Event[0]

While the mechanic of "talking" with an artificial intelligence is often surprising, charming, and even a bit frightening at times, the simple fact that the game frequenty freezes, stutters, and crashes betrays any amount of wonder. Add in the minutes long initial loading time (not an exaggeration,) and the inability to change settings from within the game without crashing hard, and you have more frustration that detracts from what might have been an outstanding title. [My pc far exceeds the recommended specs.] I understand that this is based on an award-winning student project. As such, it's spectacular. The 80's aesthetic and retro-future gimmick is very well done. As a very short retail release, however, it seems both over-priced and lacks any proper support or fixes. In the end, I'll barely remember the excitment of the text parser, but will always remember that it nearly fried my computer. Disclosure: I received this title for free in a bundle with Tacoma. If I had paid any price, I would have instantly returned it for refund after the second time I had to force quit by turning off my pc.

A nice experience, original ; the video games industry needs this kind of project. It is almost a walking simulator but you have to solve some pusszles and the whole thing is about the interaction with the AI. I think I could get a better experience by trying to chat a bit more with the AI ; I've discovered at the end of the game how our discussions were influencing its behaviour towards me. As the game is short, another play will be interesting. It is far from perfect, you sometimes have to understand the AI flaws to be able to communicate properly with it, but it was annoying one or 2 times during my whole gameplay. Be careful with the French localization, there are issues (the piano puzzle is broken, watch an English walkthrough). If you expect to speak with a complex AI like in 2001 A Space Odissey, you will be disappointed. You should consider the IA in the game is a less advanced AI than Hal and partly broken due to the state of the ship. The art is good, the small walk in space is nice, as always. It's short if you rush but there is sufficient content to enjoy the game. The story is ok, some things remain unexplained and not really logical but the main point is to interact with the AI and to be immersed in an empty ship. The performance was initially bad (GTX1070), but after having deactivated vsync it was ok although I still got FPS drops ; it seems they occur mainly during the saving times so there is nothing to do. It's not a deal breaker. The graphics and sounds are nice, the lightning is sometimes outstanding. The art is really good, nothing realistic, it's application of the 80's idea of the future, with floppy disks and old keyboards, cleaning drones (from the Farscape series of the 2000s)... At the end it's a refreshing experience if you accept to immerse yourself in this old representation of the future and to communicate with a limited AI to save your life (which is the whole point of the game). I don't recommend it on full price though.

This was somewhat an impulsive buy by me, and yet I ended up really liking this game, the aesthetics are those great 60-80's Sci-fi, the AI you deal with in my case at least worked surprisingly well, I mean you can tell it's like a conversation bot, but it still worked far better than the AI you talk to in The Talos Principle, simply because I could write my questions my way, and for the most part get the response I sought, it gave it a much more real feel imo. I really hope this will be taken further, because this game is entirely too short, and I'd love to see something like this implemented in a longer game, with an even better AI, and more stuff to do, they need to revise controls too, I mean it was simple and you kind of need to be able to use the keyboard on the run, but I think it could work fine if you simply had a toggle to start typing. The ending is kind of bleh, I mean I love the build up, you'll slowly realize things are not as they seem, and what you're being promised likely won't happen, and I liked that part, but the end was still bleh, that's about how well I can explain it without spoiling anything major.

I agree with a lot of the other reviews that it was too short for ther price; however, I did get it on sale (thank goodness.) I loved the interactivity with the AI. It felt real. I have never seen a "chatbot" that interacted with me this well. The game does have some heavy loading periods and it was really rough on my nice gaming computer. It also crashed one time. Even so, I recomend this game if you can find it on sale.

Event[0] is a short but well crafted and innovative narrative exploration game. Lengthwise it falls within the same range as title like Firewatch or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. The AI is a very unique feature, and although it's naturally not the brightest minds it does the job quite well. The following video features more details and gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO7-DDTQ094