Alone in the crowd

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6142328/][b] With 1,400+ reviews, make sure to follow The Cpt Froggy Club Curator Page for plenty more![/b][/url][/quote] Alone in the Crowd: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You wake up in a locked room with no idea why you are there. Several seconds fly by, and you realise you don't know who you are. As sweat starts pouring from your face and the entire surface of your body, your mind spins into a panic. Then a strange voice breaks out of nowhere. The voice seems friendly and reassuring, and it seems to know you. It introduces itself as Boxy, the AI that will give you tasks, show you how the multiple gadgets work, and answer all your questions. Get ready, as you have some investigation to do in Alone in the Crowd. Alone in the Crowd is a puzzle investigation game developed and self-published by Machine Nun on the Steam platform on February 27, 2024. This review might be a bit strange because I am not sure how far I have managed to go, and the reason for that is that there is a fair bit of learning in this game. After waking up and becoming acquainted with Boxy, the AI, the room you will work in is pretty much empty. The room itself is displayed as a rectangle that extends right across the bottom of your screen. It's probably one-fifth of your entire screen. The rest of the space will be filled by the gadgets you'll open to find individuals and fulfil your tasks. You can only have two gadgets open at the same time, and as you progress through the game, you'll need to swap between several gadgets to complete a task. This is not an easy game to play in terms of puzzles, but the developers have created an extremely helpful data box where you can go for any information relating to the gadgets. Boxy will appear as a monitor suspended from the ceiling; clicking on it will make it more prominent and fill one of the two gadget spots. Boxy provides some humour in this game and will reward you by answering a question each time you complete a task, enlightening you about the story. But most of the time, Boxy's responses are pretty vague. As you get used to a specific gadget, a new one will be given to you until you have eleven gadgets in your room. One of them, the merger, can be used in ten different ways. I am quite amazed by the depth of this game. Some of the tasks so far have been quite difficult. For one, I had to find a person who had visited a gymnasium for a good workout and also visited a lounge for relaxation on the same day. Then I had to provide a photo from the surveillance system where the person is not wearing a hat or glasses. To give you an idea, when I matched all the criteria in the wheel report, thirty-nine matches came through. It took me some time to figure out as I had to swap between six different gadgets to complete the task. The graphics are good, and the game runs well. I didn’t encounter any crashes throughout my gameplay, which is always a positive. I enjoyed playing Alone in the Crowd, but it is a challenging game and takes quite some time to complete tasks. Positives: ~~~~~~~ + Good graphics + Challenging puzzles + Interesting story with some humour + Eleven different gadgets to use + Achievements Negatives: ~~~~~~~~ - No trading cards as yet Alone in the Crowd takes time to learn and is challenging, but it’s really fun once you get it. 7/10 Key provided by the developer/publisher for review purposes. Any opinions expressed are entirely my own! [quote][url= https://www.zeepond.com/zeepond-reviews][b]READ EPIC REVIEWS FROM “THE CPT FROGGY” AND MATES, UP NOW ON ZEEPOND, THE HOME OF THE ALMIGHTY FROG![/b][/url] [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/thecptfroggyclub#curation][b]FOLLOW THE CPT FROGGY CURATOR PAGE HERE[/b][/url] [url=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZchpsMdA2hDYJKZgOPdo_w?view_as=subscriber][b]SUBSCRIBE TO THE CPT FROGGY YOUTUBE CHANNEL[/b][/url][/quote]

Idea: 10/10 Execution: 7/10 Linux Support: I found the game would frequently crash under it's unofficial Proton support when lighting the surveillance footage. I ended up having to restart on Windows. This is a wonderful idea that is sometimes spectacular but can be a bit of a let down at others. The world is expertly realized, in that every citizen lives a full life and you're able to view them going about their day. I loved the camera, and once I finally understood what all the symbols were telling me, I loved that you could follow someone around the whole city. You spend ~4 hours simply learning all of the tools, their features, the rules of the world, etc, however once you're unleashed into the world, you only have a handful of fairly tedious quests to complete before the game ends. It appears there are several endings to the game, and I will likely try to achieve at least one other.

I wouldn't really recommend this game to everyone, given it's bland story. But the surprising scale and continuously growing complexity (which prevents you from getting bored) show that it deserves much more attention than it has now with just a couple reviews in half a year since release.

got softlocked 2 hours in. no way to fix this other than restart the entire game. gave it the benefit of the doubt cause its a pretty fun game otherwise and decided to restart the game. i couldn't even get the point i was at before being softlocked again. wont fool me 3 times

A fascinating investigative game where you need to find the exact right person in a city of thousands. It is immensely satisfying to become familiar with each tool at your disposal, and the writing is good enough to keep you chugging along, following requests -- or defying your AI handler -- as you go.

I am having so much fun with this game! I'm not sure if my tactics are optimal, in fact I'm pretty sure they're not, but it's a really interesting mechanic. Like Guess Who, but with robots and dystopia.

A great investigation game! Highly recommend if you enjoy games like Papers Please and Shadows of Doubt (With no time restraints) Took me a bit to realize that each person you gotta search for is actually randomized, adding lots of replayability, making it similar (But not as complex) to Shadows of Doubt's randomization I'm really shocked with how little of reviews I've seen