UGLY: A Dark, Twisted & Beautiful Hand Animated Puzzle Adventure About Uncovering an Ugly Truth 

I featured a short Beta demo of Ugly back in March (and really liked it) but the devs were kind enough to offer to pay me for a follow up video for the full release! This video featured a condensed playthrough of the first four chapters. Each chapter introduces a different mechanic. The boss fights are a particular highlight - especially the giant slime monster! :)

You can really tell a lot of care and attention went into this game just by the sheer variation in boss fights and death sequences. I love, for example, how the first mummy boss is localized/limited to a single location (as you would expect in the early stages of a platformer), but the second slime boss is the total opposite in that it's a chase. Awesome all around.

30:48 Of course the piece of glass is afraid, somebody's been smashing all the mirrors.

You don't need to squint to see a grim situation - past and present - here. But the dead menagerie had my eyes widen. There is something or someone truly rotten within in this game.

something to be said about the experiences "ugly" people have where the two extremes both hurt. constantly being abused and belittled by his father because of his looks vs. being directly lied to by a mother that calls you a handsome prince and denies the truth of what you experience due to your looks. It's like being visibly disabled and having "good" Samaritans call you brave and beautiful and whatever just to pat themselves on the back for being nice and not to actually engage with you as a person. I'd be drinking too if those were the only two options.

Reminds me a bit of Braid. And the animation for the bosses is amazing.

The pink slime I think symbolises a distortion of the character's self-image. Considering you can't mirror through them its a literal obstruction of the mirror, like if your were to paint over the glass. Once your consumed by that, you can't really look into yourself for truth.

That slime boss looks so cool. Well animated 👏🏻👍🏻

I love the old-timey movies showing that every appearance is not what it seems The caterpillar showing that ugliness may hide beauty and vice-versa with the rotting strawberry

18:39 my other nostril when the first one becomes finally uncongested

Something about this games music is so beautiful and yet so unsettling, bravo to whoever composed this it’s on a level of power I only really felt playing hollow knight

Something about the main character being so short and little makes me worry that they might still be a kid. Left down in a basement with nothing but alcohol to drink. Scary Edit: the fact that whenever they lose, they just start drinking and pass out drunk might mean that this whole adventure is happening inside themself, and they're drowning their sorrows in alcohol as a last resort. Truly depressing :( Okay so. I watched the full game play and umm. Yeah its a lot

I don't do well with these kinds of topics. It's a beautiful melancholy game because of it. Just breaks my heart.. Reminds me of my childhood. Never felt good enough and worthless. I hate seeing it happen to others. Even if it's a fictional character.

2:09 Romeo-ing his way out of a dire situation, I see.

ive looked for the names of the bosses and more details on them but its really hard to get search results for lol, so heres my take on the bosses shown here, i dont think im reinventing the wheel when i say they are symbolic but lemme know what you think. 1#/Bandages represents hurt to me, it giggling when it gets a hit on you is probably some sort of reflection of the 'Father' character when he takes joy in hurting his son, and its suspended above you maybe to reflect that it thinks its higher/above you? maybe its the main characters own negative voice justifying his own abuse. (tw: maybe it could represent self harm?). 2#/Pink Ooze probably represents anger or envy. its the biggest one of them and its very heavy = it could represent all the vengeful feelings the main character has towards his abuser which is the main(biggest) inner conflict. it specifically targets the father and i actually dont think its even after the main character, he just gets in its way and is hurt in the process, i think hurting others in blind rage is something alot of angry people do. 3#/Glass Boss is pretty straight forward and the symbolism is the clearest i think. the boss is immediately afraid of the reflection-tool-thingie and it acts out of fear, rising from a pile of broken mirrors with a sledge hammer. it fears anything that will show its reflection, and to destroy that flaw, in the end the main character has to smash it too. its boss fight isnt super interesting but i think its my favorite, i really feel its fear and sorrow even though it has no face. 4#Keyhole is the toughest one for me to decipher, i have a few thoughts about it. first i thought, maybe it symbolizes repressed trauma? with the much darker more graphic environments and the way it locks itself in and tries to do the same for the main character, like its trying to keep something in or maybe out. then i thought maybe its a literal depiction of the locked doors in the house and the father making the main character feel trapped. i also wonder if maybe theres symbolism in the fact that when its unlocked, theres nothing inside. anyway i havent seen the full game yet, i know theres also a drunken boss that obviously represents the character's drinking habits too, let me know what you think of my interpretation bc im genuinely interested in further forming an opinion about these bosses, they're really neat.

For a game called Ugly, it sure looks good! I'm not usually one for puzzle games, but this looks interesting! I'm looking forward to the full release.

Finally, a game that resembles me!

beautiful game and the way you use the mirror shard is so efficient? the glass shard/crystal floors mechanics were so creative, esp in the section on 26:40. of all the portions of the castle shown i think i liked the crystal one the most, seeing the spider on top of the door entering it made me unsure what to expect so the boss mechanics surprised me! i pitied the crystal boss the most though, wonder if it was supposed to represent the mother since she had a spider like pendant on her neck and eyepatch, man super excited to know more about them also i noticed there were some memory portions missed which i was wondering if you were gonna go back to revist?

Hey! We didn't get to see the Memory before the Crystal Room!

That pink stuff... A mirror cannot reflect if it is covered.

Nice one really, looks promising

Man. This is a good-looking game, but the one thing that really stands out to me is its’ method of _“teaching through doing”._ Very Portal-style mechanic explanation, which is an obvious positive.

18:25 Slime Time Never Ends!

absolutely pumped for the full release!

This is actually cute by Minecraft Villager standards

I don't know why, and I haven't seen stuff from this channel in forever, but one of the reasons I felt like looking at this is just because of the art, LOL. :p

Me seeing the thumbnail: Damnit what's Akumu doing now?

Gives me Samsara vibes

04:32 it's Donald Trump

This. Is. Amazing.

Hi

1:08 ah yes, the old bash and dash. Kid's gonna grow up to be a UPS delivery man.

Hello there. Nice game :)

Commenting for the algorithm...!

4:35 poor kid, continuously tormented by Trump.

👍🏻✌🏻

Part 2 ?

The work of the artists is excellent. But the character design is not very good. With this kind of artwork, it should definitely appeal to fans of puzzle platformers.

Is there a 'proper' story about what happened to himself?

Now play Beautiful Light, the ugliest FPS of 2023!

First. Lol😂

The guy in the red suit seemed cool.