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.

This is an interesting little story-driven game set on a strange, lawless space station, that sets you loose to get to know various characters and factions as you try to survive and maybe find some way out of there. While I was not extremely in love with the overall story or its structure, I found the game's mechanics surprisingly addictive and definitely enjoyed aspects of the characters and worldbuilding.

The mechanics revolve around a few key ideas. The core one is a set of up to five dice that are rolled at the start of each day, whose values you can then apply at will to various skill checks like a tabletop RPG. Think of Dicey Dungeons for how the interface works. Once those dice are all used up, you can go sleep and begin a new day, but a couple of survival-like meters tick down. Some objectives are also time-based, so basically you are optimizing the dice available to you, your health, your money, and all the wide array of different possible actions available to you.

This gameplay loop works really well. There is a near-constant flow of short- and medium-term objectives for you to work toward, and the survival stuff is just demanding enough to stay interesting without being a hassle. The interface could be streamlined a bit for things like turning in multiple items at once, or quickly traveling across the map, but generally it flows very nicely. I basically played the game for like 6 hours straight until I reached a satisfied conclusion.

Different character and faction stories can lead to many different possible endings, some of which are mutually exclusive, and several of which continue the game (I believe you can always reload the save if your ending actually does not continue the game). I reached my first of several credit rolls pretty quickly after starting. I liked these endings from a thematic point of view, but none of them really worked for me in terms of character/emotional payoff. A couple of them also just felt weirdly sudden and awkward.

That open-ended story structure does wonders for gameplay freedom, but I think it harmed the overall story arc, or at least what I was looking for in a story. I struggled in general to really get invested in most of the characters and things that happen in this game, and I'm not sure if it's just that you don't get enough time with them, or that they just genuinely aren't that interesting. Still, there are a few pretty cool story threads and exciting objectives.

I think this game is best approached as a series of small stories that may overlap a bit and share thematic material, and not expecting the type of strong overarching plot that I personally was looking for going in. I did enjoy enough of the story that I'm glad I kept going on it even after that first credits sequence was reached. Glad to have another Game Pass indie that really worked for me, I do recommend people check this out. Definitely lean toward PC if that's an option for you, but I suppose it's probably fine on console. Would love to see this kind of structure in more games.

87/100

Narrative games normally don't entice me, but the art style and good reviews enough were enough for me to at least give the game a chance.

Story: I was surprised how quickly I became attached to the story. Every character was unique and I found myself actually curious about where each character development was going. The pacing was my favorite part because I was allowed to decide what and who I wanted to focus on first making the relationships with characters feel a little more personal. I had a hard time understanding what to do and what was going on at first, but the game encouraged curiosity and exploration. By the end, everything tied together and my questions were mostly answered. Balancing events and survival at the beginning of the game was challenging at times. A few instances the story took an interesting direction because I wasn't able to get enough money or high enough dice roles to satisfy every character. It wasn't too difficult, but I think it was enough to require some tough decisions and interesting conflict. The dlc was a little easy since I was over prepared after the game warned me, but it developed the lore a little further which was exactly what I was hoping for.

Mechanics: Obviously, there aren't too many mechanics to the game since it is a narrative rpg, but the dice element to the game was actually really good. I wasn't too thrilled about it at first, but the chance aspect was actually brilliant. It was simple, but it led to me making difficult decisions that I knew might introduce conflict and negatively effect my character. The ability to use my poor dice rolls to steal data made every number feel useful. The upgrade points came slowly at first, but since they progressed with the objectives of the story it led to me feeling more comfortable and controlled with the game at the same time my character was starting to fit in and thrive. Finally, the narrative choices were straightforward for the most part, but there were several times I wasn't sure how what I said would affect the story and I was surprised on multiple occasions. Every decision seemed to count.

Visuals: The visuals were basic for the most part with stand still characters, but the art style was beautiful. From the relaxing colors to the expressiveness of lines on characters it was easy to feel immersed and get lost admiring the art at times. Though I would've loved to see some animations, the team did an incredible job with the what they were able to create. Everything was set up perfectly, as it was easy to understand, see, and move around the eye.

Sound: Honestly I don't normally put much focus on the music or sound effects of a game, but the music in this game was perfect and helped immensely with the immersion. It was relaxing and helped me focus on reading. It picked up and created some extra tension during conflict. It was about as perfect as it gets for a chill indie game like this.

I have a major issue that I think could've been fixed pretty easily. The lack of a screen size adjustment setting was unfortunate for my setup. I couldn't see the amounts of my items or data making it a guessing game at times. I could see the tops of numbers and had to keep mental track at times, but it was a difficulty that I think should've been avoided.

I jumped to PC and it was less buggy. I still got a bunch of soft lock bugs but not in the first 15 minutes and the auto-save made it relatively painless.

It is less clunky on PC but still annoying to play on. It is bearable but still feels like it intentionally avoids quality-of-life stuff. I was trying to sell trying this game to some friends and this is what I said:

"I realized I said yesterday CS is a "game about living with a disability under capitalism" which I realize now is WAY too opaque. Let me put it in better terms:

It is a single-player TTRPG where the videogame is the GM. Its main verb is dice rolling. It is a single location but dense with fascinating Sci-Fi tales and very replayable because there are constant time restraints so you can only do so much in a single "run".

Not real-time but you only have so many dice per "day" and everything is happening at once and every resource is limited so you have to really make decisions to mould/create a "character".

What traits you choose when you level also decide the type of person you are. It is a rough and confusing game to start but once you click with it, what it is doing is very engrossing."

I really enjoy the story and the writing. I reached the credits the second time on cycle 101 and it felt so right to end it there that I did. I feel like this game can be very replayable but also engrossing in a way that maybe you only want to do it once.