The game feels like is was written by David Lynch after he got road head from Hunter S. Thompson while driving down Kentucky Route 0. It plays kinda like Planescape: Torment/Tides of Numanera, but with effectively zero combat. The game is driven by internal/external dilogue between the outside world, your character (an amnesiac, alcoholic detective), and his skills. In this way, the skills you possess passively inform the text that’s revealed to you (complete with their own, imperfect biases) while also modifying your active abilities to complete tasks. In this way, your skills will literally transform the world that you are able to perceive – and I found this pleasingly executed as a mechanic. The game, at this point in time, has mechanical flaws (skills not working correctly, save games corrupting), balancing issues (some skills being much more useful than others), and missed opportunities (types of actions/references not feeding into thoughts [in D&D terms, “feats”] which are essential for the exploration of story arcs). There were a few breakpoints in the game where I had to resort to save scumming in order to progress; this was irritating, but by no means a deal breaker. I would wager that most of these issues will be fixed in later patches. T The writing is fantastic: it is funny, bizarro, realist, empathetic. My personal journey took me to a painful place of self-reflection, treachery, and (repeating myself) kinda profound empathy. If you’re down for a story rich world with virtually no combat and (the game’s early, so I forgive this) a couple of weird bugs, the you will love this game. If you need combat or are disposed to skip dialogue/reading sections, you will not enjoy this game. If you’re easily offended, you’ll be put off by some aspects of this game (but the blame would partially be on you for going down those rabbit-holes and tricking yourself into believing they were mandatory). It took me 30+ hours to beat; I relished the experience.
This review pains me. The game itself is enjoyable, but every time I have set down to play it with friends, the initial setup (i.e. binding controllers to it) has been an unmitigated disaster. I have read that this plays well with XBOX controllers; I use steam controllers and logitech ones. 3/4 of the times I have tried to play it, with some combination of those controllers, I have been unable to. In one instance, I was able to successful play with one controller and a keyboard, because the game forces the keyboard as an input (in my experience). Given the type of game this is, these flaws are an absolute deal-breaker for me. I only every want to play this game on a whim when a few friends are together, and in most instances this has culminated in several unsuccessful configurations, and an irritated "giving up" after 15 minutes. The game itself is fun: I enjoy the aesthetics and mechanics, but I have been unable to play it (with friends) in the circumstances where we wanted to play it.
This game was certainly good for scratching that Grimrock itch. Combat is a core part of this game, the monsters were diverse, but they could mostly be taken out with the same strategy. I played the game as a mage. Battles consisted of strike, move, area of effect, move strike, with minimal variation. Combat itself moves a little faster than it did in grimrock: to be surrounded is death... but monsters are handicapped by their movements: every one of them can be kited (because they can't move/turn quite as fast as you) and AoE spells will get them as they try to close in. Combat really consisted of this for me, and I can't tell if I was exploiting the system or playing it as it was meant to be played. I don't know if this is because I slipped into a strategy that worked for me. The puzzles were a little heavy on the "move blocks around" front; aside from that, I don't really have complaints, they consisted of: timed movement exercises, scavenger hunts, and lever based password challenges. None of these were particularly unforgiving or tedious (with the exception of an extended scavanger hunt for library books). The narrative wasn't particuarly compelling. You have little to no memory, you wake up at the base of a tower, and there are monsters in it. It turns out to be a research facility; you're looking for you daughter and wife; something went bad while folks were researching an exotic, deep sea material. I never really cared about the protagonist or felt caught up in the mystery, but it was a fun dungeon crawl, and the voice acting didn't offend me. The secrets were a little too well hidden in most cases. I used guides after I cleared a level to pick up what I missed... and more often than not there was some little bolt that needed to be twiddled in order to open a door. I'm sure someone with more patience could have found them naturally, and I found about half of them on my own. All things considered. It was fun; I'd get another one from the devs.
