I miss the days when a mega-corporation taking over as the de-facto government of a nation was a mere cautionary tale and thought experiment in the Sci-Fi genre. But alas, times are changing.
This is great cyberpunk. There is a sense of maximal minimalism to this game. Kind of similar to a Fumito Ueda game (where the primary drive in game design is always one of subtraction, reducing a game to it's core components and then refining). This maximal minimalism is more than likely due to the fact this was developed roughly 95% by one person. Compromise becomes necessary if you want to make a game with such limited resources. And the developer imposed deadlines on himself, to ensure he would make steady progress. Content would be cut if it interfered with his arbitrary deadline. All of this design by subtraction works exceptionally well for this game. There isn't anything wasted. No filler content like you see in almost every bloated and over-designed AAA game. This does result in flaws, mind you, but it's easy to overlook them with how much this game exudes charm, intrigue and most importantly, atmosphere.
Your character is effectively a slave to a corporation, where your automaton-like body is designed to degrade rapidly (planned obsolescence in marketing terms) unless you take a propriety drug owned by the very same corporation. A good insurance plan to ensure dependency and enslavement to the corporation. If you run away, you will inevitably waste away and die. The reason why your character agrees to enslavement is due to immense debt. By agreeing to having a simulated part of your consciousness transposed into an artificial body, you can work off your debt while your real self is cryogenically frozen. Ostensibly until your debt is balanced and you can wake up debt free! Of course, if you ever have read cyberpunk or paid any attention, the corporation does all in it's power to undermine their deal and maintain your servitude. Thus the game starts with you having escaped to this dilapidated space station, far from the grasp of your corporate overlord, but still a victim to it. Now the game starts as a constant struggle for survival.
What's really interesting about this premise is the inspiration for the game itself. The director/designer gave a 20 minute talk at BAFTA (it's on Youtube and I recommend checking it out if this review intrigues you) where he talks about how he was a firm part of the gig economy and struggled working hand to mouth for years. A constant struggle for survival. Feeling dehumanize as some gigs could cancel on him randomly and sometimes in the very moment he shows up with all the consequences placed on him and none on the person offering the gig. This is loosely the premise to this game and it's a really fascinating way to create something both relatable yet fantastical (since you are an "emulated" intelligence in a robot body). Most people on this station are a hand to mouth worker in a gig eco-system. There are exceptions, as some individuals see an opportunity to exploit and garner power/influence. Thus the game organically creates multiple perspectives, ideologies and factions that all play into world building. This game is very political and while those politics are firmly about criticizing capitalism, it does still criticize anarchism, which is the main ideology of the dilapidated space station.
Gameplay itself feels like a table top game. Where the game world is effectively a 3-D board decorated with nodes you can interact with for actions. Really game-ifying the whole survival and gig economy. Each round you get a certain amount of rolled dice (depending on your bodies durability, which drains every time you end a cycle. Thus creating constant pressure.). You move by scrolling your mouse wheel and scrolling across the board to click on the nodes. When you click on a node, you can interact with it either with items you've collected or your dice.
Dice based actions always have a set of risks associated with them. The riskier an action, typically the more rewarding but potentially damaging. In tangent with risk/reward there are also time restraints. Where some activities have time limits or you need to wait in order for an event to unfold. But each cycle you lose durability to your body and your energy depletes. Thus the game is also a survival game (not horror but perhaps existential dread if you wanna count that). With you needing to work to earn money for resources and fulfill obligations to build relationships with people. This was all inspired by a table top game about heists that had core mechanics around time limits and risks of actions. Really cool seeing how that inspiration led to the core game design that makes the gameplay loop here engaging.
There isn't really any evolution to the gameplay loop as the game progresses and towards the late stage of the game, it does become pretty easy once you've built up resources and found reliable means to restock. This isn't a criticism, it does feel satisfying getting to a phase where you don't feel you are living hand to mouth. This does cause the gameplay to stagnant in the later phases of the game, but the questlines are well written and among the best, plus the game is pretty short so it didn't overstay its welcome for me.
Overall this is a very unique experience that won't be for everyone. It's not a flashy game. It's minimalist, but you can tell this was a passion project for the designer and they poured their soul into it. The art, writing and atmosphere are great. Creating a constant sense of mystery and intrigue.
Some criticisms I would say about the game would be how your character build only really matters in the early phases of the game. If you do all available quests/side activities, by the end of the game you can almost max out every stat. It would have been cool to see more impact from the build you chose to play, but for a near one man team, it's easy to overlook this. There's also is a bit of a plateau in terms of gameplay complexity. You kind of see everything and idea this game has mechanically within the first 3-5 hours. This didn't bother me though because the gameplay stayed engaging due to the risk/reward mechanics, time restraints, survival mechanics, writing, atmosphere and art direction.
Taken as a whole this makes this game feel loosely similar to Disco Elysium (albeit much smaller team and budget). It certainly surreal, heady and political just like Disco Elysium and there's an ever permeating sense of existential dread. They are different games, but if you loved Disco Elysium as much as I did, this game is an easy recommend. It certainly won't be for everyone. It's effectively a novel with the sheer amount of writing and no voice acting which will be a turn off for a decent amount of modern gamers. But the writing, characters and art are all great and worth experiencing if that's something you look for in a game. I'll definitely check out the sequel, perhaps later this year.
