HIGH The outdoor weather effects are a sight to behold, especially in VR.

LOW A whole lot of time-consuming fetchquests.

WTF The ending is straight out of a bad Twilight Zone episode.

After crash-landing on an alien world, The Solus Project starts off slow and uneventfully. A player’s first act is to craft a sharp rock to cut away netting from their ruined escape pod and emerge onto the planet. Don’t be lulled into complacency though — a few minutes later, the game throws a literal tornado at the player as if to say yes, you will die here.

As a first-person survival title, Solus rewards those who settle into experiences rather than those who expect the best sequences right at the start. Apart from that opening tornado, the moments of awe and intrigue come as the player engages in an exploratory survival adventure on a strange world full of ancient ruins and machines. Unfortunately, the mechanics and design don’t match the thick, successful atmosphere.

After the crash, players awaken to find themselves the only survivor of a mission to save humanity. This setup launches a quest that tasks players with determining whether or not the mysterious planet might be a potential new home for humanity. In order to accomplish this, players must gather local resources, craft useful items, scavenge the wreckage of their spacecraft, and discover the secrets of an ancient alien civilization before it’s too late.

Solus excels at creating a genuine atmosphere of isolation and distress. In order to survive, players must monitor their heat levels, hydration, nourishment, and other biological factors using a small computer they permanently carry in their left hand. This computer also tracks progress on quests and translates an alien language found around the world. Meanwhile, the player’s right hand is free to wield useful items such as a torch, food and drink to be consumed, or a device that fires teleportation disks to make traversal somewhat easier in difficult terrain.

Desperation sets in as players realize that they are susceptible to dangerous weather events while above ground, and equally threatened by cold and fatigue exploring the many subterranean environments.

The weather effects are perhaps the most graphically impressive element in Solus, although it generally displays the sort of moderate graphical prowess befitting its indie origins. Thick swirling, ominous clouds accompany the formation of deadly twisters, sheets of rain dampen the earth as lightning crackles in the fogged distance, and meteor showers set the sky afire, all in a glorious spectacle that help sell the idea of the world’s inhospitable nature.

These dangers are especially believable and salient while playing the game in VR, which I did for the majority of my playthrough. While Solus handles fine in normal mode using a controller, its weaknesses are more apparent and it lacks the sense of presence that VR provides. In addition to witnessing the gorgeous weather effects, one of my favorite VR moments was simply wading through underground pools of water while holding my Move controller high in the air to keep my in-game torch dry while it illuminated my way.

Standard first-person controls in normal mode become quite different when playing in VR, which requires the use of two Move controllers. Although Solus‘ controls suffered on launch day, the latest patches have produced one of the finest first-person VR control schemes. Players can choose between standard teleportation movement or use the left Move controller to point in the direction they want to go and the right Move controller’s central button to move in that direction. It’s an intuitive setup that quickly becomes second-nature, and a great workaround considering the Move’s lack of analog sticks.

While The Solus Project achieves a great sense of place, it’s ultimately a title plagued by poor design decisions. The more I played, the more I had to weigh my appreciation for the atmosphere against a growing mountain of small complaints.

To begin with, a lot of the environments look the same — especially the underground ruins. The caves and decayed pyramids repeat textures and assets, creating deja vu rather than the joy of continual discovery. Furthermore, some of the wide-open areas require a lot of trudging through difficult terrain to pick up quest items, and most of the campaign’s ‘progress blockers’ are just fetchquests for items like keys, ship parts, or alien dolls. The only other puzzles involve an underdeveloped mechanic about placing objects on weighted floor platforms. Solus Project is at its best when it produces a feeling of momentum coupled with the awe of discovering new and exotic spaces, yet its desire to challenge or impede players flies in the face of its strongest elements.

Similarly, the save system feels arbitrarily limited, allowing saves only at special pillars. While the game is generous about how many of these pillars it includes, I experienced moments where a quicksave would have been a godsend, particularly after random crashes – a problem between early patches – or after unexpectedly dying. Any sense of discovery quickly fades after being forced to repeat sections.

For being a survival and crafting experience, the inventory system in Solus Project isn’t especially intuitive. The interface is clunky (particularly in VR) and players can only carry a small number of items. There are some pickups that expand backpack capacity, but these are easy to miss and the scant few slots they unlock never truly solve the problem. Like other survival games, Solus Project forces players to weigh edibles against other useful items like glow sticks or flashlights. This creates a sense of consequence for player decisions, yet I didn’t feel that it made the game better, or more pleasurable.

Despite its limited crafting system (mostly used to make sharp rocks or torches) players will spend the majority of their time walking from one cave to another while trying to maintain their health. For players who prefer a less strenuous journey, The Solus Project offers a sliding difficulty scale from 0 to 100. At zero, players no longer have to worry about food, water, or temperature, and the limited save system almost ceases to matter. This means players can freely enjoy exploring the alien world and unraveling its mysteries. This also eliminates what some might consider the essential tension of the survival mechanics and drastically changes the experience, but it’s to the game’s credit that it offers this option.

While the story about the fate of humanity and the mystery surrounding the unseen alien race was ultimately a disappointment, I still find myself thinking about the most memorable moments from The Solus Project, such as encountering my first raging storm or wading waist-deep through that subterranean pool. At its best (and in VR) it evokes the strange and wonderful sensation of exploring a truly unknown environment. At its worst, it’s a slog that undercuts its unique qualities with finicky survival elements and an inconsistent, sometimes-buggy experience. Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Teotl Studios and Grip Digital and published by Teotl Studios and Grip Digital. It is currently available on Windows, Xbox One, and PS4. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4 Pro. Approximately 14 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Violence and Blood. Players will encounter things like alien skeletons and crucified people in space suits. These images may be disturbing for younger players.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game features subtitles for all dialogue and does not require sound to play. it’s fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH The beautifully rendered worlds.

LOW A third of the game is loading screens.

WTF Why can’t I move faster!?

