This game felt like a deep, refreshing draught for the mind. The linguistic puzzles are satisfying. The mystery of the Nebula's history is intriguing and the way in which it reveals itself under investigation reminds me of Return of the Obra Din. It rewards exploration without turning itself into a pixel hunt. The space river navigation sequences are simple but manage to come off as relaxing rather than boring (and if you do find them boring you can hand over control to your robot - if you still have him)! There are many little details in this game that can completely change how things go. You may find yourself discovering things you never expected, and entire segments of the game can be missed. The game autosaves often and you cannot take actions back, which feels consequential in the game's atmosphere rather than unfair. I liked this, except for a couple of moments where I felt the game had gone out of its way to trick me. A word of warning: Dialogue choices matter and cannot be taken back. If you habitually try to explore dialogue trees to the fullest, show everyone everything, and do other things that would be completely okay in other adveture games then you will quickly discover unexpectedly bad things happening. For all the game's wonderfully good points, it's also buggy and janky. I had entire segments of environment completely fail to load during one of the final sequences, leaving me bemusedly gazing out to the skybox as I tried to imagine what I might be seeing. In another case, the camera refused to reset from its position during a scripted sequence. I restarted from my save and ended up with a completely different outcome, which displeased me. The further into the game you go, the more these seem to occur, meaning that it'll get in your way just as you're most invested in what you see. Still recommended. You should buy and play this, but be prepared to roll your eyes and kick it a few times.
