entertaining, addictive, stressful
Was hoping for an experience like what Papers Please gave, this game has all the addictive fun but only a slight emotional impact. The gameplay is fun, you navigate from various cameras and solve mini mysteries regarding what you see, or not, the story is very fluid with different outcomes depending on your actions/inactions. This allows for multiple restarts as you try and get all the endings. Throughout all is a timer, which hampers the fun greatly, timers are money (to pay rent, buy more cameras, food), plus story timers to solve mysteries or subplots, for which you gain large rewards. there are insta fail events which cause game overs. each game is randomly generated which resets which stories you get, you still start in same place, just different events.
Its a bit clunky at times dealing with the multiple windows, people knocking on your door and micro managing physical needs and jobs. you get different clues at different times so it pays to keep an eye on the camera, but that damn timer has you pull off to earn money, grocery shop etc.
After playing for several hours im tired of it. Having the same scenarios play out and solving for each whilst you wait for new events gets old. I wish they had a better story mode, as I do want to see all the events and cameras and their final stories, which is quite interesting to see the final camera shots displayed. endings are abrupt with story cards concluding your actions and feel pretty shallow and unsatisfying.
i was hoping for a more indepth and emotionally charged time with the game, got instead a light fun time waster with repetitive gameplay and a sense of grinding in order to gain new scenarios. get it on deep sale and enjoy