EDENGATE: The Edge of Life

Edengate: The Edge of Life is an extremely linear game. There's only ever one way to go as you travel through corridors and from one room to another, first in an apparently abandoned hospital, and then in a vast and seemingly endless bioengineering facility. You spend a brief time outside, which is cluttered with abandoned vehicles, but again, there's always only one way to go, i.e. the next building you need to enter. Your character is a young scientist named Mia, who is alone in these buildings, with the exception of an occasional ghost boy who pops up throughout the game, but other than that, there is no character interaction. The occasional dialog you hear comes in the form of "memories." There are only a few very simple and very short puzzles (or tasks to solve) for which you'll find the answers to from notes you pick up, so you won't be expending a lot of brain power in this game. The only thing the game requires of you is your observance, especially if you're going for the achievements. If you're not after achievements, just play the game and don't worry if you miss an item here and there. Very few items contribute to the story or are needed to solve something, such as a password. There are a lot of notes, leaflets, magazines, and books to collect, graffiti to observe, and the items you need to interact with in order to obtain the collectible memories. Most items are very easy to spot with a little white circle in front of them, or a white cloud-like appearance for the memories, however, a few can be easily missed if you're not looking everywhere. All items and memories are required to gain 100% achievements, however, if you miss anything, there is a Chapter Select feature, however, that's only available at the end of the game. There's also a trophy gallery you can access through the main menu which displays all of the items and memories you earned for each chapter, and it's pretty easy to see where you missed something, so you can go back to that chapter and collect the item(s) you missed. The gallery doesn't show you what item(s) you missed, but you'll have a pretty good idea where the items are by the placement next to items you found, because as I mentioned earlier the game is very linear. I missed 3 items out of a few dozen items needed to collect in the game, but fortunately, they were all in the same chapter, and I was able to go back and clean up pretty quickly to get 100% achievement. As far as the story goes, well... I don't know, it was very confusing to me, and I thought it left a lot of unanswered questions, like "Where is everybody?" and "What exactly happened?" and "What really happened to Mia in the end?" and "Was this just a dream?" The dialog you hear retold in the memories is very vague, which was my biggest complaint, because it's hard to know what's going on. However, despite all the issues I mentioned, I still liked the game. I still had a good time with it. Overall, it was decent enough, and quite relaxing. You can go at your own pace, and though some of the screenshots and promo videos might lead one to believe it's a horror, it really isn't. There were no jumpscares at all. I'm not sure how long it would take to complete in one uninterrupted run-through, but I would say approximately 1.5 to 2 hours. Steam shows I spent 10 hours in-game, however, that included about 6 or 7 somewhat lengthy pauses. I never shut down a game I'm in the middle of, and I pause frequently to go deal with stuff. I just know it's a pretty short game, but for the price, I'm not complaining. I got it on discount, and I recommend anyone who wishes to play to try and wait for it to go on sale.

good game