(Highly spoily; I don’t recommend reading this until you’ve played the game, probably twice)
I really liked this one, although I don’t think I’ve got the “winning” ending yet. Lemmy is a funny NPC and a great unreliable narrator. I got completely taken in on the first runthrough and the shift from the light right-royal-cockney-barrel-o’-monkeys narrative to the realisation of what I’d done to Alison made me physically horrified. I found another ending (I think) on the second run.
The writing is good throughout, and the in-universe help menus seem almost feelie-like, providing glimpses into the larger universe that you’re playing in a small corner of.
Flaws:
- The diegetic interface works, but I feel it was taken further than it needed to be in a couple of places. The endings I got (I think) didn’t produce any ending message, you’re just left stuck there in your immobile mech. I understand what’s intended here - in fact, I think it achieved what it intended - but out of universe, it just seemed impolite. UNDO is also disabled, with a gag about “causality violation mode not available”, which is a nice gag, but it could just as easily have been “causality violation mode engaged.”
- I didn’t realise for a while that you had to put things IN the incinerator. I might have missed it but I don’t think that was in its description, so I was confused that all the stuff I was dropping in the incinerator room wasn’t being incinerated when I pushed the button. The incinerator action is described as a jet of flame shooting from the ceiling, and if it doesn’t incinerate everything present, why put the button in the next room?
- I DID notice that “Alison” weighed 5kg on my first run. I wondered if it was a Clue, but what with the apparently badly implemented incinerator, I thought this was just as likely to be a mistake too. I’m not sure that I could have guessed what was going on without having seen the losing ending, complete with villainous “How I Did My Brilliant Evil Plan” speech. So on my second playthrough it felt like I was using unfair knowledge from a past life.
Funny and clever. Provisional score: 9.