2.5/5 ★ – TangyTomTom's review of Koral.

I'd never considered there was an uncanny valley between a walking simulator game and an environmentalism exhibit at a museum, but Koral showed me the error of my ways. Media very often has a message, and that's perfectly fine, even in games. I prefer media that makes me reflect, or reassess my views, or have to confront a challenging and emotive issue. However, implementation remains key, and that's where Koral missed the mark for me. While incredibly sweet and noble of the developer to pair his activism with game development. This falls short of both being a game and doing enough to engage with it emotionally so it can elicit any real response to the message it's trying to convey. There were some interesting facts raised throughout the game but jarringly the game sometimes wanted you to deviate from the most logical path (or at least the closest one that could be described as fun) and hug walls so as to not miss some hidden crevice containing a collectible, which seems a little counterintuitive to trying to get the developer's environmental message across. However, the gameplay -which is probably best described as puzzle solving/ walking simulator- never held any element of challenge such that I felt like I was doing anything other than busy work designed to provide some justification for this being a game. Some simple typographical errors were particularly jarring and with unremarkable music and graphics this is a hard game to recommend, even for its price.