Free, short, amusing. The game has 10-20 minutes of content and does not pad it, so it would take me longer to talk about the game than it would for you to play it. You’ll know whether it is for you within the first two rooms; the concept doesn’t really change, although it escalates. The Steam description alone gives you a sense. I would say I am avoiding spoilers, but this game is especially difficult to spoil. Due to a mix of role-playing and trolling, the discussion, guides, and even the official content is a mix of helpful and completely misleading. It is unclear whether people asking about subquests that do not exist are confused or playing along. It is unclear whether people who say the game itself does not exist are confused or playing along.
Spoilers are fair game in the comments.
Instead, I am going to talk abut how achievements can hurt enjoyment of your game, since I am usually very positive about them. This game has rather unfortunate achievements, a few standard “do the thing”s but mostly “do all the things”s. The descriptions of how to get the achievements are missing or misleading (“in-character”), and the “all the things” are of undisclosed number in hidden spots. It is a scavenger hunt without telling you what to hunt for. And every room has a closed door, so if you miss one thing, start the game over.
The game tries to fight the trend I noted about scavenger hunts, blocking achievement completion if you alt tab, bring up the Steam overlay, etc. so you cannot follow a guide. Actually, that might be a bug, and I don’t know if it’s worse for that to be intentional or not. If intentional, it is somewhat clever, except that most of us have smartphones now and can just bring up the guide on another device, so it is just an inconvenience. The inconvenience is compounded in that this apparently bugged out achievements completely for most of the time that the game has been live, making them unachievable. Players also report needing to uninstall and reinstall to clear whatever flag is set by alt-tabbing. The game is a quick download, so this is an annoying speed bump rather than a barrier. The line of aggravated and confused players starts over there, compounded by the confusion noted by trolling both in-game and out. The forums are surprisingly rollicking for a free 15-minute game.
So I’m saying: play the game and uninstall. Don’t go for the achievements.
Bonus points to the game for having Steam trading cards. Because it is a free game, you can never be awarded trading cards. A+ trolling. You can, however, craft cards with gems, so people have backdoored their way into a badge that is not achievable through in-game means. Well done, players.
: Zubon
I’m not sure about uninstalling right away. I enjoyed playing the tapes. Maybe you can do that on the first playthrough and I just didn’t pick up the tape recorder before leaving the first room? In any case, that’s some amusing additional content. Replaying just to obsessively try to collect all the coins, post-its, pretzels or whatever is probably not worth it unless you’re really into that.
I’d go for a YouTube video. Replaying to listen just adds a chance to miss tapes. And I didn’t really like the tapes I listened to, a bit over the top for my taste.