Sslar
2024
Pretty decent first-person survival horror with an interesting setting. The main gimmicks are the unabashed intrusiveness of the UI and cursor aim combined with restrictive tank controls for movement, and both of those, in my opinion, are fairly successful in mixing up the formula and setting Sonar Shock apart; however, if you are looking for an immersive sim experience, it doesn’t quite deliver.
The levels are varied enough to not be boring but never feel all that complex or maze-like, the tasks and progression are very straightforward, and the player agency in terms of approaching encounters is limited, essentially boiling down to choosing which flavour of gun you prefer, pouring points into the respective skill, and gradually upgrading to better gear as you find it. There are also psi powers, but those mostly feel auxiliary to the regular arsenal.
On the survival horror side, we’ve got a few long-standing staples: firstly, snooping around for resources (mostly ammo and healing) - this is mostly relevant in the first half of the game where you will routinely run out of bullets, but even at the end, despite having saved up a bit of a reserve, I never got enough to comfortably spray and pray. Another big one is limited saves (as long as you play on the "normal", intended difficulty); this also ties into the looting aspect since saving requires a consumable. Both of those, the scarcity and the danger of losing progress, combined with clumsy movement (you don't truly appreciate being able to strafe around corners until you can't do it anymore) and solid visuals/aesthetics, make for quite a spooky experience, and if you're as much of a coward as me, the game might take you upwards of 15-20 hours to beat.
As a PSA, to anyone looking to play this in the future, I would still recommend enabling the 'save anywhere' option that was apparently added in a patch since unfortunately there are some places you can get stuck in the textures at, and having to redo half the level is painful when you’ve got to also vacuum every inch for items.
I also found the shooting to be very pleasant. The visual and audio effects for weapons are great, and the enemy sprites react to being hit in a satisfying way. There isn’t much complexity to the combat itself (aside from maybe dodging the rare projectile which is very tricky in tight corridors and with tank controls), which is compensated for by layering a degree of interface management on top of it. There are no quick keys, so if you want to heal mid-combat, you’ll have to open the inventory, find the right item, and use it manually, all while trying to avoid damage without sprinting or strafing. Additionally, in order to reload, you have to manually interact with the gun in the interface (chamber a round, cock the hammer, pull the pump, etc.), which is also a neat idea, and works well with the other systems.
While I didn’t mind the deliberately clunky interface and enjoyed the gun mechanics, I feel like both of those ideas could have been taken further. For being such a central part of the game, the regular interface is never used in any interesting ways aside from manipulating the firearms. You can’t place items in the world, you can’t use anything from the inventory to interact with the environment, instead pretty much all the interactivity is limited to aiming the cursor at an object and right-clicking. As for the weapons, this extra degree of interactivity is never used for anything other than reloading. You can’t use safety, for example, and switching fire modes is a separate UI element. The reload sequences also feel same-y, detracting from the character of the guns and making them more uniform than necessary.
Bottom line - if you’re looking for a first-person survival horror with a few unique ideas here and there, and don’t mind spending an hour or two getting used to an unusual control scheme, Sonar Shock might be the right fit for you. However, if you’re expecting a Submarine System Shock instead, it’s unlikely to be able to scratch that itch.
The levels are varied enough to not be boring but never feel all that complex or maze-like, the tasks and progression are very straightforward, and the player agency in terms of approaching encounters is limited, essentially boiling down to choosing which flavour of gun you prefer, pouring points into the respective skill, and gradually upgrading to better gear as you find it. There are also psi powers, but those mostly feel auxiliary to the regular arsenal.
On the survival horror side, we’ve got a few long-standing staples: firstly, snooping around for resources (mostly ammo and healing) - this is mostly relevant in the first half of the game where you will routinely run out of bullets, but even at the end, despite having saved up a bit of a reserve, I never got enough to comfortably spray and pray. Another big one is limited saves (as long as you play on the "normal", intended difficulty); this also ties into the looting aspect since saving requires a consumable. Both of those, the scarcity and the danger of losing progress, combined with clumsy movement (you don't truly appreciate being able to strafe around corners until you can't do it anymore) and solid visuals/aesthetics, make for quite a spooky experience, and if you're as much of a coward as me, the game might take you upwards of 15-20 hours to beat.
