I was totally engrossed by this game. It's one of those that really gets at what I like about indies.
As I was poking around about it, I saw that the dev considered it a commercial failure, which is really such a shame. Happily they've continued to release games in the years since, but this deserved a much better reception than it seems to have gotten. It was unique, ambitious, and well-written; it was impressively complete for such an ambitious indie game, IMO.
Karaski is set in a kind of fictionalized USSR on the verge of balkanization. You and a smattering of other people are on the maiden voyage of an airship whose creation is hugely politicized. When it becomes clear the dirigible has been sabotaged, you have to try to suss out which of the many different political factions is responsible, and who onboard is trying to get everyone killed.
The game starts with you, Player Character, waking up in a closet on the middeck of the ship; you walk down the hallway to find that some kind of explosion has happened in one of the control rooms, killing an employee. In a panic, you try to escape, and as you do end up talking over a radio to someone who seems to think you're an 'agent' there to investigate the sabotage and stop a tragedy from unfolding.
The sheer amount of ways you could go about the investigation was really impressive. Every dialogue choice affects a constellation of relationships, as does your performance in the stealth areas of the ship (there's also robust accessibility options for those who dislike stealth gameplay). There are multiple ways to approach everything and completing a plotline doesn't necessarily mean choosing the schmooziest options. The game also keeps very meticulous track of who you've talked to and where you are on each of the main characters' plots, as well as the important items and documents you've found, which I appreciated a lot.
It was just really well-written and well-put-together, definitely heads above a lot of the other more uptaken games in the genre, which kind of sucks.
There were a few things I didn't like -- the weird metafiction (that seems to also be a Pathologic reference?) was superfluous and went less than nowhere; IMO it actively detracted from the experience of making choices and deductions. I almost wonder if the dev was having issues with people 'getting it' and felt like he had to add this in, because it doesn't fit in with anything else about the game and was a really big distraction from the more meaty things it was trying to say.
Two, I really wish the badge got you free reign in the lower levels. You get it so lategame that it feels like it should be a way for you to clean up little bits and go in every nook and cranny, but it basically doesn't do anything helpful -- at the stage where I got it, the rep hits didn't matter, I just needed to be able to find some hidden stuff. It's weird, it's this item that's framed as super strong but ends up being a letdown.
I want to muse about the end a little:
[spoiler]
So the game is set up so that there's no 'true' ending. Pretty much everyone has a motive, and the game refuses to commit. While I'm not normally a fan of this kind of setup, I liked it here for two reasons: 1) I think the game earned it by just setting up all the characters and the complexity of the political situation really well and 2)...
So as the PC, you never really know who you are. You try to tell the mysterious radio voice you're not the agent they think you are, but they don't really listen (or care), and at several points it's implied you're making up your own backstory. Some people seem to remember you from other times/places, but it's not clear if they're mistaken or not. And then there's you waking up down the hall from where the sabotage happened.
All of the suspect passengers have 'secret luggage' you can find. And across the board, if you complete their plotline, you find... they're not as sinister as you thought. Their caginess and secrecy is more about personal issue and how they see themselves, and less about the machinations of politics. The evidence isn't exonerating in a logical sense, but it certainly feels that way in an emotional one.
The end result, for me, is that the only person who really makes any sense as the saboteur is you. To me this feels canonical in a way I'm not sure it's intended to be, but as you uncover more and more about the other people it just becomes clear how suspicious and cold you are. And I think this is the best capstone to the story as well. In a game about the complexities of political awareness and activism, putting the onus on the player to take responsibility feels pretty powerful?
I'm not sure if this was an intentional writing choice, to make this ending feel the most 'real', or if it's just a quirk of how I navigated the story, but I really like it and it definitely was one of the reasons I thought the ending worked.[/spoiler]
