Developer: Airtight Games
Publisher: Square Enix
Gameplay Stats: 6 hours, 9/25 achievements
Heard about this game on the Humans Who Make Games podcast with Kim Smith, one of the creative minds behind Narbacular Drop and then later Portal. Does this game hit the same high highs?
Visuals: This game is pretty charming visually. You're in a stylized giant house with plenty of test chambers similar to Portal. The house begins coming apart and you can see the mechanisms underlying the testing chambers and the bits that drive the house. The bits of science plumbing all look like science plumbing. What I will say though is that the character included in the beginning of the game here starts to run a bit stale. There isn't enough variety in the environment nor in the decorations filling it. What's there is nice! The first half hour maybe is full of chuckles and admiring the nice little set pieces, but the same set pieces repeat for the entire rest of the game. I can understand the mechanical objects repeating for ease of reading the puzzles and their solutions, but the decorations to bring character to the levels repeat frequently enough that I was distracted. What started out as a strength became a weakness weirdly enough.
Audio: The sound effects and music are strictly serviceable. I don't think I can remember any of them apart from the little dispensers vomiting their objects. The singular voice actor did a good job, but I think he had too many lines, he kind of overstayed his welcome. I get that he's supposed to be an eccentric uncle who is kind of rude (similar to Glados from Portal) but he has SO MANY LINES. I don't think he was charming because there was so much of him, but I may not have been the target audience here.
Plot: Not too much to speak of here. You "help" your weird uncle solve a mystery in his house while he is trapped in another dimension. Going through weird physics puzzle testing chambers is how you "help" him somehow. This house is a nightmare.
Gameplay: Here we go! It's why we're here! The main mechanic is that you have a glove that changes your current room between one of 4 alternate dimensions affecting many (but not all for some reason?) objects within the room. The puzzles are pretty fun! I enjoyed them for the most part. I think there were a couple spots where I didn't understand where to go so I googled a walkthrough, but I usually missed a platform above or or something and that was all I needed to get squared away. I think the use of the mechanics was pretty interesting but I think it was held back by some pretty weird controls. I suppose that's on me, I should have remapped them.
Overall I enjoyed this game pretty well! I think it was good, not great, but I think it was held back from seemingly trying to imitate Portal so closely. I might check out the DLCs, but I'm not sure at this point.
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