I'd seen the tech demo of this game in the hands of Let's Players in the past and was intrigued to see a full game came of it. More reviews and gameplay footage sold me on it entirely.
This game is essentially the lovechild of Portal and The Stanley Parable, bearing the first-person puzzle-room and science elements of the former and the anxious "behind-the-scenes of empty reality" and philosophical elements of the latter. The premise is that you're placed into a dream-augmenting service that is meant to provide therapy, but the orientation program fails and you find yourself lost in an increasingly confusing and sometimes harrowing dreamscape deep within the program. The puzzles mostly revolve around physics and tricks of perspective: any object you pick up will assume the size that it appears to be in perspective. This allows you to enlarge an object by holding it up and backing up so it looks large, and it will land in the background at that size, and vice-versa. The game also engages with optical illusions that can be experienced in 3D space and often takes them a further step into warping reality along the theme of perspective's images being real. Maybe my favorite puzzles, however, are the ones that make you feel like Alice in Wonderland as you shift the size of doorways and, thus, the size of the environment you're about to enter, with some opportunities to use linked portal doors and size alteration to experience a space at any size you want. The game also has several achievements and hidden items and rooms which reward exploration well.
The emotional experience of this game, despite its subtle comedy, is uniquely off-putting. Occasionally, the puzzles are so cool they're magical, but the premise and the execution are extremely unsettling. The game definitely indulges in fear on purpose and quite effectively, and it's never terrifying but can at times keep you on edge. Part of me finds the ending disappointing after this unnerving setup, since I think the game misused the compelling idea of being stuck in a deteriorating dream, and the message the game tries to deliver didn't land well with me. I still adored the surreal experience, and with the approach the game takes, I can enjoy some of the thematic effects it creates for some of the areas.
This game is a lot of fun and very emotionally effective, perhaps only failing at the end in the latter respect. It's a visual and mental treat and will likely give you some unique feelings. I definitely recommend checking it out.
A fascinating experience.
I'd seen the tech demo of this game in the hands of Let's Players in the past and was intrigued to see a full game came of it. More reviews and gameplay footage sold me on it entirely.
This game is essentially the lovechild of Portal and The Stanley Parable, bearing the first-person puzzle-room and science elements of the former and the anxious "behind-the-scenes of empty reality" and philosophical elements of the latter. The premise is that you're placed into a dream-augmenting service that is meant to provide therapy, but the orientation program fails and you find yourself lost in an increasingly confusing and sometimes harrowing dreamscape deep within the program. The puzzles mostly revolve around physics and tricks of perspective: any object you pick up will assume the size that it appears to be in perspective. This allows you to enlarge an object by holding it up and backing up so it looks large, and it will land in the background at that size, and vice-versa. The game also engages with optical illusions that can be experienced in 3D space and often takes them a further step into warping reality along the theme of perspective's images being real. Maybe my favorite puzzles, however, are the ones that make you feel like Alice in Wonderland as you shift the size of doorways and, thus, the size of the environment you're about to enter, with some opportunities to use linked portal doors and size alteration to experience a space at any size you want. The game also has several achievements and hidden items and rooms which reward exploration well.
The emotional experience of this game, despite its subtle comedy, is uniquely off-putting. Occasionally, the puzzles are so cool they're magical, but the premise and the execution are extremely unsettling. The game definitely indulges in fear on purpose and quite effectively, and it's never terrifying but can at times keep you on edge. Part of me finds the ending disappointing after this unnerving setup, since I think the game misused the compelling idea of being stuck in a deteriorating dream, and the message the game tries to deliver didn't land well with me. I still adored the surreal experience, and with the approach the game takes, I can enjoy some of the thematic effects it creates for some of the areas.
This game is a lot of fun and very emotionally effective, perhaps only failing at the end in the latter respect. It's a visual and mental treat and will likely give you some unique feelings. I definitely recommend checking it out.