Reviews from

in the past


I thought this was fantastic. A bite sized walking sim with a solid story that reeled me in at just the right pace. It does that narrative thing I really like where they start the story basically in the middle, and the first half is getting caught up with where we even are and what we're doing. To me that makes for really fun storytelling because I like being given small clues and then time to guess at what they might mean. Ended up finishing the whole thing in one sitting!

Gameplay wise this is basically exploration and audio logs and that's it; normally this wouldn't appeal to me but Return to Grace has some fantastic voice acting backed up by strong, memorable characters. These have some obvious influences and there were some other pop culture references sprinkled throughout that I thought were great; they were thematically appropriate and felt like homages.

The slow walking speed is the biggest frustration, but it's kind of understandable since so much of the game is walking and talking that they don't want you blasting past like 3 scripted events while you're still listening to the first recording. But it really puts the damper on exploration and was a huge pain the one time I got turned around.

I can't stress enough what a big deal it is for me that the plot and worldbuilding are what drove me forward in this, because that's not usually what grabs me about games. The ideas presented were all pure, old-school, head-full-of-big-ideas science fiction and I was really impressed with the pacing and execution overall.

I've been to Canada a bunch of times and have friends there, so it warmed my heart to hear so many Canadian voices in one place. I suppose we should say thanks to the taxpayers of Ontario for this one as well, and yeah support the arts guys.

I will start by saying Return to Grace isn’t great, but it is good. It’s a walking simulator that I know isn’t a genre that appeals to everyone, but it’s short and sweet with enough little bits of interactivity to keep the pace steady and not monotonous.

You take control of a future space archaeologist, Adie Ito, who’s ended up on Ganymede (one of Jupiter’s moons) at the resting place of Grace: an AI seemingly worshipped as a god.

Here there is no life left but you quickly discover a piece of Grace.
The first of which represents her logic processing and is quickly dubbed Logic as expected.
Throughout searching this retro-future facility you have different aspects of Grace come into existence all with distinct personality traits.
These characters (I guess technically character singular) are excellently presented, with a great variety of voice acting and all give different and interesting perspectives on what may have happened to Grace, her purpose and views on Adie herself.

Presentation isn’t just from great voice acting, Adie has a little computer mounted on her left wrist which is used for some puzzles but mostly shows simply differently expressive and coloured faces to represent each of these personalities you interact with.

Other interactions involve climbing, pulling levers, small button puzzles and a couple more interesting things that I don’t want to spoil from this game’s extremely short run-time.

Graphically the game is neat, smooth and shiny. Quality lighting and the aesthetic is somewhat 60’s sci-fi but with a good variety of interesting locals to keep you engaged.

If you enjoy walking simulators and especially if you have access to Game Pass this is worth a pick up.
It took me a little over two hours to get through and I did reload some saves to check out alternate choices which can end up with a couple of different endings.
Strangely Return to Grace is more full than you’d expect a two hour story to be in terms of little touches, variation of locations and characters but also feels fairly basic too.
It isn’t doing anything new or particularly innovative and the story is good but it’s a little predictable.
Return to Grace doesn’t feel like the clearly talented staff stretch out further than what they know they can do but while it means it doesn’t necessarily excite it does do everything to a level of quality that’ll not have you upset if you spent a couple of hours with it.

lovely experience, with some cute AI interactions. It felt like talking with the Portal 2 cores again, which is always welcomed.

Also, I want to point out the weird sci-fi aesthetic this game has, specially considering it's set out so far out into the future. Not saying it's bad, just something that I wouldn't expect.

This is an okay short narrative game where the player finds out the disappearance of an AI that ushered a utopian era. The narrative is centered around this mystery and I think it was not intellectually or mechanically engaging. While the ending choice is a bit of a cliche, I did not feel it was explored well. Rather, the quirky interactions between the AI personalities is the strongest aspect of this game.

The gameplay suffers a bit with several context-based interactions that require waiting for audio to finish and most of them are not interesting to do. No strong puzzles or mechanics either to add variety and the inclusion of puzzle skips makes me sad. Since the narrative is not as strong, the lack of other supporting mechanics or systems makes this a weaker experience.

