Yeah, just finished this. Pretty disappointing.
Pros:
+Great spritework
+Really nice UI
+Excellent voice acting for the most part (Anna's acting is really stiff at times and it sounds like she's reading lines in a booth instead of reacting to what's in front of her in the game).
+Some nice sections that have that charm/spark of classic 90s adventure games
+I like how they kept in death scenes + an auto-rewind to not make it too punishing in that regard
The cons though are that the whole thing feels like a waste of potential. The story opens great, like you're going to get an interesting mystery adventure thriller about these four people and some sci-fi phenomenon. But the story really fizzles out once the four meet up. Instead you have a first half of a few chores around the city, then halfway point, then a bit of good adventure gaming and then it ends. The plot starts interesting and grounded but gets really silly conspiracy theory sci-fi channel bad by the end. Everything feels underdeveloped, whether it's the actual plot which feels slow and yet rushed at the same time, or the characters who all feel severely lacking in characterization.
And it's not like the game is super short. It's a solid length at around 5-7 hours, but it just feels so padded and so much of that time is wasted. There's really very, very little plot in the game. Probably about the same amount as your average indie 2-3 hour adventure game. But often those are episodic entries that have multiple games to further build and develop the cast. Here, even the amount of screens and locations is really really small. Wadjet Eye said it was their "biggest game yet", but maybe they were just talking about production values (which are really fantastic with the great spritework and voicework and interface).
The gameplay side of it is ok. There are some good puzzles and there are some ridiculously tedious bits. I get that you only have like 15 screens in the game so you need to take a single screen warehouse and turn it into 15-30 mins of gameplay just to pick up an item, but it really makes the pacing feel sluggish and some of the puzzles feel solely like padding to get more hours out of limited environments.
The four person system even works to the games disadvantage instead of its advantage. Having to juggle inventory between party members and make sure people are moving together and the right person is interacting with the right object just ended up being tedious instead of enhancing the gameplay. IMO the game would have been MUCH better and tighter narrative experience if the entire game was like the prologue with 4 timeframes all taking place simultaneously that you can do in any order. Going in, I actually thought that was the hook of the game, that it was an adventure game about 4 stories going on at the same time that eventually link up and interact with each other. Instead that was the prologue and then an hour in everyone meets up and it's just a traditional adventure game except you have to move 4 people at a time. Like the story premise, the gameplay (with the 4 person system) feels like a waste.
I sound more negative than I mean to be. It's a solid little C+/B- indie adventure game with great presentation and a story that is entertaining (the prologue and the 2nd half are very enjoyable even if the story is kind of dumb in the 2nd half). I think it's a good try for a new developer's first major adventure game, and I can see them shaking off some of the amateurish faults for their next game and maybe making some really great. I'd still recommend it, and it's priced right. But I'd be lying if it wasn't a game that could've and should've been something a lot better and more interesting than what it actually turned out to be.
The prologue is actually the best part of the game and it's the demo. Go figure.