As a PSA, to anyone looking to play this in the future, I would still recommend enabling the 'save anywhere' option that was apparently added in a patch since unfortunately there are some places you can get stuck in the textures at, and having to redo half the level is painful when you’ve got to also vacuum every inch for items.
I also found the shooting to be very pleasant. The visual and audio effects for weapons are great, and the enemy sprites react to being hit in a satisfying way. There isn’t much complexity to the combat itself (aside from maybe dodging the rare projectile which is very tricky in tight corridors and with tank controls), which is compensated for by layering a degree of interface management on top of it. There are no quick keys, so if you want to heal mid-combat, you’ll have to open the inventory, find the right item, and use it manually, all while trying to avoid damage without sprinting or strafing. Additionally, in order to reload, you have to manually interact with the gun in the interface (chamber a round, cock the hammer, pull the pump, etc.), which is also a neat idea, and works well with the other systems.
While I didn’t mind the deliberately clunky interface and enjoyed the gun mechanics, I feel like both of those ideas could have been taken further. For being such a central part of the game, the regular interface is never used in any interesting ways aside from manipulating the firearms. You can’t place items in the world, you can’t use anything from the inventory to interact with the environment, instead pretty much all the interactivity is limited to aiming the cursor at an object and right-clicking. As for the weapons, this extra degree of interactivity is never used for anything other than reloading. You can’t use safety, for example, and switching fire modes is a separate UI element. The reload sequences also feel same-y, detracting from the character of the guns and making them more uniform than necessary.
Bottom line - if you’re looking for a first-person survival horror with a few unique ideas here and there, and don’t mind spending an hour or two getting used to an unusual control scheme, Sonar Shock might be the right fit for you. However, if you’re expecting a Submarine System Shock instead, it’s unlikely to be able to scratch that itch.
1999
On today’s edition of 'Guy Playing Old Games And Getting Shocked at How Playable They Still Are': System Shock 2.
Not quite System Shock 1 and not quite Deus Ex, this one sits in a bit of an awkward position. The game puts a lot more emphasis on the RPG elements and character building, but it doesn’t quite have the type of openness and variety in the level design to facilitate some of the playstyles and make associated builds viable or satisfying to play with. Personally, I half-intuited and half-lucked into what seemed like a pretty optimal one, but still couldn’t shake the feeling that a lot of the tools just aren’t all that useful (repair, modify, exotics, research, you get the gist). Even the ones that are don’t feel as impactful as in, say, Deus Ex. What further adds to this issue is that the same RPG elements also serve to narrow down the player’s options compared to what’s available to every character in System Shock 1, potentially making some situations pretty annoying to deal with.
Despite the shortcomings, System Shock 2 is still a joy to play through. That is mostly due to the masterfully built atmosphere aboard the Von Braun. The environments are dense and immersive, the enemies are spooky, the sounds are unsettling, and the audio logs are plentiful. While the rewards for exploration themselves aren’t always that exciting, you will still want to see as much of the ship as you can so you don’t miss a piece of a random side character’s story or a tape of some janitor being actively eaten by aliens at the time of recording. Even though the level design in SS2 isn’t quite as ingenious as in its predecessor or successor, it’s very impressive how much sense the layouts themselves make, and how skulking around the ship doesn’t get boring until (arguably) the last couple of levels.
As mentioned before, the game feel is also surprisingly good - arguably even better than Deus Ex since your character generally shoots wherever the reticule is without having to wait 5-10 working days for it to stabilize first. This means that the game is surprisingly easy to pick up and play even in 2024. The movement has a bit of physicality to it, similar to Thief - just enough to give the character some weight but not to the point where you get stuck on every corner and object. I definitely wish there were some more mobility options or choices to be made in that department aside from just leveling agility or snorting a speed booster, but what is there works.
The transition to a proper RPG with stats and builds and a variety of different playstyles, no matter how conflicted I may personally be on the idea, also brings an undeniably higher level of replayability. Playthroughs have the potential to be drastically different from one another in terms of equipment used and, to a degree, approaches to encounters. There’s a pretty solid assortment of weapons (which you are likely only going to be able to use a fraction of until the last hours of the game) and spells to use as well.
All that said, returning to the opening point, I still preferred the first game to the sequel. There are a number of reasons for that, so here’s a lightning round of idle complaints for a 25-year-old game - a few ways in which I think SS1 overshadows the sequel:
*) At the moment, I’ve only played the SS1 remake. But from what I’ve heard, it’s very similar to the original in most ways that matter, so I’ll be basing my judgement on that. Am I a hack fraud? Sure. Not like there's much else to compare it to either way though, and I'll be sure to revisit once I play the OG SS1, which is likely to happen at some point.
