Downward Spiral: Horus Station

HMD: Oculus Rift Controllers: Oculus Touch Gameplay Is King. After playing just one hour I've concluded that I'll be following this developer closely. Why's that? Gameplay, to be frank, there are not too many games these days that ooze gameplay but DS:HS does and we should thank the developers for that. MY very first reaction was how well the game channeled Alien Isolation, they both offer the feeling of complete and utter isolation yet with a growing feeling of confidence and empowerment as the player starts to learn how to manipulate their envornment employing the tools and weapons at their disposal. The mechanics of the game are top hole, especially for an unknown dev, with excellent attention to the science. Of course one of the elements 3rd Eye Studio's had to ignore was reaction mass when it comes to weapons. Usually when you fire a weapon in space unless its a weak laser you will always fly backwards; however, the devs ignored that particular physics lesson and thank god they did because it has enabled them to design and offer up a plethora of really cool weapons as well as some interesting tools that you can use in fascinating ways to complete your mission. Deep End: No backstory, just you waking up after an obviously ongoing catastrophic event in space. With very little hand-holding DS: HS throws you into the deep end, the player is confronted with varied robotic guardians in an extremely hostile environment, from small, swift bots to massive sentries whose single shot can vaporize you instantly. You learn how to manipulate your surroundings even going as far as interacting with the space station to the extent of manouvering base airlocks into position! Truly, the £14.99 was the best cash I've ever spent on a game, was it light on story? Yes; however, I hold out hope that as the developer becomes better known I am sure we can expect future games that will include all of the above plus your usual triple A fundamentals including hiring writers and voice actors to flesh out the story and universe. I thoroughly recommend both this game (and the prequel) as they are quite obviously a labour of love and deserve all the support they can get from the VR-gaming community.

[h1]Reviewed using HTC Vive Pro[/h1] 🚀Sci-fi Adventure Zero-G on abandoned ship except for military-grade robots. Those Roomba bots did a great clean up❗ Got boring pretty quick for me maybe co-op or online modes will help it out 👨‍🚀 ❌ Graphics see no difference between High to Ultra ❌To few side tasks with floating stuff a disappointment ❌ Playing solo was vary sterile to me Best in Co-op ✔️ Sounds are fantastic sets the tone nicely ✔️ Controls fit well for the concept here ✔️ Fingers Crossed online doesn't come in DOA Both Horus Station and Prologue needs to have more content to hold my interest. Opening door after door hitting buttons or flipping switches while along the way shooting drones Gets BORING. Despite glowing reviews you might read about it 🙃 https://youtu.be/s5THVN9bOt8

Visually it looks great. I really like the visuals and the whole artstyle. The sound design is also cool. The first time you enter space, all the ambient music stops and you hear nothing. About the story I cant tell much yet. It seems its a game where you have to analyze yourself what happened with all the computer screens on the station. Some like that subtle storytelling, others might want to have it straight to them. The movement system works great. Compared to the prototype you have some sort of "rope cannon" and you can move quickly with that. Gunplay feels good. Lets come to the most important part to me. The atmosphere is really great. It really feels like you are alone with the robots on the station. Whenever I entered a new area, I was always wary of the surroundings and checked before I entered a new area. It feels more like a horror game and reminded me a lot of Alien Isolation in that regard. I can only recommend it. Update: Finished Chapter 4. The storytelling is really really subtle. People who like to have their story told directly, wont be happy. The objectives, the order you do them in, the areas you visit are all important to enjoy the subtle storytelling. Will update again when I finish the game. Update 2: Finished the game. Atmosphere is great over the whole game. Later areas can be stunning. The game itself is fun and imo a must-have in VR. Now my main complaint: Storytelling is too subtle. It actually fits the whole narrative, especially in VR. You are alone on the station and you have to figure out what happened and what the purpose of Horus station is. If you dont really pay attention though or wont read screens, you lose a lot clues as to what happened. I think I kinda know what happened up to chapter 7, but after that I am not sure anymore.

