All the Delicate Duplicates

6/10 All the Delicate Duplicates is basically a walking simulator in which your character's reality appears to be shattered. Your character has the ability to move between "realities" at will, and you will find that certain objects can transport you to different time periods in the character's life. In addition, certain memories and statements have such significance that they are physically overlayed over your environment. For instance, in one section of the game, an enormous chess piece slowly shifts through the hallway in your home. All the Delicate Duplicates plays with a lot of interesting ideas. Although the game didn't really add up to much for me, it brought to mind various media. For instance, the modernist authors (James Joyce/Willam Faulkner/Virgina Woolf) often demonstrated the way that the past can be the present, in terms of making decisions and constructing ourselves. In some ways, All the Delicate Duplicates toys with this idea as well. Our dead parents and grandparents still affect our lives, and we see them reflected everywhere. In addition, one theme reminded me of the film Arrival, based off of the book by Ted Chiang. A piece of knowledge can be so powerful that simply knowing it can change reality, like the language gifted by the alien race. Mo, a character who has ostensibly left a box of warped glass bottles to her "relatives", seems to have made such a discovery. Unfortunately, I felt that the ability to shift in time wasn't explained well. When using the "T" command to switch, I never knew quite where the game would take me or why I had this ability in the first place. I also didn't like that it was so easy to miss content. With such a short experience, designed with care, I'd prefer the ability to more thoroughly explore the environment. I had to play through the game twice to see everything I wanted to see, and some of the content (Charlotte's drawings) were quite intriguing. All the Delicate Duplicates presents a good deal of food for thought, though I was a little disappointed by the ending. If you're generally a fan of walking simulators and environmental storytelling, I can give the game a cautious recommendation.

Played through the beta demo of this a while ago and finally bought a copy. Great to see how beautiful and sad it is so far with only skimming the surface. Looking forward to going through it again and working out things like what's with those vanishing and reappearing words in the backstory part.

I guess this is what the kids today call being woke, right? If it is, then sign me up. This is flipping [i]fantastic[/i].

I can say that although I couldnt get my head around this... it is a great game! Maybe that statement is kinda like the Game... an Oxymoron? If you are thinking of purcahing this you have to ask a couple of questions.... Here is my experience https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYFd9JScrgMT1MuHGwhyDdg I can say that I had [b]NO[/b] idea with what was going on. But I know that if I opened my mind to it and looked under the hood, there was something far deeper than what I was looking at. YOU HAVE TO BE OPEN TO USING YOUR HEAD with this one. Its not a shoot'm-up. its not a AAA, its a very deep psychological game. Question is.... is that what you are looking for?

If you're expecting a story rich game, do not buy this. Gameplay consist solely of just walking around and picking up items to look at them. It feels like project from a student thrown together in a few weekends with the intent to try and make the game deep or something, it feels more like /r/Im14AndThisIsDeep because it contains more or less nothing. It is just trying to use already existing tropes here and there to make you think "omg... wow.... this is so deep" when in fact it is not, it is nonsensical garbage made up and it doesn't mean anything, with dumb graphical effects to make you feel as if it is such a trippy and 'woah' game. Think Dear Esther, which is made by students just huffing their own farts but at least they [i]tried[/i] to achieve something, but without any story at all and instead occasionally some trope happens, you can just imagine the students faces: https://i.imgur.com/gSa3rdX.png - "They just don't get it" while huffing their own farts. The positive reviews are almost giving me 2nd-hand embarrassment. People are acting as if this is some amazing "WOW" game and being blown away by simple, garbage 'psychedelic' effects. Any person that is fully developed and self-aware cannot play something like this and see it as some amazing wow-factor philosophically deep game, it isn't at all. The game is laden with motion blur, over-exaggerated blooming and other garbage effects. Even if it was completely different and was half-decent, 8$ for a copy-pasted asset game is ridiculous. No options menu, like, literally no options or settings menu exists. Weird to not have controller support in a game like this, it would be incredibly easy to add. The 'Partial Controller Support' tag is a lie. [h1]Curator page[/h1] [i]If you liked this review or otherwise found it helpful in deciding whether or not to buy this game, feel free to follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/29162366/]my Curator page[/url].[/i]

This is a game that rewards multiple play throughs and stopping to digest the content. The more you invest in this game the more you will get back from it. The story is engaging and the environment is different to anything else I've seen before. Definitely worth while.

