ASA: A Space Adventure - Remastered Edition

A Myst-like game in an omnipresent 2001 a space odyssey atmosphere. This review is about the RE version. I am surprised that this game has so few reviews with many negative ones. Except for the voice acting, I found that it was quite an impressive and enjoyable puzzle game. The story was pretty interesting and directly inspired from 2001. You are an astronaut. While working outside your space station, you see an enigmatic black cube floating close by. Intrigued, you leave the safety of your station, trying desperately to catch it. Finally reaching it, you find yourself low on oxygen, unable to go back to your station. You lose consciousness, and wake up on a mysterious alien spaceship, named the ark by a previously rescued astronaut. Having no idea where you are, you start following the notes he left everywhere, trying to uncover the secrets of this spaceship, and maybe find a way to go back home. To advance in the game, you have to solve a wide variety of puzzles (not one puzzle is the same). For this, you will need to read everything you find, and pay careful attention to your whole surrounding. Like Myst, Rhem games and the like, you will have to take notes. I never took so many screenshots in a game. Clues are just everywhere and can be anything. I had a lot of fun solving the puzzles. Puzzles complexity is diverse and ranges from easy to impossible (for one puzzle). Be ready to do a lot of trials and errors to solve some of the puzzles. Persistence is a requirement. There is just one puzzle at the end that is way too hard to figure out by yourself. In addition to the alien spaceship, you also have the possibility to explore two planets (and a satellite). Because of the wide diversity of the environment, every rooms, places are different, you never get bored, and are just curious to see where you are going to explore next. There are also two possible endings to choose from. The background music also fits nicely with the surroundings. The only thing I did not like was the voice acting, which I found pretty useless. An option to disactivate it would have been most welcome, or was there? There are two voices in the game, the previously rescued astronaut diary voice, and an AI voice (from your space suit?). First, I did not see the point of having to hear the astronaut voice everytime one clicks on a section of his diary. It's more distracting than anything else, since one reads faster than the guy talks. Also, if you make the mistake of clicking twice on the section you want to read, the reading voice will start twice simultaneously... So, I ended up turning off the sound while reading the diary. And just so you know, you cannot skip the reading part because the diary contains many clues to solve the puzzles. I would recommend reading the story of the other astronaut anyway since it is necessary to understand the plot. Also, I did not really understand the true purpose of the AI voice. Was it intended to give us hints, or simply to keep us company while being all alone on an unknown spaceship? It could have been seriously improved, since most of what she said was pretty obvious or just made me feel like a small kid: I find a scalpel, and the AI tells me "leave it here, you could cut yourself!"; I look over some handrail, and she tells me: "be careful not to fall!". Oh well... It would have been great if it could have been funny... In all, while looking past the voice acting part, I most definitely recommend this game. Puzzles were fun, the exploration and story quite interesting. I am looking forward to the next games of this developper. ------------------------------- The game ran flawlessly on a windows 7 laptop. But here are a few glitches I encountered: - Simultaneous reading voices can be heard if you click several times on the same diary section (you are not supposed to do that, but well I did it...). - on Planet Kepler, in one of the houses, I first found a locked door with a keypad on the side asking to solve some mysterious equation. When I came back later to try to solve it, the locked door and keypad had disappeared. At their place was a shelf. I first thought it was a different house looking the same, but I looked everywhere and never found the first house again. If anyone has any hint about this first mysterious house, I would be interested to know. - outside the spaceship, after coming back from the satellite Cobalt, if you decide to turn around, the satellite is gone. You have to go back inside the spaceship, then exit again for the satellite to be there again. - after advancing in the game, some objects previously found, reappeared (copper wire, dark rock, bird fruit) and could be then needlessly used again. ---------------- Note: All negative aspects cited above about the voice acting have been resolved in the next opus of the serie: Catyph.

A pretty neat adventure game inspired by classic FPA games like Myst and RHEM. It lacks some of the polish that those games had, but still has an interesting story, beautiful environments, and some clever (albeit easy) puzzles. Pros: +Extremely good prerendered animations and screens +Unique sci-fi story told through diaries and the environment +Very nice soundtrack +Most of the puzzles are good Cons -Puzzles are mostly very easy... -...with the exception of one puzzle near the end which makes absolutely no sense. Even after reading a walkthrough, I still didn't understand it. (this was the only puzzle I needed a walkthrough for) -The game lacks polish; most of the animations don't "line up" with the screens correctly, so they just suddenly cut and start which breaks immersion. -On the subject of polish, I found a prerender which contains a texture that has a very clear watermark on top of it. This kind of stuff really shouldn't slip through. -Many animations show the player character from the third person, and some of the screens are shown from camera angles that the player character clearly couldn't be standing from. This isn't a big deal, it's just one of my pet-peeves as it breaks immersion for me. If you take a look at RHEM and Myst, these games always remain in first-person and all of the prerendered stills are always taken from camera angles that make sense for the player to be standing. Despite some of its flaws, ASA is still a great adventure game. Definitely going to be giving the sequel, Catyph, a shot after this.

