This is such a curious little game. It's not entirely perfect, but it has a ton of charm and it does what it wants to do really well. The basic idea is that you are a sort-of detective abord a generation star ship that solves cases, always locking in your solutions like in Sherlock Holmes games, making use of a self-updating log of discussions and evidence you found. But, importantly, nobody stops you from giving the wrong answer. You won't be told immediately, the game just goes on (and saves!). So you can say whatever you want. It leads to a fascinating dynamic. It reminds me of the way Return of the Obra Dinn needs you to give 3 answers before confirming what is correct. The downsides mostly come down to it being a tad too short, and the fact that navigation is a bit arduous. There are a lot of shortcuts, but menu positions reset and the map could show more details.
This is really, first and foremost, a musical. It's a visual novel with some choose-your-own-adventure elements second, but only after being a musical. That being said, the central mechanic - that you can dynamically alter the lyrics, the tempo an the scenes of songs mid-song by changing verses as they come up - works brilliantly, and is very unique compared to other visual novels. Plus, the voice cast does *phenomenal* work, in particular Grace your protagonist and Pan are exceptionally well-voiced.
Unlike the later The Bunker, Rebirth is a *very* different game. It's more of a horror-y and mostly creepy visual novel, an interactive piece of fiction with little actual escape or hiding except in very predefined ways. This all made me pretty disappointed at first. But, sticking with it, the insanely twisted atmosphere and creepy visuals that far exceed what even the later The Bunker does (which I think is overall the better game and even outdoes TDD) really convey a dreadful feeling. It's as if HR Giger took a swing at creating an Amnesia-game-like feeling just via visuals and atmosphere. It's a shame there's virtually no gameplay to match it, but the overall game was still *very* good, at least IMO. Just be aware, it's a visual novel more than a stealth exploration game. A very good one, IMO, but still odd to sell it under this label, more comparable to A Machine For Pigs although unlike that one, this gets the creepy feeling and dreadful foreboding atmosphere right!
One of the few games that does randomization right. Everyone has their ~slightly~ different play, while overall elements are reliable. The atmosphere is truly dreadful, with lots of things not explained clearly, and intentionally so. I'm trying to not say much more as I want to avoid give any real elements away. Highly recommended, it's easily the best game Frictional have done so far. I will say that IMO it drags out too much near the end, but luckily there are options to make the enemies less agressive and/or disable some entirely, and while I would readily recommend against doing this for the actual playthrough as you'll remove much of the horror, if you find yourself annoyed by the end from having "solved" it but taking forever to set up the run, then honestly do it, it's awesome that they provided those options.
This is such a quirky concept. A roguelike city builder, spending just 20-60 minutes on each settlement until the mission is over either way, victory or defeat. But, independent of which, the show must go on. You go to the next settlement spot. Each time your villagers are randomized, the map is randomized, the available buildings and orders are randomized. Successful settlements give resources that are used to advance overall upgrades and work towards reforging a seal, which is a mechanic that increases the cycle time until the entire overworld map (where you pick the next settlement) resets, because of course that is also randomized. This increased cycle time gives you access to more upgrade resources, but also to farther seals. And with that, slowly the required difficult to play at increases, giving larger rewards but also adding extra mechanics to keep in check. It's.. fascinating. I should not work! It sounds horrible! But it works, and incredibly well so. I have never seen a city builder keep my attention like this. "Just one more level"-syndrome. A lot of it!