On a side note, I am disappointed that it uses Catholic concepts and centered around humanity given its cosmic scale feels lacking in a bit of narrative creativity. AI being somewhat gendered is okay but I was really disappointed it did not have non-binary representation. It ruined my immersion a bit where an AI controlling the masses is based on a heteronormative structure. This section is my preference so take this with a grain of salt.

This is an okay title but I do not have any strong reason to recommend it either.

Its an okay game, a walking sim with... some "puzzles" and its story serves it purpose. Its just okay but I do really like the voice acting and the aesthetic of the game is really enjoyable sometimes but it's a short game and that is okay. I think the ending was really bland though and could of been better.


Fantástico.
É um jogo tão direto, sem firulas, que não tem como largar.
Ele consegue a façanha de ser um jogo com diálogos sem pausas, mas que não te incomodam, pelo contrário, te conquistam.
As performances são muito boas, a direção de arte é maravilhosa, mas o destaque MESMO fica com a caneta, que não te deixa de saco cheio em nenhum momento.
Entrega muito pra quem não espera nada.

Se não suporta Walking Simulator melhor nem chegar perto. Se tiver a fim de uma experiência narrativa curta, não tem erro.
Surpresa muito positiva.

While Return to Grace is super short at around 2 hours long, I'm impressed by how much better it managed to be than a lot of other adventure games like it. It wasn't perfect, mind you, but it knew how to put its strength into where it counts.

While the developer's ambitions clearly outweighed the runtime they ended up with, those ambitions are clearly shown through some well-written dialogue, an interesting story concept, and some stellar visuals. I laughed more in the short time I spent with Return to Grace than I have in a lot of those five hour walking sims that stand similar to this, and was more interested in its story given its timeliness.

Ultimately though, the game isn't without its flaws. Besides the runtime issue, sound design is also lackluster. A lot of the game doesn't support either music or believable sounds which can properly detract from the immersion. As a consequence of that runtime, some of the game's more interesting concepts don't get the time to flourish either such as the branching paths toward your objective.

As an experiment though, it's clear that the dev should put more time into this style for a fuller experience. Return to Grace is a promising sign for their future, provided they can take the right lessons away from this adventure.

P.S. Screw Control. All my homies hate Control

Return to Grace is a bite sized linear adventure game with a novel, but ultimately underused premise. While there's some semblance of a mystery, its unraveling and big reveal played it very safe. It's that kind of story you forget in a day or two.

Interacting with the different AI personalities was the high point of the adventure, it reminded me of Portal 2's cores, although not even close to being as brilliant or memorable, and the game has some semblance of reactivity to your (sparse) choices, even though they don't change the outcome that much.

People have voiced disapproval over your character having too much leverage and opinions about what's happening around her, but I didn't mind. A Tabula rasa or self insert character wouldn't have worked well for what the game proposes.

The puzzles - if I even dare to call them so - are easily the worst aspect of the game. Midway through it even gives you an option to completely bypass them, but it still seems a bad design choice to even include them in the first place. Another terrible design decision is locking you out of actions until all the respective dialogue has been played, which often forces you to keep staring at an object just waiting for the "use" prompt to be available.

Still, considering it's a 2h game (and on Game Pass to boot), there's not much to feel angry about it. Treat Return to Grace as if it were an interactive Love Death & Robots episode.

- Grace -
Supongo que está bien, su pequeña historia me gusto y me dio a entender pq fue que Grace desaparecio.
--
Sus puzzles son super ligeros y el juego solo consiste en caminar.
-
Sus interacciónes con las IAs me gustaron, cada una se siente y expresa bastante bien y acorde a lo que son.
--
Es un juego lindo, corto y sencillo con una trama religiosa que me pareció bien. Pero siento que no es algo de otro mundo y no termina termina de explotar del todo su potencial :/

A solid narrative puzzle adventure game. The characters are really the shining point of the game as they're a joy to listen to and their interactions with each other's distinct personality's are really the bright spot of this game. The graphics are stylized to be like a cartoon much like Deliver Us the Moon with a retro-futuristic style reminiscent of the 50's.
The atmosphere was also great with some very pretty views. The story started off a little weak, then picked up at the middle and the falling action and then somewhat fell off at the end. I enjoyed the game for what it was, an indie mystery puzzle game.

