ASTRA : Era Of Anguish

pretty fun addition to a world that I hope is expanded upon! I enjoyed it quite a bit and would've definitely been happy purchasing it if I hadn't received a key.

The complex and deep plot drove me to tears. It was THAT good.

Both a rocky proof of concept and something of an abstract art piece; within the first 30 minutes you hold onto hope that it is going to be higher concept than it actually is but every mechanic simply exists as a vehicle to get you further along the plot which has some intriguing thematic intersections but ultimately is just hardly even a story. I think this is the kind of dev that I will check back in on in ten years when they eventually release something that cracks the zeitgeist but until then it's really hard to call this anything other than a half-baked meme game for an audience of one. Seeing how the dev jumps concepts and half bakes all of them I think it'll take a while before they settle down with an idea they choose to nurture in earnest but when that happens I think all of the dev's personal weirdness will either catalyze into something very outsider art and perfect or metastasize into something alien and antagonistic to a fault. I love art that hates when you play it- it's one of my favorite genres- but there's nothing here that rewards you for cutting your teeth and gums against it.