Developer: Cosmonaut Studios | Released: 2022 | Genre: Adventure, First Person
In this first person adventure game, I was an observing rubber suit guy manipulating time in a house with two floors, trying to save the lives of six young adults after a fire in a fuse box.
Using a tool held in my right hand, I could start an event somewhere in the house. It typically lasted a few minutes and showed some of the young adults talking together as ghostly figures that I could walk around. A bit like in Tacoma, but with much clearer character models – and I couldn’t fast forward an event.
The events themselves had a separate overview screen that scrolled far to the right. It was overwhelming at first, with hundreds of dots available on a timeline. Some dots could be selected immediately, and after watching it was no longer a question mark. Most events were solely observing some dialog, but sometimes I was given a opportunity to alter time by making a person change their mind and react differently.
This had a butterfly effect and could change what events were available after that point.
The purpose of all this was of course to change enough in the past to make all six characters survive the fire. The overview screen was really flexible and made it possible to filter dots by one or more characters, watch events in a sequence, or jumping around in time. Sometimes observing an event also revealed where e.g. a key for a door was located, so I could unlock the door and watch more events.
At first the events felt like watching cuts of a soap opera show, and I also wasn’t sure of randomly watching events in 3D. It reminded me of Return of the Obra Dinn, a game I surprisingly didn’t like.
But in the second session I gave it a chance and was quickly intrigued. The event clips were the common part of the game, and for that reason the developer had really cared for that part. The motion capture and the voice acting of the young adults was really convincing. I have a suspicion that the developer used motion capture and voice acting together at the same time while recording. It’s that good.
The time manipulator agent was walking around in the empty house after the fire, and it was dark and foreboding. This led to believe horror elements would occur, but apart from a picture falling down from the wall, it was pretty much just walking to a new place and watching the event there.
The mute protagonist had a supervisor in his headset. He called him “43” and was most talkative in the beginning of the game, while I was setting up equipment and learning how to play. Later he commented on whenever useful objects were created or found somewhere.
I liked how I pulled out my device and typed in a name for the event I had just watched. Especially trying to guess what name the rubber suit protagonist was going to give it.
After having spent some hours watching as many events as possible, perhaps changing the outcome of some, there was a period of trying to produce the best timeline by altering changes. This could all be done on the overview screen, there was no need to review event cuts. It was a little arduous because of the amount of dots available, and all six characters had to survive in order to complete the game.
There were two difficulty levels – a normal and an abridged version. The normal version was the full set of events (this is what I chose) while the abridged version was easier with a smaller subset of events.
Pros
- Excellent motion capture and voice acting makes the events feel authentic.
- Much more than just the six characters, they are frequently visited by various friends.
- The motion capture is so good, it excuses the basic lip sync and the stiff eyes.
- The hand animations for the mute protagonist are frequent and satisfying to watch.
- Objects in the house appear or disappear depending on what events you have changed.
- Some doors are locked at first, you have to unlock them to see more events on the other side.
- If you find the overview screen overwhelming, try playing the abridged version.
Cons
- Only takes place in a house and its backyard, there are no other locations to visit.
- The overview screen with hundreds of event dots can be overwhelming, especially at first.
- The dark house with solid horror vibes is not really utilized with scary moments.
- There is a phase of twiddling the timeline in the end to get the best results.