Engaging, fun, but flawed
Fri Feb 23 2018 RectumsatchelLike many people playing this game, I’m a big fan of the Lifeline series. In comparing Flatline to its cohorts, it improves in some areas, but displays new flaws that ultimately outweigh its innovations.
First of all, the character of Wynn is pretty great. Not as idiosyncratic and lovable as Taylor or Arika, but not as dry and dull as say V. Adams. She’s believable and engaging, but kind of unlikable in a few ways.
Secondly, the heart rate and its involvement in the game is a minor innovation that adds a good variable.
But the things that keep this one from a perfect score are its far too frequent pauses in the action. Part of what made the first several games so good were their pacing. A consistent, moderate amount of action in spurts. Flatline takes you out of the action for brief periods way too many times. While this does draw out the story more, it’s just ridiculous to wait five minutes while Wynn takes a sip of water or something.
Also, I’m not a huge fan of the Green story arc that ties these games together- it seems kind of slapdash and patched together, and so I wonder why it’s always the focal point of these games stories, but that’s honestly just a personal thing for me.
Quirky, awesome, engaging
Tue Feb 14 2017 LucentripThis is my second Lifeline game (I played the with Alex first), and it's an awesome, unique experience (even without an Apple Watch). The real-time nature of the narrative contributes to its engaging nature. I find myself actually caring what happens to Taylor, which is the same feeling I experienced when playing Lifeline: Crisis Line with Alex. I had to look up the order in which to play the other games, since 3 of them star Taylor. Right now I'm simultaneously playing Lifeline, Lifeline 2: Bloodline, Lifeline: Whiteout, and Lifeline: Flatline since they star characters other than Taylor, as I want to play the Taylor entries in order (Lifeline, then Lifeline: Silent Night, then Lifeline: Hallway to Infinity). These games are definitely worth playing. I'd love to see how the experience differs when playing with an Apple Watch. Regardless, I highly recommend all of the games in the series. They do have an overarching theme that ties them all together (the threat of the green-eyed woman and/or the odd, green alien tentacle blobs that can enter your body Wrath of Khan style). I like the fact that some of the games are sci-fi, one is fantasy/magic themed and one is basically survival horror, and all of them adhere to the overarching theme of the green mind-controlling alien creatures that you must either destroy or avoid at all costs. I highly recommend them.
Good, but needs work.
Sat Jan 04 2020 Banzai!!!!The story is quite engaging. The suspense is very thick. You want to keep playing. But you can’t.
Wynn takes as long as she possibly can to do the simplest of tasks, like walk ten feet or process information. I feel like the writers couldn’t think of a long enough story so they put ridiculous pauses in even more ridiculous places. Some of these I understand, like sleeping or trying keys, but it is totally possible to walk and talk at the same. Multitasking is pretty great. It would have been better with a bit more backstory to replace some of the pauses.
And to be honest, at the beginning, I couldn’t get into the story. I get that Wynn woke up after some mysterious surgery and was terrified out of her mind, but even still, she came across as super whiny. But after a while, the story picked up, and I found myself caring what happened to her.
Overall, this game is one of my least favorite in the series, but to be fair, this series is super amazing, so even the worst game in it is pretty darn great. I loved how it tied the rest of the games together, and despite the egregious wait times and slow start, it’s totally worth a play through.
Explaining the elevator, and this game is dope
Tue Nov 08 2016 Cyote 7875First off, the elevator. Why create a rewind in the story called into the elevator when u actually aren't supposed to go into it or do anything with it? So to answer any questions about it, leave it and let the apes attack you because it's the only way for the story to continue. Now, this game is as good as it it FREAKY!!! I love the story even though it can get quite confusing. However, my main problem with it is that Wynn take too long to do stuff, I had to turn the game on fast mode (which I hate doing) just so I could get the game moving. So that's my review, I hope that what I told anyone about the elevator helped. P.S - This is just my opinion but I think that Adams shouldn't be over (because I'm not done with him personally and Taylor and Arika seem to be the only people with a more than one game series and I think it would be cool if Adams did as well) and I think that a MAJOR crossover should happen between the characters. Also, is Taylor's series over? Or was the end of Silent Bight just a massive cliff hanger?
Always on the edge of your seat
Tue Sep 04 2018 DelusionalGoldfishThis really brings the chills as you think through performing through logic or morals, and the difference between good and bad. Your choices will affect this character and this game shows you that through the characters words and heartrate ( and changed storyline).
