The Message from Deep Space

Incredible.

Haven't finished it yet, but I'm having a blast. An easy recommend.

I don't usually bother to post reviews or recommend games, but this game was honestly something really special. It's absolutely my game of the year and probably right at the top of my favourite games of all time... and I play a lot of games. I don't think it would appeal to everyone, but I was the absolute perfect audience for it. I got absolutely hooked and played through the entirety in a week. First off, the game is ridiculously well thought out; the way that you progress through and build up understanding from the messages to cover such a broad range of topics is just incredible. The dictionary mechanic and the ability to customise the formatting of each signal is perfect (if sometimes slightly janky). The actual concepts and how they're communicated is also stupidly clever but I don't want to spoil anything... the joy is in the discovery with this game. As well as being very clever conceptually, it's also very cleverly written. The interactions with your team are both hilarious and profound. I absolutely loved every character. I'm writing this immediately after closing the game and the characters feel real enough that I'm actually feeling quite raw. Aesthetically, the game might not have the best graphics ever, but in my opinion the way they're done adds to the charm. In the meetings with Doppler, watching him jump between various freeze-frame poses during the conversations, his coffee cup teleporting around, him somehow levitating occasionally... it's just great. There's also all the little touches too that I bet a lot of people don't even really notice, such as the keys on the keyboard responding as you type, the circle display thing on the left responding to your mouse movements, the incoming and outgoing transmissions on the oscilloscopes, and probably a whole bunch of things I missed myself.. Finally the actual gameplay itself. It can be slightly frustrating at times, I definitely sat staring at a few transmissions for quite a while, or got to the point of throwing random things from my dictionary at it... but I was playing solo and was determined not to look up any help, so that's probably to be expected. Frankly, it's not an easy game, but there's definitely always enough information to move on if you think about the response for long enough. For me, the satisfaction of seeing the "NEW SIGNAL" message and the green light was the perfect dopamine hit... [spoiler]not to mention the confetti![/spoiler] It definitely makes you feel really clever when a new definition clicks into place. For people who don't care about spoilers or who have already completed the game: [spoiler]I also got a huge amount of enjoyment out of the fact I used the word "[u]HORNY[/u]" for what was obviously supposed to be "[u]PARENT[/u]". Helped by the fact I had the two alien species as "[u]ALIENWORM[/u]" and "[u]ALIENBALLS[/u]"[/spoiler] This game absolutely dominated my life for the past week. I'm sort of relieved that I'm free and can have my life back, but I'm also extremely happy to have experienced it. Huge thanks to the developer(s) for making such a fantastic game. It made me laugh a lot and then made me cry. Perfect.