Obduction follows in the footsteps of games like Myst and Riven as an open-world, environmental puzzle game that requires an attention to detail and a saint’s patience from its audience. Yet while this new release from Cyan Worlds might respect the intellect of its players, it does not respect their time.

After being abducted by aliens in the opening sequence, players find themselves on a strange world nearly devoid of life, but brimming with tiny buttons to push and switches to flip. The first hour of the adventure features decent pacing, builds a sense of intrigue, and delivers puzzles in a fairly clear manner. Cyan Worlds makes use of old-school full motion video and real actors as NPCs to help deliver the premise. However, this sense of immersion, storytelling, and discovery doesn’t last long.

Obduction attempts to tell a story about people from across time being abducted and forming a community on these alien worlds. The devs provide a lot of lore, but most of it comes through notebooks and journals. Yet this narrative doesn’t compliment the gameplay in any way — it’s ancillary rather than additive. It’s also all but impossible to read on a TV screen that’s not parked right next to the player’s eyeballs. Not optimizing the display text for a console release is perplexing and speaks to the sloppy nature of the game in general.

For instance, the controls don’t work well on a PS4 controller. Players will struggle to maneuver a tiny reticle over small objects in order to activate switches or pull levers. With the precision of a mouse it’s not terribly difficult, but it manages to be obnoxious using a DualShock 4.

Another example of this sloppiness comes through in the excessive loadtimes. The loading screen is visually arresting as players witness reality fracturing into millions of tiny elements that gyrate and envelop the player, but after sitting through this same 30-second sequence over and over and over again, this image will come to haunt and annoy.

Past the loading, Obduction quickly nosedives into long, long walks between points of interest, more excruciating loading screens, and baffling obstacles that I hesitate to even call puzzles. Whereas a game like The Witness didn’t explain much of its world to the player, exploration was almost always rewarded with new knowledge and its line puzzles were engaging in and of themselves. In contrast, Obduction requires the player to wander around with little knowledge or learning while looking for the next object to manipulate in the hopes of progressing. Obduction quickly becomes an exercise in tedium.

In my view, a good puzzle provides players with everything they need within a confined area and tests their situational thinking, rather than their memory or their ability to withstand long slogs across the map to flip a switch or recover a crucial piece of information seen hours ago. Some may remember this approach from days of old and appreciate it, but for people who have a life, responsibilities, or a small mountain of other games to play, this can be the kiss of death.

Other puzzles involve an alien language composed of connecting blue dots that can be solved by simply exhausting a limited number of possibilities — both a godsend and a major problem. On one hand, it helps frustrated players move forward with a little experimentation. On the other, it does not adequately communicate the basic logic it wants players to acquire.

Another central mechanic of Obduction involves transportation machines that warp the player and chunks of the environment in order to cross gaps or create paths forward. This means having to sit through a lot of loading screens. This is at its worst in the third area of the adventure and the game’s final puzzle, which is cleverly designed but mired in loading screen after loading screen while players transport back and forth between worlds.

Spanning three large areas across different planets (a fourth is more-or-less stapled on) the main thing players do in Obduction is walk for long periods of time. While discovering the world for the first time, the walking is enjoyable. But, once the game devolves into backtracking, it’s monotonous. Movement in general is slow and cumbersome even when using ‘run’ mode, and in a title that requires walking for virtual miles between puzzle elements, this is simply unacceptable.

Despite featuring a gorgeous and carefully-designed world, Obduction fails to execute on its central identity as a puzzle game. And, when three quarters of the experience consists of walking from one point to another and sitting through loading screens, it’s difficult to imagine that Cyan Worlds respects the time of Obduction’s players. Returning the favor, I ended up having very little respect for their game. Rating: 5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Cyan Worlds and published by Cyan Worlds. It is currently available on PC, macOS, and PlayStation 4. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on a PS4 Pro. Approximately 16 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E for and contains Fantasy Violence and Mild Language. The violence is just environmental destruction using lasers and, in one climactic instance, an explosive. There are only a handful of non-player characters, and none of their language is inappropriate for children.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game does not require audio. It features subtitles for dialogue and mostly depends on environmental cues for puzzle solving. It is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

With a new location in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, IndieCade celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. Yet while the festival has been honoring and promoting indie game development now for ten years, it continues to remain at the cutting edge of art and innovation in the indie game space. The Japanese American National Museum graciously hosted the festival this year, creating a beautiful and reverent backdrop to the already eye-catching indie titles.

I had the opportunity to wander the exhibition and seminar spaces and talk to developers about their work, which ranges from one-button rhythm games to VR experiments to installation-based, real-world office simulators, complete with computers, file folders, and ringing telephones. In this interview, I talk to Jordan Magnuson, an interactive media artist and gamemaker, who was showing off his political hypertext game Ismael.

Can you introduce yourself?

I’m Jordan Magnuson. I’m a game designer and interactive media artist at Santa Cruz. I make a lot of abstract, small, experimental games. Things like Loneliness, Freedom Bridge – I did a project a little while back to travel around Asia and try to make little experimental games about that process. It was a Kickstarter project.

Tell me about your game Ismael.

Ismael is on a different track. It’s a Twine game. I grew up in the Middle East in the reality of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Ismael is meant to be an exploration of a little bit of that. It’s a game about this young Palestinian boy. What I wanted to do was try to make a game that wasn’t overtly political. So, this game tries to do that by having this perspective of this child where most of the game is just his daily life. It doesn’t have anything to do with a political conflict. It’s just the things he is interacting with day-to-day. The subtext is there, but he doesn’t quite understand that. It’s not his reality.

The game is about a couple of days in his life and him encountering in a significant way, on the last day, the reality of this conflict. But again, he still doesn’t quite understand it and he is drawn up into it. The game is trying to ask, is this inevitable? Can he resist this? It’s obviously a very linear game. That’s intentional. You have a little freedom to play games and do different stuff, but you don’t really have any freedom at the larger narrative level.

