Deeper review SPOILERS

[MAKAIROSI]

Ok, so:

1. The game is obviously borrowing a lot of concepts from The Talos Principle and similar puzzle games, but I want to talk more about the philosophical aspects. See, in a game about climate change, it's very hard to pose any interesting philosophical questions or dillemas.

"Can we heal the world?" and "Is this the right way?" (meaning, technology?) are entirely uninteresting questions as the answer to both of them is yes. In a world where a simulation can be built which is indistinguishable from reality (there's mention of taste, even), then the tech is advanced enough to control the weather and terraform (at least in small-ish segments).

2. The simulation itself. The reason this worked in TTP was because the protagonist had a child's mind, so to say, and was prepared for the real world. You were *born* in the simulation, and, like, connected to it, through your "brain" itself. Here, we get a glimpse of the real world early on, and what the "sphere" that the simulation takes place in, is like.

And it's just a sphere. We are, physically, inside a sphere. So when our friend says "I can't find you" or "I don't know how you can escape" or whatever, it makes no sense. We are right there, inside a sphere. We saw it exiting, we saw it entering, we saw it at the end.

And how is it even possible to get something from the simulation out into the real world? Does it have a 3d printing machine inside? When we exit the first time, we don't see any of that, so my guess is that it doesn't.

See, all these things would be solved if we never saw the real world that early on (though it was really interesting), and were left to wonder how this whole thing works.

Also, someone inside the simulation stated that time runs differently inside the sphere? Or maybe they meant that since your capabalities are this augmented, you can achieve much more in less time. I dunno. But if it's the first, then it makes no sense that our friend keeps on trying to contact us seemingly in real time.

Also, there's 0 reason why the scientists would vanish. Did they leave the simulation when they saw the thingie didn't work? But on the other hand, for scientists, they got overly emotional about it. Instead of trying to find different ways to make it work, they started jumping to straight up despair and giving up.

3. What exactly did *we* do? We just navigated the simulation, through parts that they had already been through, only to find a batch of land with a flower in the end. But we didn't really *do* anything, we just found that. Why didn't the scientists find it? Maybe it took time to grow, but wouldn't *they* have foreseen that? They are scientists xD

In TTP this works because all that matters in the end is the experiences themselves (there's a reason for this, but I don't wanna spoil what it is). Here it makes no sense, because what exactly did we experience? In the entire game, I felt like I was hunting down some schematic, or discovery, that the scientists had made, right?

4. The research itself, and more importantly, sound. What where they trying to do exactly? Initially, I thought it was to fix the weather. Then I thought it was to recreate plantlife. What was that cannon in the end? I thought it was to fire some sort of thing, or frequencies, to jumpstart the planet's cycle. But why did it break down (it should work, just not fix the planet), and what did all that have to do with sound? Though sound can be beneficial, sure, it isn't *crucial*, and one scientist spent so much time on that.

Like, we know how plants grow, what they need, we know why global warming is happening, etc. And we know sound isn't what's to blame, nor what should be used to fix everything.

If other dimensions were at play, like, this isn't a simulation but some other universe, then yeah, it could be awesome to utlize sound like that. But in this world and this simulation and this universe, it doesn't make much sense.

Even so, the research papers talk about *frequencies* but all you listen to from the boomboxes is beats playing. Not exactly the same as frequencies.

5. Exploration and secrets. There's 0 exploration, as everything is linear, and whatever isn't part of that linear structure isn't worth exploring, as you can't interact with anything. The secrets on the other hand, are in a form of collectibles, which is always bad in my opinion. Also, the secret achievements have to do with stuff that you have no idea you had to do, you would only do them by accident.

The point in exploration is to reward the player for going "off the beaten path", but here there's nothing. The world isn't open (you have to get the tram thingie from chapter to chapter), and again, I'm wondering why. You could have all 5 chapters spread in a big world, but would require parts from other worlds or challenges in order to solve their puzzles.

I understand the need to bar the player, as the whole camera thing is too limitless, but if it was an FPS issue, you could have timed the structures, or have a limit to their number. I think it would be awesome if a secret was located somewhere we couldn't reach, but would have to structure images in such a way so as to reach that place and find it.

6. The constant talking. In such a game, we want to chill out and explore in peace and the sounds of birds and leaves and such. We don't want to constantly have a popup about getting a hint, or CAIT praising us in how imaginative we are for solving an over-simplified puzzle, or having our friend from the outside world immitating playing the guitar. The only thing that matters is the researchers, and what they have to say about their research. And yet even they talk about personal BS so many times.

CAIT could be contacted at key points, maybe only outside puzzles. Having the thing inside puzzles was really distracting, although I think it was meant to be supporting.

- Anyway, I'll stop here, I think I have more to say, but anyway. I gave it a positive review just for its creativity, cause I like supporting devs with creative and new ideas. Keep it up, and I hope your next game will learn from this one <3