Ctrl Alt Ego

It's a classic.

It took an hour or two for this to click for me, but when it did, it was pretty good! Get past the intro (armed with only a shotgun and floaty controls) and get yourself a disk to choose your own upgrade, and it will really start to shine. Maybe you want stealth options, or just to blow things up. You'll have plenty to work with after getting one of these, and will get plenty more options if you look for them. I appreciate that it's open and very difficult to truly softlock yourself, yet still challenging and engaging. It's a delightful little imms\ersive sim with interesting tools and physics to work with. Even those floaty controls I mentioned are fine, actually. They fit what you're playing as (a disembodied ego piloting floating or big and clunky robots), and even work to your advantage sometimes if you want to try some silly (but clever) maneuvers. Pick up the vacuum and/or aeronautics and your otherwise-grounded bug can get pretty agile for a low juice cost! I was fairly thorough in cleaning out enemies and exploring, yet still missed tons of upgrades and hidden things. I'm sure there are plenty of paths I haven't seen. I was pleasantly surprised by how unpretentious the plot was. I was expecting to be poorly preached to about identity and ego as in so many other games. Maybe a time travel twist for no reason, and then you gotta make some forced choice and die to press a button. You know how it is. The plot here respects your agency and, ultimately, leaves it up to you whether anything even matters or not. Some mild criticisms and possibly skill issues: I took far too long to realize you could open those lockers in the walls, green glowing button and all; could use maybe one early one you're suggested to open. Also, the tutorial notes you can find are all over the place, and basic concepts are introduced long after I figured them out myself. Similarly, program descriptions for the main bug could have been a little more transparent in the menu. All in all, pretty good.