Intelligence

I REALLY loved this game. It's very short but very engaging. If you like games where you read and solve puzzles you will love this. I also found the built-in hint system very helpful. Give it a try, it's extremely well made!

My time doesn't mirror the 5ish hours I've spent offline with this gem--which is both poignant and independent with its plot and ending message (if any studies of imperialism have been done--as hinted in the game by mentions of despots). The mystery was kept salient and smooooooooth as silk... My only issue was the autosave (okay two issues, also that I can only 'pin' one thing whereas the bookmarks are their own replacement tab)--having done the ending (the hint system helped a lot, covering details I already did know...until uncovering things I've not tried while stumped), my only giant issue was that the autosave only has ONE point of reference, and I missed a message concurrently happening (I was focused in connecting the dots and sent in the ending action [spoiler]in powering that one ship down[/spoiler] and thus the autosave messed me up by having me miss the thrill of escalation T_T). The online time spent was how long I've had in reflecting on that lacking save point as I realized "I need to write a review" vs "I wish I could see that ONE green dot with probably more !!fun!! messages". 12 whole minutes never felt so long! I wish the accessibilities described below was similarly done to the save system because there's no way I'll find out those messages I missed now, as after doing the ending, it'll only return 'continuing' to the transition point of no return. There's no point where one can then access the in-game notations or similar details after finding an ending. Beautiful game though, love the non-genAI disclaimer in the credits, love the way the dev team handled perspectives and the material nature of choices/bureaucracy[spoiler]social control and power/political impacts; in a just world, we'd totally have better like the good ending as displayed.[/spoiler] I've not found myself playing something that compiles both the detachment of stratified logic/assessment, and the reality that it's all based on the attachment to informing social choices and thus culture about. This is a bit aside but seeing a negative review complain about the 'politics'; lol, lmao even--(an aside [spoiler]the very same people being affected by anti-intellectualism and empire, miss the reality of how empire works, [or our constant voices in the global south about it] if they bothered to look beyond thought-terminating cliches, because the dialogue of the President is pretty much what has been done in breaking how many countries in real-world history by that kind of intervention--which remarks on sci-fi itself, contemporary critique in the time it was made through analogy to issues of the time, if that kind of distinction and connection has to be drawn, and there's active propaganda against realizing that until now, even in the fall of empires in 2026[/spoiler])--in itself, the plot is very standalone because it's VERY apt in describing despotic authoritarian rule and what mess that does for a united venture into space, unbothered by artificial scarcity or borders and the beauty therein, which comes like a telegraphed avalanche when the ending comes into play; it's just that your job right now isn't that, until the roles of analysts and people handling literal data come into meeting the very cornerstone of analytics--informing choices. Because the clues are literally all strewn about in the subnarrative, nicely written as aside opinions in remarks. I do love the path to the ending itself using/training a whole different skillset [spoiler]where translation? Yeah it involves repetition but also ciphering, which is somewhat different when it comes to the cipher used here--it's obviously not a 1:1, it's a game of exchange and interaction. I really couldn't get the words without the hints[/spoiler] but that's uplifted by the plot (and the hint system, yay!) The minigames were quite fun, as a player of sudoku and similar puzzles--the difficulty being accessible is wonderful, being able to be toggled at any point. Edit: Those 12 minutes turned into a ~40 minute speedrun to see the missed messages, and (this is just me musing on the endings) [spoiler]apparently there is another ending--I initially chose to go with the peaceful point, and what it changes is the needless loss of life for punctuation. On a re-review, there are SO MANY SIGNS on these that the subtext is clear as transparency, goodness; here I thought thinking the negative reviews had a point. That other ending does emphasize more how the culture from that point under said President has affected what is (also re-reading Earth comms and contexts).[/spoiler]

A very nice puzzle game that requires you to read and deduce things based on the clues you find. There are many increasingly obvious hints if you get stuck or find the game too difficult, but personally, I hardly ever needed them. I feel like the default difficulty settings make the game somewhat linear and feed new information in a dropwise manner, so it is always fairly evident what you need to do. Be sure to check the difficulty settings if you like some extra challenge or would prefer to figure more things out on your own. A well-made game, and it has a nice little plot that goes along with the investigation. I quite enjoyed my 3-hour playthrough, definitely worth checking out if you are into logic puzzles.

Nice game, the detective part is not that difficult, but engaging, and the story is well though out. Would gladly have paid 5 bucks for this.

Spectacularly fun, and great balance of deduction. I wish the pinning system had more flexibility but remembering to bookmark stuff certainly helps. The hints were also the right amount of helpful (I think I only had to go 2 layers deep in them at most the few times I used them before I realized an action I missed), thanks to Failbetter for putting me on this!

This game is fantastic! I struggled a bit here and there, but that's what I hope for in this kind of game. Very Obra Dinn, very Type Help. I love it!

Fantastic for a free game.