1) Keeping tools available and relevant, and making you learn and pick the right one for the task at hand. In SS1, you are pretty much guaranteed to have access to both energy and ballistic weapons, as well as an assortment of grenades. You are free to choose how to use them to approach any sort of enemy you encounter. Meanwhile, System Shock 2 requires that you invest in those skills before they are even usable, let alone useful.
2) Level and overall game progression - where the first game really forced you to pay attention to your surroundings and the things you were doing in both the local and global context, this one feels a lot more like a straightforward string of quests, following directions from the powers that be. In a more local, level-restricted context, rarely, if ever, does System Shock 2 present you with a problem like “how do I get there” - through a locked door, over a wide gap, etc. There are just fewer roadblocks to try and find your way around.
3) Implants and powers - implants can still be great, but you are limited to 1-2 at a time, and to change the effect you need to swap it out in the inventory. It adds a whole lot of unnecessary fiddling, like swapping over to the organ to eat some worms and swapping back. Implants are a lot more boring/less game-altering in general with nothing that would really impact your mobility options or playstyle.
4) Shodan’s involvement - her introduction in 2 is fantastic, but for how prominent she is in all the marketing materials, her role is really quite small, reduced from a proper rich antagonist to a mere voice hissing at you from the comm link every now and then. This also leads to fewer interesting situations arising directly around the player since Xerxes, the new AI antagonist, is a lot less reactive and aware of your actions.
Finishing thoughts: absolutely no regrets over playing it. Grabs your attention and holds it through both the gameplay systems and the plot; shooting is fun, sneaking around and exploring is great (for the most part), easy recommend even for those who don't generally vibe with the survival horror genre (like myself). Don't go in expecting Prey levels of interactivity/variability and you'll be in for a wonderful time.
Not quite System Shock 1 and not quite Deus Ex, this one sits in a bit of an awkward position. The game puts a lot more emphasis on the RPG elements and character building, but it doesn’t quite have the type of openness and variety in the level design to facilitate some of the playstyles and make associated builds viable or satisfying to play with. Personally, I half-intuited and half-lucked into what seemed like a pretty optimal one, but still couldn’t shake the feeling that a lot of the tools just aren’t all that useful (repair, modify, exotics, research, you get the gist). Even the ones that are don’t feel as impactful as in, say, Deus Ex. What further adds to this issue is that the same RPG elements also serve to narrow down the player’s options compared to what’s available to every character in System Shock 1, potentially making some situations pretty annoying to deal with.
Despite the shortcomings, System Shock 2 is still a joy to play through. That is mostly due to the masterfully built atmosphere aboard the Von Braun. The environments are dense and immersive, the enemies are spooky, the sounds are unsettling, and the audio logs are plentiful. While the rewards for exploration themselves aren’t always that exciting, you will still want to see as much of the ship as you can so you don’t miss a piece of a random side character’s story or a tape of some janitor being actively eaten by aliens at the time of recording. Even though the level design in SS2 isn’t quite as ingenious as in its predecessor or successor, it’s very impressive how much sense the layouts themselves make, and how skulking around the ship doesn’t get boring until (arguably) the last couple of levels.
As mentioned before, the game feel is also surprisingly good - arguably even better than Deus Ex since your character generally shoots wherever the reticule is without having to wait 5-10 working days for it to stabilize first. This means that the game is surprisingly easy to pick up and play even in 2024. The movement has a bit of physicality to it, similar to Thief - just enough to give the character some weight but not to the point where you get stuck on every corner and object. I definitely wish there were some more mobility options or choices to be made in that department aside from just leveling agility or snorting a speed booster, but what is there works.
The transition to a proper RPG with stats and builds and a variety of different playstyles, no matter how conflicted I may personally be on the idea, also brings an undeniably higher level of replayability. Playthroughs have the potential to be drastically different from one another in terms of equipment used and, to a degree, approaches to encounters. There’s a pretty solid assortment of weapons (which you are likely only going to be able to use a fraction of until the last hours of the game) and spells to use as well.