There’s an interesting choice at the end of the game. Obviously, I want to put the gun down. Resist this. But the game doesn’t allow you to, ultimately. It gets to the point where the dogma of this discursive world keeps repeating. You’re ultimately forced to jump into the fray. Why did you not make that into a decision for the player? 

It was something I thought a lot about and went back and forth in terms of how to do that. I ended up feeling like I wanted it to be a game that posited this idea of inevitability. Not because I think that that narrative is necessarily true, that it is inevitable, that he got caught up in this and there was nothing else he could do. But I wanted to put that out there as a possibility for the player to react against. What do I think about that? Is this true or not true?

Hypertext is just one form of interactivity and I think it’s more suited, in some ways, toward exploring things that are linear. I tried to combine the strength of hypertext with the narrative, the story I was trying to tell, the game I was trying to make. I remember thinking, this seems like it would be a good format to explore this idea of inevitability where that linearity is intentional. It’s like, okay, play tic-tac-toe, or whatever, make whatever moves you want to make — you have all the freedom to click in these boxes, but you try to say, what about this bigger story. Do you have choice there or not? And leave it up to the player to decide whether they agree with that or not.

You mentioned this was made in Twine, but it’s a modified version, no?

It is Twine. It’s a combination. It’s a highly modified version. It’s not an out-of-the-box Twine. I’ve done a couple of projects like this. I like to use Twine as a base because it works really well for hypertext. But I don’t like being constrained to the out-of-the-box Twine. I like to bring in multimedia, so I do a lot of HTML5 and custom Javascript.

Is Ismael available online right now for people to check out? 

It is. It’s at my website. Ismael can be found here: http://necessarygames.s3.amazonaws.com/ishmael/index.html

This is the 10-year anniversary of IndieCade. What value do you think IndieCade has for an indie community that isn’t necessarily unknown – indie games are part and parcel with the video game industry now – so, what value do events like IndieCade have for the community, creators, and audiences?

Sure, you can go on Steam and find indie games, but that is only one avenue and process and it looks a certain way and you might stumble upon certain things or you might follow links or a Steam recommend, or whatever, but it’s different than coming to something like this. It’s a different exposure opportunity that works differently. Being able to talk to the developers and see them and be like, that’s a real person. How did this game actually come about? That’s not something you get to do on Steam.

I agree that people are aware of indie games and they can find them and play them, but it’s cool to be able to see people in the flesh and talk to them and connect the dots between people and the games. It’s really easy, especially on Steam, to have that be disconnected. You play all these games, you have your huge library, but you don’t think about where these games come from.

The development becomes invisible. The product is everything.

Yeah. Right. The product is a lot, but it’s all part of the reality about what games are. It’s not just what they are on Steam. It’s also the people that make them.

When making your games, who do you imagine as the player? Who is going to enjoy Ismael? 

Most of my games are not what you might think of as typical video games – and I know that’s true of a lot of the games here.

But I’m definitely interested in video games as a potentially universal medium and something that’s not just for gamers. I’m interested in exploring universally relevant topics that don’t really have anything to do with gaming, per se.

Most of my games, like Ismael or others, do not require gaming skills to play. I want anyone to be able to sit down and interact with the stuff I make and not for it to have to be something where you need a specific set of skills. I want to be able to show it to my mom or dad or friends who do not necessarily play games. For me, I’m thinking about, okay, what do I find universally interesting or relevant in this story, and I want anyone to be able to interact with that story.

With a new location in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, IndieCade celebrated its 10^th anniversary this year. Yet while the festival has been honoring and promoting indie game development now for ten years, it continues to remain at the cutting edge of art and innovation in the indie game space. The Japanese American National Museum graciously hosted the festival this year, creating a beautiful and reverent backdrop to the already eye-catching indie titles.

I had the opportunity to wander the exhibition and seminar spaces and talk to developers about their work, which ranges from one-button rhythm games to VR experiments to installation-based, real-world office simulators, complete with computers, file folders, and ringing telephones. In this interview, I talk to Justin Bortnick, narrative designer and jack-of-all-trades for Twinbeard Inc., which released Glittermitten Grove about a year ago.

Spoilers: This interview contains major spoilers about Glittermitten Grove. While quite an “open secret,” I still want to warn readers who may not know the real deal behind the game.

Who are you, what is your position, and what is your studio?

The studio is Twinbeard. I’m Justin. I am writer, narrative designer, game designer, marketing, art – it’s an indie studio, so everybody has 10 jobs.

The game is Glittermitten Grove, maybe something else as well. I don’t know how much you want to get into it.

Get into it. I know next to nothing about this game. 

Okay. So, with a blanket spoiler alert, this is going to ruin the past of this game, which has already ended. Glittermitten Grove is a game that contains a second game called Frog Fractions 2. Frog Fractions 2 is, surprisingly, the sequel to a game called Frog Fractions, which came out about four years ago. It was just a flash game on the Internet for free on our website. We got over 1 million people to play it. I wish we had charged a dollar for it.

We decided, ‘Hey, maybe we can do this for a living.’

We ran a Kickstarter that said, ‘Alright, Frog Fractions 1 was a game about providing new and surprising experiences to the player, all the time, perpetually — you never knew what was going to come next. If we were to make a sequel, you would go into it expecting to be surprised. So, we already would have failed. So, here’s what we’ll do if the Kickstarter is successful: we’ll make a game at some point. We won’t tell you what it is or what it’s called or when it comes out. You’ll just have to find it.’

And that kicked off this three-year-long treasure hunt to find Frog Fractions 2. There was hundreds of people online searching, buying games, trying to figure out what game it was. In December 2016, the jig was finally up. They discovered we had hidden Frog Fractions 2 inside of Glittermitten Grove.

And nobody knew you were working on Glittermitten Grove?

No. We had a shell company that published Glittermitten Grove, with help from Adult Swim.

It was out for probably two weeks before our fans looked at it. In tandem with this, there were two alternate reality games that were running to help them find clues and also buy us time to make the game.

I cannot succinctly describe them, because they were crazy. There were clues hidden all over the country. There were clues in other indie games that agreed to work with us and hide pieces of our game inside their game. After three years, the fans finally put all the clues together and thankfully, it was two weeks after we had finished the game, so it was okay they found it.

