The game opens with you doing a lot of walking until you get to a timed section where you have only 15 seconds to input a 7 step launch sequence without it even being clear where all the things are in front of you as they aren't highlighted or specifically visible. when the game reloads you just end up in the same spot and you can't progress. very cool, fun game design.
The game is fairly short, I finished it at around 6 hours but it felt much longer than that as the game was a slog. The core controls for your camera movement are painfully slow. All the "puzzles" are self evident, no thought required actions that feel more like busy work than a test of your intellect. The only challenge I encountered were the controls themselves, it not always being clear how you are supposed to input something, or get to a certain screen. The control scheme having random button choices and many unnecessary button holds instead of just pressing a different key felt uncomfortable and felt like a bad pc port of a console game. While the game environments look nice, the game stutters a lot, and character facial animations look off, not always syncing with dialogue. There was a point where an object unintentionally clipped through the camera during what should have been a tense moment. The atmosphere, sound design, and general mood of the game are nice, but the poor controls and dull game-play sour the experience. I won't spoil the plot, but suffice to say Observations brings nothing new to the table as far as sci-fi horror goes. A Space Odyssey this is NOT. This would have been much better as a short film instead of a game with poor controls, if you are still interested, go look up a play-through online and watch that instead.
