An enjoyable romp through the Groundhog Day movie, set in a different time. Solid voice acting, while a bit let down by the bobbleheads, nevertheless carries a reasonably well thought out story that even lets you care for the characters. Playthrough took me a solid five hours, though I did not attempt to divine all the little secrets within.
Overall, recommended if you liked the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, watch the movie and then see if you'll like the game. If you haven't seen the movie, the game's story, which relies heavily on the movie, will likely fall flat.
[h1]Gameplay[/h1]
This is a story-based game, generally in the vein of a Maniac Mansion/Monkey Island/Telltale Games story, but placed on repeat, befitting the Groundhog Day premise. The single day has seven possible scenes, of which you typically explore up to six on any given day, depending on your choices.
The primary gameplay mechanic is selecting floating bubbles that determine Phil Jr's general intent of what to say. Mostly it aligns, though sometimes the actual script is slightly unexpected. As you play through the day again, new bubbles become available, opening different actions for the scenes.
Six minigames pepper the story on occasion: a cooking minigame (think Job Simulator), a shooting minigame, a spray painting minigame, a dancing minigame, a stone chopping minigame, and a guitar playing minigame. A seventh, apparently cut, drawing minigame still has its mechanics in the game, as well as a lampshade about how they spent the effort implementing it.
Each minigame is basic, generally works, but is not fleshed out enough to warrant any kind of replay value. The main story requires "passing" each minigame challenge, which typically boils down to replaying the game with slightly increasing levels of difficulty until you succeed. This is supposed to represent Phil Jr achieving mastery over the given skill.
An additional control is opened up after the first day, allowing you to select whether to replay the entire day, or just a specific scene. The scene restart in particular is an excellent addition and essentially works as if you restarted the day and made the same choices leading up to the start of the scene. New dialog options may be available, allowing a quick exploration of a particular character's storyline.
Controls are similar to Vacation Simulator. You can teleport around the scenes (albeit to very limited areas), and interact with objects to a varying degree. Object controls are workable but not excellent, and especially throwing items or releasing items results in unpredictable behaviour, sometimes requiring restarting the scene.
I used the Valve Index headset, and Index controllers to play the game. Headset support was excellent. The controllers had basic functionality (no finger tracking). Crucially, however, the virtual hands did not align with my actual hands, leading to awkward hand bending.
[h1]Story[/h1]
The storyline is pretty much as expected. Our unlikeable protagonist, Phil Jr, for some reason has a following and is working his way up a career in broadcasting. He hates Punxsutawney, would nothing rather than leave, is rude and dismissive of everyone he meets, and is stuck in the town because of a snowstorm.
As the single day repeats, Phil Jr slowly learns to listen to other people and their concerns, becomes less snarky and rude, and tries to make the best of every day. Unfortunately, that means he goes from incessantly snarky to incessantly optimistic by the end.
Overall, the story is enjoyable, although it sometimes feels cut short. Phil Jr goes from grumpy to "I have to better myself" in just a couple of time loops, and the game completely misses the ability to wreak havoc on the town. Towards the end though I couldn't help but care a little bit about the characters, especially how they progressed in their own little stories.
As you go through major story beats, you're further rewarded with an additional between-day cutscene of memories with Phil Sr, showing the father-son relationship in three disjoint points in time. It is a nice touch, although it is not too substantive.
One major unexplored part of the story itself is the time skipping itself. [spoiler]Phil Jr seems more grumpy than amazed or depressed at the reliving of the day part. His mother is aware of the time loops and prods him to become a better person, and, surprisingly, he just ups and does it. There is no moral concern over whether it's okay to use the time loops to pry people's secrets out. Equally unrealistic is the characters' reaction to hearing this story -- which Phil Jr happily shares. Nobody seems to mind that he has seen all their secrets and done things they don't know about to them.
This omission takes some depth out of the story. One of the strengths of the movie was that it allowed its protagonist to sink into the darkest depths of his psyche, see the emptiness and loneliness therein, and therefore change and become better. To me this is the primary reason why Phil Jr's change seems more that it's "because the plot demands it" rather than "he realised".[/spoiler]
[h1]Sound & Visuals[/h1]
Audio design of the game is reasonably good. There are plenty of background sounds, and even background coversations to eavesdrop on, making each scene appear reasonably lively. There are various radios throughout, which thankfully can be shut off as the repetition of any one scene has a tendency to become nerve-grating.
The visuals are a bit of a letdown. The characters themselves are unique, but exhibit a bobblehead effect when talking. The characters didn't really capture my attention too much when speaking, which is a bit awkward. Thankfully they don't care that I fiddled with my phone while they're talking. The environment visuals are decent, however, and the environments -- when interactible -- reacted okay enough to it.
