Obduction

May contain mild spoiler (depends on how sensitive the reader is)

Obduction is a slow but atmospheric game. Very original and intriguing story.

It can be a bit hard to understand the backround story at first because the only bits one get are through books and notes of ingame characters and through environmental storytelling, latter is very confusing in the beginning. That being said, once the central idea behind the story is communicated to the player, much more suddenly makes sense. It does not get boring after that, quite the opposite, because if you wander through the worlds, you will make more and more connections. Things you registred and didnt understand at first, suddenly shine in a new light ...

The pros: + Game design and environments are of a mystical beauty.

+ The plot is original.

+ It is very satisfing to finally solve a puzzle.

+ Mechanics do not get too repetitive, riddles are hard but not unsolvable.

+ There arent really "fail-states" in the game beside obvious ones. So it is possible to get things strait afertwards.

+ Connections in the world(s), world building and almost everything regarding the story is mostly very good.

The cons:

• Frustrating controlls: Even if you solved a puzzle, it can be very hard to put in the solution in the mechanic.

• The End: Story ends rather abruptly, i was expecting a chapter more to it.

• Backtracking and going from Place A to B to A to C and to B again can be mildly annoying.

The comparison to the myst series is obvious, since they are from the same developer. But Obduction is not a new Mystgame. It has in my Opinion a very different philosophy behind it, some simliarities are undeniable there though. What Obduction shows is that the people behind Cyan are still capable of creating a fantastical setting and a well thougt out world.

My conclusion: It is a great experience but not a perfect game.

An absolutely beautiful game and one I actually hope anyone considering it can have the patience to get through to the proper end.

The settings are gorgeous, mysterious, and have an otherworldly tech-nature integration, from a dusty Arizona-like setting fused with steampunk tech, to an Amazonian jungle with hyper-futuristic tech, it's just a please to explore.

The music is rare, but powerful when it is. Perfectly adding to the feel of the different settings and key scenes.

The intrigue hits the spot and as long as you pay enough attention to get the proper ending, the plot as a whole is complex, impressive, satisfying and ultimately leaves you in awe.

Some of the puzzles are very well done, some just so-so (in one case too complex mathematically to be worth trying seriously, getting through it with trial and error instead), but as a collection they really work, and get you involved in the different settings, with two *huge* caveats...

If that's all I could say about it, this would be a 9 or 10 star game for me (probably the latter).

Sadly, the development seems like it was seriously lacking when it comes to exactly how the player interacts with the game. There were two *major* frustrations for me.

1) For users who prefer 'inverted' controls (ie. pushing forward, like moving your head forward and like plane and submarine and crane, etc, controls, tilts the view downwards; and pulling back tilts the view upwards), the controls are a complete mess. There are many cases, including but not limited to the use of a special kind of trolley car, where the 'invert Y axis' option applies properly in some aspects but not others, leaving you constantly struggling with the controls as what counts as up and down keeps jumping back and forth. (I believe not a problem for people who like the standard controls, which is more like controls on a 2D 'hidden object' game).

2) Several parts of the game, including one of the largest and most complex puzzles, involve jumping back and forth between scenes. Why is that a problem? Loading time. It often works roughly like this: Flip a switch here; go to other scene (=wait 30-45 seconds for other scene to load); walk up a path for 3 seconds, rotate an object here, walk back; return to first scene (=wait again); there and discover you didn't rotate far enough, repeat all over again (=wait twice all over again); eventually finish and have to go back to other scene one last time (=wait yet again). And for one puzzle, you can expect to do this whole process 7-10 times id following a walkthrough and 20 or more times if determined to work it out yourself. In the latter case, I think there was a period where I spent about 10min actually doing the puzzles and about 50min waiting for loading screens.

Either the developers didn't actually trying playing the game for themselves, or they did and decided it was too much work to fix and left it a sadly frustrating experience.

I really, really want to love this game, but really can't recommend it for these two reasons.