Neoproxima

Discovered thanks to John Walker's Buried Treasure blog. Neoproxima is great sci-fi adventure. Time loop mystery in cool setting: alternative 70' french space station on a planet quite hostile, but overflowing with alluring alien artefacts. You and your friends, freelance explorers, unearth one that gets you in timelooping mess. Story is full of clever ideas, twists and surprises. From beginning to the absolute banger end (ends) it keeps you in tension and manages it without single piece of bulls*ittery. It's quite an accomplishment to keep this kind of story under control and cleanly wrap it up. Especially on such relatively small scale, cause game is't very long. Skillfully written characters add strong emotional punch (although biggest tearjerker moment came from unexpected side). Stylish audio and visuals help too. Mechanically, Neoproxima is similar to Outer Wilds. I enjoyed planning where to go, with what and whom, to accomplish something before daily reset. Felt like an scientist/explorer myself, so I guess story and gameplay convene pretty well. Also difficulty is just on spot: I didn't get stuck anywhere, yet my brain was working all the time. I had great time with this exceptional game. P. S. If you want to discover other less known gems, you're welcome to visit my curator page: [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45655021-Nods-for-Underdogs/]Nods for Underdogs[/url].

[h3]原本以为是小星际拓荒，可惜是个粗糙的文字冒险游戏[/h3] 流程很线性，是[b]以叙事为主的文字冒险游戏[/b]，几乎没有探索元素。剧情一般，不过还是有一些转折，配乐和背景音效恰到好处，有亮点，能够动人心弦。Neoproxima的“日志记录”系统很明显是学习了Outer Wilds，也是时间循环题材，本来很感兴趣，但玩下来比较失望，有些很令我困惑的设计，十分消磨耐心，影响心流体验： -----刻意拖长玩家的游戏时间。[b]“体力限制” + “转轮盘概率检定” + 没有文本跳过功能[/b]，万一失败就得再经历一段无聊的开车驾驶和重复的文本。 “体力限制” 属于踩到我的雷点了，low得不能再low，本作主角开车移动、选择选项都要消耗体力，我不知从何吐槽...... ---玩法很一般，无法通过逻辑推理出“正确选项”，只能“试错”，失败需要承受较大时间成本 ---CG比较敷衍，和文本内容有脱节，比较出戏。角色立绘没有表情变化，文本里描述角色惊讶、悲伤的时候，立绘还是傻呆呆地楞着。剧情里“船只着火”、“建筑内部场景”、“藤蔓缠绕”在CG里都没有体现出来，纯靠脑补。 --UI很简陋，可能是为了贴合70年代风格作出的妥协。主菜单“退出游戏”选项不明显，居然是 黑底+红色，第一眼不仔细看不容易找到。有的选项要求玩家拥有对应的物品，但这些物品还要玩家一个个分别“点选”才能解锁选项，有点多此一举。

One thing I’m not a fan of in regards to Neoproxima is its pacing. The prologue, for example, hints at some systems and UI, but is overall completely linear and lacks any sorts of player choice. I hated it at first, but then decided that, alright, it’s going to be a non-interactive Visual Novel disguised as a game, I should go with it. But after 15-30 minutes, the game changes completely, suddenly involving many story trails, planning, basic puzzle solving, and even dice rolls. But then again, parts of the game are simply limited to you keeping the hand on the Enter key and reading through blocks of text without any additional input. To my taste, it’s a bit of a mess. But moving forward: Neoproxima has a lot to offer, still. The worldbuilding introduces imaginative imagery. The UI looks good, and when the game uses retro-S-F CRT screens to display lore, it becomes gorgeous. The music and ambient are used sparingly and suit the mood well. The text-relient tools, such as dynamically changing POV, works great and benefits from the selected medium. The story doesn’t get as pretentious as it sometimes threatens to become, and I definitely got attached to the characters and enjoyed the narration, as well as the story’s conclusion. I think I encountered some tiny continuity errors and typos, but that’s to be expected from this kind of a game, and wasn’t too distracting. I’m not sure why the game has so few reviews on Steam, but I hope people will recognize its quality and drag it out from obscurity. I’m greatly happy with the experience I got, and I’d easily recommend this piece of art to anyone who enjoyed Citizen Sleeper.

A solid sci-fi story heavy game with a time loop and light resource management and exploration mechanics. A unique combination altogether. It is well written but the English version is being dragged down by a lot of typos and some inconsistencies. Discovered via [url=https://buried-treasure.org/2024/04/neoproxima/]buried-treasure.org[/url]

Good timeloop sci-fi game with a retrofuturisitic bend. It does embrace the dark parts of a timeloop more clearly that its counterparts.

Neoproxima is a tremendous sci-fi adventure. The structure of the game is a time loop, but it's set up in such a way that you only need to repeat things once or twice - you start off in a hub and each point of interest is in a different direction so there's no backtracking, and by the second loop through each mission you'll know the best kit to bring along to succeed. Not having to waste time playing through the same scenes over and over is key to what makes this game so good. Every day the story progresses. Every day you gain another little piece of the mystery. I can't tell exactly how long the game is, but it's slightly longer than the recorded Steam playtime because the integration is a bit buggy (side note: achievements also don't consistently fire). Maybe 5 hours? Whatever it is, it is paced perfectly. It's so rare that a narrative game gets the pacing just right, but Neoproxima is on point. I hesitate to get too much into the story, because what really makes this game work is the payoff at the end. It's one of the best endings to a sci-fi game ever. There are no dangling plotlines or spin-off hooks - this is a single, epic sci-fi story and you get the whole damn story, just like a good novel. The setting is an alternate history where humans got alien tech during the Cold War so everything has a gritty, 1970s feel to it. The artwork is great, shades of Métal Hurlant through a battered CRT. The music is top tier. The dialog feels authentic, and even without much conversation you really get a sense of who each character is and what motivates them. Gosh, this is such a great game. It's a shame that for whatever reason this never got any mainstream traction, because it does so much stuff better than a lot of the more acclaimed story games. And it does that simply by serving up a great sci-fi story, something different to the usual cyberpunk/post apocalypse/space opera whatever. If you're a serious sci-fi fan, this game is definitely worth a purchase.

A beautiful game, visually an emotionally. Not a long one, but a really good one. Must have if you enjoy text games, the feeling of exploring an alien world and some time-based shenanigans with an overarching feeling of a light puzzle game. Please understand that this is quite a linear game, not many branches, but that suits this game well- it tells a story, and, in my opinion, does it well. Very much recommended for what it is.

[strike]Generative AI used and not disclosed.[/strike] Apologies, some of the backgrounds in scenes looked like early AI generated images; however what really set me off was the developer and publisher being cited as Lodestone. The website of the publisher themselves states they are an AI first company with Neoproxima being showcased on their website as an achievement. Though a company can be AI first and then not use AI in development, it feels hard to make that disconnect. [b]However[/b] quoting Lythom and Pierrick, "entierly human made and we are proud of it!" / "The art, 2D and 3D were made by wonderful people here in Nantes." I would like to offer a correction on the game, since I stopped playing as I looked into Lodestone as a publisher. I adore isometric, choice based, exploration games. Neoproxima scratches that itch with lovely character art, world building, graphics and lore settings. I apologize for jumping the gun on AI usage, but hope with the context of publisher, it would make sense for the knee jerk reaction.

Great little game. The puzzles were fun to solve, not very difficult - you immediately know what to do the next loop. The comparisons to Outer Wilds are well deserved. Ran into several poorly translated bits of writing that were distracting but never stopped me from enjoying the game.

This is charming little time loop game. Great writing, well developed characters. Short, but perfect for its price