All that said, returning to the opening point, I still preferred the first game to the sequel. There are a number of reasons for that, so here’s a lightning round of idle complaints for a 25-year-old game - a few ways in which I think SS1 overshadows the sequel:
*) At the moment, I’ve only played the SS1 remake. But from what I’ve heard, it’s very similar to the original in most ways that matter, so I’ll be basing my judgement on that. Am I a hack fraud? Sure. Not like there's much else to compare it to either way though, and I'll be sure to revisit once I play the OG SS1, which is likely to happen at some point.
1) Keeping tools available and relevant, and making you learn and pick the right one for the task at hand. In SS1, you are pretty much guaranteed to have access to both energy and ballistic weapons, as well as an assortment of grenades. You are free to choose how to use them to approach any sort of enemy you encounter. Meanwhile, System Shock 2 requires that you invest in those skills before they are even usable, let alone useful.
2) Level and overall game progression - where the first game really forced you to pay attention to your surroundings and the things you were doing in both the local and global context, this one feels a lot more like a straightforward string of quests, following directions from the powers that be. In a more local, level-restricted context, rarely, if ever, does System Shock 2 present you with a problem like “how do I get there” - through a locked door, over a wide gap, etc. There are just fewer roadblocks to try and find your way around.
3) Implants and powers - implants can still be great, but you are limited to 1-2 at a time, and to change the effect you need to swap it out in the inventory. It adds a whole lot of unnecessary fiddling, like swapping over to the organ to eat some worms and swapping back. Implants are a lot more boring/less game-altering in general with nothing that would really impact your mobility options or playstyle.
4) Shodan’s involvement - her introduction in 2 is fantastic, but for how prominent she is in all the marketing materials, her role is really quite small, reduced from a proper rich antagonist to a mere voice hissing at you from the comm link every now and then. This also leads to fewer interesting situations arising directly around the player since Xerxes, the new AI antagonist, is a lot less reactive and aware of your actions.
Finishing thoughts: absolutely no regrets over playing it. Grabs your attention and holds it through both the gameplay systems and the plot; shooting is fun, sneaking around and exploring is great (for the most part), easy recommend even for those who don't generally vibe with the survival horror genre (like myself). Don't go in expecting Prey levels of interactivity/variability and you'll be in for a wonderful time.
2000
Still extremely playable today in its unchanged form (not revival, not any fan mods - just the intended experience with a few technical fixes like increased FOV and running on OpenGL), and would probably be a joy to play for any imsim fan. Almost 25 years later, it's still one of the most open-ended ones even in the genre already emphasizing player agency and freedom to choose your own approach to solving problems.
The level design is definitely the undisputed highlight. Almost any given objective can be reached in a number of ways depending on your character build and playstyle, to the point where the few instances where the game forcibly funnels you into a specific approach (e.g. a door that can't be lockpicked or bypassed electronically so you HAVE to find the code) immediately jump out. Lockpicking, hacking, crawling through vents (usually still accompanied with at least some more skill checks), or bashing in doors are all perfectly valid approaches, and while the game still makes sure that any character is able to actually progress the main objective, it does feel a lot less obvious than in most modern imsims - getting a code or finding an alternative route will generally take a lot more effort than just picking the door if your character is equipped to deal with the lock.
If you're like me in being addicted to hoarding "optional" resources since you're used to game just handing over the solution as you progress anyway, the most important piece of advice for Deus Ex would be: don't. The game is genuinely so much more enjoyable if you let yourself play the character and use the infiltration routes available to you; unlike in, say, Prey, the maps here are definitely not designed for the player to see every corner and vacuum up every single object; instead, they are large and complicated to facilitate the freedom to choose a route and stick to it. Sure, most doors have codes or keys, but they are very missable, presumably exactly to insentivize using all the other tools in your arsenal, and if you let the game lead you instead of resisting this guidance, the quality of your experience is likely to improve tenfold.
From the gameplay perspective, the signs of aging are a lot more apparent than in the level design. Early on, I don't see Deus Ex being playable in an action-y style thanks to its famous aiming system (where the reticule takes up half the screen and slowly decreases to a point as long as you don't make any sudden moves); however, as your character progresses in skill level and gets more augmentations, the run-and-gun tactics become a lot more viable: by the end, you will be able to jump around at supersonic speeds headshotting bozos in mid-air, or tank an entire arsenal worth of bullets to the skull, should you be so inclined. Despite the slow start, once the augmentations really start rolling in, the power progression really becomes extremely noticeable and gratifying.
