Obduction ®

I originally bought Obduction months ago but never got to the end. I hit a puzzle, not sure which and simple gave up. I came back with the determination to finish it this time. Some vague spoilers! A few of the puzzles, like finding the code to the tower elevator and the circle maze seemed exceedingly difficult and I’m not sure why. I had to get the internet’s help to solve the tower code. The game looks nice but load times when swapping worlds is painful, even with my SSD, that’s just for games. The ending was a god damn let down and I feel robbed. I read a lot of the in game material, trying to get a handle on the politics of the world/s. I’m still not sure why it played out like it did. Why did it suddenly go this way and what was the point in doing what the Mofang did. I really wish there was a developer explanation. All that work solving puzzles and you get the endings offered. Blah.

I have to say, I do prefer games that require less... thinking. Don't get me wrong, it's got really good puzzles that include aspects of the game world by retracing a lot of your steps... meaning that you get to revisit a lot of places and learn new things about them. I found the optimisation could be a little better... I think my gaming laptop defaulted to high-end settings though, so that may be my own fault. However the deatil is amazing, even down to the handwritten notes you find in each location. All in all, it's a good solid and short game with intricate lore and a unique tone. But it was an even shorter game for me. I had just unlocked the door in the third world, and went back to the Temple... only tog et stuck in a wall. Yes. Stuck. I somehow walked along a very narrow ledge, which lowers as you go along it. This game has no jump mechanic, and no gravity for the player so I couldn't drop down, I couldn't jump off, I couldn't walk back the way I came either. I could not move at all. I reloaded my save... and it put me back on the ledge. Unfortunately this prompted me to uninstall and not try again. This IS a great game, and please give it a chance... but just be more careful than myself (a gamer whose aesthetic is being able to do a cool flip to get out of a sticky glitch!)

Mystery and intrigue quickly gives way to mundanity and aimless wandering in this odd adventure game. The game looks pretty and plays pretty well, although the control scheme is a bit rudimentary at times, but the lack of story/narrative, lack of direction, very few real puzzles and not much atmosphere makes it a bore to play rather than it being an involving and interesting adventure. It’s a very slow burner, with lots of exploration and teasing out the relevant information, and there are a number of poor design choices which spoil things. A few minor conveniences, like having a map, journey, objective list and not having to wait so long every time you swap worlds would have made it better.

This game's already annoyed me several times and I'm not even half an hour in. First of all, there's no way to remap the controls! I want to move with SDFE, not ASDW. That's how I always play and anyone who thinks I'm wrong can fight me about it. But this game thinks it knows better and forces me to use their way. It's such an easy change to implement. There's really no excuse for this. The performance isn't great either. In the intro alone it dipped down to 37fps. Other points where it's loading in new assets causes it to dip. I have an RTX-2080 and this is no Cyberpunk. No excuse for this either. And just now I alt-tabbed away to share the game on Discord with a friend and the game crashed. $30 is already a ridiculous price to pay for something that's only digital, but at least get it working. And while you're at it, fix the overview text; "it's" is a contraction, not a possessive.

The game is difficult and the story is not deep, however it gives good satisfaction when you start to connect the pieces