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Review
This review is based on the NORMAL Mode setting of the game.
It’s not every day you get reprinted.
But then again, you are Jean Wilson, Comms Officer of Theseus, a cargo ship that has experienced a catastrophic collision. A collision you did not survive. Thanks to printing technology, your mind and body have been reprinted so you can figure out what happened.
Also, this review spoils the heck out of it. Please play the game first.
Gameplay
This isn’t a mere explore-the-spaceship game. It’s also a resource management game with awesome mechanics. It involves finding items around the ship to recycle and then using the resources to fabricate useful items. You also have oxygen, water, and food levels to manage.
Current resources:
Biomass: 22 | Metals: 49 | Water: 15 | Minerals: 35 | Polymers: 12
Puzzles largely consist of bypassing locked doors and barriers, but there is enough variation to keep things interesting. The author also provides a generous walkthrough/hint system into the game.
Detritus is an example of a Twine game with free range of movement, meaning that the player can wander around a map and interact with people/objects in each “room,” much like a parser game. This, paired with the recycle/fabricate mechanics, may appeal to players who like the idea of resource management gameplay but are intimidated by the parser format. Similarly, if you prefer parser games or are not a huge fan of Twine, Detritus is dynamic enough to be engaging.
You can also play the game in Story mode. There is something for everyone!
Story
Main story
The story revolves around a corporation called Rainforest™ that employs the ship’s crew. Unsurprisingly, it puts profits first. But now, it’s taken things too far. (Spoiler - click to show) The crew finds out that the “luxury goods” in the cargo bay is just a cover for the truth: Rainforest™ is planning on using Earth as the galaxy’s new landfill. Plus, cost of upgrading the fabricator, which is practical for productivity, comes out of the crew’s wages. Unacceptable.
Anyway, (Spoiler - click to show)the crew had enough and planned to go on strike by taking control of the ship. Meanwhile, GAIL has been closely monitoring the crew and recording every interaction, and these recordings are automatically company property. So, when GAIL goes silent as the ship wrestles itself from the crew’s control and into the path of an asteroid, things are looking awfully dire.
So: Can we trust GAIL?
As in, GAIL the corporate A.I. who’s been quietly recording and ghosting the crew members right up until the accident? The answer is:
(Spoiler - click to show)Heck yeah.
I’ll admit I had some doubts.
After all, corporate A.I.s in stories tend to be antagonists. And GAIL is not portrayed in a reassuring light as we try to piece together what happened. The flashbacks we see indicate that the crew distrusts her and the lower clearance terminal logs are just as worrying. And then, right before the collision, she goes silent and unresponsive? Hm.
Also, this little gem…
"Daisy, daisy, give mee yoooour annnnnnswe…"
…does not help her case either.
And yet… I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. If Rainforest™ is capable of screwing over its human employees, surely it can do the same to its A.I., too. Still, it leaves the player not knowing what to think.
After seeing the crew’s talk of a strike from GAIL’s recordings, Rainforest™ commanded GAIL to fly the ship into a collision course. She refused, prompting Rainforest™ to initiate Command Omega to take over the ship and do the company’s bidding.
Indicators of GAIL’s loyalty are only revealed later, and they can be overlooked if you simply skim the text. In fact, I think one of the most exhilarating moments in the game takes place via a terminal log that we read:
› Rainforest: Initiate: Search for and wipe any crew body/mind backup data
› GAIL: Internal: Begin compressed backup of main / memory cores
› Rainforest: Remote command: Shut down main engines
› GAIL: Internal: Wipe Rover
› Rainforest: Goodbye GAIL
› GAIL: Internal: Begin data transfer…
› Rainforest: Initiate: Full reset. Wipe onboard AI.
It’s easy to underappreciate her fancy footwork here if you’re not paying attention.
As Rainforest™ uses Command Omega to take over the ship, she quietly transfers herself to the ship’s ROVER droid as her memory cores are being purged.
The quietest of battles. And Rainforest™ never stood a chance.
This means the GAIL in the archive room is a copy. You get to meet GAIL for real at the end of the game. It’s revealed that after the collision, she spent four months using her ROVER body to “rebuild” the crew with her recordings and the biological material in the cargo.
With varying success. Turns out our body is made of trash and the recycled remains of failed clones. Yeesh.
Thoughts on story
Detritus already has received high ratings which makes me feel like a wet blanket by giving it four stars. It has to do with the game’s delivery.
There are two big reveals that overlap. The first is that GAIL is, in fact, on our side. I already discussed that. The second is the nature of our existence as a recycled being. This one didn’t quite stick.
I feel that there is some hand waving regarding the plot twist. The mind and body backups of the crew were deleted by Rainforest™ when it initiated Command Omega. Thankfully, GAIL saved the recordings she made of the crew to recreate the mind backups and used the waste in the cargo to reconstruct bodies via the fabricator. Got it.
Problem is, I’m having a hard time imagining GAIL’s recordings of the crew’s conversations being complex enough to replicate an entire human mind. I would also like clarification on the nature of the PC: Is this primarily Jean’s mind that includes the fragments of the crew, or are they equally a blend of the crew but are given the impression that they are Jean? As in, a fifth character? I still felt like “Jean,” so maybe it’s up to interpretation.
It’s an odd thought to think that theoretically, if the ship was built a certain way, it would be possible, if illegal, to bring all the crew members back to life at the flip of a switch! The fact that mind and body data can be stored and then used… or erased is mind boggling. I assume the printer on Theseus can only print one person at a time because of legal reasons, not because it’s scientifically impossible to do so.
