Anyone pick this up from Game Pass?

Played a couple of chapters last night and it seems kind of good I guess? Plays like The Witness but less complicated so far, none of the puzzles have really stumped me so I'm hoping it gets a bit more difficult as it progresses.

The voice acting/writing is fairly suspect but it seems like the story isn't really the main thrust so you can sort of ignore it.

I downloaded it yesterday ahead of giving it a go this week, it completely slipped under my radar until release. Looks right up my alley so quite looking forward to it. It would be interesting to see others find it too.

I'm on the last chapter and with one real exception I've found the puzzles well designed and fun. The narrative isn't doing anything for me (for once I'd like a game set in that era that is not related to HP Lovecraft) but I'll finish it since it's so short.

How long did it take you to get to that point?

@ramone: I'd guess 4 or 5 hours. It's only 6 chapters total.

Lovecraftian fiction isn't my thing either and the story didn't really grab me, though I appreciated how they tie up loose ends and there's always narrative justifications for questions that pop up along the way.

Puzzles were okay (although there was the one involving 3 floating rocks I couldn't logic out, so I resorted to clicking randomly until it was solved). I played The Gardens Between shortly before this one (also on Game Pass btw), and that game had some really creative puzzles that made me go "wow" but nothing like that here - but what it lacks in cleverness, it makes up for in variety. I think what I enjoyed the most was the presentation. There are some neat environmental visuals and animations combined with audio that make for otherworldly experience.

The first chapter got me hooked. Seemed like a well presented little puzzle/adventure game. Feels like every other game I've played this year has been inspired by Lovecraft fiction in some way. If only it didn't crash after the first chapter for me on PC I would likely play through the entire game.

@riostarwind said:

Soft locked on me twice last night! Didn't lose much progress but it's still annoying.

I saw this on a few GOTY lists on here, checked out a trailer and it looked interesting, and since I signed up for the $1 game pass ultimate deal I thought I'd give it a shot. I played through a couple of chapters last night and thought I might be done with it, but then I read that it's only six chapters so I figured I'd see it through. I finished another couple of chapters today. It's ok, not great. Funnily enough I think the story is what's keeping me moving forward. Some of the dialogue and exposition is clunky, but it has enough intrigue that I want to see what happens. The puzzles so far have been hit and miss, with some being a bit too obtuse for my liking. I wish everything moved a bit quicker as well. Getting around the island can be a bit tedious (even when holding the "sprint" button), especially when you're going back and forth between multiple locations to try and solve a puzzle. I've also run into a recurring bug where the game soft locks when I pick up some documents (I'm playing the PC version). The dialogue doesn't play and I can't back out from it. Luckily the checkpointing system is generous enough that I've been able to quit out and load back in without losing too much progress, but it seems to be happening more and more the further I get which is a bit worrying. I tried searching but no one else seems to be having the same problem. Hopefully it doesn't prevent me from finishing the game.

I was intrigued when I read this is supposed to be like Myst since I was a real fan of those games. I’ve downloaded from Game Pass but haven’t had a chance to try yet. Once I wrap up Cyberpunk I’ll probably give it a go - from the trailer the voice acting does indeed seem suspect.

I downloaded it and started it, but the way the main character just exposition dumps everything so plainly in the first room put me off so hard that I just uninstalled it. Maybe the writing gets better after that but BOY was it one of the worst offenders of "show, don't tell" I've seen in awhile.

Feels like Riven for babies. I like Riven and I'm a baby, so it's good. I agree that I really, really wish this didn't have HP Lovecraft ties.

I finished it but I wouldn't recommend this game. The mostly monotonous puzzles and lack of more stuff to do (encounter some characters at least?) in the later chapters is why.

Props to the voice actor for carrying this game at least.

I quite liked this game. It reminded me alittle of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture but with added puzzles and a better story imo.

And the puzzles worked overall really well for me. I also liked the ending which is always a plus.

It did have some bugs. Most annoyingly it would softlock sometimes when I would pickup a note or picture and I couldn't back out of it. I heard somewhere that if you enabled vsync it would fix it and after I did that I didn't run into it again.

I played this in the lead up to Christmas. I would say that its better than average and cautiously recommend it for "fans of the genre." It's a slow start but it soon picks up and has strong "This actually looks kind of incredible for a game of this scale" vibes. The game drags a lot in the latter half, though I would says it's worth finishing.

There are 6 chapters. I would say Chapter 1 is OK, Chapter 2 and 3 are excellent story telling and intriguing puzzles without really stretching the brain at all. Chapter 4, 5 and 6 could easily be one chapter and an epilogue, and the percentage of time spent traversing the world in this part of the game is way too high.

Also, there were only 2 puzzles in the whole game where I really felt any sense of accomplishment when I solved them. The Witness it isn't.

(Minor plot spoiler about the games tone I guess:) The game does deserve kudos for the level of horror it can squeeze into a PG (Australian) rated game

I liked it. Surprised it seems have slipped by the Giant Bomb people.

I played this today because of this thread and I think overall I liked it. Some of the puzzles took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out, though I didn't look anything up, which speaks positively to the puzzle design. The story isn't spectacular or anything but it's good enough to carry a 5-6 hour game, the environments are truly gorgeous, and the sound design is spectacular. The water sounds are especially delightful, from the rain to the swimming sounds.

I have two major criticisms. The first is that you just move too damn slow, even when running. This is the biggest problem the game has, since a lot of the puzzles require substantial backtracking. Knowing what you need to do or where you need to go but it taking several minutes to complete because you walk so...slowly...is frustrating even if there's a narrative explanation.

The other criticism is the voice acting. It's not bad, but the tone is really weird. The main character sees a lot of intense stuff during her journey and while sometimes she reacts emotionally to the events her descriptions are generally happy and chipper even when she's just passed by evidence that her husband might be in danger or whatever. It's like they recorded the lines with no context of what would be going on in the game at the time. She can react with horror at an object she looks at...and then give a light and comedic comment about something else that's like 10 feet away. It's distracting.

There was also one point where I got stuck because even though it was obvious what I had to do, the character wouldn't do it until I examined a small note off to the side, even though it was repetitive of other material I'd already found. So that was annoying.

It's funny because while everyone is comparing this game to Myst and Riven it actually reminded me of Firewatch, probably because there are some visual similarities and the story's focus on narration. I was like "they created the walking simulator by making adventure games without any puzzles...and now they're making enhanced walking simulators by adding puzzles back in. We have come full circle!"

I am surprised that this game doesn't have any VR support on PC. It seems tailor made for VR with its excellent sound design and simple but attractive graphics. I honestly thought it was a VR game that got a screen build to increase the potential audience.