The core mechanic here looks incredible at first, and the first few times you play with it—as well as several of the elaborations that appear throughout the game—are stunning. But the rest of the game just can't bear its weight. The puzzles themselves are fine if by-the-book elaborations on the core conceit, but it quickly becomes clear that the designers struggled to find as much depth as they hoped in it. Perhaps the mechanic is just too complex on its face and as such too difficult to extend into a full game's length.

While you play, you are weighed down by the game's dull writing and ceaseless blandly-positive commentary from the virtual cat that follows you around. If you do take the time to pay attention to the plot, you'll quickly find that it makes no sense: a group of climate researchers created a virtual environment, but they constantly marvel at the "physics-defying wonders" they create within it, as though physics within a simulation of your own design is anything more than you say it is. The player is "caught" in the virtual reality despite an early scene clearly showing them in more of a VR booth than jacked into a headset. It's boring, it's sloppy, and it would be an unambiguously better game if it just presented a series of puzzles without any commentary.