And that is what this is. Part of the reason it took almost four years to make is that we had to make two games. Glittermitten Grove is a complete game. You can buy it. You’ll get a full experience, whatever is advertised on Steam. But it also does have this other game inside of it.

And you had to cover your tracks the entire time as well, right?

Yes.

That’s insane.

It’s very hard to talk about, because any way you talk about it immediately spoilers the conceit of the game. Anyone who buys this and then discovers Frog Fractions 2 inside of it is having a great experience. But at this point, almost nobody is, because everybody knows.

Like an open secret. 

Yeah. But the goal was that it would never be found.

Jim, who is the head of the company, would remark at times, ‘It would be really great if I were to be hit by a truck and die before the game is finished, because there’s no way the game we make will ever be as good as the thing that all these people are hunting for. But if I die and the game never gets finished, then it’s a way better story about this mysterious, mythical game that nobody ever finds.’

It reminds me of the secret of the NES golf game, developed by Iwata, hidden in the Switch.

Yeah. So that’s what this is.

You said you Kickstarted it, so what was your experience doing that?

This was years ago at this point. Kickstarter has changed. This was back in the days when you could ask for $70,000 to make a game. [Note: the campaign was in March 2014]

We got more than we asked for, so that’s always good. After we got funding from the publisher as well, it allowed us to make what we wanted to make.

With the acknowledgment that Kickstarter has changed, if you were to do Frog Fractions 2 today, would you go to Kickstarter? Would you approach a publisher first? What would you do? 

With the disclaimer that it’s not my call at the company, personally, I would be wary of going to Kickstarter. I wouldn’t write it off. I would not count on it the way I feel like it was a pretty reliable source of funding four or five years ago.

There are also a lot of good alternatives to Kickstarter that are more focused on game development, like Fig, which also allows for investment.

Right.

We’re lucky because Adult Swim came to us. We didn’t go to a publisher. They came to us after Frog Fractions 1 and said, ‘If you ever want to do anything again let us know and we’ll talk about it.’ I don’t know if they’d work with us again. We haven’t had that conversation. Our relationship with them seems to be pretty good, but it would ultimately be their call. But I wouldn’t write off working with them again.

I’m interested in how indie developers imagine their audience.

So we know exactly who the demographic for this game is. It’s not the same as the demographic as the first one, which was way more popular and also way more accessible, and not just because it was free, although that does help.

We set out to make a thing that was not just a sequel, which is why it’s not actually called Frog Fractions 2. It’s called Glittermitten Grove.

We found that the people who enjoy this the most – and that’s not saying that the people who don’t fall into this demographic haven’t loved it – are people who are roughly between the ages of 27 and 35, who were kids in the 80s and 90s, were into games, played a lot of shareware, floppy games, and never really lost track of where games were over that span of history from then until now.

It’s a very small demographic.

Those people love it! Everybody else? It’s hit or miss. We’ve had a lot of people who are like, this game is great, even if I don’t recognize a lot of the games that are being referenced or if I don’t understand what is going on here at a game cultural level.

And we’ve had a lot of people who are like, I understand that this is a well-made thing, but it’s just not for me. I don’t have any point of reference. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not fun enough on its own. So we’ve seen the range of the spectrum of responses.

Where can people get this?

It’s on Steam and Humble. It might be on Itch by the end of IndieCade, because of the partnership that IndieCade has with Itch.

It’s IndieCade’s 10^th anniversary. What value does IndieCade continue to offer developers?

It seems like IndieCade has been really consistent in featuring games that, number one, are not all video games. There are table-based games here. If you asked somebody, ‘What would you expect at a games convention?’ They are going to think video games, even if they slow down and realize, actually, yeah, board games are games, too.

IndieCade has shown a continued dedication to the full spectrum of what games have to offer, even cool experimental stuff like the Gameboy music maker over there [Atchafalaya Arcade]. It’s a cool music production tool. It has some sort of play aspect. It works for me. But there’s no way that it’s the sort of thing you would be able to walk into a store and buy, even though that is a digital game.

Giving those sorts of interesting, creative projects a spotlight and an ability to be seen and have people talk about them is really important, and that feels like it’s really part of what IndieCade does.

HIGH The high-quality cartoonish backdrops.

LOW A slew of terrible user-generated levels on quickplay.

WTF Making players complete each difficulty mode sequentially.

Infinite Minigolf is a cartoonish miniature golf game from Zen Studios that focuses on user-generated courses to create a near-infinite amount of content. Although mechanically simple, the game exudes character and style while also providing one of the more content-rich PSVR experiences available today.

The game features small minigolf courses across three central settings including a boy’s bedroom, a cemetery, and a Christmas wonderland. Each of these areas features four tournaments with pre-designed courses and three difficulty levels. Unfortunately, players are forced to start at the casual difficulty before unlocking more challenging (and engaging) higher difficulties. This choice certainly promises that players will return to the same courses again and again, but the slight differences between difficulties doesn’t justify this forced progression system.

Other than tournaments, players can go through courses online in one of several modes, create levels themselves, or choose the quickplay option that cycles randomly through user-generated content. While many of these user courses are awful and probably created just to earn a corresponding trophy, some users have actually created courses that rival the developer’s.

Outside of virtual reality the visuals are serviceable, but I highly recommend using PSVR. In VR, the cartoon aesthetics combined with skillfully-constructed environments and high-resolution textures create some of the most vibrant and immersive worlds for the platform. Although the areas are largely backdrops, they do add a lot to the experience. The christmas-themed world is especially delightful thanks to its upbeat holiday-inspired music, and the bedroom perfectly captures the tropes of boyhood including pizza, a pet dog and remote-controlled drones.

As with most minigolf titles, the core of Infinite Minigolf is straightforward. Using the DualShock 4, players can adjust the direction they putt the golf ball and use the right thumbstick to control the power of their stroke. While an option to actually swing the putter using a Move controller in VR mode would have been nice, being limited to a DS4 means the game becomes a relaxing couch experience.

