Opus: The Day We Found Earth – Review

Opus: The Day We Found Earth, from Team Signal, was originally released back in October 2015 on iOS and Android. It has received significant updates since then, and with over 100,000 downloads on Google Play I thought I should have a look and see what it’s all about.

The first line of the description states: ‘After eons of spreading across the cosmos, humanity has lost its way back. Peer into a forgotten galaxy to rediscover our planet of origin through the lense[sic] of a deep space telescope.’ Immediately, I like the premise, and the game’s title screen excites me further.

During the introduction, we are informed that humanity has mastered intergalactic travel but that the human gene pool has degraded so badly that they need to find their planet of origin (Earth) in order to find some nubile native humans and diversify the gene pool a bit (I hope they at least buy them dinner first). So, you set off on what seems to be the greatest booty call in human history, using a telescope to look for earth.

Next, we’re introduced to some characters: Makoto, Lisa, and Emeth (a robot Lisa built to work the telescope and the player’s character). Makoto and Lisa then disappear and Emeth is left alone on the space craft with only the ship’s AI for company. After five minutes of gameplay I’m still not sure what this game is or what you’re supposed to do. Eventually, it becomes clear: this is a basic 2d Cartesian coordinate system point-and-click game, superimposed over photographs of various celestial objects. The game will give you the coordinates of a star; you then drag your finger to those coordinates and click on it. The game will produce some complex information about the star’s planetary system (this information serves no purpose and is fictional, so you can ignore it) before giving you the next coordinates to try.

There are two gameplay modes: Story and Challenge. During Story mode, the game guides you to the correct star after a very short time, which removes almost all of the challenge from the gameplay. Challenge mode is the same as Story mode but without any guidance, so you are on your own to find the right star. After each click the gameplay is interrupted by your character (Emeth) who progresses the story by unlocking rooms beneath the main telescope room. These rooms progress the story and offer clues to the next star system locations.

The storyline, although broken up by poor dialogue, is interesting and explores the absurd condition (google Albert Camus); i.e. the tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life without the ability to find any. Emeth’s struggle to confront his own futility produces a nice character arc for him as he flips from acknowledgement and depression, to refusal and contentment, to deification (of Lisa) and hope. It would have been nice to interact with and affect this character development though, rather than just watch it play out.

The graphics are all 2D with a parallax effect to give it that pseudo-3D appearance, which looks really nice during the story segments of the game. During gameplay the graphics are very basic: white dots (stars) superimposed on a black background or an image of some celestial body. I’d like to see a version of this game where they really push the technology and show a 3D voyage through space, with real nebula and stars (e.g. Solar walk 3D). This would lead to a more satisfying sense of achievement upon finding the correct star. The sound is ok: relaxing music plays for the most part but is interrupted by the mechanical whirring of the telescope whenever you move and a ping each time you move the telescope past a star.

If you’d like to try Opus then good news: the first half of the game is completely free, so you can try before you buy. There are no adverts at all in either the free or paid version of the game, which is refreshing. This is a nice marketing technique, which definitely benefits the player more than the developer as it allows the player to get a full experience of the gameplay before parting with any money. For me this game just missed the mark but it is worth a look, and there is a meditative therapeutic quality to the easy repetitive gameplay, which a lot of players will like.

Team Signal‘s Opus: The Day We Found Earth is available to download on the App Store and on Google Play, where it is currently featured as an Editor’s Choice. The game’s full version is available at a one time cost of $1.99 USD.





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