At least it isn't "that" kind of story.

From the beginning, the eponymous story of A Story About My Uncle is ... a little off. The slightly-stilted English narration is part of it, but only a part: there's also the inconsistent dedication to the storyteller's fourth wall, and obscure in-game messages that - rather than teasing deeper parts of the story - are just music video links. The game's childlike sense of wonder is fun and fascinating at first, but, about an hour in, its focus on storybookish light sci-fi just feels dull and unsatisfying.

I can say pretty much the same thing for the gameplay. The game world's hyperactive platforming and beam-grappling are neat at first, if lacking in originality; but rapidly become an annoyance, as an over-reliance on grapple-swinging is hampered by momentum-killing collisions. It's never a huge point of frustration, since checkpoints are fairly frequent, but this flaw keeps the grappling mechanics from shining the way that they otherwise could.

The game seems to be pretty short, too. As far as I can determine from achievement info, I'm a little over halfway through, putting the game's total length at well under two hours.

It comes across as a well-done amateur game, but fails to find a substantial raison d'etre for itself. The grappling feature isn't that unique, and any given first-person puzzle game (Portal, et al) has better platforming and level-design. At the same time, the story isn't anything special (becoming utterly predictable in the first 20 minutes or so), and there are also plenty of examples of better storytelling in games.

A Story About My Uncle isn't bad, but it isn't as good as it should be, either.

Better than: Dear Esther
Not as good as: Gone Home (which, it really could have been)
To be fair, the ending: which I looked up on Youtube, seems pretty good.

Progress: Got a bit into the Star Haven.