“‘Cos for twenty-four years
I’ve been living next door to Abby
Abby, who the f… is Abby?”

Forgive me for ripping off some lyrics to an almost 50 year old song by Smokie, but it felt kind of fitting. It’s also the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the game title. I blame the Boomer brain. In any case, there’s more emotional impactfulness in those three lines up there, even if you don’t know the song, than in the entire running time of this Unreal asset flip simulator. Heck, you’d probably get more emotionally invested in a smudged cardboard box slowly wasting away in the rain.

Why is this so, you ask? Well, apart from sharing many similarities with other half-baked Unreal attempts, like say Fabled Woods, and The Uncertain: Light at the End, this one also has the privilege of using quite a few AI generated art assets. What a brave new world we live in. They’re most easily spotted by insipid and soulless paintings plastered, and repeating, all over the walls everywhere. And I apologize to all the real artists by calling those travesties paintings.

The vapid, expressionless, stilted mannequin animations with a few frames missing, that sometimes look like they’re having an epilepsy attack, are another hallmark of the Unreal asset flips. They perfectly serve their purpose of further catapulting your emotions into a brick wall. If you accidentally have any leftovers, the acting school dropout voiceovers, and spectacularly unfitting music will make sure to scrub them out with vigor. And probably battery acid.

I can even barrel through the voiceovers, barely though, but the oddly unfitting music deserves some extra mention. It’s incredible how out of place it is in most cases, nowhere near complementing the context of the scenes. And there’s just something wrong, and off beat with it, that my mind immediately starts yelling AI. And one still learning at that.

I’ve also experienced some choice bugs and glitches. You can often pick up items through closed boxes if you manage to highlight them, and there’s some awkward clipping issues. A mobile phone clipping through a wall is just one example. Perhaps that’s why the main character has signal problems.

Strange audio positioning, like it’s not coming from where it’s supposed to, and weirdly disappearing footsteps just magnificently round out the entire egregious game soundscapes fiasco. Optimization also seems to be on the burner, with noticeable stuttering, and slow loading, even on a Ryzen 9, 4070, 32GB of RAM, and an SSD. Perhaps the shoving of RTX where it doesn’t really belong and barebones graphics options are to blame? No? I don’t really know what the 15th April 1.4 update was supposed to polish.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3467991724

Oh, and the cutscenes are unskippable. Why? Why in all the gods and commandments of Unreal asset flip walking simulators is that the one you decided to keep as well? Yes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, but even the aficionados replaying the game will want to skip your homage to Denis Villeneuve’s sweeping cinematography.

My personal favorite though, is the technical implementation of the out of whack depth of field. Get close to any object, and your eyes get so funky they heavily blur out everything but the said object. Talk about a severe case of tunnel vision. Maybe it’s just the main character’s befuddled mind playing tricks on him. Or someone spent too much time modding Bethesda games with third party depth of field mods. Stock Unreal game menu from the marketplace is my close second.

If you’ve managed to get this far, you might be wondering why I haven’t said anything about the story. Can you imagine any semblance of a story with all the issues I’ve mentioned? Do you honestly think the story could be so powerful, so gut wrenching, that it could eliminate all the shortcomings in a medium that requires interactivity to flourish? Yes, yes, creativity as well, but we all know Ubisoft still exists.

It’s jumbled, crudely copied from a certain movie, and completely unimmersive due to all the technical issues. If you pay even a smidgen of attention, and kudos for that, it’s even rather predictable very fast. It’s a great companion to the rest of the game though.

As this is a walking simulator, paths are predefined, with very little deviation. Puzzles can’t really be called puzzles, more like trekking quests around the scenery looking for items you need. Even in the more complex tasks, everything is used for you in the proper order when you find the items. Collectibles are usually straight on your path and hard to miss. If you’re so inclined, you can replay chapters for the missing ones. Shame the game still seems to have a few bugs that make it impossible to finish them, and also get the achievements.

Surprisingly, there are brief glimpses of some potential and ideas. The game does feature a funny collection of books spoofed from real life pop culture references. It even includes a great joke about talking to yourself and narrating too much, which is usually the case with walking simulator protagonists. All are big fans of their voice.

Another, perhaps stand out feature of the game, is a museum that you can enter either through chapters or on the main menu. It’s sad that it doesn’t really serve a purpose in a game such as this. But, in case you’re not enamored enough with the AI art, and other assorted assets, you can easily go marvel at them again. And if you’re a fan of that shabby Unreal store look embellished with ray tracing, you’ll find some enjoyment from the visuals. You could also just go start some of the RTX demos on the Steam store.

This ended up turning into an “Unreal Asset Flip Rant”, but there’s too many of these kinds of quick flips with repetitive art, bland story, and Unreal marketplace assets. It might be more bearable if only they weren’t marketing themselves as the next What Remains of Edith Finch, or SOMA. In the end, most of them end up as advertisements for the Unreal engine, and an interactive catalogue for the marketplace assets. Who is Abby doesn’t fall far from that branch.

We don’t do Unreal marketplace asset flips over at Summit Reviews.

More off the beaten path games, wonders and failures at the Cabinet of Curiosities.

I would recommend it, if you can find it at 50% discount.
More than that, I would recommend to play the Demo and that's it.

3 chapters are QUITE boring.
3 of them are Quite nice
the others are a bit meh