In a sliding scale between a good, reputable game and cheaply tossed together garbage put on Steam as part of a $60-a-pop money laundering scheme, I'd give this one a solid 6/10. Memes and drug use alone cannot, unfortunately, cover up that there is functionally no game here.

Exo One is a pinball simulator where you roll around in seven blender noisemesh landscapes until you find the exit world pylon. There are no objectives to speak of apart from getting to the next world zone. You can claim glowing orbs scattered throughout each world zone if you wish, or don't, it doesn't matter. In between world zones, you will experience shock stock art of NASA astronauts, or Jupiter, and a narrative fragment that, as far as I can tell, never really resolves into a full story. I think there was some kind of ship explosion with a crew going to Jupiter, then this guy wants to get in an experimental ship to go after them (the pinball?) and then he leaves his wife or something and goes to Jupiter? Hard to tell. Maybe it's not the pinball at all, but an alien documenting the whole thing from a distance or...anyway I don't know, but fortunately it has zero impact on the game.

Ultimately the only goal is to stumble into the next acceleration zone. The story seems like an after-thought. The whole game honestly feels like someone figured out how to make a pinball with basic physics, get the pinball switch to aerodynamic physics on a keypress and, ten minutes into farting around with it, said "I bet we could sell this as-is". Then they made a series of worlds to experience the exact same gameplay with mild atmospheric differences, though honourable mentions to water world and space world for differences larger than "mild".

The most infuriating part of this game isn't the nonsense waste of time NASA/Jupiter cinematic jumpscares, nor the total lack of fleshing out how this mechanical concept could be a game at all. No, the most disappointing aspect is that if you really give the game a shot, it wastes just enough time to put you barely outside the two hour refund window. Could be a coincidence, but it just feels a little calculated.

I'd probably not be as bothered if it were five dollars, but it's twenty bucks for two hours, and lord help me if I can figure out why. Piloting a pinball that can also fly for a short time before running out of batteries is an interesting concept, but I can get a similar level of satisfaction from putting on a clean pair of socks. So I'd probably advise doing that and saving the $20.

My review is negative.