Faraday Protocol

It's a puzzle game with boring puzzles. The stuff around the game is all interesting, the style, the story (what little there is of it), the game interactions are all decent experiences, but the puzzles the game asks you to solve are dreadfully boring or barely puzzles. Transcribing symbols from one thing to another is a puzzle akin to 'put square peg into square hole', sure, you're making the process of transcribing mildly inconvenient, but that's not really a puzzle and more of a interface problem. Very often the puzzle's 'difficulty' lies in actually finding the interactible element that lets you progress, and some interactible elements are quite small and/or have quite mild differences between active/inactive states, which makes you have to double-check them as you can't trust the visuals. I think I had to actually engage my brain a grand total of one time, and that's only because the game introduced a new concept without explaining it, which is fine, but I really expect to be more mentally challenged by a puzzle game than 1 time in the 4 hours of playtime. The rest of the puzzles, if we ignore the time it took to find all the pieces, are immediately obvious and just take some time to finagle. There are plenty of other 3d puzzler games that are better and more worthy of your time and money.

Faraday Protocol ist ein Rätselspiel der Marke Portal und Co. Man landet auf einem fremden Planeten und soll dort seltsame Strukturen untersuchen. Wieso stehen die hier? Wozu dienen sie? Und was ist hier passiert?Dabei löst man Schritt für Schritt allerlei Rätsel. Unterstützt oder vielleicht eher kontrolliert wird das Ganze von einer KI, die über die Anlage wacht und sich natürlich für klüger hält als der Spieler. Klingt vertraut? Ja, das ist nicht weit weg von Portal. Faraday Protocol nimmt deutlich Anleihen sowohl im Look, als auch im generellen Spielgefühl und selbst die Story erinnert stellenweise an die grosse Vorlage. Allerdings kommt es zu keinem Zeitpunkt an das Niveau von Portal heran. Das macht Faraday Protocol aber noch lange nicht zu einem schlechten Spiel. Tatsächlich ist es handwerklich ziemlich gut gemacht: Die Grafik ist in Ordnung, das Rätseldesign solide. Einige Rätsel sind sehr einfach, andere ganz schön knifflig, aber nie unfair. Unterm Strich ergibt sich ein gutes, angenehm flüssiges Gameplay, das wirklich Spass macht. Die Story bleibt zwar hinter dem Anspruch zurück, ist aber okay, auch wenn das Ende etwas überhastet wirkt. Mit rund 4–5 Stunden Spielzeit hat Faraday Protocol ausserdem genau die richtige Länge für ein oder zwei entspannte Spieleabende. Fazit: Faraday Protocol ist sicher kein „Muss“, aber eine klare Empfehlung für alle, die gerne knobeln und denen Portal und Co gefallen.

My expectations were pretty low, although not perfect, I found myself pleasantly surprised by this game. Before starting the game I glanced at the reviews and found that that despite it generally being rated as very positive, the pool of reviews I was shown were very mixed. I kind of ended up preparing myself for a very mediocre experience that I might not like, but I was still willing to give it a good go. As you might expect, going into games not expecting much usually means enjoying the game more. The first thing I really noticed was the graphics and general setting. Right from the get go the graphics looked quite pretty and I very quickly brought into the aesthetic. It’s art deco meets “alien facility” meets “testing chamber” with a little Ancient Egyptian sculpture/artifact thrown in, which I thought was pretty cool. It has a very similar aesthetic all the way through, it changes a little bit chapter by chapter, but for the most part it’s similar. I don’t think I’ve ever actually played a game with an art deco inspired look to it before so the black walls and gold trim didn’t get boring for me. Levels play similarly to Portal, in that you run through test-chamber-like puzzles to progress forward. You can tell Portal is one of a few inspirations here, as there are a few similarities, but I do feel as though this game has a very different vibe to Portal. Enough so that it can stand on its own. With that said, it definitely feels quite amateur of a game. I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way, there is just something about it that feels like a companies first go at making a game. The developers seem to be a small company, and this does seem to be their only game on Steam, so it kind of checks out. The voice acting, once it started, again gave me that feeling. It’s generally okay, it’s not bad, just amateur. The puzzles in this game were interesting. At first, I wasn’t too sure, but I warmed up to the game before long. It wasn’t too far in before I noticed that there isn’t really any hand holding here. The game introduces new mechanics without explaining them, and you are kind of just left to your own devices to figure them out. I actually didn’t mind as I don’t mind figuring things out, but I could understand this may be frustrating to some people. The main puzzle mechanic in this game is you having a tool that essentially extracts or propulses energy to/from energy sources. It’s a fairly simple concept, but I did enjoy the puzzles all the way through. There was a good mix of things in there and new mechanics were introduced often enough to keep it interesting for me. There is also a lot of puzzles utilising symbols in this game. Sometimes it’s as simple as copying a sequence of symbols on the wall to a lock, and others are a bit more complicated than that. When it comes to difficulty, I saw some reviews claiming it was too hard, others too easy. I can only guess that the difficulty is then just entirely subjective. I personally would say that the puzzles are not overly complicated, for me they weren’t challenging, but they were engaging and at times quite satisfying. In terms of the story, I think this is this game's weakest element. You play as an alien archaeologist exploring what he thinks is an abandoned alien facility. For me, the story was very meh. It portrayed itself to me as a story mashed together quickly by a sci-fi fan who loved the Alien films, the Halo games, and of course, Portal. I wasn’t very invested in the story from the start, but I enjoyed the environment and the puzzles enough that it didn’t matter to me. At a certain point, it felt like science fiction buzzwords were just being thrown around left, right and center. It felt as if the writers were asking themselves how to sound smart and scientific about sci-fi tech/history that doesn’t exist. I’ve always wondered about that myself, in honesty. A great sci-fi will explain a completely made-up futurist invention in a way that sounds plausible despite it being made up. Just the right amount of understandable and science jargon to get away with it. I imagine that is not easy to do well, so I don’t judge too hard when I say this game did not do it well. When I was getting close to the end of this game, there is a kind of monologue/explanation and I was sat on the sofa on my Steam Deck playing and my partner out of the blue went “there is some serious waffle coming from that side of the sofa right now” and I mean, hard agree, I have no idea what they are talking about I practically zoned out. I feel harsh slating the story side of things, maybe there are players out there that enjoyed it, but for me it wasn't cohesive enough as a story. There is also the choice of two endings which just furthered my feelings of this being a lack-luster sci-fi game created by fans of the few key franchises I mentioned earlier. The story is just a bit vague and seemingly not well thought out. With all that said though, I did still enjoy the game. I think overall it has an amateur feeling to it but was engaging enough for me to have enjoyed my time in it. I think this game is worthwhile for fans of the first-person puzzle game genre. It's not the absolute best, but it's decent enough to spend a few evenings in. This is classed as a short first-person puzzler, it apparently took me 8 hours, although I did play this in one sitting and i’m pretty sure that counts me wondering off from my Steam Deck a few times for food and the like (it’s giving iPad kid). I got this game on sale for really cheap, and in that context I would say it’s worth it. I don’t think I would pay full price for it though. [quote][b]Achievements:[/b] Included Really easy 100% as achievements are mostly tied to the story. Complete the game, collect all collectibles (easy with level select) and see both endings. [/quote] [quote]For more reviews of this genre, check out my curator page [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45518898-The-Best-First-Person-Puzzle-Games/] The Best: First-Person Puzzle Games[/url][/quote]

