A fully narrated [b]first-person puzzle-adventure[/b] - think The Stanley Parable or Dear Esther, but with considerably more actual gameplay.
The game takes place in the world of an anthropomorphized phone, where the operating system, apps and processes are all characters and the player character is the Update Assistant app, launched by the phone's user to replace the current operating system. The operating system isn't very thrilled about that prospect and points out to the player that going through with the update also means that the update assistant (and thus the player) will be deleted in the process, along with the old operating system. And so starts a wild caper all over the phone, with the player trying to disrupt as many operations as possible (guided by the old operating system, who serves as the game's main narrator), in order to trigger a system reboot that would eventually cancel the update.
The game is lavishly produced for a such a small indie title - [b]tons of superb voice acting for key characters[/b] (and text-only dialogue for the rest), considerable runtime if you interact with everything (9 hours for me), graphics are on the somewhat simpler side, but fit in with the inside-a-phone theme and the animations are well done, too. There are some performance / optimization issues - despite being a Unity game, and the playable demo through which I discovered this game back in 2022 (you guessed it, once again during a Steam Next Fest) is no longer available, so giving it a quick test play after buying to see if it works fine for you or if it's time to refund is advised.
I really [b]really enjoyed this game[/b], it completely delivered on what the demo promised. It's very funny in a tragicomic way, the writing is up there with The Stanley Parable, albeit a little less absurd and self-referential - most of the gags and plot points are very cleverly built around the concept of the phone (and its user) going through the usual problems encountered with aging smartphones.
What's really tragic (without much comedy to it) is the criminally low amount of reviews on this game, indicating less than stellar sales figures.
This may be a case of a game being somewhat behind the times - for the gags to land, the story to make sense (and to solve some puzzles, although through most of the game, plenty of in-game help and hints for the puzzles are available), the game assumes some knowledge about how software and computers work - everything is built around that. Barely any pop-culture references, no quips, no zany comedic relief characters ... if this game had come out around 15 years ago (i.e. as a contemporary of Dear Esther and The Stanley Parable, and probably set in a computer rather than a smartphone), it genuinely might have been the biggest hit of the three - because back then, a large fraction of PC gamers were tech-people or at least tech-hobbyists.
But times have moved on, gamers on average are less technically minded and knowledgeable than ever, and at this point in time this game might simply sail way over the heads of most of its potential buyers.
The game is not without some actual flaws - towards the end, there is a somewhat lengthy 3D puzzle platforming section that is a bit dodgy to control - and even worse, comes without any of the plentiful hints the game is so happy to give out earlier - I actually got stuck there for a couple minutes and had to look up a video walkthrough to get unstuck.
But all in all, this is a [b]real gem[/b] and a new personal favorite of mine.
[b]8/10[/b]