Pick your truth: * This is a tale of communicable mental illness. [spoiler]A husband has his wife committed, then slowly goes insane (with guilt?).[/spoiler] Pros: * Awesome story and portrayal of altered perceptions. * Much of the more confusing pieces are in random text, which you have to manually sort out. Cons: * Confusing story and random scrawlings, which make you think. * This is a confusing ride, full of lies and half-truths. [spoiler]The wife worked for a cult-y company, and her husband ill-advisedly read her work then went nuts.[/spoiler] Pros: * Awesome story and portrayal of altered perceptions. * Confusing story and random scrawlings, which make you think. Cons: * Much of the more confusing pieces are in random text, which you have to manually sort out. [spoiler]ROT-13 for teh win:[/spoiler] Gurer'f yvrf, unys yvrf, naq qnzarq puvpxra genpxf npebff gur zvaq juvpu yrnq gb envaqebc ubefrurnq oyvmmneq jbeqf naq ragvpr gur vaabprag vagb orvat fgnyxrq ol navzngr purff cvrprf bs RIVY! (gur pbashfvat znqarff bs juvpu, vapvqragnyyl, nyfb znxrf vg rnfl gb zvf-ernq gur fho-cybg naq oryvrir gung vg'f zreryl nobhg enzcntvat obggyrf shyy bs Xyrvaarff naq xvggr--- [h]fgbc[/h] gung, jr GNYXRQ nobhg guvf!) Gur jvsr jbexrq sbe n oyrrqvat-rqtr pbzcnal juvpu oebxr tebhaq va pebff-qvzrafvbany erfrnepu, naq ure uhfonaq vyy-nqivfrqyl ernq ure jbex - juvpu gura fhpxrq uvf zvaq naq gurve qnhtugre'f zvaq vagb rira qrrcre ernyzf bs jbeyqf bs urnegnpur naq enintvat pybhqf bs wnttrq-rqtrq ireovpnoontr. Cebf: * Ubyq bagb lbhe urnq, orpnhfr gur gbc bs vg'f tbvat gb or hafperjrq naq fung vagb. * Gur enaqbz fpenjyvatf npghnyyl ZRNA fbzrguvat. GUVAX nobhg gurz! (ohg jngpu bhg, orpnhfr gurl znl or ernqvat [o]lbh[/o] gbb) * Gur zber pbashfvat cvrprf' enaqbz grkg, juvpu lbh unir gb znahnyyl fbeg bhg, cebivqr fbzr bs gur zbfg vagrerfgvat uvagf nf gb jung'f tbvat ba. Bs pbhefr, gur orfg bar vf bayl ivfvoyr ng gur irel raq bs gur tnzr. 9/10 - The game is short, even if you go digging for details, but it's well worth it if you like finding your own truths.

A friend recommended I try this and at 1st it wasn’t all that, gave it a quick go, getting to the end, or what I guessed was the end in just under 30, impressed by the atmosphere but not sold on the story. Then I let it sit with me for a bit, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how John had messed up his daughter, or she’d messed him up too, and them both being obsessed with Mo. So I gave it another proper run though, didn’t rush through it this time, and, wow, now I can see what all the fuss is over, all the chess bits linked to mental illness, and scifi aspects, and time loops showing more and more item reveals, and the ending just being incredibly sad. I won’t say more about the ending, but if you take the time to go through it all, you’ll see what I mean.

Lacklustre and uninspired exploration game in the vein of Dear Esther or The Old City Leviathan. No sense of mystery nor any David-Lynch-like intrigue. The art style and graphics are overall interesting.

This. This game right here. Characters, world. A mind in pieces. The story was huge. A tragedy. One thing is, words need more time on screen. They disappear real fast. But gorgeous. And tragic.