[h1]Experienced on the Oculus Quest 2[/h1] You can view my review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/xl16AUc515U Game is an absolute steal when it goes on sale as low as $6 USD (I bought it for $12 USD). This is a zero-gravity, space-themed narrative driven walking simulator where the narrative is told through environmental story-telling. You'll see locked hatches, dead bodies, powered down halls, & a station physically torn apart. You figure out what happened by exploring the area and seeing the aftermath of the event. If you're expecting Lone Echo Triple A production values, then you'll be sorely disappointed. This game does not have high production values with no VOs or really any written story. The inside of the space station actually does look nice although the game could have used a little more variety there. The outside locations, however, do not look as good. There is nice sound work with appropriate sounds and musical soundtrack. There's also some neat little toys and zero gravity to play in. There's this plunger / grappling hook type tool that you can point and shoot and you'll be pulled towards it. There's also a vacuum type tool where you can propel yourself forward quickly. There's also lots of guns. There's a fair amount of shooting involved (and also just avoiding the bigger drones at first). The puzzles here are very simple and straight-forward. The game is running on the Unity Engine. On my RTX 3080, I was getting a steady 90 fps. There aren't very many settings available, but at least you can choose the low, medium, high, or ultra graphic settings. Locomotion is the standard zero-g type deal where you grab on to stuff to pull yourself forward or push off of objects (along with the tools). You do have snap turning available as well. Game took me about 4.5 hours to complete. I did experience one serious bug where after inserting a disk, the event did not occur that was supposed to. I had to quit and restart (after wasting time trying to figure out where to go but after seeing a YT video I saw that my game was indeed bugged). Also, there's these loading screens that happen pretty often and are annoying because it feels like your game is about to crash. Overall, I do recommend this game, but it's not for everyone. There's a lot of repetition in the gameplay. I could have sworn at one point that I was repeating a section because the gameplay actions and the corridors looked exactly the same as a prior section I had been in. However, the game is very atmospheric and using the toys in zero-G is pretty fun for the most part. Luckily, there are some change-ups to the gameplay near the end. This is one of the better walking simulators in VR, but it could have been so much better with more variety & higher production values. [b]Rate 7/10.[/b] [quote]Please consider joining my Steam Curator Group. You can join here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Oculus_WMR [/quote]

I'm about 60% through the game, played one act per day and have enough information to offer insight. For the price, despite everything I'm about to say, I still recommend it, but there are some glaring laziness issues that annoyed the hell out of me to the point where I don't know if I'll bother proceeding past act 4 (out of 7 I think there is). The Steam stats on achievements suggest most other players stopped playing before the end too, probably for the same reason. Namely because I'm really bored and uninspired at this point. These gripes are purely my own personal opinion, but I suspect they're shared by many. The first few acts when it's new are quite good, you really feel like you're in the setting and it's very immersive; but going forward I quickly got the impression of laziness. Pure and utter laziness on the part of the developers of which there really isn't an excuse. I'll explain in more detail rather than just throw out a general complaint though in the interest of fairness and understanding. I truly believe my critique here should be taken constructively, rather than just moaning. First off, the lack of diversity in the environment. It's all the same. The puzzles you encounter going forward are all the same, to the point where you feel like you're just grinding through something that exists purely for the sake of it, not because it's logical based on the setting. It's like the entire space station is made up of a half dozen architectural prefabs. The notion of "environment-based storytelling" is a cop out. What that really means here, is the sheer lack of bothering to include any cohesive story line or writing. That's a genuine tragedy and such a missed opportunity, because all the ingredients are in place to really have leveraged that. There is really nothing to tell you what happened to the station because nothing is logical or makes sense in the context of a bigger picture, so it's near impossible to derive your own plausible conclusions from the environment alone. For example, you'll find things like clipboards floating around. They're all blank. Apparently this space station crew was incapable of using the pens you'll find floating near the clipboards. Those blank clipboards were opportunities to really lay some icing on the cake and build drama or empathy with the crew. You'll come across audio recorders, which only play back one of two things - cliche classical music or static. That's it. To the point where you've literally zero reason to inspect them. Would it really have been difficult to add a couple more sound files to the build? I can't help but see that as a missed opportunity too. They could have contained audio-logs left by the crew to give a sense of mood, drama or any sort of indication of the fate that befell the station. But nope. That's lazy. Sorry guys, but that is REALLY lazy game design and it annoyed me as a result. That was a blank canvas that could easily have been utilised to lay things on thick and build mood/atmosphere very easily for minimal extra effort. Then there is the actual environmental components. For example, finding bodies of dead astronauts floating around, with zero indication of how/why they died. Since they feel like they're just randomly placed for the sake of it, they might as well not be there. You feel zero empathy for them that you would otherwise have felt if there was information in the same locale about what befell them. It also makes no sense, since you'll find dead drones next to them - who destroyed them? Not the dead astronaut, and you never feel like something else is responsible. Then there are the drones themselves, boring, uninspiring, feeling like they exist purely for something to do and to justify having guns in the game. Most of which are pointless. The nailgun-esque gun you get early on is pretty much all you need, except perhaps for a snipery sort of leaf-blower looking thing you need at various stages to snipe soft-spots on the really big drones (which start off early on as really scary, but quickly only p*ss you off instead). The puzzles are also boring, repetitive and since there is zero context, don't make you feel like they have any particular purpose than to slow you down. This could have been really fleshed out with some writing or purpose introduced, but nope. That said, the game is quite beautiful. The graphics are lovely and the quality of the visuals is great, if repetitive. The level designs are also repetitive, with new layouts being few and far between. Also the lockers are always empty. For a large space station that is seemingly abandoned, the crew apparently managed to empty all their belongings first. So while you can open lockers to look inside, you learn very fast that there is zero point in doing so, because you can safely presume there will be nothing inside any of them. There are lots of buttons, switches and interactables, but 99% do nothing. I'd have liked to have approached a terminal, spent time reading some internal messages among the crew, general status reports, problems they were having etc, to feel like I was actually gazing into a pending catastrophe that was affecting real people. Yeah that would have been cliche too, but in the context of this environment would have worked even better than many other games who angle that approach. There are moments that are particularly good and well executed too (which I can't go into for risk of spoiling), the trouble is they're few and far between in the grand scheme of things. That said, I'm still really optimistic about the developers since this seems to be their first major release, so I can forgive a lot of the above. It's the missed opportunities that would have been easy to implement that is my main complaint, it could have been so much more with minimal additional work and a little quality writing. The game is nice to look at, it is very nice to behold and all the ingredients are there, it's just a shame the recipe didn't fully utilise what was otherwise clearly possible. If they make a sequel or go on to make similar, I really hope they listen to the feedback, because if they do - this developer is fully capable of some mind blowing work, I've no doubts about that, I'm quite excited to see what these guys go on to create going forward. This is why I still recommend it. Because it IS actually a good game overall, it's just the little details (or lack thereof) that prevents it being a 'great' game. For the price it is, I'd still definately recommend it, but don't expect the depth and meat of Lone Echo. I recorded each chapter as I progressed, and this is where love turned to frustration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoCXcVtLhYk

