Arthur DiBianca
Played 2024-09-04, IFComp 2024

Indeed requires a very strong gland.

I need to go back to this one. After hitting a rough spot with BOSH I was not braced for a very difficult puzzle game, and I bounced off this pretty hard. I've loved some of DiBianca's past work and suspect I'd enjoy this too in the right moment.

The hook here - besides the unique input scheme, which I quite like - is that you're in an alien place full of aliens and alien tech, and so *nothing* is clear or obvious - neither what the aliens say to you, what objects are, what controls do, etc. Everything is sort of bland and sterile, and you work out every little thing through trial and error and gradually build up a vocabulary and mental model allowing you to proceed through the world.

A satisfying intellectual challenge, to be sure! But one I've got to be in the mood for, and unfortunately this caught me on an off day. I found myself switching into a sort of degenerate adventure game “try every thing on every thing” mode pretty quick, and since the game opens up and gives you a lot of locks and keys early (and you probably won't recognize them as such) that meant progress was quite slow.

All that to say, go read other reviews, I think I didn't give this its best shot. I might go back to it post-comp.