5.5 hours played
Written 4 months ago
This is an incredibly ambitious game made by an incredibly small team- considering that this game is *incredibly* impressive. While it's not quite perfect, it's a good experience and a good start for an interesting series. If you are looking for a complex philosophical narrative with several timelines you can seamlessly jump between,
I have several small issues with the game, but only a few truly impact the experience.
First, the most forgivable issue is the lack of visuals around character death. While there are several reasons for it (adding at least a dozen or so CGs would be timely and costly), it can feel... odd after you notice how we almost never see anyone's actual body when death is fairly frequent. At first I assumed it was some kind of sensitivity to violence thing, and then we got some in detail death descriptions and a rare violent CG and it feels very... tell don't show at times. There were times where I fully lost tract of who died and had to go back to the logs just because I couldn't remember and some for of visual indication would have helped. Overall this is not a big deal, and the art that exists is very pleasant, but if this game is ever remade/remastered I believe it would make a big help to establish a stronger tone to show some of the bodies and add a few more art assets for clarity.
For achievement hunters- don't! It's not worth it. You will probably have to replay each of the puzzle rooms at least three or four times (and some novel sections as many as eight) to read all of the possible dialogue options that are required for the several achievements the require you to read all of the text in the game. I went back and choose basically every alternate option whenever I could, and I barely had half by the time I got to the true end.
My only true issue for this game is the writing. I do think the plot is generally good and fairly thought out... but the dialog and tone can be weird or almost unbearable at times. Some characters will dance around light curse words or intense subjects like a preschool teacher and then a chapter later curse like a sailor and then make some wild sexual innuendos. It's mostly our narrative character Simon that's the issue (he is incredibly inconsistent and often a bit unlikable) but its an issue with most characters. He a bit of a pervert, a coward, weird (he makes more than one weird joke about his unrequited crushes weight for example) and a wallows about several things that just are (partially to entirely) his fault... I see the inspiration (If you know you know) but he was maybe not the best choice as an MC. Almost everyone has some faults though, from making very specific references, making unbearable puns, or spouting over thought experiments that they do not have any business knowing... but while the frequency is often enough I can't call the writing.. good.
Finally, the puzzles. This game has a habit of solving puzzles for you. If an object needs a specific item iteration for you to proceed, the game will complete that interaction as long as you have the item... even if it's your first time interacting with the object. Other puzzles will simply be auto-completed by the MC as he describes how he did so without any input on your end. Since some of the puzzles we do have agency over are often misleading in their instructions, this isn't ideal but it's not the worst. The next game almost over-corrects this issue so... hand in there!
While I will complain, I also don't think it's SO bad that it's worth skipping the game. Also, the newer game has some similar issues but is much less frequent and far improved, so I'd argue it's worth sticking out for!