Отличная игра, один раз произошел баг и не открылась дверь и пришлось перезапускать уровень и головоломку решать с самого начало. А второй раз в самом финале вылетела и тут я не стерпел слушать второй раз диалоги, пошел до проходить на ютубе. А так головоломки скучные и очень легкие, если вы не можете их решить, это значит вам плохо объяснили все фишки игры и вы как то должны сами додуматься про особенности гемплея.

Так, а вот сейчас не понял… Почему так хорошо-то?! Пока не заглянул в отзывы, думал, что игра популярнее на порядок. Даже странно. Пропихнул мне её Стим в составе набора с не менее примечательной [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/kaizon2004/recommended/596000/]The Shattering[/url], что я сперва и не заметил, но вскоре таки пришлось признать его правоту. В других обзорах пишут, что игра напоминает дилогию Portal и The Talos Principle. Хвала разработчикам, что избавили нас от рудиментарного гиковского юморка (который добавляют обыкновенно по правилам хорошего тона, а мы сидим и терпим, привет Уитли с тортиками) первой и от инфернального занудства последней. Сложность оптимальна — пришёл, подумал немного, покрутился, решил и побежал дальше. Без издевательства и долгих поисков одиноких пикселей, но и не детский сад, как в какой-нибудь [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/kaizon2004/recommended/1927720/]Monument Valley[/url]. Несколько механик довольно ловко сочетаются между собой. Разве что комбинаторики под конец с излишком, но не критично. А какой тут визуал: причудливая помесь Древнего Египта (и не только, судя по зиккуратам) с ар-деко, [strike]цыганским барокко[/strike] и био-теком радует глазки всё прохождение. Пожухлый Танос не чета. Отдельно стоит отметить сюжет. Он вроде бы опционален, вот прям совсем для галочки (как в Hue (…), например), парочка реплик за всю игру и содранная с Portal концовка, а по итогу вызывает эмоций и мыслишек поболее иных сюжетно-ориентированных проектов. Люблю такое. Вердикт: [b]7/10[/b].

Странно, что такая классная игра осталась малозамеченной любителями головоломок в духе Portal и Talos Principal, вполне годная игра -местами поломать мозг и вполне может идти в копилку для разнообразия!

Works fine on SteamDeck. Interesting game with unique mechanics. If you like the structure of Portal, You’ll like this game. There are a couple of long shots you need to do, and for those I would have appreciated a zoom function like in Portal 2. Also, most of the lore gets shown at the very end, and then the game ends very soon after. It would have been nice to see a bit more about the culture(s) and what happens after the end.

Это 3D-головоломка в закрытом пространстве, жанра Портала - вам предлагается пройти череду комнат с переключателями, лестницами и платформами, и в конце сделать традиционный выбор - to be or not to be. + графика вполне на уровне, выдержана в черно-золотой стилистике. +/- концепция и механика сами по себе не оригинальны, но +++ головоломки заставляют в меру подумать и их достаточно. +/- звук и озвучка - так себе. Дама под АИ и мужик-археолог. Классика. - сюжет без затей. - коротковата. Очень симпатичный Порталоид, обязателен для ценителей жанра.

Faraday Protocol, while short, simpy isn't worth your time. -Overly simple, non-interesting and repetative puzzles that can be easily brute-forced, or require no thought at all (e. g. match the symbols on the wall / do the only possible thing avaliable to you at the moment). -Boring story that consists only of dialogues feed to you by what sounds like, or is AI-generated voices. What's worse, there's no way to skip them, so you'll have to listen to the nonsense to progress. -Striking visuals... that are striking for the first few minutes you've seen them. After that it's just the same room, after the same room, everything looks exactly the same. Overall, Faraday Protocol fails at being a puzzle game, does not have anything interesting to say and is boring to look at. At least it was cheap while on sale, I guess...

Super dull circuit puzzle game. I barely go through 10 puzzles because it felt like the Portal tutorial the whole time. I just felt my time was being wasted walking back and forth.