The shooting itself is fine, with the exception of enemies routinely taking several shots to the head to kill - seems like there are some hit detection shenanigans that make certain headshots count towards the torso instead. Speaking of - the complex locational damage system is pretty impressive, with body parts being targetable for both the player and all (humanoid) enemies; this isn't really used for anything interesting other than headshots as far as I could tell, but still surprising to think this was made in 2000. The game even supports non-lethal takedowns - and comments on it if this is your preferred playstyle. This doesn't have much of an impact on anything but I definitely appreciate the option being available.
The augmentation system is also neat in concept - having to choose between 2 mutually exclusive upgrades for every slot is interesting, and augments do genuinely have the power to completely upturn the way you play - the only obstacle to this is the default key bindings. Do yourself a favour and rebind the most used ones to something more ergonomic than the F- keys, and once you do, managing enabled abilities, toggling them on and off, becomes a fun element of extra challenge rather than an annoying drain on your finite bioenergy resource.
Story and voice acting - the absolute crackpot mash of a bunch of conspiracies is really amusing at the start, but surprisingly actually becomes pretty engaging as it goes on, the general tone shifting from a story about a cool gigacop with augmented vision to an illuminatipilled global conspiracy-driven paranoic mess is cool to witness, and the few reactive story elements are always fun to come by, especially the ones you aren't expecting. Honestly didn't expect to get invested, knowing what I did about the plot before going in, but did end up thoroughly entertained.
For the more negative aspect - the latter levels are falling into the same trap as a lot of other games of the era by ramping up the "difficulty" through throwing a bigger amount of more annoying enemies at you (ones that explode on death, or take little damage from bullets, etc.) but in an unprecedented move for imsims, the game actually sticks the landing with a good final boss fight, highlighting the freedom that defined most of the game up to that point instead of forcing combat that some builds may be unequipped for, or resorting to some awful gimmick.
Overall, Deus Ex is still a great game, still managing to hold its own against the present-day immersive sims thanks to its outstanding level design and breadth of possibility when it comes to problem-solving, with a lot of its DNA being easily trackable to much more modern games. Easy recommendation for anyone interested in the genre and not afraid of a little jank.
The level design is definitely the undisputed highlight. Almost any given objective can be reached in a number of ways depending on your character build and playstyle, to the point where the few instances where the game forcibly funnels you into a specific approach (e.g. a door that can't be lockpicked or bypassed electronically so you HAVE to find the code) immediately jump out. Lockpicking, hacking, crawling through vents (usually still accompanied with at least some more skill checks), or bashing in doors are all perfectly valid approaches, and while the game still makes sure that any character is able to actually progress the main objective, it does feel a lot less obvious than in most modern imsims - getting a code or finding an alternative route will generally take a lot more effort than just picking the door if your character is equipped to deal with the lock.
If you're like me in being addicted to hoarding "optional" resources since you're used to game just handing over the solution as you progress anyway, the most important piece of advice for Deus Ex would be: don't. The game is genuinely so much more enjoyable if you let yourself play the character and use the infiltration routes available to you; unlike in, say, Prey, the maps here are definitely not designed for the player to see every corner and vacuum up every single object; instead, they are large and complicated to facilitate the freedom to choose a route and stick to it. Sure, most doors have codes or keys, but they are very missable, presumably exactly to insentivize using all the other tools in your arsenal, and if you let the game lead you instead of resisting this guidance, the quality of your experience is likely to improve tenfold.
From the gameplay perspective, the signs of aging are a lot more apparent than in the level design. Early on, I don't see Deus Ex being playable in an action-y style thanks to its famous aiming system (where the reticule takes up half the screen and slowly decreases to a point as long as you don't make any sudden moves); however, as your character progresses in skill level and gets more augmentations, the run-and-gun tactics become a lot more viable: by the end, you will be able to jump around at supersonic speeds headshotting bozos in mid-air, or tank an entire arsenal worth of bullets to the skull, should you be so inclined. Despite the slow start, once the augmentations really start rolling in, the power progression really becomes extremely noticeable and gratifying.
