"Earth will always destroy themselves."
There are two things that I absolutely love in this world. Portal (or even the Half-Life series as a whole) and sci-fi involving time manipulation. I've played several indie games in the past that have tried to replicate Valve's first-person puzzle adventure formula, but to no avail.
It's clear that The Entropy Centre draws inspiration from Valve's flagship titles, so I'm gonna be making the comparisons a lot here. However, this ultimately feels more like a love letter; a spiritual successor, rather than another "knock-off". You could tweak a few things in the gameplay and it could easily pass off as a new game in the Half-Life universe. (It'd sure fit well with the Borealis lore, too.) It's actually quite shocking how well it all works here.
The Entropy Centre is, in a sense, a narrative-driven first-person adventure that takes cues from Portal... although instead of portals, your tasks require rewinding of objects. There are lasers, bridges, and funnels of course, but they all take forms of movable cubes, even alongside some newer mechanics like transformers and lifts. It's definitely not as simplistic of a concept to grasp as portals, but it still feels brilliant and satisfyingly challenging on its own. Across all 30-40 puzzle rooms, I think I only had to look up solutions to a few of them, but even those ended up being because I was stupid for not remembering certain strategies. None of these puzzles are built to be unfair, and each chapter is paced perfectly to both introduce new elements and differentiate each other through unique setpieces and challenges.
Rather than thinking with creating two holes to form a pathway, you're thinking of placing objects in reverse. It's a hell of a lot like Singularity or even Christopher Nolan's Tenet, the latter of which also touched on the subject of entropy. And with a talking protagonist and a robotic gun, the conversations occurring throughout the story remind me a little bit of Firewatch.
As a fan of the sci-fi genre, I also incredibly loved the narrative at play here. This isn't a story with any real message or moral; simply a fun adventure with a world akin to the weirdness of Valve's own. The journey is simple: you're an employee on a moon base that rewinds Earth to prevent future cataclysms, and you have a talking gun assistant to help fix the planet. And if you're a lore person like I am, there's an abundance of intel and scenarios found scattered through the building's computers that help ground yourself into what the organization was like before it went to crap. Stories of rewinding Earth to before an employee's departure and essentially wiping their existence from their family members, the number of cataclysms prevented without any knowledge from Earth's inhabitants, it's all my kind of theoretical scenarios that really make me invested in the world that I'm currently wandering through. And on top of all of this, the writing and performances between Aria and Astra is both heartwarming and comedic. Everything here just combines beautifully to make a memorable standalone adventure from beginning to end.
Honestly, the only minor downsides I found in this game were its "jank" that can be found in most indie games. It sure as hell ain't gonna be superior to Portal, with certain actions and collisions showing their somewhat unpolished state, although I only rarely ran into bugs. And of course, as stated before, the time reversal mechanic isn't as simple as the main gameplay flow introduced in Portal, and therefore it may be a bit too difficult for some.
I think The Entropy Centre is fantastic, and it can easily pass as one of the best indie Portal successors to date. From its unique world to even its pretty graphics, it's truly an ode to the genre. In my 8-hour experience (which may be shorter or longer for you, depending on your puzzle-solving skills), I felt the similar feelings I did playing Valve games back in the day. Sheer brilliance.
There are two things that I absolutely love in this world. Portal (or even the Half-Life series as a whole) and sci-fi involving time manipulation. I've played several indie games in the past that have tried to replicate Valve's first-person puzzle adventure formula, but to no avail.
It's clear that The Entropy Centre draws inspiration from Valve's flagship titles, so I'm gonna be making the comparisons a lot here. However, this ultimately feels more like a love letter; a spiritual successor, rather than another "knock-off". You could tweak a few things in the gameplay and it could easily pass off as a new game in the Half-Life universe. (It'd sure fit well with the Borealis lore, too.) It's actually quite shocking how well it all works here.
The Entropy Centre is, in a sense, a narrative-driven first-person adventure that takes cues from Portal... although instead of portals, your tasks require rewinding of objects. There are lasers, bridges, and funnels of course, but they all take forms of movable cubes, even alongside some newer mechanics like transformers and lifts. It's definitely not as simplistic of a concept to grasp as portals, but it still feels brilliant and satisfyingly challenging on its own. Across all 30-40 puzzle rooms, I think I only had to look up solutions to a few of them, but even those ended up being because I was stupid for not remembering certain strategies. None of these puzzles are built to be unfair, and each chapter is paced perfectly to both introduce new elements and differentiate each other through unique setpieces and challenges.
Rather than thinking with creating two holes to form a pathway, you're thinking of placing objects in reverse. It's a hell of a lot like Singularity or even Christopher Nolan's Tenet, the latter of which also touched on the subject of entropy. And with a talking protagonist and a robotic gun, the conversations occurring throughout the story remind me a little bit of Firewatch.
As a fan of the sci-fi genre, I also incredibly loved the narrative at play here. This isn't a story with any real message or moral; simply a fun adventure with a world akin to the weirdness of Valve's own. The journey is simple: you're an employee on a moon base that rewinds Earth to prevent future cataclysms, and you have a talking gun assistant to help fix the planet. And if you're a lore person like I am, there's an abundance of intel and scenarios found scattered through the building's computers that help ground yourself into what the organization was like before it went to crap. Stories of rewinding Earth to before an employee's departure and essentially wiping their existence from their family members, the number of cataclysms prevented without any knowledge from Earth's inhabitants, it's all my kind of theoretical scenarios that really make me invested in the world that I'm currently wandering through. And on top of all of this, the writing and performances between Aria and Astra is both heartwarming and comedic. Everything here just combines beautifully to make a memorable standalone adventure from beginning to end.
Honestly, the only minor downsides I found in this game were its "jank" that can be found in most indie games. It sure as hell ain't gonna be superior to Portal, with certain actions and collisions showing their somewhat unpolished state, although I only rarely ran into bugs. And of course, as stated before, the time reversal mechanic isn't as simple as the main gameplay flow introduced in Portal, and therefore it may be a bit too difficult for some.
I think The Entropy Centre is fantastic, and it can easily pass as one of the best indie Portal successors to date. From its unique world to even its pretty graphics, it's truly an ode to the genre. In my 8-hour experience (which may be shorter or longer for you, depending on your puzzle-solving skills), I felt the similar feelings I did playing Valve games back in the day. Sheer brilliance.