You wake up in an abandoned space station, what happened? how did you get there? its up to you to figure it out... The story is told via enviromental clues, you see dead bodies, destroyed robots, part of the station broken apart out the window, and a planet close by... While the game has an option to make it a "walking simulator", i chose the middle option to have enemies, and there are a few of them, some different from each other where you have to take different approaches to kill them, you get a bunch of weapons, but the game really is a story told by looking around and piecing it together. The movement method is really well done, you are in 0g, so you have to pull yourself to where you want to go, later on you get a grappling hook to make traversing the station easier, then again a bit later you get an "air pistol" that lets you gain momentum and move towards where you aim it. The environment is great, the audio excellent, and the visuals quite good, as is the story telling, while it felt a bit repetitive at times, it goes with the theme. While the ambience is eerie, this is not a horror game, there are no jump scares or anything like that. Took me a little more than 4hrs to finish this game solo, and what a good experience it was, i finished it all in 1 session and im glad i did. Recommended for anyone wanting a desolate and mysterious experience.

Floating around in a huge eerie spacestation using the grapple (and other things) is surprisingly effective to completely avoid motion sickness! Not only that, but it’s also a lot of fun, and, creepy at the same time. The mix of exploration, suspense and a bit of shooting works really well. A wonderful exploration and a must-play if you like single player sci-fi in VR.

Do not buy for Coop experience. Everytime a player has a disconnect, a chapter restart is required. No way to reconnect ongoing sessions or save game. Also several bugs have not been treated in the main menu and require physical keyboard input

Очень атмосферная игра. Не понимаю почему так мало отзывов. Это конечно не Халф лайф Аликс. Но она и не претендует: Плюсы: 1- Графика не плоха (весьма не плоха), глаз не режет, но и райских красот не выдает. 2 - Атмосфера. Это один из трех главных плюсов. Ощущение заброшенной базы передано поразительно. 3- Невесомость. Я играл в разное VR. Плавать летать орлом и парить в открытом космосе. Однако я ещё не встречал настолько удавшейся невесомости. Передвигаться с помощью магнитного гарпуна, столкнуться с приборной панелью и если не успел ухватиться, то лететь дальше... В общем невесомость здесь ощущается чуть ли не всем телом. 4 - Оружие. Разное и что очень важно в руке чувствуется по-разному (для вр проектов это прям очень весомо). И к слову, оружием тут выступают строительные инструменты :). Гвоздометы, энергетическое шило и т.д. Привет Дед Спейс. Конечно прям такого резака как в ДС тут нет, но те пушки, что имеются поначалу приятно удивляют. 5 - Враги и дроны валят тебя с 1-2 выстрелов, что добавляет некоего драйва и заставляют действовать расчетливо. Минусы: 1 - Сюжета как такового нет. А я очень люблю сюжетные игры. Но здесь за сюжет работает всё та же атмосфера и это получается у нее отлично. 2 - Это не чистокровный VR контроллеры работают безотказно, но вот после паузы игра бывает крошится. Благо сейвы очень частые. Да вот и всё. Ценителям фантастики и заброшенных космических корыт брать обязательно! Свою порцию космо-отчужденности вы получите с добавкой ;)

Very enjoyable and anticipating story, (strongly recommend to play with a friend) but the ending as seen in the prologue was left of on a dark screen. Today I finished this game and even after the part of the prologue, the dark, fading screen was still there. Though it was a fun story, would recommend to purchase.