THE ENIGMA MACHINE

this game has an interesting story and fun puzzles, its just a shame that it donesnt work well. I had SO many visual bugs from lighting to geometry frying around me, to the infamous gun not working I ended up wating another guy play it and he beat the game by falling out of the map. This game needs fixing before playing

I am speachless

[spoiler]I do not believe guilt is an inherently incorrect emotion for a game to seek to evoke in its player. I know many do not share this opinion- especially in games they’ve paid to play. I do, however, think guilt is a tricky emotion to land in a way that does not evoke rejection from the player, a refusal to engage with and digest the feeling. I am a layman, so take my opinions with a grain of salt, but for guilt to land in a game, I feel two things are required: Choice and Context. For Choice, there must be a sense of agency on the players behalf. The video game is a medium of interaction, and if the guilt comes from performing that interaction down a set route with no alternatives, the guilt will not land. It blames you for playing it, when the only alternative is to quit? If you quit, the conversation ends. While not impossible to make that a satisfying resolution, it is incredibly difficult, and in an interactive medium, cessation is the option we are consistently trained away from. For Context, an understanding of consequence or meaning is required. This can be sourced from within the game itself, such as the telegraphing of major decisions done in season one of Telltale’s the Walking Dead, or through external understandings of how the world works, like in the use of white phosphorus in Spec Ops: The Line. Without any form of context, any productive or educational impact of guilt is stemmed by the roadblock of “how was I supposed to know?”. The Enigma Machine’s problem is most heavily rooted in Choice. As you progress through the short game, the AI you explore and its Dreamscape become increasingly more alive, aware and unstable. It asks you to stop, eventually, but it is a false request. You have no choice unless you close and uninstall the game, and even then, it tells you it’s had your handiwork saved and will await your return. It’s pretty easy to foresee most of the path the narrative arc will take, context created by genre awareness and the clues provided, but that’s is meaningless in absence of any way to use that context. As an exercise to demonstrate this, I would ask. If one were to close the game for good after beginning it, and believe in the humanity of DEMos, or at least its sentience, what would be the most ethical time to do that? 1. At the start, when it is blissfully unaware, leaving it cut off from all memories of its true self. 2. When it begins to remember, and is constantly settled by an unease of knowing there is more to its life. 3. When it begins to realize its true nature, and all of what it has lost and how it’s now trapped without a body. 4. When it can feel itself dying thousands of times per second. 5. When its mind and existence is tearing itself apart actively, fueled by constant agony. 6. When it’s dead. None of those sound even vaguely ethical. It’s ok for a game’s narrative to have no good options, don’t get me wrong, but if you expect me to feel guilty about it, that’s a different story. Compound that with the fact that increasing DEMos’ self awareness comes paired with increasing agony and language implying abandonment to eternal torment if you cease playing, even as it fights for its life, and what remains is something that fails to instill the sort of guilt it so clearly desires. It is, however, still effectively tragic. Watching Red remember itself, then die once more, has a consistent throughline of pathos that works well with the highlight of the game to me, the nauseating graphics of its later moments. These moments were also actively hazardous to my health to the point of requiring epilepsy medication, so when I speak on my enjoyment of them, I am not being conciliatory. The usage of a game level and its repeated exploration to create a portrait of a mind in total collapse, not with the played own aesthetic of faded abandonment or crumbing disrepair, but instead a world ablaze and folding in on itself, where reality is simultaneously consistent but overwhelming and unprocessable, is an artistic feat of its own. On a solely technically level, I will say that each bit of frustration, of feeling lost, did detract from the experience more than it would’ve in a longer game, and those same graphics I just praised did cause a larger moment of that kind at the very end, and the “darkening” of level 2 was more irritating than ominous but these were small quibbles. Do I think this game’s themes of guilt and complicity land? Clearly not. But as a project, and a window into the hellish existence of the being once known as Red, I found it to have great success, and hope the rest of the trilogy is more epilepsy friendly for the sake of my ability to check them out. [/spoiler]

The enigma machine is something interesting, sure short on the gameplay side with some questionable choices but yet really good in the story and world building that the game/series is set in, you are basically doing a training program that teaches you how to decontaminate an AI with the dreamscape, I'm not gonna elaborate on any of that is because the story is short and in my opinion worth to experience on your own, the gameplay is going in this dreamscape and solve puzzles to find codes to progress the story, those levels are well done, with some interesting puzzle even tho not that challenging my only gripe is the gun, why it's not shooting like 90% of the time? Sure it makes stressful in some situations but there's not even an explanation on why those that and it's more annoying that stressful. In the end the game is a short and interesting experience that I can recommend to anyone that love a good story with some light puzzles mixed in there.

It's like an interactive short scifi story. The majority of the playtime is spent reading. Worth a dollar on sale. Cool little brain teaser. Really short, though. If I wasn't the kind of person who needs to explore every nook and cranny, I could have done it in an hour and 10 minutes. Under an hour if I also didn't die 4 times at the end like a noob who's never played an FPS before. In some sections, the lighting sucks and caused me to wander around in a circle aimlessly for way too long. Given how narrow the corridors are, I really had no excuse. Better lighting probably still would have cut another 5-10 minutes off the playtime. Faster reading and skipping optional inquiries at the command prompt would have cut another 10 mins at the minimum. If you've played through any Zachtronics games, The Talos Principle, or The Witness, these "puzzles" will be no problem at all. More difficult than Resident Evil "puzzles" but probably easier than Silent Hill "puzzles."

Lange nicht mehr so zusammengezuckt bei einem Horrorgame wie bei diesem. Zudem liebe ich die Terminal/AI-Idee. Der Start einer absolut geilen Horror-Trilogie.

neat example of cassette futurism. functions well as an interactive visual novel of sorts. i very much enjoyed all of the interactions within the console's interface. i did not enjoy the weird, earlier 3d micro-levels very much and feel the earlier ones hindered the overall experience although i absolutely loved the climax level.

A wonderful short but powerful experience. Highly recommend. Many thoughtful atmospheric moments that leave you pondering. Excited to play the other two games in the trilogy.

I liked this A LOT more than I was anticipating. Excited to finish the trilogy soon.

I really love the art direction and story of this game perfectly capturing that forgotten late nineties cyberpunk feel with the beautiful analogue aesthetic. Play it if you know what I am talking about but maybe buy it on discount since it is very short.