Genre: First Person Experience, Adventure, Puzzle, Sci Fi

Platform: PC

Available on: PC

Release: August 24, 2016

From the makers of Myst and Riven, Cyan Worlds Inc., comes a new mind bending experience that came to be through a kickstarter campaign. For the sake of full disclosure, I’ve never played Myst, or Riven, and know essentially nothing about them, other than their names and the fact that they’re critically acclaimed games of mystery – and they looked beautiful and intriguing in my teenage years, and I always explored the game box whenever I saw one. One of those games I always wanted to play, but never did. Here we are now, twenty some years later, and I’ve just finished Cyan’s new release of a brand new idea, and if this is any indication of the weirdness hidden away in Myst, then I missed out. Obduction is a gem.

Let’s get into it.

Graphics / Presentation: 9/10

With such a small team and a modest kickstarter funding, it’s amazing how beautiful and detailed the environments are. Lighting, textures and water all look fantastic, and the alien landscapes are impressive and intriguing, and quite often left me in awe. The level of detail and polish is surprising for a small team on a limited budget, an excellent example of quality over quantity – and the artwork on display here is a testament to the talent of Cyan Worlds Inc.

The sound design is also top notch, Cyan co-founder and brother, Robyn Miller returning for the soundtrack. The nuanced ambient sounds of the wilderness work well to bring the world to life, juxtaposed against the buzzing of lasers and low toned sci fi womp whaas of alien barriers and devices. Music will cue at certain moments of discovery, and in certain areas, evoking feelings of wonder at times and at others an impending moment on the cusp of revelation. It’s really well placed and the music is just fucking excellent. The smallest of sounds, from pressing buttons, turning dials, pulling switches, or the chugging of an old engine as it starts up are all great quality and add a tactile real-ness to the experience.

It’s not all roses and ponies on display here, unfortunately. On a technical level, the game is still a bit of an unstable mess, as of this writing. I can play most modern, graphics heavy games, on high to ultra settings with smooth fps. Obduction drops frames, stutters, freezes and performs other weird mutations of programming constantly, even on the lowest graphics settings. I’ve had a save file load me back to a previous save, losing about an hour of progress, some weird glitch in the menu where I had to select the picture beside the one I actually wanted, to access it, and then there was the time I was followed halfway across the map by the pulsing hum sound effect of a glowing celestial tree until I was forced to shut down and reboot because I couldn’t press buttons – and of course the game just full out crashed a few times. Hopefully patches will be released in the future to resolve these issues, but as it is right now, it definitely needs more optimization.

Another unfortunately painful point to mention is the load times using the “warp seeds”, which you will have to do a whole lot of fucking times throughout the game. In fact, it becomes a major facet of some later, complex puzzles so prepare to spend more time looking at the slowly floating shattered molecules of the loading screen more than you’ll actually be playing in some sections. It’s really disappointing, since some of the warping puzzles are pretty fucking awesome, but executing the solution just turned into such a bloody chore.

Gameplay: 7/10

Obduction is an adventure puzzle game and plays similar to many recent games that are being referred to as walking simulators, that tell a story passively with varying degrees of light, to sometimes completely absent gameplay mechanics – and it gently reminds me that the idea is not as new as that newly coined label would lead us to believe. Thankfully, Obduction is probably the most balanced, best example I have so far experienced in this genre of adventure games. Interesting to note that you can either play in point and click mode, or first person free roaming mode. I played in free roam, of course.

I typically play all games with a controller, since I do most of my gaming on PlayStation 4, and this game was very clearly built for mouse and keyboard. A controller works, but barely. The menu system really doesn’t work at all with the controller, so consulting pictures I’d taken required use of the keyboard, trying to aim laser devices was nearly painful, and attempting to make patterns on the alien lock mechanisms using the controller was maddening and eventually made me give up and just use the keyboard to solve them. Walking, looking around and pressing buttons worked fine, but anything involving precise control was horrible.

The gameplay consists of exploring the environment and solving puzzles to progress the story forward. The puzzles range from fairly simple and obvious, to ridiculously obscure, multi-level solutions that require finding various things in the environment and figuring out how they are connected or useful. Flipping switches and pressing buttons that apparently do nothing. Finding cryptic notes that outline how to decipher alien numerical systems. Locked doors everywhere. Taking pictures of notes that contain details that might later be useful. There’s no arrow to point the way, or objective markers to be found to help guide you. The game gives you no idea what you are doing or what you need to do next, though there is a vague design that hints at the direction you need to go in – kind of. Objects you can interact with will glimmer, if you have that feature enabled, but otherwise you will have to find your way on your own.