The shooting itself is fine, with the exception of enemies routinely taking several shots to the head to kill - seems like there are some hit detection shenanigans that make certain headshots count towards the torso instead. Speaking of - the complex locational damage system is pretty impressive, with body parts being targetable for both the player and all (humanoid) enemies; this isn't really used for anything interesting other than headshots as far as I could tell, but still surprising to think this was made in 2000. The game even supports non-lethal takedowns - and comments on it if this is your preferred playstyle. This doesn't have much of an impact on anything but I definitely appreciate the option being available.
The augmentation system is also neat in concept - having to choose between 2 mutually exclusive upgrades for every slot is interesting, and augments do genuinely have the power to completely upturn the way you play - the only obstacle to this is the default key bindings. Do yourself a favour and rebind the most used ones to something more ergonomic than the F- keys, and once you do, managing enabled abilities, toggling them on and off, becomes a fun element of extra challenge rather than an annoying drain on your finite bioenergy resource.
Story and voice acting - the absolute crackpot mash of a bunch of conspiracies is really amusing at the start, but surprisingly actually becomes pretty engaging as it goes on, the general tone shifting from a story about a cool gigacop with augmented vision to an illuminatipilled global conspiracy-driven paranoic mess is cool to witness, and the few reactive story elements are always fun to come by, especially the ones you aren't expecting. Honestly didn't expect to get invested, knowing what I did about the plot before going in, but did end up thoroughly entertained.
For the more negative aspect - the latter levels are falling into the same trap as a lot of other games of the era by ramping up the "difficulty" through throwing a bigger amount of more annoying enemies at you (ones that explode on death, or take little damage from bullets, etc.) but in an unprecedented move for imsims, the game actually sticks the landing with a good final boss fight, highlighting the freedom that defined most of the game up to that point instead of forcing combat that some builds may be unequipped for, or resorting to some awful gimmick.
Overall, Deus Ex is still a great game, still managing to hold its own against the present-day immersive sims thanks to its outstanding level design and breadth of possibility when it comes to problem-solving, with a lot of its DNA being easily trackable to much more modern games. Easy recommendation for anyone interested in the genre and not afraid of a little jank.
2024
A very tight and focused language-based puzzle. Unlike the other linguistics-oriented games out there (Heaven's Gate, Chants of Sennaar), Epigraph presents you with a much more grounded scenario and places its language in a little bit of a wider (fictional) context to provide the player with tools for eventually deciphering it instead of presenting you with words in a vacuum and letting your character guess their meaning one by one. Due to the way the game is structured — namely, all the materials being available right from the start — Epigraph also doesn't need to fall back on the crutches of magically and definitively confirming when you've made a correct deduction, leaving a refreshing layer of ambiguity stretching over every piece of text. This approach is very fitting for an ancient lost language that you can kind of grasp but never truly master. Until the very end, you work off of what you yourself have established to be correct, and not what the game has told you is correct.
And this, in my view, is a very important distinction, since pretty much the entire game is based on making assumptions. You take the given information, extrapolate, then make a guess—no matter how informed—and see how well the results fit into a puzzle. With enough attention, most of the time you should be able to quickly get the feel for when the guess is entirely off-base or whether you're on the right track. So even without external validation, there are still breakthroughs to be had—both major and minor—serving as milestones and providing confidence that you are actually making progress and not just going around in circles.
The store page describes Epigraph as a short game, but I would argue it's only short in the same way a Rubik's cube is a 30-second puzzle. That may well be true if you're a savant or immediately click with the game, but for me, a former gifted child, it had a pretty decent runtime (around 9-10 hours), so I would absolutely say it's worth the already low asking price. Keep in mind that there is no grand mystery or stealth gameplay attached — all those hours are spent directly working with the language.
The presentation is neat and functional — the minimal interactive elements provide enough tools to keep track of your guesses and quickly try them out in different contexts, but not much more; so you are likely to need to bust out a notepad (or MSPaint if you're a real one for Mother Earth) at one point or another.
If this sounds interesting, and now you want to tinker around with an open-ended linguistic enigma, Epigraph is very easy to recommend. Join today, and you too may spend a few hours of your life walking back and forth mumbling to yourself about Makudovu and Pagomaru. Thanks Qwert :^).
And this, in my view, is a very important distinction, since pretty much the entire game is based on making assumptions. You take the given information, extrapolate, then make a guess—no matter how informed—and see how well the results fit into a puzzle. With enough attention, most of the time you should be able to quickly get the feel for when the guess is entirely off-base or whether you're on the right track. So even without external validation, there are still breakthroughs to be had—both major and minor—serving as milestones and providing confidence that you are actually making progress and not just going around in circles.
