CAPSULE

Although I see a lot of praise on the store, I think this game is a good concept executed poorly -- there is simply too little depth to the game to justify any price but free, and even then, it's a lackluster experience. CAPSULE is a slightly scary experience for the first five minutes until you know what the game has to throw at you. After that, it just gets boring -- the game will probably take you over an hour to complete. Much of your experience will consist of listening to breathing sounds and slowly moving away from pixels with simple chase AI. It won't be worth it, even if you got it for free.

This was recommended by the Bitmap book on horror games, so I bought it on sale and tried it. It's extremely minimalistic and retro indeed, it reminds me of arcade games from the early 80s like Dig Dug or, more directly, Asteroids. The horror aspect didn't click for me, it didn't feel frightening or claustrophobic despite the heavy breathing and the suffocation of the pilot. The sound is supposed to be a really important part of the experience, so for once I played through this with sound turned on, although I play everything without any sound normally. For me personally, sound or no sound didn't make any real difference in this game either, sorry, but at least it wasn't irritating. The way you need to learn the game little by little, as simple as it is, is designed very well. Up to a point you just learn what the obstacles are, try to avoid them, and save fuel by floating slowly, but in later stages you realize that this usually isn't enough, since you don't find enough air or fuel dropped randomly to travel all the way to the goal. Around this point, you eventually figure out by trial and error how to farm a lot of fuel and air using drones, shrikes and the other moving things, and then the question basically becomes not how many times you need to try to beat each stage, but how quickly you can do it. I don't think Capsule is great as a horror game, but it's really good as an arcade game. True, you can beat it in a few hours, but you can replay the levels as often as you like. It's not like the point of playing something like Pac-Man or Wizard of Wor is beating the game.

Sound design was really scary and everything launching itself towards me was terrifying... I loved it! The only problem I had was how hard it was to figure out how to jumpstart and get oxygen from dopters but other than that It's a very solid and great game! 9/10

Многие воспринимают Capsule как выживальщик или хоррор. И в целом с подобными определениями можно согласиться, но всё портит абсолютно аркадный процесс. Практически всё ваше положительное впечатление замешано на собственной фантазии, чему способствует графический минимализм и куце подаваемый сюжет. Можно долго размышлять что происходит за бортом спасательной капсулы, в каком мире находится главный герой и стал ли он жертвой каких то жутких экспериментов, а потом 5 минут играть в простенькую графическую аркаду с перемещением из точки А в точку Б. Поэтому людям с неразвитой фантазией к приобретению однозначно нежелательно. Да и остальным проект с одной единственной фишкой вряд ли сильно зайдёт. Остановлюсь на 6.0 исключительно в целях поддержки.

A minimalist, narrative-based space explorer; interesting idea and good execution. The learning curve is well designed. It starts easy and simple to get the player familiar with the basic controls and have them figure out what the GUI and icons mean, and then gets considerably harder as the player enters endgame, during which nothing is new anymore, there's just more of them. While I would appreciate if the game's tutorial covered more "advanced" tricks like [spoiler]chasing down Dopters and priming engines[/spoiler], I understand the developer's choice, as a part of the game's experience is finding out how things work by yourself. The gameplay is, again, minimalistic. The entire game consists of getting a coordinate to go to, making to that coordinate alive, reading lore-related messages, and repeat. While this does introduce repetitiveness, the game's short length kept it at an acceptable level. The addition of new elements plus the increasingly challenging game environment also kept it from boring me out. The story is slightly better than "it's just there". Some lore was involved and there was a setting, but nothing exceptional. The writing too was no Shakespeare, but it was able to communicate a rough idea of what is happening. I was rarely confused about what I was doing during my first playthrough, and I found the ending quite self-explanatory. It is a bit disappointing, though, that you cannot review collected messages in-game, but those are still available in the Steam community for anyone interested. Getting all 6 achievements for the game spent me around 2 hours, including the time I used to read guides (because, apparently, there's those few mechanisms that weren't taught by the game and left me confused why I kept dying). I wouldn't suggest getting the game for its regular price as it's a short game for the price, but if you are interested in its process I'd suggest buying during a sale.

Personally, I found this game really boring and spinny. It just wasn't doing it for me.

Short and immersive. Light horror elements, but I think there's a lot more horror in the situation it presents and the feelings it elicits. Worth it if you like the idea of being lost in the unknown and having only the least possible tools to figure out and a very old and warped CRT to view the world from.