This is... tough. But good. This game has some incredibly strong and also confusing aspects, and they overlap each other throughout. So maybe we should start at the beginning.
It starts out with something that I find very intimidating: an unstructured, cluttered world on a timer. You can interact with everything, often not making much sense. You can run around until you collapse on the floor exhausted. You better write down your objectives or you'll forget. But in hindsight, this is well done: it really feels like you've just arrived in a new town.
And that's where it opens up in the best way: You make friends, go to parties, talk to people, don't manage to do what you've set out to. Parties have another function: They show you how to navigate with sound and find interesting places just by noticing where the muffled beats are coming from. This might be the best part of the game, despite knowing what's coming next.
You can practically hack everything, and this is the biggest potential and the biggest downfall of the game. And with potential, I mean actual genre-defining potential, I'm talking Outer Wilds levels of potential here. You can do incredibly powerful things, and everything you try opens up even more possibilities. Everything in the city is interconnected, you're becoming some form of god, and it all works. But soon, you're becoming too powerful.
Maybe it's because I do know how to program and managed to try things out earlier than other players, but this omnipotence actually complicated things down the road, mainly by the game not knowing how to handle your complex progression. This is where the gamedev limitations show up - there are millions of parameters you simply can't account for, and it results in confusing situations. People explaining you basic programming concepts in the late game, not reacting to new info, and at some point simply not talking anymore, and most importantly for clutter games: if you visited parts of the city before just for exploration's sake, you're unlikely to return or give a second good look. But if those somehow later become relevant? Tough luck. Even when exploring an area for the first time, a lot of the clutter you can interact with is a copy. The need for it is understandable, but I have interacted with hundreds of computers at this point that displayed the same program - so I'm unlikely to keep clicking on others.
On another note, it's sometimes unclear if you've broken the rules in a correct way, circling back to the omnipotence. Not only is it unclear inside the game universe itself, as some of these hacks are very easy and extremely powerful (not having to sleep, teleporting everywhere, unlocking everything) but the world is still pretty much like ours and nobody seems to have used these powers. It is also unclear on the meta level, as you have a big toolkit to work with but could possibly skip entire sections or the 'intended path'.
And with this, the game kind of fades out and the bigger dramatic set pieces do not get resolved. The end is hasty. The side missions don't have any bearing. The reason for why you've come to this city in the first place got lost in only a couple days. It is sad that the final puzzle with a genius callback solution stands in a vacuum. The beginning sets the scene so well, but the ending fails to pull the curtains.
The potential is still there, lurking below the cluttered ground. You just need to balance the incredible power with an actual narrative. If you manage to recapture the feeling of the beginning, this might be one of the most atmospherically impressive games ever.
It starts out with something that I find very intimidating: an unstructured, cluttered world on a timer. You can interact with everything, often not making much sense. You can run around until you collapse on the floor exhausted. You better write down your objectives or you'll forget. But in hindsight, this is well done: it really feels like you've just arrived in a new town.
And that's where it opens up in the best way: You make friends, go to parties, talk to people, don't manage to do what you've set out to. Parties have another function: They show you how to navigate with sound and find interesting places just by noticing where the muffled beats are coming from. This might be the best part of the game, despite knowing what's coming next.
You can practically hack everything, and this is the biggest potential and the biggest downfall of the game. And with potential, I mean actual genre-defining potential, I'm talking Outer Wilds levels of potential here. You can do incredibly powerful things, and everything you try opens up even more possibilities. Everything in the city is interconnected, you're becoming some form of god, and it all works. But soon, you're becoming too powerful.
Maybe it's because I do know how to program and managed to try things out earlier than other players, but this omnipotence actually complicated things down the road, mainly by the game not knowing how to handle your complex progression. This is where the gamedev limitations show up - there are millions of parameters you simply can't account for, and it results in confusing situations. People explaining you basic programming concepts in the late game, not reacting to new info, and at some point simply not talking anymore, and most importantly for clutter games: if you visited parts of the city before just for exploration's sake, you're unlikely to return or give a second good look. But if those somehow later become relevant? Tough luck. Even when exploring an area for the first time, a lot of the clutter you can interact with is a copy. The need for it is understandable, but I have interacted with hundreds of computers at this point that displayed the same program - so I'm unlikely to keep clicking on others.
On another note, it's sometimes unclear if you've broken the rules in a correct way, circling back to the omnipotence. Not only is it unclear inside the game universe itself, as some of these hacks are very easy and extremely powerful (not having to sleep, teleporting everywhere, unlocking everything) but the world is still pretty much like ours and nobody seems to have used these powers. It is also unclear on the meta level, as you have a big toolkit to work with but could possibly skip entire sections or the 'intended path'.
And with this, the game kind of fades out and the bigger dramatic set pieces do not get resolved. The end is hasty. The side missions don't have any bearing. The reason for why you've come to this city in the first place got lost in only a couple days. It is sad that the final puzzle with a genius callback solution stands in a vacuum. The beginning sets the scene so well, but the ending fails to pull the curtains.
The potential is still there, lurking below the cluttered ground. You just need to balance the incredible power with an actual narrative. If you manage to recapture the feeling of the beginning, this might be one of the most atmospherically impressive games ever.