Variations on putting come in the way of environmental aids and power-ups in the courses themselves. These include rockets to speed up the ball, joysticks to give the player direct control of the ball, and springs to jump the ball over gaps. Similarly, each tournament features an NPC that players can use to redirect the ball. For instance, in the cemetery, if players hit the ball into a scarecrow figure with a pumpkin head, he’ll use his cane to shunt the player’s ball toward the hole.

Players earn coins and tickets by completing tournaments and an ever-shifting series of goals. Coins can be exchanged for more tickets, and these can be used to purchase aesthetic upgrades including hairstyles, clothing, and accessories. However, unique tickets are tied to every aesthetic upgrade, and I found myself awash with tickets to buy pants but rarely encountered tickets to purchase new hair. While it’s just a small nuisance, I would have preferred tickets that could have been used to buy whatever upgrade I fancied.

When players get tired of premade courses, the course editor provides a robust set of tools for building original ones. The devs give access to almost all of the assets they’ve used and all of the basic course elements such as straightaways, curves, hills, dips, loop-de-loops, power-ups, environmental obstacles, and basic geometry. After briefly familiarizing myself with the creation controls, I was able to quickly create an engaging course, test it, name it, and share it via on the online servers for others to try.

Although it offers a simple premise and equally simple mechanics, Infinite Minigolf actually ends up being one of the PSVR’s more promising titles. The tournament content is engaging despite having to play through each difficulty, but the real future of Infinite Minigolf depends on an engaged community of creators. The tools are here, but the devs will have to come up with a method of purging the servers of one-slab, featureless courses if they want people to continue to build on the “infinite” amount of content suggested in the title. Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Zen Studios. It is currently available on Steam, PS4, and XBO. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PSVR using a PS4 Pro. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. I could not play the robust multiplayer options before the game’s release, but the course-sharing features work wonderfully.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E for Everyone. There is no questionable content here, just cute visuals and mini golfing.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Sound isn’t necessary. The game does not feature any significant dialogue.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH The final level and the impressive boss fight.

LOW Barren, empty environments.

WTF A subplot about the melding of machine and human minds that goes nowhere.

Archangel is a story-based, on-rails shooter for the PlayStation VR that puts players in the pilot seat of a four-story tall mech reaping vengeance against a paramilitary group that has destroyed their family. The game expresses a strong sense of scale and core mechanics, and presents a surprisingly human narrative at times. Sadly, it ultimately falters due to lackluster visuals, slow pacing, and a short, straightforward campaign.

In a future where global climate change has sapped the Earth’s water supply, a paramilitary group called HUMNX (pronounced humanix) has risen to return order to a world spinning out of control. Archangel picks up as players choose to play as either Gabe or Gabby Walker and accompany their son to field test a secret robot weapon called Archangel that promises to turn the tide of a war between HUMNX and the resistance. Unfortunately, things go awry during the testing and players set out, inside the Archangel mech, on a quest for revenge against HUMNX.

In many ways the story is generic, featuring an evil paramilitary organization and a plucky group of rebels fighting for the common people. However, the central plot is more interesting. This choice between playing Gabe or Gabby changes Archangel‘s perspective to either a grieving husband/father or a grieving wife/mother. While the ability to choose either is a small detail, the fact that the protagonist is a person of color is a breath of fresh air in an all-too-white industry. In fact, the ability to be a black mother fighting in a giant mech is something no other game has offered, as far I know. Decisions like this that add texture to an otherwise rote war narrative focusing on the last hope a giant robots offers.

Besides some narrative choices, Archangel’s strongest quality is its core gameplay. In the PSVR, players are free to look around the mech’s cockpit in 360 degrees. At almost any given time, the mech is the largest thing on the battlefield, providing an impressive sense of scale while also making the player feel powerful. Using two required PS Move controllers, players control the right and left arms of the mech. Players can punch, but will primarily use the guns on the mech’s right arm and the missiles on the mech’s left to take out waves of enemies. What makes the mechanics engaging is that each arm is also equipped with an energy shield.

While working their way through on-rails levels, players have to constantly balance the use of their weapons and shields on both arms. For instance, while firing with the right arm, players should have their left arm shield up. As the shield depletes, players have to switch to their right arm’s shield and their left arm missiles. It’s a dynamic that will keep players switching up what they’re doing with each arm while trying to conserve ammo and shield energy, both of which replenish after brief cooldown periods.

Despite being Archangel‘s best element, there remain a few drawbacks to the attack mechanics. First, the weapons don’t feature appropriately loud sound effects — instead, they’re oddly muted. One would think a machine gun or missile launcher attached to a giant mech should be way louder. Hopefully this is something the developers tweak in future updates, along with an option to control the volume of in-game voices of squad mates, sound effects, and music. Second, while it only happened once, I did encounter a major tracking problem during my playtime that meant I couldn’t aim my weapons and had to exit the game completely to reset it.

Other than these minor quibbles, the moment-to-moment action in the mech’s cockpit works well. However, Archangel stumbles hard when it comes to offering engaging levels, visual fidelity of environments, and overall campaign length.

The developers at Skydance use a lot of resources making sure the mech cockpit and chassis look great, which was a smart choice considering these are the closest assets to the player’s point of view. However, everything else in the game suffers from low polygon counts and simplistic texture work. It’s a good thing the action takes place in an apocalyptic desert since it explains the sparse, barren environments. Particle effects add some necessary pizazz to the visual presentation, but the graphics still vary wildly from one level to the next. The scenes get somewhat better as the game moves from ruined Chicago to the mountains of Colorado, but the improvement is never profound.

Another consequence of the technical demands of VR is that there’s just a slow drip of enemy activity throughout each on-rails level. I won’t say most levels are boring, but they rarely throw anything exciting at the player until for the final level, which stands out as the best. In fact, if the devs would have included more levels like the last (a multiple-stage boss fight with a colossal enemy weapon) the campaign’s brevity would be overshadowed by its wow factor. Instead, the jaw-dropping moments come to little, too late in the short four-to-five hour campaign.

