Christopher Nolan's Dowhill Jam. Hate to be all "Cons: - Too much water" but lol. Has so few levels that feel like they make any satisfying use of the Zineth gravity-shifting mechanic and the cloying story insists on butting in to fuck up the vibes. I just KNOW the dev crew watched Interstellar while feverishly taking notes and none of them related to anything I wanted out of a game like this, very sad. Exo One is screaming from the diaphragm for some kind of Steam Workshop implementation so people can make School II or Hangar or even Bob-omb Battlefield.

Exo One grows on you as its level design develops — the relatively simplistic early levels growing more complex as mechanics are added (or subtracted) and new twists are added to its stunning set of environments. And driving the player through those strange and sometimes wondrous planets is a gorgeous soundtrack filled with moody, contemplative tracks that, for me, are the game's lasting highlight. All-in-all, it's a wondrous, moody, atmospheric game that captures the scale of outer space in a way few games have.

Or, in short, it's like Denis Villeneuve decided to remake Journey and Interstellar at the same time, as a game about falling with style.

De esos juegos que de forma pedante suelen llamarse experiencias.

Pros:
- Es bellísimo. Period.
- El manejo de la ¿nave? es muy ágil y placentero, a la par que original.
- El océano. Por dios, qué maravilla de agua.

Contras:
- La fórmula se agota bastante rápido, perdiendo el factor sorpresa.
- Por algún motivo intentar introducir una narrativa que poco casa con el juego.
- Algunas texturas están realmente mal acabadas.

The best this game has to offer is its presentation, right from the start you get that feeling. Big long shots, grainy effect, space probe look, low fidelity audio messages, etc.
Some kind of narrative that gives you an objective that tries to convey melancholy (along with some music themes) which doesn't go anywhere, only gets in the middle of its otherwise documentary/naturalistic vision.
When the propper game starts, you're given control of some kind of ship, a cutting-edge technology that only modifies gravity to move. With that simple but powerful premise you get along, but as the game goes on it fails to expand its concepts, right from the second level you get the feeling that you're just going from point A to point B, not giving any opportunity of expression or challenge.

An extremely simple visual journey that is way more interested in presenting pretty locals than any compelling gameplay. In this game you pilot some strange alien craft and get launched across the cosmos to different planets where you fly your way to the next alien cannon that shoots you to the next level. You start off as a sphere that can manipulate gravity, with the push of a button the ship crashes down to the surface like normal gravity, release it and the ball will float. To gain momentum you turn on gravity when going downhill and let go and float when launched upward. Then you can glide by turning the sphere into a disc like shape which floats through the air for sometime until it’s energy is spent. Energy is refilled with kinetic energy so you can dive or hit the surface and bounce back. Essentially all you do is dive down then launch up and try to keep that momentum going to reach the goal.

The environments are sparse yet visually stunning. It takes inspiration from interstellar with barren planets and all kinds of trippy space visuals. Some planets are filled with water, some volcanos, one a jungle planet and so on. There isn’t much to do or see, every level seems to have one hidden upgrade to find that lets you glide longer but it’s kind of pointless. A few levels try to mix things up like adding wind boosts, one has you collect three blue lights, another shuts down the glide so you have to roll around. It’s never that interesting, for the most part is all travel by parabolic movement. Luckily the game is over in an hour and a half but that still feels like an hour too long.

There is some pathetic attempt at a story involving some simple dialog between planets that describe why you are in an alien craft and the purpose of the journey. There is no great lesson to be learned, no emotional payoff, it’s just exposition. It’s as hollow as the gameplay.

I only played this because it’s on gamepass and I found it to be a total waste of time.

Score: 3.0

A slight, emotive experience that is a singular concotion of high sci-fi short stories and marble games. Adore the atmosphere, art direction and the overwhelming enigmatic tone through which the narrative is told. Controlling the craft is the entire gameplay loop and it's immensely satisfying when you get it right, brutally punishing if you don't. There's definitely a learning curve, one that might be too steep for a 2 - 3 hour runtime. I liked how much it leant into its inspirations though, even sporting a couple of levels that felt like expanded Super Monkey Ball stages with their obtuse side-challenges requiring manipulation of the environment and mastery of the traversal. Exo One really falls apart though with the performance. I played this partly on Series S and the rest on PC, neither of which handled the game to a level I was happy with. This kind of experience needs to be ultra-responsive and smooth to convey the blisteringly fast speeds at which you're travelling, but not only do the visuals swerve erratically between gorgeous and rough, there's frequent hitches and frame-drops when you gain enough speed that it just can't keep up with. Worst of all, my save corrupted on the final level so I had to watch that and the ending on YouTube (doubly worse since Xbox Cloud happened to go down at this moment too so I couldn't even finish it through there). A lot of promise, some of it fulfilled, but it is often its own worst enemy.

Título preciosista pero que peca de simplón. El movimiento está bien trabajado y es divertido de jugar, pero apenas tiene profundidad y todo lo que necesitas saber se te explica en los primeros dos minutos. Los mapas son todos demasiado parecidos, más allá de tener una pequeña variación de uno a otro en forma de montañas, agua, dunas o lo que toque.

No está mal, puede ser recomendable pero a mí me da la sensación de que al estudio se le ocurrió una idea buena para el movimiento y que la acompañaron de un buen apartado artístico y que no va más allá de eso. Una pena.