It’s a stark reminder of how far we’ve come from having to think for ourselves. It was truly refreshing to play and gave me a sense of freedom and ownership over the experience. There’s been a few games in recent years that have approached this removal of hand holding elements, but holy fuck, I’ve personally not played anything quite on this level. All the information and tools you need are there in the world, but it’s entirely up to you to explore and find them, decipher their mysteries, and figure how they work or what they’re used for. It works so well for the first half of the game that it’s disappointing that it descends into a slog of leg work and obscurity as it gets closer to the end of the game, when everything is open and it becomes incredibly easy to get lost and find yourself blindly backtracking through the environments searching for a clue, a hint, anything to tell you what the fuck to do next, or what you missed – and with so much space to cover, even a simple solution can become that old tree lost in a forest bullshit a little too easily.

Story: 8/10

There’s really not much I want to say here. One of the things I’m grateful for was going into this game with a big fat blind zero of knowledge. I had no idea what the game was about, other than the fact that it was made by the team who made a game 20 years ago that I wanted to play, but never did. I’m glad I knew nothing. The entire design of the game and the approach to storytelling is based on that feeling of not knowing where you are or what’s going on.

The game starts in a forested park campsite type area by a lake, with a voiceover that tells a story that alludes vaguely to what is happening, as you follow a flying light until it approaches you and transports you into the game proper. You’re dropped into a bizarre, seemingly abandoned earth-like place that looks like a piece of Arizona desert torn from the planet and dropped onto an alien world of twisty, violet, shiny spires and cascading peaks.

As you move forward you come upon a small post with a button on it, beside a sci fi looking flower-like pod, made of glass, or metal, or some alien element, and by pressing the button, the flower petals open and a hologram of a person appears, claiming to be the mayor of this town and welcoming you to your new “home”. Beyond the sign, you’ll come upon intersecting train tracks and an old farm house with a white picket fence in the near distance, seemingly planted into the Arizona desert scene from…somewhere else. To the right, the tracks disappear into tunnels and over hills and into the weird purple alien world that seems to be a barrier. To the left seems to be an old mining town. This is the world you’re blindly thrown into, and this is where you will begin to uncover the secrets of this town and what happened here, and more importantly, what happened to you.

I fucking love the premise, though I’m not going to talk about it, other than saying it’s one of the best in its class, though it sadly never digs far beyond the surface on any level.

I’m big into sci fi and extraterrestrial weirdness and mystery and this just scratched an itch, hit a nerve, had a voice and scent to it that was wholly alien and new, and unlike the generally forgettable games like the critically acclaimed Firewatch, or The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter, I’ll actually remember this game in 20 years and think fondly of it.

Hopefully the bugs will be fixed and the game optimized by then.

If it wasn’t for the technical issues, which unfortunately had a significant impact on the experience I would have scored this a dreamy crème brûlée out of oblivion, but as it stands, we’re going to have to stick to the boring human 10 point scale. Boo. Fucking boo.

In Summary:

Obduction is an instant classic. It’s going to be loved and discovered by people for years. Sure, it’s going to be a niche crowd drawn to it, and god help any Call of Duty gamers who stumble onto it and attempt to tackle this challenge – but if you take your time, and lose yourself in the weird world and challenge yourself to overcome it’s tremendous barriers, you’ll be rewarded with something unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before.

That’s the magic of Obduction – that rare singularity, that original idea, reverberating in a tightly controlled capsule of echoes. Kids these days would call this shit fresh, if they had the tolerance and critical thinking skills to navigate their way through this obtuse world. Some will, and those who succeed are going to sing its praises. Some are going to give up before it ever truly begins. Many are going to consult online guides, and in the end, if they’re invested enough to seek out the solution online, will still find the experience something…special. If you like a challenging puzzle game and a nearly Twin Peaks level of weird storytelling, do yourself a favour and play this game. We want developers like this to be making more games. We just need to give them more money to polish these fucking gems.

Pros: intriguing worlds, beautiful graphics, mysterious story, organic puzzles, zero hand holding, forces critical thinking / problem solving without offering any hints, the music, unique experience

Cons: horrible controls, badly optimized / technical issues, load times for warps, some overly obscure puzzles, some easier puzzles that required excessive leg work

8.5 / 10