The Message from Deep Space

1420405762 1420405750 1420405762 1420405744 And some words to indicate that I'm not a bot spamming. Really enjoying it!

Jumped out of my seat when I read [spoiler][i]DEFINE 0 --- 2 POW --- DEFINE 1 --- 2 POW --- ADD EQUALS DEFINE 2 --- 2 POW[/i][/spoiler] Great game, very deep, and tons of "oh crap, I recognize this!" moments

It is an excellent puzzle game.

This game is just wonderful. Very well written and just so well made. Tbf, I am absolutely the target audience of this game. But while the gameplay and puzzles can be very arduous to push through (Likei mean it was actual work at times) it was just so rewarding to get through (for me). I loved writting down all my theories as I kept pushing through. I have like, over 100 pieces of loose and bound paper just all over my desk now. Some of it was just me enjoying the working out and adding a ton of little notes, but some of it was actually me figuring out conversions and extra math ahead of time as soon as I could. I played it fairly slow I'd say and took me 38 hours. But it was so good. There were so many perfect "Aha!" moments and some moments so endearing. All the characters too were given a lot more detailed than I expected. Overall, this game is quite the work to play through, but for me every extra discovery just meant so good. Absolutely play the demo first to see if the game is for you. It lasts quite a while and will tell you exactly what the gameplay loop is about. Additionally, your save from the demo automatically transfers to the real game, so there's no reason to not just give it a try!

The gameplay is good — going from basic counting to full grammatical paragraphs using nothing but numbers is very impressive, though it's easy to not notice the transition given how gradual it is. But the biggest draw of the game is how beautiful the emotions behind it are. No cynicism or pessimism, the game shows kindness and love with a strength that might be without compare. It's a beautiful game.

This is a very qualified "yes" -- I can't recommend it if you think having to learn or review high-school level algebra, chemistry and physics to solve puzzles is the opposite of fun -- but if you're OK with that, I think The Message from Deep Space is a deduction logic game in the same tier as other greats like The Return of the Obra Dinn or The Case of the Golden Idol. My only real criticism is that your colleagues become a lot quieter during last couple acts of the game, where the puzzles are the most abstract, after being generally useful up until that point.