In between missions players can upgrade core systems, including weapons and shields. They can also engage in optional conversations with squad mates who pilot attack ships that assist on the battlefield. These conversation sequences are entirely optional, but consist of probably 30 or 40 percent of the story content. Skipping them means the game can be completed in just two-to-three hours. Again, although they’re something many players might skip, these sections bring humanity and help flesh out the relationships and emotional stakes.

Archangel is a highly ambitious game despite the on-rails shooter genre to which it belongs. The mechanics of balancing weapons fire with energy shielding make for an engaging fighting system and its narrative tries to surpass expectation with creative choices, but it ultimately lacks the environmental detail and moments of awe that would have made its adventure a memorable one. Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Skydance Interactive. It is currently available on PSVR. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PSVR using a PS4 Pro. Approximately 4.5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. The game has no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T for violence, blood, and foul language. Players blast enemy soldiers and vehicles with missiles and machine guns, although there’s almost no gore. Holograms are shot and leave pixelated blood on glass. Characters use mild curse words. The game is pretty sanitary overall, though.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The dialogue can be read via subtitles, and there are no significant auditory cues since it’s an on-rails shooter.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable, and it requires two PlayStation Move controllers.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH An excellent gloomy atmosphere in the labyrinth.

LOW Instant deaths around every corner.

WTF The underdeveloped twist ending comes out of nowhere.

Theseus is third-person PSVR action-adventure game that reimagines the Greek myth of Theseus — the man who entered the Labyrinth and slayed the dreaded Minotaur.

In this iteration, Theseus’s love Ariadne is trapped in the center of the maze. Players are tasked with rescuing her while avoiding the bullish beast that haunts the twisted, nightmarish structure. While perhaps one of the most visually stunning games available for PSVR so far, Theseus suffers from an incredibly short journey, clunky mechanics, and frustrating instant deaths.

The game begins with the hero wading through a shallow lake of blood-red water toward giant, slightly ajar double doors. The screen then goes black and they awake atop a cold stone slab, already lost within the Minotaur’s labyrinth. As they explore the byzantine ruins, the spirit of Ariadne greets players and becomes a guiding light through the maze.

It’s not until players die for the first time that they realize Theseus has been caught in some kind of time loop. He’s forced to return to life again and again within the maze until he can reach its center. It’s a compelling premise that fits into the established videogame logic of repetition and failure. Unfortunately, like many story aspects here, it’s never explained or fleshed out — it’s just delivered matter-of-factly and players are expected to accept it.

Rather than the first-person perspective common in virtual reality games, Theseus instead turns players into the in-game camera. From this position (either locked behind Theseus’s shoulder or positioned in the corner of the room) players can look around the environment and control the hero.

Despite not seeing through Theseus’ eyes, players will still feel firmly immersed in the beautifully decaying world. The camera automatically switches to a new cinematic perspective when moving from one room to another, not unlike classic Resident Evil titles. It’s a design choice that works here, even if I kept wondering how much more immersive the game might have felt if the camera was fixed to an over-the-shoulder perspective.

Moving around the environment is relatively painless, but simple things like running and climbing feel unnecessarily clunky. The animation is a little jerky, as if missing frames, and I never felt like I had full control of Theseus. Instead, it felt like I was pressing a button and waiting for the character model to perform the appropriate action.

This same disconnection is mirrored in the abysmal combat system, which involves mashing buttons to either swing a sword or torch. While thankfully kept to a minimum, players are forced into boring bouts with spider-like creatures several times over the course of this 90-minute game. Because of the simplistic nature of the combat, battling these creatures feels like busywork, implemented just to squeeze a few more moments out of the anemic length.

Another way the developers have tried to extend playtime is by instantly and routinely killing players. There’s a section early on, for instance, where players have to swing their torch wildly to ward off the spider-like offspring of the Minotaur. If players hesitate, get too close to the darkness, or accidently walk under water that extinguishes their torch, the spiders rush Theseus and quickly tear him apart. Likewise, there’s a section that involves sneaking past the Minotaur, burning away rot that covers a doorway, and activating a switch. It’s an excruciatingly frustrating sequence since the monster can swipe his massive paw across the screen quickly, leading to another instant death. While the game has generous save points, it doesn’t lessen the sting of this lazy trial-and-error gameplay.

Despite its shortcomings, however, Theseus provides a visually arresting world to explore. In VR, players will marvel at the decrepit corridors, foliage creeping up through cracked stone, the water dripping down from mossy rock, deep shadows, and dynamic lighting effects produced by the torch Theseus carries for much of his journey. The Minotaur itself towers over players, grotesquely covered in boils, with a gaping maw where its chest should be. The character designers and artists deserve credit for creating a monstrous adversary that will frighten, if not irritate, players throughout their journey.

Theseus provides a stunning, atmospheric world to ogle in virtual reality that ends too soon, all the while mired by clunky controls and instant deaths along the way. Although based on Greek myth, Theseus proves to be far from mythic. Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Reply Forge. It is currently available for PSVR. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PSVR using a PS4 Pro. Approximately 1.5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. The game has no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T for for blood and violence. The game features corpses, blood from spider creatures, sword fighting with spider creatures, impalement, and bodies being crushed. None of it is strikingly graphic, however.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game features onscreen subtitles set on as default, and there are no significant auditory cues.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH A folksy art style that encourages progress.

LOW Random puzzles that encourage quitting.

WTF Honestly, just about every scene transition in the game.

On paper, the idea of making a video game based on Franz Kafka’s dark, absurdist, and bureaucratic worlds sounds inspired. One can imagine all kinds of surreal and existential scenarios playing out interactively, from a metamorphosis into a giant cockroach to a man condemned by a shadow, labyrinthine government for an unknown crime.

However, The Franz Kafka Videogame instead presents a meandering and uncanny point-and-click adventure game that shines as much for its concepts and hand-drawn aesthetic as it suffers from frustrating puzzles and an unsatisfying journey.

