Review SIGINT 3/5 · Apr 13, 2023
This is a decent, short, small-scale game combining the Tron universe with a visual novel adventure style most reminiscent of developer Bithell Games's Quarantine Circular. Your character is a detective, arriving to investigate an apparent attack on a vault whose former contents are a mystery. Though you're sworn to simply investigate and not interfere, the game sets up interesting …
This is a decent, short, small-scale game combining the Tron universe with a visual novel adventure style most reminiscent of developer Bithell Games's Quarantine Circular. Your character is a detective, arriving to investigate an apparent attack on a vault whose former contents are a mystery. Though you're sworn to simply investigate and not interfere, the game sets up interesting branching choice-consequence moments where even doing nothing comes with inescapable impact on how the story plays out and on characters' fragile trust in you.
If you aren't already pretty familiar with Tron, this story does throw you in the deep end a bit with an assumed understanding of basic jargon and lore, but with patience and attentive reading you can figure it out well enough. I found the story a bit mixed in quality, sometimes good at creating big moments and at throwing in new variables and revelations at the right times, but not necessarily the most satisfying or memorable when taken as a whole. Particularly toward the end, the way the story resolves (and doesn't resolve, leaving the door wide open for a sequel) felt a bit underwhelming.
Though this is a low-budget game, it does present some nice glowy Tron art accompanying its many long text-based scenes. The text could use one more round of editing for punctuation and stuff, but it's not too bad by any means. Adding a bit of variety is a quick puzzle minigame played at key points in the story to help uncover characters' lost memories. It's an okay diversion, though the game is a bit too short for it to really go anywhere once it teaches you all its basic obstacles. It's also straight-up skippable, which should ease repeat playthroughs, something the game's format definitely encourages.
Generally speaking I would recommend most players to just try Subsurface Circular or Quarantine Circular instead of this, unless you already have played those or are pretty invested in Tron. Those games, while not amazing, had more interesting mysteries and philosophical content, as well as choices that felt more agonizing (in a good way) than what was presented here. This game, for me, is pretty good but not very good. Maybe once whatever sequel(s) they have planned come out, it will be a more satisfying overall experience.