I almost gave up on the game after the cool video introduction. But I stayed with it and I am glad I did. It's like 2001: A Space Odyssey meets Myst. I liked the story that developed, but navigation took a little time to master. I thought there was enough information given in clues as the story developed to solve most puzzles. Had to look at a walkthrough when I got stuck in the game twice to keep me going. Overall a satisfying ending and a good overall experience.

ASA : A Space Adventure est doté de nombreuses qualités, surtout depuis l’édition Remastered qui se voit pourvue d’un nouveau moteur graphique et d’une traduction en français qui n’existait pas de base dans la première version. Atypique et doté d’une ambiance réussie appuyée par une bande-son de qualité, il est tout de même à noter qu’ASA est à réserver aux puristes du Myst-like, avec toutes ses forces (énigmes passionnantes, atmosphère mystérieuse) et ses faiblesses (rigidité des déplacements, énigmes passionnantes MAIS d’une difficulté parfois absurde). Bref, à vous de voir mais si vous aimez le genre, nous ne saurions que trop vous conseiller de foncer ! Le test complet sur IndieMag.fr : https://www.indiemag.fr/tests/asa-space-adventure-myst-du-futur

I dont know how people can compare this to Myst. yes Its a point , click and solve type game but thats it. it is no where near as good as Myst. The movments are cumbersome and frustrating. I found it too annoying to play.

*Pollice giallo* Asa è un avventura in prima persona a schermate statiche. Gioco myst-like a tema spaziale. L'inizio è affascinante: ci troviamo in una stazione spaziale (quasi) disabitata, il primo enigma ci richiede di inserire una combinazione usando un sistema numerico alieno; qui si evidenzia la prima caratteristica del gioco: dovrete giocarlo con un taccuino in mano e segnarvi le cose che scoprite, visto che il gioco non fornisce nessun supporto in questo senso. La cosa è semplice all'inizio ma diventa più complicata quando bisogna avere tutto l'alfabeto alieno sott'occhio o una sequenza di 42 numeri(!) da inserire nel giusto ordine. Già da questo potete capire da soli se siete pronti per questo approccio "Old-Shool" o se non avete il tempo o la voglia di sbattevi a questi livelli. Tecnicamente siamo su discreti livelli, per quanto siano antiquate le schermate statiche, generalmente però tutto sembra abbastanza grezzo, e non potrebbe essere altrimenti visto che è un gioco realizzato da una sola persona. La trama è interessante, con qualche richiamo a 2001":Odissea nello spazio". Il problema principale per me sono alcuni degli enigmi veramente troppo estremi, visto che non solo dovremo avere le informazioni giuste nel nostro fido taccuino, ma dovremmo anche ricordaci tutti gli indizi che troviamo nella nostra esplorazione, i quali saranno fondamentali per capire la logica di alcuni enigmi che altrimenti sembreranno del tutto senza senso, rendendo pressoché impossibile ad esempio giocarlo solo nel weekend. Insomma il gioco non è bocciato del tutto, chi ha voglia di dedicarsi e impegnarsi a fondo questo è il gioco giusto, per tutti gli altri il gioco risulterà fin troppo ostico.

very much Myst, but in a different space time. lots of nods to it too lol PROS: - puzzles are logical, you just have to be observant - graphics are a bit aged but not bad, it's not a new title anyway (doesn't affect the game) - i would say it's a no-nonsense game - not a lot of the annoying things-you-have-to-do-before-you-get-to-point-B sort of fillers - I like the music - the story can engage the player, and that makes the ending pretty chilling. CONS: - the directional movement is confusing and quite redundant on some points. mostly confusing. - i would hugely appreciate a note/picture-taking feature. - wish the game's window size can be adjusted. the feature isn't there and my game opened at lower resolution, in a window, and stuck at the upper left, about 3/4s, of my screen (normal reso 1920x1080). don't think there's full-screen adjustment capability either. overall, 7/10

it's a very special game.

beautiful game, highly recommended

Really nice sci-fi adventure story for those who enjoy space themes and narratives. The game is also quite absorbing, creating an atmosphere that gets you playing comfortably immersed in the environment and setting it creates. The music contributes tremendously to that, as well as the good voice acting of the protagonist of the logs you collect. Graphics are ok, but navigating through them feels strange in some instances due to weird angles (images are static in most cases, so is not a problem of camera navigation, rather of artistic choice of perspective). Puzzles are good and interesting in general, making you think quite a bit on how to find the solution. It is one of those 'old school' games that forces you to take notes on paper (or screen shots of a clue with your cellphone in my case, to access relevant information while completing the corresponding puzzle) to be able to complete the difficult ones. I particularly enjoy that, as it makes you think beyond just 'trial and error: click on everything and use every object with each other' Overall, quite a good recommendation, especially for sci-fi and space narrative fans. 4/5 stars.