This review assumes you have read about, or watched videos on, the basics of the gameplay mechanics and will not go into them. Observation is a fairly decent indie game that heavily features puzzle-based gameplay and some very light exploration. The storyline is the main focus and, while I'd like to comment on it, doing so risks giving away the plot as all you're meant to know at the start is that you're an AI on a space station helping a human scientist stay alive as she (and you) figures out what is happening. The puzzles are generally decent, though some of them start becoming same-ish and repetitive since they are mostly simple pattern matching or sequence memorization. The atmosphere of the game is, by far, its greatest strength. Creepy mechanical noises reverberating through tons and tons of steel hanging in space provide a tense backdrop for a game where death is impossible for the player character. The game areas are meticulously detailed and the lighting is superb. You really have a feeling of anxiety and desolation as you move through the inexplicably abandoned hallways and rooms of the Low-Orbit Space Station. The story concludes rather abruptly, and afaik, there is only one endgame version to be reached. This fact, along with the extremely linear, story-based approach of the game, plus the repetitive puzzles, makes me feel as though the replay value of this game is fairly low. The first playthrough is still decent fun if you can forgive some occasional bugs with the UI and clunky controls. For an indie developer, I think this one was worth the purchase as I'm happy to support smaller studios willing to take risks with games that really break the archetype of a game's basic structure.
