Explore the worlds of Californium, a first person exploration game where you are a writer trapped into shifting realities. Will you find what's behind the simulacra?
Berkeley, 1967. You are Elvin Green, a writer whose career is not better than his sentimental life. Besides, the day starts badly: yo...
Explore the worlds of Californium, a first person exploration game where you are a writer trapped into shifting realities. Will you find what's behind the simulacra?
Berkeley, 1967. You are Elvin Green, a writer whose career is not better than his sentimental life. Besides, the day starts badly: your wife Thea left you a break up letter. As for Eddy, your editor, he summons you: "you are a writer who does not write" - you should find yourself another editor. Your world is falling apart. Too much acid and cheap booze? Too many sleepless nights stuck to your typewriter, powerless to tackle your first novel? Your poor mental health is collapsing. Luckily this nightmarish world is unstable, you can extract yourself from it and thus access another reality! You have nothing to lose!
Find the anomalies
4 alternate realities
Inspired by the life and work of Philip K.Dick
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soundtrack (MP3)
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Why buy on GOG.COM?
DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.
This isn't a game. This is yet another low-effort, pretentious, shallow piece of entertainment masquerading as a game. There is no obstacle to overcome. There is no challenge. There is no reason to invest time in this. GOG should exercise a modicum of restraint and hold back on charging money for high school project nonsense like this. The GOG catalogue loses more than it gains by listing this alongside its other products.
is an interesting but mediocre tribute to the works of Philip K. Dick and his life. In Californium, you play as a struggling writer who goes on an unstable journey through different realities. Meanwhile tormented by an almost omnipotent narrator as the player come to terms with the oddities around them.
The plot and presentation is by far the best aspect of the game. The art style adds a lot of charm and detail to the world. The voice acting is great and a pleasant to listen too. The music is also great which helps set the tone for each of the environments. As for the plot itself, the narrative presents itself in almost a short story fashion as it goes through the chapters(levels). Each chapter brings forth its own genre and tone. As the plot progresses, it goes into wild and perplexing directions.
In terms of gameplay, this is where the enjoyment ends. Gameplay-wise, its an exploration game a.k.a walking simulator. The main actions at play is walking and listening to characters to trigger events to push the narrative forward and sometimes solve reality warping puzzles. These puzzles are neat at first but get tiresome towards the end of the game. They are a nice addition to the game but they could have been done much better. That is basically all you do within the game. Game length took me about three hours and a half to complete but it can be done in a shorter time. During gameplay, voices sometimes cut out and sections of levels became block off forcing a restart to bypass those problems. This was most noticeable during the last section of the game. Even the credits were glitched out.
Overall if you are a fan of PKD, which the game is fill up with references to his works and or enjoy first person exploration games, give it a try. However if not, the game is not for you.
People who don't like it are obviously not fans of Phillip. K. Dick. This game is full of the author's atmosphere. Fully recomended, I have played it many times, better than smoking pot
This is a hidden object game in the guise of a "walking sim" preteding to be deep and weird. Minimal story, badly voice acted cardboard - both literally and figurately - characters, and all but non-existent world-building and gameplay. All you do is walk around trying to find hidden hotspots.
Bought it, played it, finished it, uninstalled it, deleted it, gonna forget about it... :/
It was a 5 hour experience, glad it didn't over stay its welcome.
I relied on a walkthrough to complete it.
This's the kind of game you could only come across by painstakingly flipping through the entire site's catalog...and then it was recommended to me after buying Jazzpunk.
You play as Elvin Green, an alcoholic, drug-addicted writer whose life has hit the skids, and then starts opening portals to alternate realities one day, somehow.
The game is pretty atmospheric, the soundtrack is very ambient, and the choice of colors and lighting effects can make everything feel immersive - as immersive as Ubisoft made things in Beyond Good & Evil, for example.
The object of the game is to find sigils - which look like a sideways "I" inside a circle/oval - that open up alternate reality portals.
The challenge is in finding these sigils, which also offer sound and lighting queues when you're nearby them. Some of them, you'll have to face away from them for them to appear, then face them and click fast enough before they disappear again. If objects start disappearing when you drag your cursor over them, that's another hint a sigil is in the area. Also look for objects that intermittently "glitch" in and out of reality, or change to something else, to find these sigils.
There are characters who will talk to you when you approach them, giving you story info about the place and time you're in; if you want to cycle through their lines, you'll have to back up and re-approach them to get them to go through their next set of lines; why you can't just click on them, I don't know.
You start in Berkeley California in the 1970s, and the two alternate realities you visit include an Orwellian version of California and Mars, then a short final level.
The ending was very abrupt and inconclusive; don't know what sort of catharsis I'm supposed to get out of this, if anything at all.
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