Developer: Ocelot Society | Released: 2016 | Genre: Adventure, First Person
That was a really cool game. Sure, it was pretty short – I completed it in about 2½ hours – but it was also very atmospheric and often fascinating. And to think I’ve postponed playing it for the longest time because I heard rumors about having to deal with a psychopathic computer AI. It made it sound like an excruciating experience. Like masochism – or sadism – however which way you want to look at it.
But it wasn’t like that at all.
Instead it was a sweet first person adventure where I sometimes had to talk to the computer AI, Kaizen-85, using oldskool terminals, in order to make it open doors, show logs, or move an elevator for me. It could get a little stubborn a few times, but it was friendly and usually approved of my request. That being said, I did decide to roleplay a very friendly and forthcoming attitude. Lots of asking using the magic word.
I was in a small space station, abandoned of course, and I had to gain access to bedrooms and even a garden. There was a puzzle about getting access to the first bedroom using eye detection, and I was also in space a few times, moving around with a jet pack and limited oxygen. I even had to gain access to one of the later bedrooms from the outside, but I won’t spoil how that came about.
It was easy to detect that talking to the AI wasn’t using the most advanced Eliza emulator in existence. It was easy to confuse it and just get answers like it didn’t even listen to my question. It was also possible to execute a file and read logs or solve a puzzle. In one bedroom I could even play the piano. The speech synthesizer used for the AI was crude, but it did pronounce the username I typed in.
I thought that was nifty. Usually games always try to avoid having to pronounce a custom username.
Interactivity was quite low, actually. Apart from typing on the terminals and moving around, I could mostly just look at things. There were no opening closet doors or pulling out drawers. Here and there a vacuum cleaner robot was either stuck or stubbornly moving around. The space station itself had that 80’s science fiction look, which worked really well in this game.
There are allegedly three endings in the game. I got the destructive one.