this game is definitely a journey. Storyline is very... cliche. I can't really give this game a thumbs up nor a thumbs down. While the storyline is cliche AF, but I do enjoyed the thrilling atmospherical and the puzzles were really fun, and did give me a sense of achievement after solving them. But of course, my viewers were pretty helpful with it too. It was a bit of a drag because the main character looks so depressed and slow. Voice actings in the game were pretty alright. But overall, the game isn't too bad, but I can't give it a recommendation.
當我在想實況的時候要玩什麼遊戲,這個看起來蠻有趣的,就打算在特價的時候買了下來。當初因為覺得這個玩法非常像【返校】,所以就買來試一試。在上個禮拜的實況台終於把遊戲給玩完了~我對這個遊戲評論呢,不能說不好、也不能完全說很好。遊戲的劇情非常地陳詞濫調。我也猜得到故事的進展,但是我非常喜歡遊戲的恐怖氣氛還有猜謎的難度也很恰當。能夠把謎解開後很有滿足感。當然,也要感謝觀眾的幫忙。配音也做的還不錯。遊戲的節奏有點緩慢,感覺有點拖泥帶水。總結來說,這個遊戲還不錯,但也不是一個我會強烈推薦的遊戲。
Steam User 2
What a wild ride, from the demo I watched before the full game came out I thought you would be only stuck escaping your mom but it was so much more than that! The voice acting was great and a really good english translation. Each new chapter really freaked me out on some parts, a feeling of uneasiness whenever I got further into the story.
There are only 2 puzzles where the items you get to solve the certain puzzles would have been better if the text on the item was translated as well but thankfully a guide was there to help me anyway.
Overall very good game, a melancholy ending and I wish Chaoyang gets some therapy after all this.