The store page describes Epigraph as a short game, but I would argue it's only short in the same way a Rubik's cube is a 30-second puzzle. That may well be true if you're a savant or immediately click with the game, but for me, a former gifted child, it had a pretty decent runtime (around 9-10 hours), so I would absolutely say it's worth the already low asking price. Keep in mind that there is no grand mystery or stealth gameplay attached — all those hours are spent directly working with the language.
The presentation is neat and functional — the minimal interactive elements provide enough tools to keep track of your guesses and quickly try them out in different contexts, but not much more; so you are likely to need to bust out a notepad (or MSPaint if you're a real one for Mother Earth) at one point or another.
If this sounds interesting, and now you want to tinker around with an open-ended linguistic enigma, Epigraph is very easy to recommend. Join today, and you too may spend a few hours of your life walking back and forth mumbling to yourself about Makudovu and Pagomaru. Thanks Qwert :^).
2019
Wonderfully delivers on the concept of playing as an archaeologist uncovering the history and the lost language of the world you're placed in, and unlike most games, Heaven's Vault really does let you explore and uncover history rather than just passively collect logs and notes. An essential difference is that this game will allow you to speculate and be wrong, and put your wrong assumptions on the timeline the same way it would correct ones, and have reactions and unique dialogue prepared for them, which means that you as a player do actually need to pay attention, and amend past mistakes, and cross-reference your knowledge to reach proper conclusions. This is present in both the translation minigame and the general exploration/dialogue portions.
The meat of the gameplay is deciphering an ancient language, and in my view, it's executed wonderfully. There are literally hundreds of samples of text for you to collect and reference, and by the end of the game you are likely to actually be able to read this (actually functional) language and recognize most of the graphemes, which feels incredibly gratifying. The game also provides a few opportunities to flex this knowledge in more... practical applications which serves to further that sense of real accomplishment as well.
The other major part of the game is exploring and talking to people with some (relatively light, depending on how you choose to approach it) investigation elements. Things are more standard in this part with not as many interesting mechanics, but it's worth noting that the writing and the mystery itself are top of the range in terms of what you may generally see in videogames. It's very rare to be able to play a game and say "The writing here is good" without having to add "...for a game". Basically, what I'm saying is that I would still be able to recommend Heaven's Vault even if it were a book.
This recommendation comes with a qualifier that the game DOES still feel about as smooth to play as chewing a bag of nails when you're starting out. The amount of little (and not so little) annoyances during gameplay is immense, and there is so much space for quality-of-life improvements (list of known graphemes for translations, better indication of what your character is about to say on any given generic "remark" or "question" prompt, etc.), and yet the good parts were good enough to win me over, despite me very much being a gameplay-first person. You have to teach yourself to trust this game: trust that it will bring up that one topic you didn't get to explore in a conversation, that it will remember one of your previous actions, that it will give you a chance to correct a mistake in deduction with new information, and so on; and once you get used to this approach, as well as the unconventional dialogue flow, and make peace with inability to manually save and try things out, you're in for a truly unique experience.
The meat of the gameplay is deciphering an ancient language, and in my view, it's executed wonderfully. There are literally hundreds of samples of text for you to collect and reference, and by the end of the game you are likely to actually be able to read this (actually functional) language and recognize most of the graphemes, which feels incredibly gratifying. The game also provides a few opportunities to flex this knowledge in more... practical applications which serves to further that sense of real accomplishment as well.
The other major part of the game is exploring and talking to people with some (relatively light, depending on how you choose to approach it) investigation elements. Things are more standard in this part with not as many interesting mechanics, but it's worth noting that the writing and the mystery itself are top of the range in terms of what you may generally see in videogames. It's very rare to be able to play a game and say "The writing here is good" without having to add "...for a game". Basically, what I'm saying is that I would still be able to recommend Heaven's Vault even if it were a book.
This recommendation comes with a qualifier that the game DOES still feel about as smooth to play as chewing a bag of nails when you're starting out. The amount of little (and not so little) annoyances during gameplay is immense, and there is so much space for quality-of-life improvements (list of known graphemes for translations, better indication of what your character is about to say on any given generic "remark" or "question" prompt, etc.), and yet the good parts were good enough to win me over, despite me very much being a gameplay-first person. You have to teach yourself to trust this game: trust that it will bring up that one topic you didn't get to explore in a conversation, that it will remember one of your previous actions, that it will give you a chance to correct a mistake in deduction with new information, and so on; and once you get used to this approach, as well as the unconventional dialogue flow, and make peace with inability to manually save and try things out, you're in for a truly unique experience.