Players begin their irrational quest in 1924 Bohemia as a psychiatrist named K who is treating a woman for an unresolved trauma. This initial scenario, set inside the woman’s unconscious, introduces the idea of the surreal into the game before a letter arrives that ultimately sends players on a transatlantic journey into the horrific and irrational human condition itself – or the United States, in other words.

From the moment players step out of their psychiatric office, they are subjected to bizarre situations, characters, and environments. On his quest, K meets spacemen in alleys, coal-shoveling ducks, and cave-dwelling, turn-of-the-century undersea divers. Whether representing a walk downtown as a tabletop game or writing a letter as an exercise in how best to use a broken typewriter, each vignette in Franz Kafka presents a strikingly original situation. It’s just a shame that none of them are particularly enjoyable.

While each sequence is short enough not to wear out its welcome, there is little satisfaction in completing any given task other than seeing the next absurd event in the highly incongruous story. For example, after boarding a floating, balloon-supported steamship in the first third of the game, players encounter a padlock that requires a specific word to unlock. The solution, as far as I can tell, is a random non-word that only makes sense because of the visual resemblance between the word and the year printed on the padlock. The game’s environment and story do not offer any context for this “puzzle” and it feels incredibly irreverent. While this may fit with Kafka’s literary themes, it makes for a poorly-executed challenge.

To the game’s credit, a hint timer mitigates the frustrating puzzles somewhat. Every few minutes, the game gradually unlocks hints for the current task. Unfortunately, this will probably result in many players just twiddling their thumbs waiting for the game to give them the answer they need to advance.

Despite its flawed puzzle designs, there’s at least one reason players may want to trudge forward — Franz Kafka features gorgeous handcrafted visuals from developer Denis Galanin. The playful inventiveness in which Galanin’s illustrations bring the world to life become the motivation to keep going even, when the puzzles tempt players to quit. The minimalist-yet-expressive designs recall a children’s picture book, albeit one with a very dark subtext.

Regardless of its visual design, The Franz Kafka Game fails to deliver a satisfying experience. Literary devotees of Kafka may find plenty of Easter eggs that reward their esoteric knowledge, but the average player will likely find irritating puzzles that are only slightly palatable thanks to the game’s appealing aesthetic. Rating: 6 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Denis Galanin (AKA mif2000) and published by Daedalic Entertainment. It is currently available on Steam. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 2.5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game had not been reviewed by the ESRB at the time of review. However, the game seems like a T for Teen, not because of violent or sexual content, but because of its weighty themes grounded in absurdism, mortality, and existential angst.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game works fine without sound, and there are no necessary audio cues. There are subtitles. It is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH The satisfaction of mowing down enemies as the shooter.

LOW The game only features four arenas.

WTF Controlling a virtual puppet with my virtual arms controlled by my real arms.

Ancient Amuletor is a first-person fantasy-based tower defense game for the PlayStation VR from Chinese developer Ti Games. With the PSVR still in its first year of release, Amuletor enters a relatively sparse field of competition and stands out as one of the only PSVR entries in the tower defense genre. However, Ti Games has exploited this early position by releasing an anemic amount of content and only a promise of more sometime in the future.

As a stripped-down tower defense title, Ancient Amuletor lacks any semblance of narrative and instead relies on the iconography of skeletons, archers, and sorcerers to communicate its generic fantasy settings. Within this thematic bubble, players are charged with protecting crystals placed around virtual arenas such as a vaguely Egyptian palace or Roman ruins. Players protect these crystals by destroying waves of enemies that appear out of ominous portals and follow designated paths toward their targets.The game requires a PlayStation Move controller in each hand to point and fire at oncoming enemies. The one-to-one control for each character works well for the most part, and I experienced very little drift of my virtual arms as I played.

Ancient Amuletor offers players four character classes to choose from, including a shooter, an archer, and a mage. A puppeteer is also unlockable. Each character has one standard weapon and one weapon that can be unlocked. The shooter character will most likely be the most popular since she wields dual pistols as her starting weapons and has a temporary infinite ammo ability. Shooting the guns feels nice in virtual reality, and a quick flip of the wrist reloads an empty chamber. The pistols aren’t especially accurate, but their buckshot spread means players don’t have to be marksmen to appreciate the gunplay.

In contrast, the archer asks players to use realistic gestures to fire a bow and arrow at enemies, and can lock onto multiple targets and fire a multi-arrow at them. The archer is slower than the shooter, but the bow play is exceptional in VR — players shouldn’t try to work too fast, though. After firing each arrow, it takes half a second for a new arrow to materialize in the player’s right hand, so rushing means limp or misfired arrows.

Even more technical than the shooter and the archer, the mage conjures fireball spells with their left hand and tosses the blazing orb using a wand in their right. Although it’s a powerful attack, aiming the fireball can be difficult and takes practice to properly wield. It’s also a far slower attack than the pistols.

Perhaps the strangest of the four, the puppeteer operates by tossing a robot onto the battlefield and controlling it from a distance. Once tossed, the player moves the robot’s arms by using their own virtual arms to swing its weapons around and smash groups of enemies. It’s bizarre to be virtually inhabiting a character who is virtually inhabiting another, and suggests yet another layer of creative possibility for VR games down the line. Operating the robot puppet is delightful, but it’s also difficult to position correctly. Rather than being a particularly useful singleplayer character, the Puppeteer appears to have been included for multiplayer as variety for defenders.

Ancient Amuletor offers the ability to switch between characters on the fly using a selection wheel. While a nice option, the selection process takes just a few seconds too long since players have to confirm character changes via a button press. During hectic situations, it would be nice if the developer could make this happen just a little bit faster.

Like many VR titles, Amuletor uses teleportation to move people from one vantage point to another. Essentially, players are immobile turrets and can only warp around and attack from fixed locations. The one problem here is that players must hit the move buttons on both controllers simultaneously to activate special attacks. This can lead to accidentally teleporting when they try to activate their special abilities. It’s minor, but irksome.

