Return to Grace

A short, engaging game about a space explorer called Adie who crash lands onto the planet Ganymede in the year 3000. She is searching for an AI called Grace who was once the caretaker of the solar system and suddenly shut down over 1000 years ago. This is on the store page. Return to Grace is more like a walking sim/Visual Novel style of game as it is dialogue heavy. Very little action apart from easy puzzles. This is definitely not like The Turing Test!! The highlights of this game are the graphics which are stunning at times and the interesting story of Adie's exploration of Ganymede. The dialogue is top notch with excellent voice actors adding depth to the story. Adie finds that components of Grace's AI are still active and she has to build a relationship with all of them to reach her goal. It was amusing listening to different AI personalities bickering amongst themselves or having a sarcastic shot at her intelligence!! I was often chuckling at their dialogue. I played through the game twice as there are 3 possible endings and still didn't pick up all the achievements. The game discusses the relationship between AI and humans and some decisions have to be made throughout the game which affects your ending. It was never boring and I was totally engrossed with the storyline. If you enjoy sci-fi walking sims with an interesting story, this is for you. If you're looking for hard puzzles or action, look elsewhere. Buy on sale due its short length. 8/10

I played the whole game once through Xbox Game Pass. Enjoyed it so much that I bought it here to support the devs, as well as to have access to it if the game ever leaves Game Pass. Before I get started, my TLDR is: if you're into vibes, get this game. There are so much really cool ideas in this game, including mechanics, interactions, and story. But a lot of these ideas aren't developed enough. There are elements of Stanley Parable and Disco Elysium, but not fully wrought out like within those games. And as others echoed, the story is a-OK. Not more nor less than that. But for me, the combination of these elements in a walking-simulator package created an experience that enveloped me. The banter between the AI components, the beautiful world-building, the visceral feeling of pulling, pushing, and pressing things. Everything together created an immersive experience that was satisfying. Again, I really recommend this game. If you are concerned about the length, it's good to wait for sale. But if you want to have a vibey walking-simulator experience to get lost in for a little while, just get it.

Return to Grace is a sci-fi exploratory adventure in which you land on a strange planet in search of a lost AI named Grace. Your first task is to locate the source of her signal and then explore an abandoned settlement to understand what occurred and to locate and activate the missing AI. The settlement is large, with multiple areas to traverse and rooms to discover. There are very simple puzzles along the way. You are joined by a set of AIs who guide you: Control, Logic, Empathy, and combinations thereof. You discover the story of the settlement by examining artifacts and listening to recordings. All, in all, a great story with interesting scenery and quality voice acting. About half the achievements are story-related and the others are easily missed. There is a decision point early in the game which controls which ending you will experience. There are three endings, only two of which have related achievements. Since some achievements are mutually exclusive, a bit of replay is required. The developers have made this easy. Within the menu, you can copy a save file to another slot. If you do this correctly, you can get all achievements by playing through one-and-a-half times. Your path is fairly linear and actions like ‘climb’ or ‘jump’ are automatically accomplished by a single action command. Thus, no platforming is required and the only places where falling is possible are accompanied by quick recovery paths. For me, playing with a controller was much smoother than using the keyboard and mouse. You cannot skip past dialog, and the action command is not enabled while any character is speaking. This can be a bit frustrating, as you will be regularly waiting for conversation to end so you can push a button and move on. I thoroughly enjoyed Return to Grace and highly recommend it. It is a relaxing and easy game with a good story and clever dialog.

This is a interesting thought provoking game about AI with lovely graphics and some easier puzzles. I personally enjoyed it very much, I wish it was longer but I will probably play again and make different choices as the achievements are there for that option.

It's been so long since I've gotten to enjoy a narrative exploration game like this! GORGEOUS environments, intriguing story... It's on the linear side, but there are branching decision moments as you go, if that means anything to you. You can see from my playtime that it's not long, but almost the whole thing is bespoke and distinct and beautiful to look at, and the acting is excellent. Why did it take me this long to hear about this??

Return to Grace was a cute walking sim. I enjoyed playing it. You are trying to find out what happened to an old AI from the past at a lunar station. Instead of finding endless notes, you discover “pieces” of the AI so you end up exploring with 6 different personalities that talk and help you. You find audio canisters from people who had stayed there before to help tell the story. I thought the voice overs were well done and the story interesting and made me want to continue. There are several choices that can lead to different endings. My “explore everything and try to get the ending I was hoping for” gameplay took about 3 hrs. There are puzzles, but they are almost like filler. They are something to do as you progress and are not challenging. For me, sometimes that’s okay. I really liked that the game stayed true to being a walking sim. There are jumps you need to make, but instead of turning it into a platformer, the game just lets you jump when you tell it to. Thanks for that! I had fun with the game and am up for seeing what a bad ending looks like. Is it a must play? Ehhh … I don’t know if I would recommend it that way. But if you like walking sims with some fun characters and a bit of mystery to the story, I would definitely recommend it.

I really liked this game! It's an adventure through several different environments, with a small gallery of constantly-changing narrators. I'd place it more in the "walking simulator" genre than the "puzzle genre". Though it purports to be a story about AI on its surface, it's really more of a story about identity, reconciling the parts of ourselves through conflict and disagreement. What would it mean to banish the parts of yourself you don't like? What do you do when others want something from you that you're no longer able to provide to them? Watching the characters wrestle with these situations is part of the fun. The architecture in the game is wonderfully evocative, with sprawling retro-futuristic art deco environments, imposing towers and caves to explore, giant abandoned hotel lobbies, etc. Highly recommend this for anyone who likes exploring.

Get it on sale (it's *really* short), but it's well-acted, with good art direction and it doesn't overstay its welcome. A lovely little game.

It's a very short game, but the story, exploration and aesthetics totally make up for it. If you enjoy short SciFi stories, this will definitely be something for you.

very cozy game that you can play at your own pace. the aesthetic is beautiful and the story is really immersive. definitely worth a buy if you like these kinda games