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As a student project and a free game released on Steam, Fayburrow is pretty cool. However, it is extremely short (Steam says I played it for 62 minutes, and that was me taking my time, futzing around, and exploring everywhere I could, as I usually like to do), and it feels like the barest whiff of a prologue to a much, much larger game, one which will almost assuredly never be made. And that's a crying shame, because I absolutely would've played a full game of this.
For what it is, it's pretty great. For what it could be, though, it's sadly very lacking.
Putting the games with potential tag on this rather than the game recommendations tag, because while it certainly does have potential, I would only recommend this game with the strong caveat that, as I said, it is not a full game or a full story (which ends on a serious cliffhanger right as it was really getting interesting). If you go into this knowing that you're not going to get a complete story and just want to play through a really nice (but really short) student project, then yes, by all means go right ahead. I just wish I'd known that going in, myself. I mean, I knew it was a student project, going in, but I wasn't aware it was quite so short or that the story would end on a cliffhanger. I mean, if you squint really hard and tilt your head at a 90° angle, maybe you could view it as a "proper" ending, but looking at it normally, I just saw it as "What? It just stopped right when it was getting good?"
(Another caveat: at least based on the forums for the game, there might be some game-breaking, progression-blocking bugs in this. Fortunately, I never ran into such, myself, as I was able to reach the end credits mostly without issue. The only real bug I ran into was a minor one involving the crouching animation while sneaking around in the professor's office, which resolved itself on its own somehow and didn't actually hinder gameplay.)
Honestly, this is why I tend to actively avoid "teaser", "prologue", "chapter 1" and other such games when I see them in my Discovery Queue on Steam. And it is also why I avoid playing episodic games until all of the episodes are available (e.g. I still, even to this day, have not yet touched The Silver Lining). This one was not presented as such, however. And, I guess, to be fair, it isn't any of those things, not really, and is indeed a "complete" experience, after a fashion, taking into account that it is "merely" a student project and all (and as such, again, it is incredibly impressive to me). And I definitely wouldn't say it was "abandoned" or whatever. However, it certainly left me wanting "the rest of it." Then again, I suppose this is even worse, in a way, because with all those "prologue" games, as well as with the episodic games, there is at least the promise that there might be more to come later, which is most likely not the case with this.
(EDIT) I'm trying to come up with a comparison for this, and the closest thing I can think of would be like if you were playing The Longest Journey, and then the game just ended and went to credits immediately after April went through her first Shift. Or if Dreamfall had ended the first time Zoë used a Dreamer console. (I mean, Dreamfall did end on a cliffhanger, too, but only after a full game's worth of content came before it [and even that was still highly disappointing and vexing to me when I played it the first time].) Or if Dreamfall Chapters had started playing the end credits immediately after Zoë woke up the first time, at the end of Chapter 1 of Book 1, and that had been the entirety of Dreamfall Chapters. (/EDIT)
For what it is, it's pretty great. For what it could be, though, it's sadly very lacking.
Putting the games with potential tag on this rather than the game recommendations tag, because while it certainly does have potential, I would only recommend this game with the strong caveat that, as I said, it is not a full game or a full story (which ends on a serious cliffhanger right as it was really getting interesting). If you go into this knowing that you're not going to get a complete story and just want to play through a really nice (but really short) student project, then yes, by all means go right ahead. I just wish I'd known that going in, myself. I mean, I knew it was a student project, going in, but I wasn't aware it was quite so short or that the story would end on a cliffhanger. I mean, if you squint really hard and tilt your head at a 90° angle, maybe you could view it as a "proper" ending, but looking at it normally, I just saw it as "What? It just stopped right when it was getting good?"
(Another caveat: at least based on the forums for the game, there might be some game-breaking, progression-blocking bugs in this. Fortunately, I never ran into such, myself, as I was able to reach the end credits mostly without issue. The only real bug I ran into was a minor one involving the crouching animation while sneaking around in the professor's office, which resolved itself on its own somehow and didn't actually hinder gameplay.)
Honestly, this is why I tend to actively avoid "teaser", "prologue", "chapter 1" and other such games when I see them in my Discovery Queue on Steam. And it is also why I avoid playing episodic games until all of the episodes are available (e.g. I still, even to this day, have not yet touched The Silver Lining). This one was not presented as such, however. And, I guess, to be fair, it isn't any of those things, not really, and is indeed a "complete" experience, after a fashion, taking into account that it is "merely" a student project and all (and as such, again, it is incredibly impressive to me). And I definitely wouldn't say it was "abandoned" or whatever. However, it certainly left me wanting "the rest of it." Then again, I suppose this is even worse, in a way, because with all those "prologue" games, as well as with the episodic games, there is at least the promise that there might be more to come later, which is most likely not the case with this.
(EDIT) I'm trying to come up with a comparison for this, and the closest thing I can think of would be like if you were playing The Longest Journey, and then the game just ended and went to credits immediately after April went through her first Shift. Or if Dreamfall had ended the first time Zoë used a Dreamer console. (I mean, Dreamfall did end on a cliffhanger, too, but only after a full game's worth of content came before it [and even that was still highly disappointing and vexing to me when I played it the first time].) Or if Dreamfall Chapters had started playing the end credits immediately after Zoë woke up the first time, at the end of Chapter 1 of Book 1, and that had been the entirety of Dreamfall Chapters. (/EDIT)
