Still There is a sci-fi point-and-click, which flirts heavily with very serious themes, such as grief and the search for identity. We play Karl Hamba, a man who has lost his daughter and who, in order to forget and to forget himself, has taken a job in a 'galactic lighthouse', far from Earth. This loneliness, the alienation he experiences and the relationship he has with the station's AI are reminiscent of Duncan Jones' Moon, with a somewhat inverted premise. In any case, Karl leads a routine and excessively uninteresting life, until he receives a distress message from a ship lost in his sector. A whole series of events unfolds, revealing the truth about Karl's presence on this station. Like an old-school point-and-click, Still There has its share of puzzles, some of which are particularly tricky. They are not necessarily unsolvable puzzles that don't make sense, but they do require a certain amount of concentration and the effort of reading the station's manual (the oxygen leak puzzle is particularly tricky). On top of that, the story is itself a puzzle: the search for a way to mend a broken soul that no longer has the strength to love. Still There takes a surprising direction, stating that this is impossible, but without necessarily having a pessimistic tone. Time does its job and eases the pain, but nothing will be the same as before. The title enjoys a quality art direction, both with the neat retro-futuristic settings and the soundtrack that accompanies the dialogues very effectively.

Still There asks the question of the most intense mourning and the necessary empathy. How to live with a heart reduced to shreds? Should one flee? But then, how far should one go? In any case, all the time we spent together will remain.

Reviewed on Sep 10, 2022


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