Transcender

It was definetly a new experience. The start narration felt like torture to me thats why I always interupted it. The second part was very intuitive and even though one doesnt know what to do or what is happening it becomes clear pretty fast. It would be nice if we would get to see more changes on the planet though. One tree - that you just see if you zoom out - and a few clouds is not that exciting. There where drones to send out but they never reported a find. On the station the time is always running out too fast. Only once I had more time after a choice put me into a slow motion state where time moved slower and even though I was moving slower too I could explore much more. Although that slow motion state also came with a first person view that made me feel sick because of the screen motion while running. I finished it by closing my eyes while running because back then I didnt know that you supposedly can get out of the first person view with the page buttons. In the end it did not feel rewarding enough to go on playing. I dont like timed games and I dont like to have to write down what I did that got me somewhere. In the end it just was too repetitive for my taste. It is definetly worth a try for a short while but I have to admit that I would not buy such a game because it got more frustrating than fun after a few tries (and not just because the game crashed everytime I reached the end). Also while reading the DEV's answers in the forum I got the feeling that the plan is to deliver this experience in small slices and I prefer to buy the whole game rather than getting milked via DLC's or part by part. It nowadays feels like DEV's make short games on purpose to get to sell us overpriced DLC's that should have been part of the game to begin with.

There’s two parts to this self-conscious art game, the game and the art, and neither is entirely successful. To address the game first, in contrast to the attractive images on the store page, after a lengthy passive introduction, the player is presented with a black empty space, and a panel of icons to click on, none of which are explained or seem to have any effect on the scene, or, crucially, are interesting to use. This continues for quite a while, until finally a perfunctory text overlay appears and announces that this part of the game will end in seven something minutes, during which time sentimental piano music plays and the player can keep clicking on things, or not, as the scene plays out in front of them. Then the player is in a space ship and a series of corridors, where vapid messages of self-affirmation are graffitied. In some rooms there are paintings by Carol Roque, which are fine, but don’t go with anything else in the game. The animations for the player character come from another genre entirely, and it all has the impression of being assembled from disparate parts to make an unconvincing whole. After a while of wandering around another countdown appears, and then the game ends. At the beginning and end of the game the player listens to excerpts of a lecture by Alan Watts, who is also featured in the game Everything. These texts appear intended to evoke a sense of calm at the start and transcendence at the end, and place Transcender in a tradition of American pseudo-science fiction seen in medium/low budget works such as I Origins and The OA, which teeter between positive humanism and narcissistic self-obsession. Perhaps with more replays coherence will emerge from the ambiguity of the gameplay and the disconnected mix of spaces, painting and philosophy, but whether players are willing to do this depends on how attractive they find the parts they’ve seen so far. Once was enough for me.

Transcender Une expérience unique en son genre, peut-être un peu bizarre. Passé la première phase qui se résume à un clicker, le voyage commence seulement. J'aurais aimé qu'on puisse changer les controls de déplacement.

Interesting experience.

найкорочиша гра в яку я колись грав, ви можети кожного разу зіграти по різному але віт цьго вона не стане цікавішою. Автор вносить шось нове. Навіть не знаю з чим порівняти цю гру, краще один раз зіграти ніж читати відгук

[h1]Before I played Transcender, I had a small pp, no friends, no gf, depression, and no life. These things havent changed, but the game is pretty good[/h1]

Simply an incredible experience. Plays with the idea of existentialism, thought provoking and creative. Played twice, both versions took me to wildly different branches.

Is this what David Bowman felt when he was in the white room?