Though there was only one thing that slightly frustrated me was when I chose certain answers as comfort but when chosen and shown at it's full length it was showing me panic or being afraid resulting in the character freaking out which wasn't my intention at all. It's understandable though as the space to explain each choice is very limited. Other than that all in all it was an absolute 5 stats from me. The choices that resulted in them panicking didn't do much to change the story so that made it only a small problem . I absolutely loved the lifeline series since middle school when i played Whiteout and I can't wait to see more of what comes out : ) THANK YOU!!
Love these games, EDIT and it's working again
Wed Dec 14 2016 solus.sonThe first review was just to say I like the games, but the app was malfunctioning.
Thank goodness, the issue seems to have resolved itself (I haven't noticed any app update so we can chalk it up to Apple) and the game is working on watch and phone. I'd hate to leave a bad review for an issue that is resolved, because this game is really very good. Engaging, not overly-time consuming, the story is very well told and the choices you make allow you to really suspend disbelief and accept, for maybe 10 minutes at a time, that you are the sole external source of advice and support for a young woman (I'm guessing the gender, here) trapped in a hellish nightmare come to life.
Very engaging and rich. Well worth the couple bucks. Buy it and choose her own adventure.
No Fast Mode, constant pauses!
Thu Aug 17 2017 OhSoAwesomeSauceSo, I got about halfway through this game, then I had to start over due to the game being deleted. In every other Lifeline game out there, "Fast Mode" is an option so you don't have to wait in between transmissions with your character. There is no Fast Mode in Flatline. So I had to trudge through the game at the same, slow pace again, already knowing what happens. Which brings me to my next complaint: sometimes you get a SINGLE sentence from Wynn, and then you have to wait five minutes for the next transition. The gameplay is too short in terms of actual communication vs "Awaiting Transmission." Wynn is not a very likable lady, either. She's kind of a snot. Taylor was awesome and so was Adams, but the two female-lead Lifeline games have mean, snarky women you interact with, which makes me think they don't have any women writers for the women characters. The story kind of lacks direction too. There is a vague goal of "find my sister scientist" in there, but so far, it's mostly Wynn wandering around a bit aimlessly. I'm still going to finish it, but I'm glad it was pretty cheap as an App Store game.
Disappointed
Sat Jan 28 2017 Wynning isn't everythingThe disjointed play is aggravating. I get that the character has to sleep, but making the player wait so long is ridiculous. At the beginning, it seems like any logical answer of holding back and opting for safe behavior will work fine, but at a certain point, after several multi-hour sleep cycles, you get stuck in an all-the-sudden no-win situation with absolutely no apparent clue where you screwed up. Then, you have to start all over and wait every time Wynn wants to sleep. Very frustrating and aggravating game play. It's like reading the old "Twist-a-plot" books a million times until you figure out the magic key. Zero adaptive play. The music...it's interesting for about 5 minutes, but the dramatic crescendos don't match the intensity of the activity going on in the game dialog. I turned it off pretty quickly. If I could make one recommendation to the game creator...download the old Infocom text based games and play them. You will learn a lot from that experience.
Frustrating
Sat Mar 06 2021 Lolathebunny89As much as I wanted to love this I just couldn’t get into it and not because the story wasn’t good but because of the amount of pauses that literally happened every 2 mins .. to the point where I wanted to just delete it because the second I started to get into the story I was once again having to wait while she did something and it wasn’t like a few mins .. sometimes it was m, but more often than not it was an hour or more . Real time games just aren’t my thing and I wish the devs would have made it optional , like they did with the other lifeline games, or the few that I’ve played . With all this being said , I still really enjoyed the character but felt like there wasn’t anything that had me feeling attached to her . I still think you should give their games a try though
Tired of constantly Awaiting Transmission
Sun Feb 26 2017 DJ RizzoI am a huge fan of the Lifeline interactive stories. But this one has (almost) annoyed me to the point of deleting the app before finishing. The reason is the constant long pauses in dialogue, all of which happen while the words "AWAITING TRANSMISSION" are shown. This causes the story to take far longer than any of the other Lifeline apps (I've played them all). The timing is so frustrating; just when I'm sick of staring at the screen and decide to move on to life IRL or another app I get a notification that the character needs me. Also, there's an annoying bug where I get a notification badge AFTER I exit the app, when no notification has actually occurred; but rarely is there a badge after a notification actually happened. I expect far better from these devs.