Return to Grace is short and unchallenging yet it's a unique and entertaining walking simulator. What puts this one ahead of the others in the genre for me is that there is a decent sci-fi story that is easy to follow along with and the fun cast of characters and dialog.

Walking sims can be a bit boring and some times tedious with how slow the main character can move and interact with their surroundings. This game has those moments of slow, tedious movement but it's countered with entertaining characters that are introduced in a unique way.

As an explorer, you find your way to an old spire and while there, you have a coms wrist computer that helps you to talk with the AI there. As the story goes, The AI characters will start combining with the others and offer new personalities to help you along the way. So while you're walking around slowly, exploring, you have all of these AI characters jabbering away and it's very fun.

A lot of the walking sims I have played in the past, I feel like they tend to leave it up to the player as to what happened and I'm a bit tired of that. This one is definitely one of those unique sci-fi stories but they at least include a few different endings that explain what is going on and what happened.

For all the great dialog and story bits, there are still moments where I wish you could skip scenes or move a little faster. The game is already pretty short (about 2 hours or so) but there are areas that I feel are padded only because of how slow the character moves. This becomes tedious when you want to see the other endings and find out there is no chapter select, so you HAVE to start the game over to do so. And as fun as the characters are, they get old after hearing it all over again a couple times to see the other endings.

One of the big take aways I have with this one though is that this feels like a game I would recommend to someone who is a big movie buff that wants to try out a game. They could finish this in one sitting, like a movie, and actually get a pretty decent experience out of it within that time frame.

A very accessible walking sim with fantastic writing and setting. The game makes you think about life a religion in a grand scale and uses emotional AI to portray the different perspectives of the human brain. The slowness of the character does diminish my want to finish on a different ending though.

An interesting setting that definitely makes me want to explore the unique environments. However, I wish there had been more depth to the story and a deeper exploration into the main character's motivations for being there. There was a lot of mystery left unresolved that I think would have improved the overall experience if it had been explored in some way. Quality voice work as well from every character.

E um walking simulator ent e basicamente puzzle e historinha. O jogo e bem curtinho ent e uma ótima experiência, eu gostei da história.

AI and religion both interesting topics, unfortunately this game doesn't explore either particularly well in any way. Not only does it not bring anything new to the table but it also chose the already most overdone concepts ever. It's pretty enough, the puzzles are as easy a puzzle can be and still be called a puzzle.

Um Walking Sim entre fraco e ok... Eu gosto do gênero e acho que tem exemplos ótimos por aí, mas esse não faz nada muito bem.

Return to Grace não apresenta nada mecanicamente interessante como Tacoma ou What Remains of Edith Finch...
A história que geralmente é o que mais prende em um bom Walking Sim, aqui também é meia boca, passa longe de um Firewatch e um Gone Home.
Os puzzles são para crianças de 3 anos parece.
Tampouco é uma experiência visual deslumbrante como Dear Esther ou Layers of Fear.

ande pra frente, aperte A, repita infinitamente. a história não faz nada muito interessante mas até que os gráficos e visuais do jogo são bonitos

Hoje zerei e até mesmo peguei 100% deste jogo, Return to Grace, graças ao Game Pass novamente pude jogar esse joguinho, que por sinal é bem curtinho. Leva apenas três horas para poder finalizar a parte principal (ao menos eu levei) e que eu curti bastante jogar.

Return to Grace é um jogo onde acompanhamos a arqueóloga Adie no ano de 3820 d.C. O trabalho de vida de Adie é investigar Grace, uma inteligência artificial que inaugurou a era dourada da humanidade, mas ficou inativa há 900 anos atrás. O jogo começa com Adie fazendo um pouso de emergência onde Grace está localizada e Adie encontrará vários personagens de IA enquanto visita várias instalações. Você terá a oportunidade de fazer algumas escolhas que não parece ser muito relevante para o game no geral, mas a maior parte do jogo é uma experiência narrativa linear. E ele basicamente é um simulador de andar. Não há um combate bem dito, apenas caminhar, e também existem momentos onde você precisa escalar.

