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Review
In this game, you play as a youngish spaceship pilot and former spy. You come across two strange young twins and accompany them across space on a quest involving sentient computers.
This game has a lot in common with other games like Rent-A-Vice, The Martian Job, The Road to Canterbury and a few other games, in that it sacrifices player freedom for a better overall storyline.
For instance, in this game, there are times where you have four ways to be skeptical, but no way out of it. Or you have 4 ways to agree to a reckless mission, but no other options. Most of your choices are about how to react to dramatic outside events rather than acting on your own.
This technique has some advantages, which is perhaps why all the Nebula Award nominees use it, since it makes story beats more effective. But gameplay suffers, I think.
The overall mystery surrounding the twins was fun to see play out, and the plot and worldbuilding are interesting. As for the stats, there was a lot of overlap between them (how can you tell if a specific check is for Gregarious, Smooth Talker or Social Butterfly?), bonuses were few and far between, but the story seemed to handle failures well.
Overall, it was definitely worth playing, but I believe that it could have used more meaningful player agency, especially in choosing how to roleplay.
I received a review copy of this game.
