Like Myst or The Witness if they didn’t have any gameplay whatsoever. The vague, lumbering prose and cryptic imagery littered throughout may be super profound for all I know, my problem is that I'm just too comfortable not expending any energy to understand it beyond the surface level. To put it simply, it's a problem of trust. How am I supposed to know if all this obscure verbosity carries some deeper, rewarding intent? Apparently I'm not alone in not being all that engaged by this: according to Steam, only a third of players completed this one-hour game, and only around half made it past the first chapter.
Arguably, this may have been the first real walking sim, predating both Gone Home and Stanley Parable by a year or so. To be fair, it deserves some credit for this, and does stand out visually with some exceptional texturing and shader work. I was impressed by how looking back and to the side would often reveal some breathtaking, painterly compositions that must have required quite a bit of intent to integrate. However, this is still a game, and as a game it feels just a few steps removed from the sensibilities of a 90s multimedia product: just so archaic, so fundamentally deficient and crippled in its design, I can't really bring myself to embrace it for what it is. Two stars.
Arguably, this may have been the first real walking sim, predating both Gone Home and Stanley Parable by a year or so. To be fair, it deserves some credit for this, and does stand out visually with some exceptional texturing and shader work. I was impressed by how looking back and to the side would often reveal some breathtaking, painterly compositions that must have required quite a bit of intent to integrate. However, this is still a game, and as a game it feels just a few steps removed from the sensibilities of a 90s multimedia product: just so archaic, so fundamentally deficient and crippled in its design, I can't really bring myself to embrace it for what it is. Two stars.