The Gallery - Episode 1: Call of the Starseed

I got to stop buying old VR games.. They don't hold up at all nowadays. I'm sure this was good when it came out 7 years ago but now VR has evolved way beyond this game. The graphics are outdated and so is the gameplay. Puzzles are very simple and straight forward except the last one. That one was frustrating. First I had to search for 2 numbers from a lab with randomly floating objects. I tried to catch them but to no avail, some were stuck between some walls and created this irritating continuous bouncing sound. After trying to grab the logical items like a floppy disc and a tape recorder for fifteen minutes, I gave up and looked the answer online. I was shocked to read that the numbers had nothing to do with these floating objects. One of them was actually on a piece of paper stuck on a back wall of a table on a random spot. That's puzzle for you, find a note in a room.. I had several bugs and severe staggering while playing. For example on the first area, always when I looked up my VR head POV floated like 10 centimetres higher and the same happened when I looked down. This was very nausea inducing. I had to stop playing for a while and drink ginger infused water (it might helps some people in VR sickness) because of this. Even worse was that in the relatively long narrative final where the player just stands still and watches and listens, my in game hand was staggering all around like crazy and a "Not being able to track" text and my Index play area grid flashed constantly in the screen. Pretty immersion breaking. The game is also very short so you will not get value for your money even with a decent sale. Absolutely no replay value. There were some positive things in the game. The overall setting and atmosphere were nice and the sound and music was OK. Overall I did not enjoy my time with this game. If this would have been free, I would have left a recommendation, but to pay money for this frustrating experience? No. I have unfortunately bough the chapter 2 from a sale as well. I really hope it's better and less buggy than chapter one.

The Gallery Episodes 1 and 2 are often discounted pretty deeply, to the point where the question isn't if they're worth your money, but if they're worth your time. In short, I think they are, though that's largely down to Episode 2, even with the knowledge that Episode 3 may or may not ever be released. If you can pick up Ep 1 and Ep 2 together for under $10-15, I think they're worth it. (Personally, here in 2022 I think they'd do well to give away Ep 1 for free, and sell Ep 2 for $10-12.) Episode 1 was released in 2016, and Episode 2 followed in 2017. One of the biggest improvements in Ep 2 was the addition of smooth locomotion control options, which are sorely missed in Ep 1. Each game could be described as a "story-driven walking simulator with occasional puzzle elements", with most puzzles taking the form of mini-game style challenges, especially in Ep 2. Ep 1 is mostly linear, and takes around 1.5 - 2hrs to complete. Ep 2 manages to wring about 3-4 hrs of play from a similar number of environments because each area needs to be revisited at least once or twice - sometimes to use an item found elsewhere, and sometimes to explore previously-inaccessible parts of the level. That said, while there is a similar "volume" of world to explore in Ep 2, the areas are much more detailed and interesting than those in Ep 1. While the dialogue can be a bit campy at times and story a bit vague, the performances are well delivered. I hope that one day we'll see Episode 3 to close out the trilogy, but 5 years and counting since Episode 2, I won't be holding my breath.

Get it on a sale like I did. Although I had fun playing this game, it's nowhere near worth the asking price. I bought it on a Steam Sale so only paid €2,30 for it, which is a fair price for the time it took me to complete, seeing as I didn't rush. To give you an idea of how short it is, I was still 11 minutes shy of the max refundable playtime after finishing.

Apparently this game was released in the early days of commercial VR, so the legal disclaimer that falsely assumes Call of the Starseed is one of my first VR experiences makes some sense. Even six years later, it feels like a decent VR experience. What gives its age away is limited locomotion. Only "comfort" artificial movement is allowed: teleport and snap turning. VR gamers today expect continuous locomotion/rotation for a game like this. The game itself is an adventure game, but is very light on gameplay. It has periodic puzzles, but is mostly moving forward and watching/listening to scripted sequences. Silly and foolish people will call this a walking simulator, but that's a meaningless term nobody should ever take seriously. The voice acting was distinctly Canadian, despite it apparently taking place in the United States with Americans. If I can, as an American, pronounce "aboat," then surely a Canadian voice actor could pronounce it "about" if they're supposed to be playing an American. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell games has this problem in spades. I was surprised at how quickly the game ended. The developers seem to have focused on production values and wow-factor, and they did well in that area. I'm sure this game was a treat back in 2016. However, the story continues in Episode 2, and I think Episode 1 did a good job setting things up. You all have got my attention. I hope Episode 2 can follow through. There are many complaints about controls with this game. I had problems, too, when I tried running it with OpenVR/SteamVR. Launching it for Oculus Rift worked fine, but I was not given credit for any Steam Achievements. I ever-so-slightly care about getting achievements, so that was a bit of a disappointment. Lastly, I want to mention that I had some vague Half-Life: Alyx feelings while playing this. The motion-captured characters in the immersive "cutscenes" that play out in front of you, and the fact that the main character's name is ALEX.... yeah, some vague feelings.

