When I first saw this game, I have to admit I was interested. The idea that the entire game would be you against an AI that has it’s own reasons to care (or not) if you live or die struck me as an interesting time. But I left it alone as I had plenty of other games to complete… until a humble bundle placed it in my hands. Now, as I finish with the title, I can honestly say this is one of those games that you will never see anywhere else just due to how unique it is. And while unique does not always mean better, this time means pretty damn good.
Story: In an alternate time-line, mankind has made it to space by the 1980s. And by 2013, you have volunteered to be part of Europa-11, a space mission to the moon of Jupiter… but the mission was not meant to be. A catastrophic failure in transit required you and all others who could to jump in escape pods to abandon ship. You were lucky enough that your pod came across a ship thought lost in the early 80s called the Nautilus, and with little choice to survive, you dock.
Upon landing, however, you find the ship both abandoned and not. There is no one left alive, but the AI of the ship named Kaizen has been alone floating in space for a long time, and he may be your only chance at survival.
I am being intentionally vague about this opening as you will decide a lot of it by clicking from choices the game will give you about how and why you were in space, so a lot of it will be up to you, but in the end it will lead you to the same place. At this point it’s up to you to find out what happened on the ship, but in addition to this, Kaizen has a request for you. He believes the engine is dangerous and wants you to help him blow it up. From here, you are in for a fairly linear story as you work together to get you to the bridge of the ship to either help or stop the AI, but an interesting one as you influence the details and ending far more subtly then just about any game I have ever played. But I will talk more about that when we get to the gameplay section.
8/10
Graphics: Simply put, Event [0] is an absolutely gorgeous game. Outside of the opening where you are stating your background, the game is completely shown from a first person perspective, giving you completely free roam over a very early 80’s sci-fi inspired cruise ship of the stars. From the Alien-esque airlocks to the old-school kitchen and living room, to even the terminals looking a lot like the early 80s micro-computers with the monitors built right in, this whole place feels gloriously dated.
And yet the detail put into this world is an absolute treat to behold to boot. This is one of those games that just proves Unity only has a bad rep because of how people abuse the free version. If I had only one gripe, it’s that this game had an odd “pause” tick that could choose to show or not, literally any time you load up. It isn’t enough to ruin the game since you really don't need that kind of precision, but when it happens, it is annoying.
8/10
Sound: Due to the game being as short as it is and the complete lack of characters, there isn’t a lot of sound work to be had in this title. There is little music (although the one song with lyrics is simply amazing), choosing to let the game rely on ambiance before all else. But this tends to enhance the rather lonely feel of a lot of the game, as you will maybe hear your own footsteps, a few blips and bloops in the background, and the sounds of the terminals through which you will talk to the AI of the ship.
And in fact, I have to give credit there, as while there is no actual voice acting for the AI, they did incorporate a nice speech synthesizer which even managed to say my callsign when talking to me. But much like the rest of this game, that voice was definitely the kind a computer might generate on a home microcomputer with the right software to interpret text about 35 years ago. It was a real throw back in the best way possible.
8/10
Gameplay: Event [0] models itself after a first person exploration game, but sets itself apart quite nicely in how you play it. Right off the bat, you are going to notice the default controls do not use WASD, but instead use the left mouse button to move forward and the right to move backwards. You can change this in the menu but against all basic PC gaming instinct, you do not want to. The reason for this is that you do not actually do ANYTHING in the game besides observe. When you want something done, you go to a terminal where your keyboard becomes it’s keyboard. If you setup the system to use the keyboard to move, you have to toggle this, but the game flows much better if walking up to the terminal is all you need to do.
And that terminal is where the game makes itself unique. You will progress the game by talking to (or giving commands to if you would rather) the AI in the space ship at these terminals. You can literally say anything to it you desire, and while sometimes it may get things wrong, the recognition it has is surprisingly good. And the developers took advantage of this to make this AI as much of a character as they could. It will not only help you by things like opening doors, but you can discuss plans with it and it will give it’s input, or even just kind words like “thank you” or rude ones like “fuck you” will effect how it behaves, resulting in one of the most unique point & click style games I have ever played, and frankly, it’s refreshing as hell for it.
The only disappointment here is that the game is exceedingly short. I completed it in under 3 hours, even going back to explore a second ending in that time!
7/10
Bugs: Outside of the slight pauses in the framerate (which seemed to at the will of the game and not for anything I could change) there were no issues in this game at all.
Overall: If I had to reduce this game to a single statement, it’s “Short, sweet, and to the point.” You will not get a lot of time to spend in this game, but the time you do get outlines a fairly interesting plot using perhaps the best hybridization of the old-school text based point and click controls with modern tech and sensibilities. It is simply one of those games more people should probably play.
However, that does not mean more people should buy it at asking price. This game is very short, and while interesting, not nearly the level of masterpiece such little content would have to be to demand $20. If you can get it for half off or better, it is definitely worth grabbing and enjoying, but the developer is simply asking too much for too little here.
Score:
7/10
Requirements:
- Intel i5 2.4 Ghz
- 8 GB RAM
- NVidia GeForce GTX 650
- 10 GB hard drive
- Windows 7 or higher
System Specs:
- AMD FX 8350 (8 cores) running at 4 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- NVidia GeForce 960 GTX with 4 GB VRAM
- Windows 10
Source: Steam
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