Apparatus: Exanimus

awesome

There is something to be said about a game I'm not sure I finished. But I got all the endings for and found what I imagine is the hardest thing to find(Violaceus and Ending X). It's a very good game, surprisingly solid with a lot of unexplained coincidences between text logs and areas of the game. But I'm left wanting more, not sure more in what direction, just, yearning in all directions(ADF-23 is what exactly? How did those logs get on the website in universe?). The core of the game is the mystery of it's development, but unlike it's cousin, Forbidden Solitaire, you don't get answers and the relationships are more interesting. It also has a much scarier premise that it doesn't quite deliver on. Lynch on a budget, so to speak. The early parts of the game are mysterious and scary, but as the game progresses to the Actual Ending it becomes sappy and tragic, and kinda evaporates the actual mystery into very pedantic puzzles(ARG logs become a chore frankly) and 90s pc game scumming. Finding the Green Card, for instance, requires you to do some seam peaking by turning off the graphics filter, completely off base and frankly infuriating. Oh the the Fungus Guy honestly just sucks. Like Dev I get you tried to balance him but he just annoys the crap out of you and scums you out of progress. He isn't scary after the first encounter and he never gets there again. For what it's worth, this is an interesting fusion of early console and PC adventure gaming you absolutely do not want to miss. Hopefully this story continues in some meaningful way.

amazing experience, super easy to get absorbed by the story and some parts were truly unsettling

I still need to dig into this one more, but having gotten the initial ending (and some progress beyond that) I feel confident in recommending it. Its presentation as a lost, late ‘90s exploration game from an obscure developer is quite fun, though the purposely dated control scheme with its lack of mouselook will put some people off. I found it to be a nice change of pace that suited the eeriness of the setting well, and despite being fairly “conscious” of the controls the game was surprisingly immersive. You are almost guaranteed to get lost given the mazelike nature of the levels and lack of map or other obvious guidance, but it never felt like my time was being wasted as there was always some new nook or cranny to uncover while revisiting areas. I was surprised by the amount of platforming the game featured given the controls (with some of it being quite precise), but for the most part this was relatively painless. As far as the visuals go, while the screenshots on the store page give a good idea of the general look, there are some curveballs thrown in the later areas in regard to both the visual identity and fidelity that I found very neat. Now, to where things get more interesting - while you can play through to the initial ending largely ignoring the graffiti adorning the walls and come away with a satisfactory experience, that is only the first of several layers of narrative that the game has on offer. Next comes figuring out what to do with the fragments of URLs among the graffiti, followed by the successively more esoteric bits of text and symbols. Without getting into any more spoilers, I’ve “solved” the URLs but have stalled out on the next portion, which I need to get back to. Even without all of the secrets I would have been pleased with what the game delivers purely as a spartan horror-adjacent exploration game, but the added intrigue of those elements lifts it up at least a notch (and maybe more, once I actually decode everything). Looking forward to checking out the other two games Figglewatts has on the horizon, which both look interesting.