To be honest, I was very surprised with quality of this game. When I saw it's release date I was expecting very basic game with clunky mechanics and rather uninspiring gameplay. But it was on sale, so I grabbed both episodes for just a few bucks. And oh boy, I enjoyed this game so much. The synopsis of the story - you are going to an island to find your sister that left a message for you. Whole game is built around exploring this island. This may sound a little bit simplistic, but it's little details that makes such story works. And Call of the Starseed have a lot of them - throughout the game you will find maps, tapes, rock paintings that bit by bit tell you a story of this place, who was there, what happened to this place. Some things that you finding out at first glance does not have a lot sense or unrelated but in fact this is false assumption - everything you find out makes sense, but you understand this only after going throgh related stage of the game. I really like such small touches in games because this is what makes enjoyable to think about them after completion. For example, when you going down, you can see here combination of Chtulhu, dragon and alien - just a fan-service, at first glance, but only at first. I also enjoyed visuals in this game. In fact, game looks better when you play then what you see on screenshots. And more to this, in 2 hours of gameplay there is quite a variety of location each with its recognizable design Another strong point of this games are puzzles - this game combines a great balance between puzzle complexity and amount/quality of tips and the use of VR mechanics. Immersion is really strong here thanks to puzzles being built around VR technologies (I am looking at you, Doctor Who: The Edge Of Time). Also thanks to this, there is almost no situations when you don't understand, what game wants from you - most of the time it's pretty clear, what you need to achieve, the question is how you will do this. As disadvantages, I have 1,5 points: 1. Controls - in case of oculus headset you need to press on stick of main hand to let you teleport. This is very unpleasant way to implement locomotion. My thumb was really hurting at the end of each session. Moreover, there is no reason for this to be implemented like this - you have buttons on your controller with no actions bind to them - why not to use them instead is a great mystery for me 0.5 Length of the game. I put it as a half of point because it's actually justifiable. First of all, this game is packed with action - something going on all the time, there is no fillers. And the second, title says that this is episode 1. And this game should be perceived exactly like this - this is not an independent game, it has episode 2 that starts exactly when episode 1 ends and they should be played together as one piece. It is also mirrored in price. If you will take a look at this from such perspective - this game as a whole is not so short and there is a major improvement for the second episode in pretty much everything So, all in all, I definitely recommend this game to everyone who has VR headset. This game has interesting story, great pacing, puzzles, visuals, diverse set of locations and overall it makes a great experience. I will just add that I played this game after I completed Half-Life: Alyx and HL didn't ruin this game for me - I think it is kind of a result, especially for the game that was made at the dawn of modern VR era

нравится не нравится, короткая длинная, но такие проекты конечно надо поощрять очень красивая графика

Awesome game with good visuals, sound and story. One of the best VR experiences so far.

Pour un des tout premiers jeu d'aventure PC VR, il reste encore à ce jour graphiquement absolument magnifique. Il a une bonne narration en anglais (sans sous-titres) même si un peu lente à démarrer avec ses quelques audiologs & qui au final ne reste qu'une introduction de ce qui viendra dans la suite. Ce qui est assez compréhensible, cette 1ère partie faisant un peu office de découverte de la VR & de ses interactions... Il a pris un petit coup de vieux sur ses uniques déplacements par téléportation assez rigides qui mériteraient une petite refonte avec la rotation vraiment séparé des déplacements, de même que sa physique des objets un peu flottante... Même en prenant son temps à faire toutes les bricoles sur la plage & autres, il reste assez court environ 2-3h maxi. Mais il est encore très immersif & mérite bien son titre de classique PC VR. (sous HTC Vive Pro 2)

i heard the call and the star was truely seeded in the first episode

It was an interresting, atlthough a bit short story. I would expect you play through this in 2-5 hours time, dfepending on how stuck you get on the puzzles. Most of my playtime I spent on doing all the achievement. And the last achievment takes atleast 7 hours, if everything goes OK, well the running the game while the VR headset spend the the time resting on a pillow. And then the pillow got moved and the headset clipped throught the sleeping bad and time stopped counting. Valve index controllers works without problem.