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The game is a 2D side scroller where you can create clones of yourself which mimic your movement and you can also swap into those clones to solve puzzles with switches and pressure plates to find out what happened on a derelectic space station stranded on a planet. Fitting to the central mechanic is also a bit philosophy about what is the mind etc. involved, but not as explicit as in Soma.

The puzzles are not so convoluted that you don't understand what you need to do, but also not so easy that it's just busywork. The art style is a bit different, because they modelled everything in clay and then digitized it, leading to a pretty unique style. Together with the sparse lightning it creates a wonderful eery atmosphere in the space station. The story plays into this atmosphere, but it is not the main focus of the game. Still, I found a certain philosophical concept they introduced fascinating, because I never thought about it.

story spoilerNamely, the concept of minds without senses and the concept of the great chain they developed out of this. In the middle of the game you learn that the planet is not without life at all. But it is life in the form of rocks that don't have any sensory organs but are telepathic in their surrounding area. Which means they don't have any feeling for where the other rocks are, but just that they can speak with some and don't speak with a lot of others. But in a long chain they can speak over vast distances. When they are taken for studying by the humans, they realize that they got cut off from that great chain and wonder what could be the reason. Only later do they find out it was done by another life form, us humans. And we exemplify completely alien concepts to them: none telepathic and apparently able to interact with something called "space".

So all in all it is a fun little game of around 5h with a little bit of philosophical concepts if you want to think about it or just some neat puzzles and atmosphere if you don't.

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[-] Freeform_Suffering@lemm.ee 2 points 7 hours ago

Sounds interesting, but apparently it's unplayable on modern systems.

[-] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 2 points 6 hours ago

Just checked the steam discussions and it seems a bug was introduced somewhere in between that makes the game crash when a transmission message is opened in game due to a bug with the interaction between game and steam.

A workaround is to just play through the game with Steam shut down completely, which works fine. The downside is that after collecting any Message from Home, that save file will be unplayable if you run the game from Steam - the game will always hang at startup. But, it will update your achievements first!

[-] Freeform_Suffering@lemm.ee 1 points 5 hours ago

After some more review scrolling I came across 'compatibility beta enabled', which also seems to fix some issues. Still, I don't think I'm spending €14 on this.

[-] inlandempire@jlai.lu 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

That was my first game played on steam !

[-] zante@lemmy.wtf 11 points 1 day ago

10 years

Thanks and get lost.

[-] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 8 hours ago

There's no way it's really been 10 years, right? This game just came out. ;_;

[-] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 1 points 8 hours ago

See, you know what I'm talking about!

[-] inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Oh goodness that takes me back, I remember enjoying that one a long time ago. Super unique mechanics and puzzles but you're right, on the shorter side.

Will absolutely second your recommendation.

[-] slimerancher@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I think I played it on Vita. Remember loving it when I played it. As you said, the game wasn't too difficult, nor too easy.

I just looked it up at psnprofiles to see if I Platinumed it, and turns out I only cleared 2 out of 10 chapters. (Also there is no Platinum trophy) Guess it's time to give it another go.

Edit: Just looked up the trophy details. They are tied to hidden collectables not chapters, so I did finish the game 😀

[-] ryo@lemmy.eco.br 5 points 1 day ago

Yeah I managed to finish the whole game with 0 trophies.

[-] Cyyris@infosec.pub 5 points 1 day ago

I remember being obsessed with this one when it first came out! It might be time for a replay on my Steam Deck!

[-] Aviandelight@mander.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

I remember getting this game in a bundle with Thomas was Alone. I loved both of them so much.

[-] istoff@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago

Ratchet and clank had a similar mechanic. Think it was a Crack in Time or something like that.

this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
72 points (98.6% liked)

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