O que define se um walking simulator é bom ou ruim, pra mim, depende única e exclusivamente da sua narrativa e da forma com a qual ela se desenvolve.

E Tacoma, com sua experiência narrativa sci-fi, agrada muito nesse quesito. O fator investigação e montagem de "quebra-cabeças" com os acontecimentos gravados em realidade virtual da tripulação da estação funciona muito bem.

Eu particularmente não sou muito fã dessa estética espacial, mas eu me diverti com o mistério em torno da história, bem como os personagens e suas diferentes motivações e personalidades.

No mais, o saldo é de um bom jogo, altamente recomendável pra fãs do gênero.

Considering how many walking sim indie games there are where you explore what happened on a space ship or station you'd think the concept would get old fast - admittedly I wasn't too eager to play this because I've seen so many of them already, but I'm glad to say I was pleasantly surprised.

It's a simple type of game for sure, but when enough care is put into writing and performing the characters it's hard not to get invested. The fact they normally come with quick and easy platinums makes for a perfect recipe to encourage me to keep experiencing them too, I like it :)

Now back to my many peak stupidly-long games to completely ruin my monthly completions figure 😌

QUICK NOTE: If you like 1) writing reviews, and 2) free games, check out my Perpetual Steam Game Giveaway here on Backloggd!

Sights & Sounds
- Tacoma looks quite nice, but won't wow you with impressive textures, mindbending lighting effects, or ridiculous particle physics. The setting, however, is really quite nice. The titular spaceship isn't as expansive or richly detailed as you might find in a game like Prey (2017) or Alien: Isolation (it's more akin to the size of the ship in Observation), but it still pleases the eyes and serves as an excellent backdrop for the narrative
- For an artsy game this short, no VO work would have been a bit of a disappointment, so I was happy find that Tacoma is fully voiced. And it's very competent VO work to boot, with one of the characters singing a touching rendition of Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?"
- Other than that, there's not a ton to the soundrack other than a licensed song here or there. Most of the time, you're inundated in eerie silence, poring over audio logs for story, or listening to the rhythmic clanging of your bootsoles against the steel floor of the station
- Taken together, Tacoma's audiovisual design serves as a very effective vehicle for delivering the game's story

Story & Vibes
- As you probably ascertained from reading the previous section, Tacoma takes place on a space station. The player character is a corporate investigator who has been sent to the now abandoned ship to figure out what happened to the crew. What follows is a thoughtful exploration of humanity's place in an increasingly automated world. In fact, the events that you're investigating take place on "Obsolesence Day", the holday where humanity celebrates the advent of AI control over labor
- Corporate stooges stay well away; Tacoma has some thoughts regarding the C-suite suits that pull the levers. Effectively, the narrative prophesizes that those in power will eventually lose enough of their own humanity that they'll become more heartless and soulless than the AIs they employ. Similarly, if you're one of those, shall we say, "intellectually uncurious" types that doesn't like politics in their video games, you too should avoid this title. In fact, take up knitting or something and leave video games to people who actually enjoy them. This game has a lot of thoughts on the topic of worker rights
- But the narrative wouldn't be as good as it is if it were purely a philosophical treatise. You learn a bit of backstory about each of the Tacoma's six crew members (really, seven if you count the ship's AI). While their plotlines do tie into the game's overall themes, there's plenty of poignant beats that delve into their aspirations, fears, families, and personalities. It's really impressive how well the devs managed to pack so much narrative depth into a game that clocks in under four hours
- Despite the depth of the characters and the heady subject matter, the vibes feel lonesome and a little austere. You're all alone on a corporate space station, after all. And all that alone time gives you ample opportunity to consider what the game is trying to say
- In some ways, 2024 is a particularly interesting time to be playing this game. Now that AI (particularly LLMs) have become so commonplace, you really don't have to stretch your imagination much to envision a future like this. Will the AIs be friendly? Will governments try to protect humanity and our livelihoods? Can capitalism continue to exist when every worker has been replaced by an algorithm? Can humanity? Tacoma will give you a lot to chew on mentally