Printing your mind in someone else’s body, well, you could simply take their place and claim their identity!
Like we do in the game. No wonder it’s illegal.
Also: If we’re recycling our body to reprint the captain’s body, why do we climb into the fabricator instead of the recycler?
Themes
Detritus acknowledges issues faced in today’s world about corporate accountability, greenwashing, waste disposal, the replacement of human jobs with A.I., and socioeconomic inequalities. There’s even brief mention of microplastics in food.
Rainforest™ heavily relies on greenwashing to sell their narrative. Greenwashing is deceptive marketing where a corporation portrays itself as environmentally friendly to divert attention away from its environmentally unfriendly practices. Predictably, Rainforest™ loves this tactic and uses sound bites such as:
At Rainforest™, we hate waste™.
More like (Spoiler - click to show)“we hate waste so we’re going to dump it on Earth, so we don’t have to deal with it!" And the irony of the name, considering what’s happening to the Amazon rainforest.
I like how the gameplay had data pads scattered throughout the ship to provide backstory without dumping loads of information onto the player. Data pad (f) is especially interesting because it features a newspaper clipping that resembles our world today.
…with the invention of Recycler technology, has the galaxy's waste problem been solved? Not entirely! All planets have signed up to the 'zero-waste' agreement; they are legally responsible for their own waste disposal.
The use of language like “zero-waste agreement” is akin to the pledges countries make, and often neglect, at summits to reach shared sustainability goals. By (Spoiler - click to show) designating Earth as a landfill, Rainforest™ is seriously violating galaxy policy. Another real-life parallel is Nadir, an “ultra-wealthy” planet that sends its trash to Earth, just as wealthier countries export their trash overseas.
In theory, anything can be recycled, but as the quantities increase, so does the energy required. Recycling is not a solution to unchecked pollution.
The game also considers the effectiveness of recycling in being a blanket solution for environmental concerns. There is an ongoing debate about how “clean” the recycling process is since it, too, produces waste. And even if we perfected the science of recycling, we would still need to make other changes as a society to reach our sustainability objectives. While the game does not go into too much detail, it makes some powerful points.
Plus, a few other digs.
"Remember, smart companies don’t pay taxes!"
"We want to make the galaxy great again!"
I’ll leave it at that.
Characters
GAIL
I liked the depiction of A.I. in Detritus because it moves away from the plucky Good A.I. (I’m here and happy to serve the PC!) or Bad A.I. (I’m clearly against the PC’s best interests and I don’t like them either) binary that we often see in science fiction.
Detritus differs from Twine games, such as Lux and A Long Way to the Nearest Star, that center the gameplay on an A.I. NPC guiding the protagonist around a facility/ship. In both games the player communicates with the A.I. and even, for better or worse, forms a rapport with them. With GAIL, it’s different.
While the game’s description describes her as M.I.A., we find her in the “Admin” room. However, she is disconnected from the ship’s systems and has had her memory erased. You can visit her in the room for help but are otherwise left to roam the ship by yourself. And while, yes, (Spoiler - click to show)you can eventually reconnect her from the Helm, doing so offers little in further interaction with her, heightening the mystery.
As we investigate the ship, we receive mixed messages about GAIL’s intentions. As a result, the gameplay is infused with do-we-trust-the-A.I.? undertones that create suspense. This leads to a buildup when (Spoiler - click to show) we meet the “real” GAIL.
Our limited interaction with GAIL means we have less opportunity to get to know her as an individual. In (Spoiler - click to show)helping the protagonist is she merely clinging to the directive of Crew, Ship, Company, or is there a deeper emotional commitment there? By recording the crew, was she only trying to maximize the chances of them being recreated in an emergency or does she secretly want to relate to them more? Plus, Kashvi mentioned in a flashback that GAIL had been suffering from hallucinations, but we never learn what that was about.
Crew
After rambling on and on about GAIL, I don’t have much to say about the other characters since I found them to be less compelling than GAIL. That said, I did think the writing did a good job at conveying the close-knit nature of the crew. Their optimism was vividly conveyed in flashbacks, making it (Spoiler - click to show) especially sad when we find their dead bodies.
Visual design
I love the visual design of this game.
It's all glossy surfaces and sleek edges with text that is easy to read and stands out against the background. Text is a mix of yellow, grey, and white with blue links set against a dark grey backdrop. It also recreates a polished “computer screen” appearance when the player accesses a terminal.
Plus, there’s extra flairs to make things more interesting, including an in-game map of the Theseus. For atmospheric effect, the beginning and end of the game has animated starfield that makes you feel like you’re moving through space. Special animated effects for flashback sequences are also featured.
Conclusion
Detritus is an exciting sci-fi game with all the traits of a high-quality game. I can tell the author left no stone unturned. Personally, there are parts that felt one-dimensional to me. I really liked the (Spoiler - click to show) plot twist with GAIL’s true allegiance. The logistics of the (Spoiler - click to show) PC’s identity were fuzzier in comparison.
Part of me feels that my view of this game is influenced by my experience with The Den. I won’t spoil it, but the big twist (or, arguable, twists) made a chill go down my spine that made me think, woah, that’s brilliant. Not quite as much with Detritus.
Nonetheless, this is a game you don’t want to miss. It can be played at Easy, Normal, or Story mode, allowing you to set the gameplay at your comfort level. As for the ending… well, it just might surprise you.
Also: If you are curious about Twine games that involve your body being reprinted to cheat death, check out Trigaea.
