It is a completely different experience from the original short story. It is enjoyable to know more about the characters and their circumstances and it is nice to be able to achieve some good endings for them. But still, the original experience with all its rivetting details and purposeful lack of attonement and extra information make the experience much worse. I would really recommend you to play this after having giving a try to the book, or complementing your playthrough with it. You have the audiobook by the author himself on YouTube and the performance is even better than in th game.

One of the most disturbing games I've played. Incredibly ambitious for its time. Adressing really really heavy subject matter that even puts Silent Hill to shame. There's no horror quite like this world.

AM's hatred for humanity is both foreign and understandable

All 5 characters are burdened by their past, guilty of it or not and they are meant to reflect on it. The horror of imagining this scenario being replayed on loop over and over is quite something.

An incredibly scary game.

honestly i didn't find the og novel memorable or interesting, but the game expands on it significantly. their personal hells are given more detail now that you can explore them, you get to know more about them as people, and some things do deviate from the novel but i vastly prefer the game version anyway. some of the puzzles are a pixel hunt or just classic moon logic, and the final level is also a bit confusing as the devs clearly did not intend to make it possible for everyone to survive, but overall it's full of atmosphere and interesting writing

What is the difference between an AI's capricious torturer scenarios and the Old Testament?

Time is a closed circle, we use technology to dream up new ways to make our sins relevant through eternal damnation or simulation.

Not me though, I'm built different. I looked up the good ending in a walkthrough.

This is one of those classic games of horror that doesn't set out to try and scare you, but more disturb you with the malice of the character who is pulling the strings and this case, the AI known as AM who went insane and has a god complex. "I think there for I AM!" as he says, even though AM meant something else.

In this game you play as one of a handful of characters that have to take on his torturous and vile tasks as he wishes to play a game with all of you, but this time actual escape may be possible.

Gameplay:
Your standard point-and-click set up where you are interact with various different items and have to use them to solve puzzles, give them to people and try to figure out what's going on with these tasks. It also doesn't help that this game does have the unfortunate issue of soft-locking where if you don't save regularly, you might find yourself stuck with no way to return like I did whilst playing a Nimdok, a controversial character who was removed entirely from the German release of the game due to his ties to the Nazis and making the game impossible to complete as every character needs to reach the end of this test before progressing to the end.

Story:
I've said a lot of the story already, but basically the AI called Adding Machine or AM for short, has a god complex and after wiping out all human life, he saves for himself five people who he feels sins are so great that a instant death in a nuclear attack, either vaporisation or slow agonising death from radiation, is not enough for them!:
Gorrister who looks and sounds like a hillbilly with something to hide.
Benny a man AM mutilated and tormented due to his own brutish past.
Ellen, the only woman in the group who AM likes to remind her of, making her uncomfortable along with exposing her to her phobia of the colour yellow.
Nimdok the aged doctor who is haunted and has forgotten his secret sadistic past working under Doctor Mengele.
Ted, the handsome man whose looks haven't gone in the 909 years living in torture, but his looks and charm have no affect against AM besides making him laugh.

A secret note lets you know that AM might actually be betting your freedom, for real this time, but is the really the truth or is this yet another sadistic ploy by AM?

Gameplay + Stream