2022
A very tight and addictive roguelike with an immensely satisfying core gameplay loop. The toolset at your disposal is very focused, essentially only giving you 3 options of what to do at any given moment - move (accelerate and steer), shoot tether, or swing; the variety comes from the various ship types, upgrades, and, most importantly, just the situations the game puts you in.
Both movement and combat take a bit of getting used to since it's unlikely that you will have seen either of those implemented quite like this before: for movement, you can only accelerate, decelerate, and turn - there is no backing up and no strafing, so dodging might prove more difficult than you would expect, and getting out of the way of some of the quicker attacks may prove impossible without swinging around some other object; for combat, you have no ways of dealing direct ranged damage - instead, you link together objects on the game field within a certain range, making them collide into each other, essentially making the entire map, including enemy ships and occasionally spawning hazmat containers, into ammo. Alternatively, you could try to rip off the enemy ships' attachments (turrets, rocket batteries, torpedo bays, etc.) which requires more careful aiming.
That pretty much summarizes the entire game loop, and while it sounds pretty simplistic, there is a huge amount of decision-making happening, both moment-to-moment, introduced by enemy positioning and attack patterns (especially in the later levels as the complexity ramps up considerably), and long-term, represented by picking upgrades every few ways, some of which can significantly affect your playstyle.
Red Tether also hides a surprising amount of content - initially, it presents as a rather small project, but as you keep attempting runs, more and more upgrades, ships, materials, and mechanics get unveiled. There are no permanent stat increases between attempts, and the whole game is definitely beatable with the starter ship, but there is still a ton of stuff to keep things fresh on subsequent runs (for an anecdotal example - at the time of writing, over 30 hours in, I'm still nowhere near unlocking all of the available ships - it is quite possible that I'm just bad at the game, but something tells me those numbers will be similar for most of the players). On the presentation side - the visuals are clean and beautiful, and the music is bangin, so absolutely no complaints in that department.
Essentially, if you are looking for games that aim to do one thing, and do it outstandingly well; if you enjoy mastering mechanics and feeling your skill level go up rather than just your stats; if you like playing games simply for the satisfaction the gameplay brings - Red Tether is an easy recommend.
Both movement and combat take a bit of getting used to since it's unlikely that you will have seen either of those implemented quite like this before: for movement, you can only accelerate, decelerate, and turn - there is no backing up and no strafing, so dodging might prove more difficult than you would expect, and getting out of the way of some of the quicker attacks may prove impossible without swinging around some other object; for combat, you have no ways of dealing direct ranged damage - instead, you link together objects on the game field within a certain range, making them collide into each other, essentially making the entire map, including enemy ships and occasionally spawning hazmat containers, into ammo. Alternatively, you could try to rip off the enemy ships' attachments (turrets, rocket batteries, torpedo bays, etc.) which requires more careful aiming.
That pretty much summarizes the entire game loop, and while it sounds pretty simplistic, there is a huge amount of decision-making happening, both moment-to-moment, introduced by enemy positioning and attack patterns (especially in the later levels as the complexity ramps up considerably), and long-term, represented by picking upgrades every few ways, some of which can significantly affect your playstyle.
Red Tether also hides a surprising amount of content - initially, it presents as a rather small project, but as you keep attempting runs, more and more upgrades, ships, materials, and mechanics get unveiled. There are no permanent stat increases between attempts, and the whole game is definitely beatable with the starter ship, but there is still a ton of stuff to keep things fresh on subsequent runs (for an anecdotal example - at the time of writing, over 30 hours in, I'm still nowhere near unlocking all of the available ships - it is quite possible that I'm just bad at the game, but something tells me those numbers will be similar for most of the players). On the presentation side - the visuals are clean and beautiful, and the music is bangin, so absolutely no complaints in that department.
Essentially, if you are looking for games that aim to do one thing, and do it outstandingly well; if you enjoy mastering mechanics and feeling your skill level go up rather than just your stats; if you like playing games simply for the satisfaction the gameplay brings - Red Tether is an easy recommend.