Close to the Sun was clearly inspired by two games, Bioshock and Outlast. It has the visual aesthetics and environment of Bioshock, with the chase sequences and horror elements from Outlast. Despite mixing some of the art and gameplay together from these two series with the intent to create something new, Close to the Sun comes off as nothing more than a cheap Dollar General knockoff.

Well to be fair, the art design wasn’t too bad at times because there were some really cool locations like the opera house and the garden section towards the end of the game. Actually, it was the only marginally good thing about this game. Everything else is pretty terrible.

Like I mentioned before, Close to the sun tries to come off as a horror game by having enemies such as these stupid looking electrical monsters, and some poorly written stab happy lunatic. Every time you encounter either of them, your only option is to run. These sequences may seem like you have options by giving you different places or routes to go, but you don’t. These sections of gameplay are very scripted and if you make one wrong mistake you instantly die because unlike Jack in Bioshock, Rose in Close to the Sun isn’t provide with any weapons.

So that’s a good segue to mention to dig into the fact that there is no combat at all in this game. It’s actually a walking sim, which in and of itself doesn’t bother me. The lack of exploration and any actual creative gameplay is what bothers me. The game gives you some interesting locations to look at, but exploration is boring because as large as the Helios is made to be in the story, the areas are actually kind of small and there isn’t really anything to discover. The game does toss a few puzzles at you, but they’re really easy to solve which honestly makes it feel like the developers put in the puzzles just to pad out the game.

Sadly, the story in Close to the Sun doesn’t balance out the awful gameplay either because the narrative is just as bad, if not worse. It’s a complete mess. The game is written to be a mystery where nothing is explained and it’s clear that you’re meant to get all the answers in a direct sequel. Questions like; who is Ludwig and what made him so psychotic? Who sent Rose the letter to go to the Helios if it wasn’t Ada? Well, you never get those answers because there is currently no sequel or DLC to answer those questions and to make matters worse the game ends on a cliff hanger.

In all honesty though, I don’t know if I’d care enough to get those answers if there was a sequel. I didn’t really like or care about any of the characters after playing Close to the Sun. None of them were that interesting. I found the main character, Rose to be more grating than compelling if anything. Her motivation wasn’t bad, but her dialogue, just like the rest of the characters, was written really poorly and just made me cringe. I might as well say it now, the voice acting is some of the worst I’ve ever heard in a video game.

Rose’s sister, Ada, is a complete Mary Sue in the fact that she’s the smartest and the best at everything. Almost all the dialogue referring to or involving her pretty much boils down to “Ada is the greatest, Ada is the best. No other scientist on Helios is smarted than her.” Other than that Ada has no other defining traits just like Rose, or any other character in this god awful story.

I don’t know much about Tesla as a person because I’ve never read up on his history, but with the way he’s written I almost feel like he was written with the a clear attempt at character assassination. From what little I know of Telsa, I don’t think he was really that big into capitalism so for the writers to make him the richest and greediest person in the world just felt that they didn’t really understand him and felt more like a pro-Edison campaign. Or maybe they took out their feelings on Elon Musk onto their fictional Nikola Tesla. Either way, it just felt very strange to take Tesla and turn him into this character… who also still isn’t as smart as Ada.

Now let’s talk about some of the main antagonists, Aubrey and Ludwig. Honestly there’s not much to say about either. Aubrey is just your poor man’s version of Frank Fontaine whose only sole motive is to impress Tesla, I guess so that’s why he does bad stuff? Ludwig comes off as a lame Outlast killer who got rejected from the final version of the game and then went over to Close to the Sun because no one wanted him. His motive for killing people is never explained and is one of those mysteries that I talk about earlier that was never answered.


Overall:
Close to the Sun is an awful game and an awful horror game to boot. This game fails at almost everything it tries to do and little good can be said about it. If it was on sale for a dollar, I would tell you to skip it, because it’s really that bad.


Pros:
+Decent art design at times

*Cons:
-bad and frustrating gameplay
-no combat
-awful story
-bad voice acting
-poorly written characters
-pointless narrative that goes nowhere due to no sequel, making the whole experience a waste of time

Un indie horror in prima persona come tanti, privo di originalità, sorretto esclusivamente dal reparto grafico-artistico e dal contesto simil-Bioshock, con Tesla al posto di Ryan e così via.
Sarò breve, come lo è il gioco in questione.
Trama inconcludente, gameplay minimalista e privo di attrattiva (ci sono walking simulator più originali) e personaggi scialbi e prevedibili. Sembra quasi che sia stata tutta una tech-demo, piuttosto che un videogioco vero e proprio.
Pessima, antiquata - e un po' furbetta - la scelta di non includere i salvataggi automatici nei livelli, costringendo di fatto il giocatore a finire TUTTO il capitolo prima di poter salvare e chiudere il gioco. Piccoli espedienti per allungare il tempo di gioco, uniti al fatto che non si possano skippare le cutscene.

Magari alla sufficienza ci arriverebbe anche, ma ho deciso di non arrivare alle 3 stelle per spronare un team di sviluppo, italiano tra l'altro, che avrebbe le potenzialità per far di più, a puntare più in alto.