Transcender

Transcender

It was definetly a new experience.

The start narration felt like torture to me thats why I always interupted it.

The second part was very intuitive and even though one doesnt know what to do or what is happening it becomes clear pretty fast. It would be nice if we would get to see more changes on the planet though. One tree - that you just see if you zoom out - and a few clouds is not that exciting.

There where drones to send out but they never reported a find.

On the station the time is always running out too fast. Only once I had more time after a choice put me into a slow motion state where time moved slower and even though I was moving slower too I could explore much more.

Real player with 4.1 hrs in game


Read More: Best Episodic Choose Your Own Adventure Games.


Transcender is something special, unique and all of its own. While, I’ve done several playthroughs, I still don’t really know what the hell I experienced. This is an awe and thought inspiring interactive experience with heavy artistic elements and nods to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (you can even see a beacon, in the AI warehouse, that is modelled after Hal) while still remaining very original. After a few runs, I do think this chapter could’ve been expanded on slightly overall but it far exceeded my initial expectations and I think Aldo Jeffrey will have some very interesting stories to tell going forward.

Real player with 4.1 hrs in game

Transcender on Steam

Kentucky Route Zero: PC Edition

Kentucky Route Zero: PC Edition

I’ve been putting off writing a review for this for literally years, because I have no idea how to describe it any better than anyone else has. But Kentucky Route Zero has been my biggest source of inspiration ever since I stumbled upon it seven years ago. In that span of time, every act released was better than the last, every character more in-depth, every location more mysterious. So let’s start there: I’m in love with this game, and have been from the start.

You play as a number of drifters in Kentucky. All of them are homeless, some have debts, most don’t have much family. Your job is to get them to Dogwood Drive, an address that is incessantly difficult to locate, and is only accessible by a route that takes you deep, deep underground.

Real player with 138.4 hrs in game


Read More: Best Episodic Atmospheric Games.


**“We lay on our backs looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when he made life so sad and disinclined. ”

― Jack Kerouac, On the Road**

I don’t normally start my reviews with book quotes but when I do you can be assured that I mean business or I am trying really hard to look smart. Kentucky Route Zero is not for everyone. Its heavy on reading walls and walls of text and building your own story of interwoven threads from multiple characters that all knit together into this Kerouac beat style prose or in some other moments a Murakami-like flurry of surrealistic philosophy where things are real…but not quite real enough. There was a point where I had given up on this title and had no confidence that it would ever get finished but they did and I am glad, if only to give closure to the swathes of fans that waited almost 10 years for this to come to fruition.

Real player with 41.9 hrs in game

Kentucky Route Zero: PC Edition on Steam

Bot Colony

Bot Colony

Bot Colony is an ambitious title, maybe even too ambitious for what it’s worth. So far, playing it is more of a struggle than entertainment…

I am aware that Bot Colony is an Early Access Game, but still, this build is not playable by far. I’m afraid i wouldn’t even be wrong if i would say that there is literally almost nothing in Bot Colony that works as it should… Let’s start with the game’s motto: “The Game You Speak With”. This is the main reason why anybody would pay attention to it, but unfortunately in the end the player will find out that this is actually “The Game Which Doesn’t Understand You”. That’s it. I’ve said it. Natural language understanding is just not ready to be implemented in a game. It wil get you right about one time out of ten. Other then that you’ll get replies like “I don’t know what you mean”.

Real player with 55.8 hrs in game


Read More: Best Episodic Immersive Games.


Review after June 18 major upgrade

Introduction

Bot Colony is an ambitious title, aiming to provide a non-scripted story by allowing you to freely converse with robots. If you enjoyed literary works like ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’, Isaac Asimov’s Robot series, movies like ‘Space Oddysey 2001’(not one of my favorites though) or Anime like ‘Ghost in the Shell’ and ‘Psycho-Pass’, you’ll find a similar setting here.

An important remark is that most of the gameplay is text (or speech) conversations, which at times can be both agitating and humorous, and that might not appeal to everyone.

Real player with 27.4 hrs in game

Bot Colony on Steam