>observer_

It pains me to give this game a thumbs down, because it has so much potential.

The art style is original and quite stunning. This includes not only the graphics, but the the scene direction as well: at times it's like falling down a wild, psychedelic, digital rabbit hole.

But this potential is squandered.

Unfortunately, the visuals are literally stunning. In fact they induce nausea. After 30 minutes of the blinking and flashing and sliding and vibrating I had to turn it off and go lie down. There seems to be no way to tone down the wacky effects in the settings. So, looks great, but impractical for anything longer than 5 minutes runs. Furthermore, the dark color scheme might be great for atmosphere but makes it very hard to see details.

On that note, the screenshots and videos on Steam are very deceptive. They do not represent the vast majority of what you will see in the game: wandering through cramped, blinking corridors.

As for the gameplay, it is frustratingly awkward and slow. Controls are awful, especially for selecting options during conversations, which are the core mechanic of the game. The conversations meander slowly, with your choices having no consequences on where they go. The scripts are heavy-handed and the voice acting is over-the-top melodramatic. (It also seems that just a few actors do all the voices in the game: this really breaks the sense of immersion.) This core conversation mechanic repeats itself again and again and quickly becomes boring. I love games with detailed content, but in >observer_ I found myself starting to hope that nobody would answer when I knocked.

The world seems so richly realized, but this impression is quickly negated. Actually there's a lot of repetition: level design at its worst. Whole areas are cut off from you and all you can do is talk to a disembodied voice beyond the door. In the areas where there seem to be interesting things, well, you can interact with almost nothing. The whole world feels like an indulgent artistic veneer over an unfinished game.

I did not finish >observer_. I could have pushed through the frustrating gameplay using a walkthrough, but in the end the nauseating visual effects managed to subdue my will.