Don't read if you don’t want location spoilers (no story spoilers).
Doctor Who: The Edge of Time is a short, decent game if you're a fan of Doctor Who, but unfortunately, it's not a very polished experience.
There were frequent issues with the controls, sometimes I couldn’t grab objects because the game required extreme precision, even when it felt like I had grabbed the items correctly. At one point, I had to restart a chapter because an elevator door wouldn’t open at all , but it worked as expected and opened automatically on my second attempt.
The most disappointing part was the sound design. Many sound effects were either completely wrong or missing altogether. What’s one of the most iconic sounds every Doctor Who fan knows? Here’s a hint: the TARDIS materializing. In this game, it just sounded completely off and felt anticlimactic. Worse yet, when you're inside the TARDIS and it starts up its engine to travel, there’s no sound at all. You can see the center column moving up and down, but it’s completely silent. That was so disappointing! The music also wasn’t from the show, or at least, I didn’t recognize any of it. It just felt very generic.
EDIT: I watched a YouTube-playthrough, and it seems the sound effects were there, and sounded just about correct. Either way, they didn't work for me in my playthrough.
On the plus side, they did get Jodie Whittaker to voice the 13th Doctor, and she does a good job with the script she was given. However, every voiced character is just that, a voice, with no in-game persona. I understand this was probably due to budget constraints, but it still could have been handled much better.
In terms of gameplay, there are some okay moments and some not-so-great ones. The first area you get to has some okay puzzles, and I was hopeful that it would only get better from there, but sadly the puzzles just become easier and easier, and just worse made. I really wish they had expanded on the puzzles more, maybe a little bit like The Room, and also incorporated more elements from the show in the puzzles. It also doesn’t help that there’s a voice constantly feeding you hints, even before you’ve had a chance to look around. This is one of the worst examples I’ve seen of a game not trusting the player to figure things out. I’m not sure if the hints could be turned off, so maybe that’s on me, but this was very frustrating.
I was also disappointed by what you actually do in each chapter. There are some cool scenarios, but they’re completely undermined by bad design choices. Again, I assume this was due to a very limited budget, but that’s not really an excuse in my opinion.
Additionally, I played this on Steam, and as far as I know, this is the only version that didn’t receive the DLC that other platforms got. I played the game on a Quest 3 via Virtual Desktop, and the achievements didn’t unlock at all. Steam didn’t even register any playtime for the game, so this might have been a Virtual Desktop issue.
Conclusion
As a Doctor Who fan, there were definitely some high points, but also some very low ones. If you're a Whovian, then only buy this on a sale. Overall: 5/10. This would have been a in-between recommended and not recommended review for me.