Playability & Replayability
- While the game is mostly a walking simulator, there are some investigation mechanics in play. As you follow your handler's instructions that take you on a data-gathering expedition from module to module in the Tacoma, you'll stumble upon various scenes that the ship's AI has recorded (with varying levels of file corruption). As your data is downloading, you can watch a holographic recreation of the events those scenes contain
- In addition to moving the game forward, these holograms will dole out the plot bit by bit to explain what truly happened to the crew. During these segments, you'll have the ability to fast-forward, rewind, and pause the recording. Doing so will often reveal moments where a crew member will have their wristband computer open; these can be investigated for more lore and keycodes needed for accessing safes and new parts of the ship
- In addition to each crewmate's personal device on their wrist, you'll find workstations scattered about the station. Be sure to dig into these as well for more backstory and clues
- Given that I 100%ed the game, I'm probably not coming back for a replay

Overall Impressions & Performance
- As a complete package, I was pleasantly suprised by Tacoma. This is one of those games that gets bundled all the time, so I thought it was just a filler title to up the game count of those packages. Instead, it's a high quality walking simulator with an excellent story that doesn't overstay its welcome
- The engaging plot full of intrigue and twists paired with the thoughtful exploration of political and economic themes was impressive given the 3-4 hour run time. It's as long as a James Cameron movie, but has much more to say
- Tacoma ran flawlessly on the Steam Deck. Given that the visuals aren't the focus, I'd say didn't feel like I was missing out on anything by playing on a portable display

Final Verdict
8/10. With how often this game gets bundled, it's possible that Tacoma is already sitting in your backlog somewhere. If not, keep an eye out for a sale. This is an easy recommend for people who enjoy sci-fi, investigation, or intrigue and aren't put off by an intellectually engaging experience

I do not have any larger point here and I wouldn't necessarily argue it's indicative of any deeper issues (though obviously Fullbright turned out to have Deeper Issues), but I am just really stewing on this game's incidental world building detail that Elon Musk was President of (presumably) South Africa and that "the capital" was named after him in 2016.

First off, the year. Tacoma is set in 2088 and was released in 2017. The game doesn't really position itself as branching from an alternative history event/trend pre-dating its release, making the decision to set it right around release jarring. Judging from the fact that there was a preview build in 2015 with a different premise (in which player character Amy Ferrier is a crew member rather than someone there on a focused assignment) and the game was delayed, it's possible this was originally a "future" event that accidentally became a "historical" event.

Second, South Africa does not have a singular capital. It has three capitals: Cape Town, Pretoria, and Bloemfonteinone, each corresponding to a respective branch of government. Did no one on the Fullbright team know this? It is an unmissable fact if you google "South Africa capital". Alternatively, maybe the implication is that 70 years on South Africa has done away with its three-capital idea. But hang on it's still called South Africa? Basically the entire west coast of the US and Canada minus California unifies under the name "Cascadia-First Nations" (sidebar: if you wanted to speculate on a sovereign Indigenous state or confederation of nations, why would you still use the colonial term "First Nations", which expressly doesn't include Inuit people, who are implied to be part of this fictional country) but South Africa just stays the course name-wise?

Third, President Musk. Unpack that for ten seconds: first white president post-apartheid, presumably through his own party (he could never win the ANC leadership), and that close to the present day at the time of release? I know public perception of Musk was fairly different in 2015-2017 (there was that awful Star Trek: Discovery name drop around then, not to mention The Messenger positively referencing Jordan Peterson like a year later), but even so like...why would this happen, and why then? There's not enough runway. It smacks of the sort of juvenile logic where The Troops would make the best football team and Deadpool should host SNL. Maybe it's a coup? That would explain the name change; it wasn't a reflection of his popularity, but rather his megalomania.

I understand that this was probably a conversation of less than half an hour between at most three people. There's the idea for the crossword, the idea to toss in world-building, someone's like "if space travel is so big, maybe it's because someone like Elon Musk became president", someone else is like "wait he can't be president of the US though, wasn't born here", third person is like "well he's president of South Africa then", and that was the end of it. Then I come along 6-7 years later and get annoyed because I know too fucking much about that stupid fuck, and the idea of him being an implicitly politically important part of a future optimistic enough to include commonplace space travel/residence/industry and actual Artificial Intelligence before the end of the 21st century just boils my brain.

I was not being ironic, I genuinely have no larger point.

Advances the walking simulator ideas in such smart, intelligent ways. While other walking simulators tend to just leave the player to follow the story, Fullbright has wisely put much of the action in the player's hands. As someone who gets distracted easily, letting you pause or rewind parts of a narration is so much more thought out than an alarming number of (good!) walking simulators. It lets you investigate crew members at your leisure and it lets you feel like you're chasing your own impulses, rather than sticking to a pre-set path. Its smart game design! Fullbright really understood what did and didn't work with Gone Home and expanded upon the genre in all the right ways. A+ experience all around.