At launch, Ancient Amuletor has only two worlds to experience, Egypt and Rome, for a total of just four levels and two boss encounters. The bosses showcase a sense of scale, with one encounter involving a towering statue that comes to life. The game has placeholder icons for two additional levels based on ancient Japan and what looks to be a Viking setting, but there’s no indication when these additions will be provided, or if they’ll be free.

The game’s multiplayer mode was not well populated since I was playing pre-launch for this review, but I was able to find another player. For those looking for a challenge, the harder difficulty modes lend themselves to having teammates who can work together to handle the increased waves of enemies. While players can get in each other’s way by being in the same location, the multiplayer extends the life of this otherwise short game.

Ultimately, the small amount of content at launch is Ancient Amuletor’s greatest weakness. With no story whatsoever, only four characters, and four levels, it feels more like an early access game than a full release, although its low price point does somewhat reflect this. The core mechanics are solid the characters all feature distinct combat styles, so it does offer an engaging, immersive tower defense experience, especially on higher difficulties and with more players added. However, with the release schedule and pricing for DLC still vague, I can only recommend Ancient Amuletor to PSVR owners starving for something to play. Rating: 7 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ti Games and published by The Time of Virtual Reality. It is currently available on PSVR. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PSVR using a PS4 Pro. Approximately 3 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 1 hour of play was spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: The ESRB has rated this game T for violence. This game is appropriate for teenagers and older individuals. Players use guns, a bow and arrow, magic, and melee combat to attack enemy soldiers, skeletons and sorcerers. There is no blood, but the violence in virtual reality may be inappropriate for younger players.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game can be enjoyed without sound. There is no dialogue and therefore no subtitles. It’s fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. It requires the PlayStation Move controllers.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Launching this October, Super Mario Odyssey brings the tried-and-true 3D Mario formula to the Nintendo Switch, continuing the tradition of making Mario a flagship title. My short time with the title at E3 2017 suggests an experience with tight controls, beautiful worlds, and unparalleled whimsy.

The demo that Nintendo provided to journalists at E3 consisted of two levels — a Latin-inspired desert world, and the now infamous New Donk City.

The desert stage offered the open, yet guided experience players have come to expect from titles like Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine. Upon starting the stage, the demo had tutorial signs that explained Mario’s new ability to toss his hat like a boomerang. Mario also has the ability to freeze his spinning hat in place to inflict ongoing damage, and to spin the hat around him in a circle to take out a group of enemies. These moves could be accomplished either with gestural controls or through button presses, and both methods work well.

The rest of Mario’s moveset remains largely untouched from the days of Mario 64. Players can long jump, triple-jump, butt stomp, perform a sudden reverse-of-direction backflip, and every other trick they remember from previous iterations of the franchise. After learning the controls, I ran through the sand towards a distant structure. Along the way I destroyed crystals that jutted out of the red earth and collected coins. Rather than stars, Mario Odyssey apparently will have players traveling from world to world collecting half-moons. At least from my short time with the title, these seemed to be the reward for finishing quests.

Players can now accessorize Mario by entering stores in each themed level. These stores offer alternative outfits such as a safari gear or a tuxedo, among others. Although these changes seem to be only cosmetic, it does offer players another whimsical feature to mess around with between visiting worlds and collecting half-moons.

I received my first moon by scaling a pyramid-like structure in the desert world. As I ascended the pyramid, I also encountered another new ability of Mario’s — he can now possess most enemies in the world by tossing his hat on top of their head. For instance, I was able to possess Bullet Bills that were fired from nearby cannons. As Bullet Bill, I was able to fly across parts of the level to skip platforming sections or collect items that were out of reach for normal Mario.

Another neat gimmick was a warp pipe that transformed Mario into a nostalgic 2D sprite and allowed me to run along the surface of a wall. Eventually, using this feature, I ran around and up a tower at the top of the desert pyramid to collect another half-moon reward. After accomplishing that goal, I was off to New Donk City.

To be blunt, New Donk City is the biggest aesthetic mistake the 3D Mario games have ever made. In a bizarre creative decision, Nintendo has opted to render the city in pseudo-photorealistic 3D while having Mario maintain his traditional cartoonish proportions. The stylistic clash is distracting. The result is an unsightly juxtaposition I haven’t encountered since the original Sonic Adventure on Sega’s Dreamcast, when the squat, blue hedgehog ran around a city with a similar visual design.

The cast of characters in Mario games have always shined thanks to their wacky-yet-unique designs that mesh with the general aesthetic of the Mushroom Kingdom. Whether the citizens of Isle Delfino in Sunshine or the Lumas of Super Mario Galaxy, these supporting characters never disrupt the visual palette we associate with Mario. In contrast, the citizens and world of New Donk City look like Mario has somehow warped into a different franchise.

On the other hand, the architectural design of New Donk City maintains the clever platform puzzle-solving for which the series is known. Using my hat again, I was able to possess wires and become a spark of electricity to travel up, down, and across to reach the rooftops of various buildings. My main goal was to find and assemble a band for a big event planned by the city’s mayor. I was able to collect the members of the band in any order I chose, and finding each meant exploring around every corner and climbing every building in the small city area.

It’s almost impossible to know what countless secrets Super Mario Odyssey has in store for players based just on the two stages I played. The gameplay is as tight as ever, and exploring the creative worlds of Mario retains the same magic. The mechanics associated with Mario’s new hat are solid, and I only scratched the surface of Mario’s possession abilities, which I can imagine are explored to gleeful degrees in the final game – one recent trailer even shows Mario possessing a T-Rex.

The only blemish of this experience is the realistic aesthetic of New Donk City. It’s an eyesore that just doesn’t mesh well with the style established in countless Mario games. Hopefully, New Donk City is an outlier in what promises to be an otherwise delightful new iteration in the expertly-designed Mario franchise.

Super Mario Odyssey releases for the Nintendo Switch on October 27, 2017

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This article was produced in cooperation with God Is A Geek, and also appears at their site.