TR-49

excellent game! The story unfolds organically and I liked how nothing is really given. Clever code system

The inspiration from Type Help (aka The Incident at Galley House) is most obvious, in that it is a game where you need to interact with a machine holding a broad story and can only expose small chunks of the narrative through noticing important details in the sections that you've already seen. I appreciate that this game is a little less linear than its inspiration whose full interface has a bit more subtlety, which makes the environment feel much more open. Like Type Help, it takes a big chance on the overall story, and I think it sticks the landing a little better (and much much better than Her Story, to give another game in the same specific genre). I got through my initial playthrough in about eight hours, so it passes the dollar per hour test even at full price. And I've got enough enthusiasm to play through the game again to finish up all of the achievements that I missed the first time through. If you're in a mood for interactive fiction where figuring out who you are and how the interface works is part of the story, then this is a fantastic way to scratch that itch.

Another gem from inkle

Cheap and interesting sci-fi story. But you have to like puzzles and reading or use a guide. What you see is what you get.

Delightful little game ... some five hours to complete, with some good world-building. I got to "the" book (you'll know what I mean when you reach it) on my own, but then was lost as to how to proceed and had to look up in some detail the final steps, which was a little sad.

A very strong puzzle game that falls a little short toward the end. Otherwise, finding sources and puzzling together the setting for this game was a genuine treat. Highly recommended.

Loved the research and deduction. Fun but not for everyone.

[h1]Rating:[/h1] 5/10 [h1]TL;DR:[/h1] This is a difficult game to recommend. It's not bad, but it's just not as interesting as it initially seems. The puzzling is fun, but everything surrounding it is just sorta "meh" at best. But for the price, it's not the worst value proposition if you like puzzle games. [hr][/hr] [h1]Pros:[/h1] + Puzzle Difficulty: The puzzle difficulty is actually pretty well tuned. A good mix of super obvious clues to get you started and some pretty obscure puzzles you have to solve via some trial and error or inference. Actually reading the articles and notes and paying attention to certain themes becomes integral to finishing the game and getting the different endings. + Gameplay/Interface: Being able to play the game with keyboard only, mouse + keyboard, or just mouse is actually really nice. At first I was using a combo, but eventually I figured out just typing would automatically enter the codes on the side and that was a game changer. Really lets you figure out what's most comfortable and stick with it. Or change it up depending on your sitting position lol [hr][/hr] [h1]Mixed:[/h1] +/- Tutorial: This game has no tutorial. You have to figure out what things do on your own. Which isn't bad per se. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes had a tutorial you could easily miss finding, but that game was amazing. Something like Tunic doesn't provide you with much info and it's part of the fun figuring out what is what. Obra Dinn is maybe one of the best example for not knowing what the hell is happening, but figuring it out is extremely satisfying. Here, it just isn't as much fun. The sense of discovery is mostly just "Oh, this thing does this." or "Oh, that's what that means." But this also means you can just infer incorrectly and the game is worse off for it. For example, in the settings menu I saw there are hints. No idea what they are, but you can turn down hint frequency. I thought talking to the voice over the radio was the hint system. So for a while I didn't. But I got stuck and decided to see what sort of hint it would give. Turns out, if the radio button is red that means it's plot relevant dialog. So I should have been hitting that whenever it was red. I finished the game and am still not even really sure what the hints even are. Sometimes the radio doesn't glow red and you can talk, but the conversations were just short lines and almost never said anything helpful. Maybe the hints are the fact that if you label an article wrong, the MC says the title with a question inflection instead of an excited one? I think overall it would have removed some mystery, but a small tutorial or legend for what things mean/do would have made the experience significantly better. +/- Plot Vagueness: This game is just so vague. That initially serves to set up the premise and establish the atmosphere. You're in a weird basement/cellar room with a machine that stores notes/writing/literature. And you have to help the voice you hear over the radio figure something out. Outside of that, there's really no better motive to why this stuff is going on. The voice over the radio will tell you that essentially "bad people are using information from this machine for bad things". You get ever so slightly more elaboration I won't spoil, but it honestly I think it crosses the line of being vague for the sake of mystery to just kinda being barebones and boring by the end. +/- Presentation: The presentation is super simple. It's one room with a machine. The environment is static and you can't even move around, just interface with the machine. But the basement/cellar still feels old, dusty, and abandoned. And the machine gives off the vibe of being from an older era of technology, but still feeling out of place in how advanced it would be for the time period. Yet, it feels TOO static. There are times when the person over the radio will describe something happening and will do so with panic or a sense of urgency, but just nothing is happening in the cellar. Occasionally there are scripted moments where something will happen with the power, but that's kinda it. Stories Untold has a section where you are sitting static at a terminal, but as you play the text adventure game the room around you will reflect things happening in the game. Definitely makes things more involved and spooky to compensate for the fact that you aren't moving at all. This game just doesn't do anything like that really and it's a shame. It's hard to feel that same sense of danger and urgency the voice over the radio is speaking with when my character is seemingly in no danger whatsoever even though we're supposed to be physically close to one another. [hr][/hr] [h1]Cons:[/h1] - Puzzle Variety: You know, the novelty of the puzzle system kinda wore thin for me around halfway into the game. The game is entirely text based and every puzzle is just reading something and connecting it to something else you read. You end up with codes that share a similar pattern and you use those codes to find the next thing to read. That's really it. The variety is just not there. Buried in the game (maybe like 50-75% of the way through) is a type of choose your own adventure puzzle. And that's fun. It breaks up the monotony of the rest of the puzzles. But I only found the one. There's not even a number puzzle/word search/anything else besides just reading text. It fits thematically with the purpose of the machine in the game, but feels like they hamstrung themselves with that limitation. I honestly ended up getting pretty bored towards the end. [hr][/hr] [h1]Overall:[/h1] Again, this game isn't BAD. I've played much worse games for way longer. It's just not as good as I would have hoped. It has similar elements of other games I love (Obra Dinn, Lorelei, Tunic, Stories Untold, etc.), but it just doesn't do them as well. It's almost like, while sharing similar ideas/elements, none of those were an actual inspiration even though it clearly states Obra Dinn is one of them. Feels like this game came to the same conclusions, while not seeing something like it already done and improving the concept in their version. Which is probably why I found myself getting bored after a few hours. The initial mystery and feeling of discovery wore off and underneath is basically just a lot of reading until you figure out what code to enter next. I played this over the course of a weekend and honestly, I think it's supposed to be done in a short a time frame as possible. It's hard to come back to and remember exactly what thread you were pulling on last time because there's just so much text and the codes can be really similar. If the devs try again, I would personally like to see more of a fleshed out surrounding world (it can still be mysterious, but give me a better motivation) and some more puzzle variety. The choose your own adventure was a fun break, but I would have just liked to see more ideas like that and less just "read the article and the notes".