Tacoma is an narrative adventure walking simulator game set aboard a high-tech space station stationed new Luna, our moon, in the year 2088. You enter the station as Amitjyoti "Amy" Ferrier and your mission is to uncover the mystery of Tacoma Station, as well as getting the AI Core safe from the station. You’ll explore every detail of how the station’s crew lived and worked, finding the clues that add up to a gripping story of trust, fear, and resolve in the face of disaster.

The mechanics of the AI Recorded memories where you would follow different characters around during various scenes was interesting and quite enjoyable. I was really interested in learning about each character, and the fact that the memories often divided between rooms and characters added replay value for each memory.

Sadly I found myself wondering what the relevance of some of the "desktop" files were, as the world-building that was often delivered through various news articles felt like a lot of reading for very little relevance. They didn't really give me more information or insight into what the characters were going through, but there were enough interesting conversations between characters to learn something about them.

One of my gripes with this game was that I would have wished for the characters to be shown as more personalized designs, rather than just the basic mannequin holograms with different colors. It would have given more personality for each character, and learning about them would have been more enjoyable.

Tacoma was also quite short, maybe even too short for it's own good. The story is intriguing and gripping you at every turn, but sadly, there is just too little in a short amount of time. I feel like the game would have been better with more optional memories, more info on who the characters were, more dialogue about the happenings on the station and the reason why it was now abandoned.

Tacoma is all about its characters and the overall story, and because those aspects of it were well balanced, I would absolutely recommend it. I find the full price of it a little hefty for how short it is, but the game is a quality product, there is no mistake of that. If you enjoy walking simulators, especially ones that provide good, and immersive story experiences, then you’ll likely enjoy Tacoma.

Looks like Fullbright is 2 for 2 with me after this and Gone Home.

They truly have a way with conveying narratives in fluid/natural ways. The pacing, exploration, atmosphere, and the like are all on point.

I wasn't as big on the mechanics involving the playing through memories and flashbacks but other than that this was pretty great across the board.

Perched for their next game.

In Tacoma you play as Amy Ferrier and have the task of retrieving data and the wetware of an AI, ODIN. from an abandoned station, Tacoma, which was struck by a meteor a few days prior. The crew was rescued, so as you collect the data, which happens automatically, you are free to explore the many different rooms in the station, where you can re-watch interactions between the crew members during and immediately after the meteor strike from a few days ago. Doing this, you find out about each member's role, ambitions, backgrounds and relationships between each other.

As mentioned, the devs are behind Gone Home as well. These games are very similar in that there isn't any threat, you can basically just explore a location and piece together the story and the events that unfolded and so, they place a heavy burden on narrative, world building and atmosphere.

It's possible that you can beat the game without really "completing" the story or finding out every truth but I wouldn't recommend it, because the story is actually pretty interesting (way more than Gone Home in my opinion). Beware that this is a walking simulator, so there isn't much in terms of gameplay. You just walk around, read some notes, listen to dialogue, do a few very easy puzzles and interact with a couple other things and that's it. All the value here is in the story and the characters, so your prior experiences with walking sims should tell you, if this game is for you.

That said, that value is quite high, as the game places you in a narrative that is quite thoughtprovoking when it comes to our current dabbles and battles with AI and how it might look like in the future where AI is more embedded into our everyday lives. I don't want to say too much, because as I said, the narrative is very important in carrying your experience, but this is a game that, while it doesn't take that story theme to an unexplored area, does create an interesting and engaging plot where the player feels actively involved thanks to the rewinding / fast-forwarding mechanic that the player needs to use to gather clues on what happened on this station.

Overall, I can recommend it and it's definitely up there as one of the more enjoyable walking sims I've played. This comes from someone who isn't necessarily a big fan of the genre, but whatever that genre needs to do to make up for its lack of gameplay, this game has accomplished.

A significant development for the studio on all fronts. Environment storytelling has become even more coherent thanks to the connectedness of the characters and the world, as well as the new scene rewind mechanics. The interiors are beautiful and varied, each character feels independent and special. The decision to create a story in a sci-fi world further encourages exploration of every room, understanding as much as possible about the world through a limited flow of information. The expansion of the possibilities of interaction with the world pleases, and also some small details (including those related to achievements) are quite funny.

Well, and the story is extremely entertaining, full and high quality. The gradual understanding of the full picture of events brings satisfaction, and one and a half final twist in the ending, even on the second playthrough, cause excitement. Also, the messages of the story are perfectly reflected in the modern world and fit even better into the world of the game.

