A puzzle and platforming game (not a puzzle-platformer) surrounding an unconventional sci-fi workplace drama. Three scientists confront the red tape of international research, the constraints of careerism, the material content of their lives, their relationship with each other, and also an emerging alien existential and viral threat to the planet. I had a lot of apprehension at the size of this game and the breadth of subject matter is pulling in, but this is maybe my favorite container for the Analgesic team's prose. Some of the jumps fucking blow and the camera is a constant antagonist as it always is in our current era of 3D platformers, but the accessibility options offer a wide gradient of curating difficulty such that anyone should have a good time.

Moving between methodical platforming to color match puzzle games is, at once, disorienting and perfectly connected. The emotional overture of this game is largely about the capability for adaptation all life has and the eventual ease of snapping between disparate Video Game Challenges drives this home so so well. The whole "middle class people with a lot of resources realize they can imagine and design actionable steps for a better world" will always be a weak narrative goal for me, but the kind of dilemmas of the workplace and nationalism that haunt these characters is delivered in the described gameplay loop that has linked the often overly-dreamlike prose to reality.