CONSORTIUM Remastered

A game where your decisions really matter. The playthrough is not very long, about 3-4 hours, but your desire to play again is guaranteed. Very unique game, if you like story-rich games, you should try it.

Boring

I got it to load up into the game one time. Just once, other time the load into the Universe just spun for almost an hour. Then the power flickered. Got tons of Unreal Engine crash reports trying to even start it up again. Re-installed the game, but now back to the same load for 30+ mins. It's on an SSD. Sorry guys, fix your game--I appreciate that you gave it freely, but would like to re-experience it since it's been like 10 years since I last tried the original. Edit: With the help of a dev I got it running fine so far. Thanks!

Updated review, i originally voted this as not recommended on 08/06/2024 due to controls/rebinding not working, either not letting a key bey bound to (despite it being the 1-0 row) or controls claiming to be rebound and not... actually changing. The developer since changed this. It's an interesting game, focused heavily around a singular story with a lot of choices that lead down different paths. I did one playthrough and died partway; the style isn't exactly aimed at me but i can see other players digging deep into this. Considering that, its reasonable price point and t he fact the developer actually read, replied to and -fixed issues-, i'm leaving this review as a positive one.

I like it - good narrative with 4th wall breaking moments in the story. A few buggy moments in the game, but it doesn't ruin the gameplay.

Am I supposed to care about ugly Metaverse blobs with numbers instead of names? Even proceduraly generated RimWorld blobs have proper names.

CONSORTIUM is a fun little experiment in first-person interactive narrative game with a sophisticated dialogue system, extra layered 4th wall breaking narrative and great presentation (mostly in terms of voiceover). It's hard to decompose, but what makes this game stand out is its free flowing natural dialogue system. The narrative seems quite branching, and your available responces are fluid, allowing for realistic sounding conversations. You often talk with more than one character, with some characters joining in mid-conversation, and it feels a lot better than static one-on-one conversations you often have in AAA games. The narrative itself is quite deep, requiring you to pay close attention to the words spoken, and often guessing, gleaning important information from between lines. The story of such depth is inevitabely short, and sadly still buggy, even in its remastered version. And due to the criptic nature of the narrative, you're never sure if the bug you encouter is intended or not. During one of the training battles fell under the textures and found myself on a platform with a friendly robot. There was no way out, and I really had to guess if it's some technical stage, an easter egg or a legitimate secret. Whatever the case, I still had to reload and to lose some progress. One of my biggest gripes with CONSORTIUM is its slow start. A brilliant experimental narrative game starts basically with a combat tutorial, which is not at all exciting. It does include one prior dialogue, but it does not do the best job of presenting its best features. I've started the game several times, and only when I pushed through for an hour in one sitting, I really appreciated its gameplay and narrative. Still, CONSORTIUM is one of a kind experience, and I would wholely recommend it to anyone who loves narrative games and is not afraid of some jank.