Now, to first talk about the big positive thing here: The backgrounds and scenery have an absolutely amazing style to them. I believe they were actually built as physical miniature sceneries, then shot to get a fully accurate tilt shift and all with "correct" lighting. And now comes all the parts that don't work: First, the game is awfully short, and "cuts out" a lot. I feel this was meant to be much much much longer, but they never got around to adding it. None of the characters are introduced well, and plenty serve no specific purpose. The game is also awfully... dead? It's so weird. It's like this was a very early tech demo to investors. Speaking of early, the game is *very* buggy. Animations are truly bad, interactions mess up constantly, skipping sometimes work sometimes does not, controller controls are flat out unusable, mouse interactions misalign, etc. Also, while I apploud letting the german speakers do the english voices to fit the setting (and Nora Tschirner knocks it out of the park as Greta as she always does), I get a feeling that due to cut content and early releases the VAs had absolutely no clue of the context of their scenes and lines. Nothing fits. The voiceovers least of all. VAs cannot work without knowing the scene, and it shows here. Puzzles are... daft. To put it mildly. At times it feels like it wanted to *parody* the "moon logic" of older point&click games, but it fails to even do that because of how unfinished and messy it is. In the end you just use everything with everything, and since the scenes are so short and the environments so limited, you end up quickly solving the game in 4-5 hours that way. To sum it up: Nice backgrounds. You got Nora Tschirner. Two of about 60 things for a successful point&click ticked off the list. Not worth the money. And I got it free.
(not finished yet) This game has a lot going for it, and it puts it all together really well. It's a lot like an isometric Zelda, with a slightly more pronounced focus on combat and in particular dodging/blocking. However, its core strength is the mystery, including an unreadable manual you collect page-by-page ingame. So the less you read up about this before you go in, the better. Its graphics are also lush and pretty, the sound design is really good, the animation is top-notch and the enemy design is not varied, but good. One big downside I found so far is that it's almost *too* obtuse at times, specifically requiring a rather specific sequence of things but hiding that sequence as good as possible. And instead of feeling clever when you find it, you feel annoying it was done in such a "ha! gotcha!"-way. This also extends to the combat system, which feels difficult at first, and then when you figure it out and it gets easy, it doesn't feel like you made personal progress and overcame a challenge, rather that the challenge was a smokescreen made out of deliberately hiding information from the player. Which, I suppose, is the whole point of the game, what with its unreadable manual. But while I love that point, I feel broadly applying it to *everything* actually dulls it a little bit. In specific circumstances less would have been more, and prevented player frustration in moments that were meant to feel rewarding or positive. Apart from that - and I intentionally worded it as generic as possible to avoid any spoilers - it's a stellar game. Really liking it to so far.
This is an *extremely* faithful remaster of the original System Shock 1 from the 90s. So faithful in fact that in many regards it feels very old despite the new graphics and models. But, that old feeling is also its greatest strength, boasting an immersive sim gameplay that has often been copied, frequently really well, but never *quite* matched. And it shows. The atmosphere is perfect, and also presents an amazing stage for a new polish of the greatest video game villain ever created. SHODAN has, from what I understand, been re-recorded by the very Terri Brosius who voiced her in the original, and she is just **perfect**. She is scary, dangerous, unstable and psychotic in just the right combination. Highly recommended game, it is atmospheric like basically no other game in the past 30 years is.
It's difficult to find a way to praise this as much as it deserves while also being fair to inevitable shortcomings. Nothing is ever perfect. I'll try it in bullet points: - Some (intentionally) opaque design. It makes sense in the context, but is confusing at first. - Some lack of variety. - (Fixed now) difficult to put down as your map doesn't really track anything. (You can set markers now as of patch 1.1) + Incredibly atmospheric. + A perfect example of how to make a game creepy in a very passive way, letting the player and their mind do all the work. + Really serene despite all the creepy stuff. + Individual days are super short, this leads to a very nice one-more-day rhythm. + Lots of little details to explore. + Very freeform. + Nice fishing minigame(s) - yes, there's multiple! + Actually decent story, with a lot of things you'll want to explore. Closed to Zelda BotW/TotK another game got, IMO. + Doesn't overstay its welcome. It lasts 8-12 hours, and that's perfect as otherwise it'd get samey. Huge recommendation. If you enjoy fishing in any video game, if you enjoy games that thrive more on relaxed gameplay and/or you enjoy lovecraftian settings, definitely check this game out. One of the best indie games in years.