Graficamente, o game, apesar de simples, trabalha muito bem seus gráficos. Nunca é feio, embora você possa ver as limitações claramente. O estilo de arte é uma ideia dos anos 60 do que o futuro pode parecer. É limpo, brilhante, colorido e bem diferente do que possivelmente vai ser algo no futuro. O jogo pode parecer um pouco silencioso às vezes, mas parece ter sido intencional mesmo, sendo um game bem legal tanto na sua parte sonora geral do game, como também na sua dublagem.

Return to Grace é um jogo de narrativa bem curtinho, mas que ao menos para mim conseguiu me prender e muito. Os quebra-cabeças são legais e nunca chegam a ser frustrantes, enquanto a narrativa e a dublagem fazem um trabalho admirável em contar esse conto futurista sobre a humanidade. Acredito que vale a pena conferir afinal o game ta disponível no Game Pass então obviamente não custa nada testar se você já tiver a assinatura.

Pontos Positivos:
- Estilo de arte

Pontos Negativos:
- Sistema de escolhas meio que tanto faz

Versão utilizada para análise: Xbox Series S

meh, it's alright. you don't really do anything fun, but it's a decent little walking sim. the puzzles aren't even really puzzles and the story and voice acting are okay.

This review contains spoilers

Short and sweet.
It may be a "Walking simulator" but I've taught myself that its okay to just experience the story a game has to offer and sit back and enjoy the ride.
I enjoyed exploring the environment and piecing together what happened to the keepers and other summoned to grace.
Was very surprised to see myself slowly getting attached to the AI companions I made along the way. The bickering was very charming and was kinda adorable.

Masterful storytelling - the only thing keeping this from 5 stars was the fact that the mechanics themselves seemed to get in the way of experiencing the narrative.

top 10 jogos que tu fica falando com robô / IA

A história é maneira e o jogo é bonitão, algumas partes eu parei só para ficar admirando.

Jogo massa demais, vale a pena pela jogatina curta!

Narrative driven walking simulator with compelling voice actors. I really enjoyed being immersed in the story and loved the visuals. With 2-3 hours you'll have a great and atmospheric evening.

Very basic walking simulator with some nice design choices in terms of allowing the player to choose how much detail they see of the world building and narrative. The writing is pretty typical of this genre and really doesn't go anywhere interesting.
The art design is cool, and I imagine a lot of people will have some school or government building from their past come to mind when walking through it.

Eu sou daquelas pessoas que adoram um bom jogo do estilo Walking Simulator e se forem daqueles que se completam numa tarde ainda melhor! Return to Grace encaixa nesses dois pontos e quando o comecei a jogar pensei mesmo que ia ser incrível, mas bem, não foi bem assim.

A narrativa tinha mesmo muito potencial para ser marcante e tem de positivo o facto de, ao contrário daquilo que é hábito, nos contar uma história em que a Inteligência Artificial não é a má da fita, mas a forma a história como se desenvolve é demasiado apressada e no final fica a sensação de que podia ter tido muito mais profundidade e, assim, ser mais cativante.

As escolhas que vamos fazendo têm o seu impacto no desenrolar desta pequena aventura e os puzzles que vamos encontrando, apesar de parcerem bastante forçados em certas alturas, são acessíveis e intuitivos.

A nível artístico, o jogo é competente mas nada por aí além – tem locais e momentos que agradam a vista, mas ao mesmo tempo existem outros que mereciam um pouquinho mais de detalhe.

Return To Grace faz parte daquele grupo de jogos de que eu queria imenso ter gostado e que ao inicio prometia muito, porém no final acabou por não convencer e ficar abaixo das expectativas


bust this
like a cool milk from out the toilet
two batteries some Brillo and some foil
heat'll boil it

the retrofucturistic look of this really helps and its overall a super charming game imo. not gonna be a wild standout but it doesnt need to be!!

This game is pretty interesting. It's a low key, exploring game that takes 2-4 hours. It's millennia in the future and the AI that has helped humanity has been shut down for a long time. I would totally watch a tv show in this universe.

A good three hour exploration and conversation