OK, I have a confession to make. My original disappointed reaction after playing this game for a couple of hours was this:
Original title was Trashpoop. Totally overhyped BS shooter. Great theme and environments, terrible story and as an experience this thing sucks. Add to it that it doesn’t run on 50% of PCs, this thing wins the Trash of the Year awards trophy hands down.
This came as part of my Humble subscription, and bought the PS5 version on sale so I could at least play it on stream. It’s visually interesting, but not something that draws me back in. Maybe someday.
I’ve since come to absolutely LOVE this game! This is down to the game design, and I wanted to make some notes about it. What kept me coming back was the art style and graphics, and the story, yet I didn’t understand the presentation. Turns out the game begins by trying to make it more confusing and difficult up until the point when we kill the Wenjies. The weapons are bad, we take a linear confusing path, and eventually find an extremely difficult boss (the multiple Wenjies), blow some machine and then we get to choose where to go and when, and we can pick what to do.
At this point, the game unfolds and turns into more of an explorative adventure. We have four levels, each of which can be visited during four time periods of the day. Each time period makes the level function differently, which makes for interesting game play. Say a hatch is locked in the morning at low tide, but it’s accessible at lunch during high tide, which blocks off other paths. This is clever, and makes for varying explorations and approaches to problems.
I’m still trying to figure out how I can kill 8 visionaries in only 4 attempts, but I’m beginning to realise that if I bring at least two of them together per level/time, it might be possible. For example, Egor spends time at The Complex unless I sabotage an experiment earlier in the day so that he loses interest and attends a party instead, where another visionary is waiting for him. That’s two birds in one location. If I can make this happen with the other characters (either bring them all to the party, or pair them up), it might be possible.
Figuring these puzzles out while re-playing each of the levels is what makes the game fun for me. I need to mention change this in my Steam review, which currently isn’t very nice.