All in all, Tacoma is a worthy narrative adventure that doesn't lose any of its major aspects and provides a deep and emotional look at an episode of the attracting world. The episode is chamber in scale of action, but large in scale of thoughts and message. And it certainly leaves a pleasant aftertaste.

P.S. I hope that despite the problems, the next Fullbright project will be of high quality (although the negative trail is of course depressing)

This was really special for the very well done personal stories and small moments brought to life. With just simple outlines and shapes of people it's more expressive and personal feeling than other games that try to immerse and connect you to people and places (the quality of the voice acting is great too.) Could it have gone deeper and further 100% but what's here is really quite charming in its simplicity, and I got a better sense of every person on this space station than a LOT of other games. I was rooting for everyone pretty much the entire time. Mileage on this will vary depending on how much you explore, read, and understand events through these actions. I should've jumped into Tacoma space station years ago but I'm glad I finally took the time to go on this little journey. Happy for you ODIN.

Another game in the sub-genre of walking simulators set in space wherein you investigate what happened to the previous crew, but this one is actually very engaging, much like Fullbright's originator of the walking sim genre - Gone Home. Much like Gone Home, I love this game. There's really nothing much to say, you explore a space station and piece together what happened to the crew and it's all wonderfully told and voice acted and engrossing. Solid little game and I look forward to the next Fullbright experience greatly.

I personally liked it more than Gone Home. It's a "corpo bad" story, but I genuinely enjoyed seeing the characters react to the events unfolding in the way they do.

There's only like 8 actual "scenes" in the game, but it's made in a way that each one is packed with so much character interaction to the point where it felt like me and the main character knew these characters very intimately despite not even being present when the AR recordings took place. You have to rewind each AR recording just to see every angle of an event. I didn't think much of this mechanic at first, but it actually kind of made it a lot more interesting and engaging.

This would be an 8/10, but I was a little underwhelmed by how the game ended which is a common trend with Fullbright games. I thought they were cooking up some fine ass fucking cuisine during the climax of the game and I was waiting for an end reveal to feed me for days, but instead I just got some microwaved mashed potatoes as my reward for getting to the end.

Status: Completed (Platinum Trophy)
Date: 01/03/2021

You drop into a deserted space station and are tasked with figuring out what happened to the crew. The story of the crews' time on the space station is told via a series of augmented reality audio logs you can pause, rewind, and move around in. Unlike most games in the "walking sim" genre which have you mostly just moving from point to point to experience a scene from a single vantage point; in Tacoma, a single AR log needs to be watched several times from different spots in the log in order to get the full picture. It's a form of interactivity that pushes you to be more than just a spectator.

Fullbright has once again done a wonderful job telling a compelling story in a neat package that can be experienced in just a few hours. If you enjoyed Gone Home, I definitely recommend checking out Tacoma.

+ The AR logs are extremely cool. I'd love to see other games use a system like this.
+ Great story. I wanted to solve the mystery and figure out everything I could about the crew.
+ Good voice acting.
+ Easy Plat that encourages you to find fun little secrets

- Unfortunately had several full game crashes in which I lost a bit of progress.
- No music. Which I think is the point? Either way, I think it could've benefited from at least some ambient music to add to the atmosphere.

Although Tacoma does not have quite the emotional impact of Gone Home, it tells a compelling story about corporate greed in a rather realistic space setting in the year 2088. I love how the developers tell their story mostly through environmental clues, and sometimes it just takes one hidden letter or a well-placed object to evoke emotions and if u take ur time getting to know the characters and their small little stories u can't help but feel empathetic for everyone of them. Again, I like the song choices that make certain moments much more memorable. I can't wait to dive deeper into the tracks, just like I did with Gone Home, where I discovered bands such as Le Tigre and Bikini Kill. I'm quite eager to see what they have in store with their next game called Open Roads.

É um jogo no espaço com tudo futurista e pá q te coloca pra descobrir o que aconteceu na nave tacoma e entender melhor como o mundo esta em 2088. A forma de descobrir tudo é interessante, a atmosfera é tensa da maneira certa, os personagens são ate legais e tem muitas ideias boas que não são muito bem aproveitadas.
No fim é um jogo que poderia ser bem melhor, mas a narrativa principal não é tao interessante e acaba sendo angustiante no final.
Fora meu game tendo crashado no final corrompido no save e eu tendo que jogar TUDO DE NOVO