Mars, 2049 AD

Interesting attempt at a dialogue-centric game. It's very well-crafted, such that as a player I always understood what was expected of me and what I was trying to accomplish.

(Spoiler - click to show)It felt a bit arbitrary which of the various options in each scene is most favoured by the director. And I expect a TV episode to have at least one or two significant moments, whereas the episode you end up recording when you get the best ending still feels very low-key: a minor conflict arises, gets sorted out and everyone seems content. Maybe the show is a slow burner.

This game was written by one of the co-developers of PunyInform, and it shows off a lot of programming complexity.

You wake up in the aftermath of a party, and need to make sure that the evidence is taken care of. I found this the most difficult part of the game, requiring multiple attempts and close inspection.

The rest of the game is a timed series of events. You are required to act in certain roles throughout the day, and you have to be in the right place at roughly the right time. You have a variety of choices in how to act using menu-based conversation.

I was deeply impressed by the tricky programming. The NPCs all have their own agenda, their conversation topics change throughout the day, you can give orders to NPCs, and so on.

This complexity was also a bit overwhelming. Even though the solution turned out to be simple, I felt intimidated by the timer and had trouble engaging emotionally with the game because of that.

Overall, though, the game was impressive and I've added it to my TV and Film list.

I found myself liking this one more than I expected - it took a moment to grasp the core mechanic in the second part of the game but once I did, I was delighted. The first part of the game has some parser/background fiddliness but it's nothing world-ending.

(Spoiler - click to show)The acting scenes thread a fine line between having everything cued to the player, leaving no room for experimentation, and leaving the player lost. The in-world conceit for not having a script works, a script definitely would have killed the fun. I did find that there wasn't much dramatic payoff to the 'right' choices. Not exactly a ratings win, I should think.

In the end I was left with a strong desire to experience more of these characters and this setting, and that's a great achievement.