Often on this site, I have talked about my deep appreciation for the publisher known as Soedesco. I have imported their physical games from Europe, I have bought some of their games here in the States, and have at the very least had an interesting experience with each of their games. They give the smaller developers a chance in a very crowded marketplace. As it turns out, when Soedesco did an open call for reviews of this game, I jumped right in and surprisingly they were more than willing to send me a code. Space Adventures, Devastating Secrets, and Wonderful Revelations, I’m certainly in.
Information
Game Rating: Teen
Size: 4.96 GB
Release date: 9/6/2018
Developer: Kyodai
Publisher: Soedesco
The game starts with main character, Elea who is laying down before entering a circular metal tube (think MRI). Olaf, nearby is telling her about the procedure she is about to go through. He is making sure for public record that she understands the procedure is not going to wipe her memory but rather suppress certain facets of it. Elea agrees. Olaf then slowly starts the machine and our patient is lowered into it.
He starts counting, one, two. Colors start to spin around Elea, almost as in a rainbow as they become faster and faster. By the time, we get to eight it is a shimmering red haze until ten when it expands into a bright white light. Images flash in and out and then everything goes dark.
The next chapter starts, it is Earth, the year 2073. Elea, pregnant is calling Ethan, her husband who is currently in space trying to colonize a new planet named Solace. The conversation moves away from the mission and the baby within Elea to their other child, Frankie. He, as usual is in his room telling his parents to go away. He’s locked himself in but then Ethan lets Elea know they have a parental access pack in the study.
Problem is the study is two flights of stairs away from her, in the dark and raining. Ethan acts like it is no big deal but then he isn’t pregnant. Anyway, Elea walks alone down the stairs and gets down the first flight. Then the power goes out. Well things certainly are going to get interesting after that.
Graphics
This a gorgeous game. From the moment you enter the first chapter and explore around Elea and Ethan’s house, you immediately appreciate the depth and vibrancy of your surroundings. Sure, it would appear that this household is rather rich (they have a three story house with a sauna and a walk-through indoor Koi pond for starters) but it’s the details and intricacies that really show off the game engine.
Later on in the episode you will find yourself aboard a giant spaceship, this time with four levels and all of the detail you found in the house chapter is tripled once you get on board. Even though some of the areas are blocked off, it really immerses you in the experiences and wants you to reach out and touch everything you encounter.
However, with the impressive graphics comes a huge toll on the Xbox. I would assume that this game plays a little bit better on the Xbox One X since it is 4k Compatible, but the frame rate is pretty rough on the original Xbox One. There is an option under Graphics to either lock the frame rate to 30FPS or be unlocked (presumably for Xbox One X) but I would venture to say that this game dips into the teens all too often as much as it jitters all over the place.
Keep in mind that this game also has an epilepsy warning in that there are often bright, spinning lights of many faceted colors that are simply not good for people with that affliction. However, it does not help when those spinning bright lights also have chunks of graphics that jar in and out because of the low frame rate. I do wish some of that would have been optimized for consoles.
Sound
The game also has a nice soundtrack which helps to set the tone for this unnerving story. It exactly follows what you would think a story about a deep and dark secret set in space would feel like. It even, in a nice touch has the music going faster at key moments to raise that blood pressure and send your mind off into…orbit. Okay, that was a bad pun I do apologize.
The sound effects are also well balanced as your actions are reflected correctly. The voice acting is also very well done and has a range of interesting (but not too interesting) voices that play off each other. Dialog is easy to hear even at lower levels. Thankfully, there are also subtitles which can be toggled on and off through the menus.
There are a few jitters (much like the graphics) and times when I thought the sound was not hitting the notes that I thought they would. However, I am willing to mark that as intended due to the way this game operates with its distortion tricks on the players of the game.
Gameplay
This is certainly an adventure game; a lot of people would probably call this a walking simulator in the vain of Gone Home or all of those Telltale story tales. It feels like that; however, it is perhaps not as detailed as say Life is Strange. But this game does add puzzle elements and sequences that have to be solved and sometimes rather quickly. There are rarely any death scenarios that the player should be worried about. Furthermore, if you do die your only anguish are the long loading screens that it might take to get you to the same spot.
Your character is thrown into the game with a very quick loading screen that explains the various buttons and movements available to them. Instruction is minimal and early on you must rely on a lot of trial and error to get to where you want. I would highly suggest using the baby room to really get familiar with all of your commands. I moved away from the room too quickly looking back and spent a lot of time in later rooms trying to figure out how to do things as simple as grabbing and throwing an item.
Eventually one gets used to the interface within time but there are still moments that can’t be prepared that have to be dealt with. Often, there are times when you need to get to a certain part of the room and the movement is blocked, sometimes by an unknown force. Or you can’t quite pick up an item until the cursor becomes the right icon for the task. It sometimes feels like I was transported into an old point and click Space Quest game where I’m doomed to be a hapless space janitor.
One moment that serves as the perfect example for what I’m talking about happens shortly after you reach the spaceship. The character heads down to the medical bay where she has to be scanned. Well, without spoiling too much things get weird and you have to maneuver a character in third person across the screen to your location. The screen is also fuzzy at this point for effect.
Well, I effectively almost put my controller through the window in getting this being from point A to point B. It is not a puzzle but an exercise in frustration. Meanwhile, my father in law, over 75 years old, is sitting in the chair wondering why he didn’t go with my wife and his wife to Salata. I finally finished after about 15 minutes and I look over and he’s asleep. I’m not making this up.
Don’t even get me started about the bubble in the second chapter. That’s another facet of this game, it makes you wait a lot for certain events to occur. If you get stuck, the best thing I can recommend, wait two minutes and something will probably change about your surroundings. I know I’m supposed to be waiting for a story to unravel but it almost moves slower than the plot of Dragonball Z.
The difficulty of the game does not come from the tasks that you have to do but rather from the frustration of the game engine. In addition, another minus is the save game system. Well, there really is none. There is one game that gets auto saved a minimal amount of times and if you want to start a new game, well then you can and overwrite what happened before. The game does not nearly save as much as it should and often long sequences have to be finished (or else reset) before turning it off or moving to something else.
This game encourages exploration but then there is no chapter select for me to go back to see if I missed something especially when the achievements speak to a lot of these actions.
Replay
The game will probably take you about 6 to 8 hours logically to complete the first episode. If you want to rush through it and already know the path, I think you can bang it out in about three hours. As I have mentioned, most of that time is spent being frustrated with your in-game movements and waiting for certain things to happen. Theoretically, you can get all of the achievements in one play-through if you really know what you are doing and inspect and try to interact with EVERYTHING.
There are nineteen achievements (with eight of them being secret) for a total of 1,000 achievement points. They range from story completion achievements to interacting with various items (like assembling baby furniture or playing dice) to sitting on all available chairs and beds. There are also a couple of achievements that are unlocked once you complete optional interactions though they never really explain what those interactions might be.
This all comes with a giant disclaimer. Personally, even though I passed both the “Broken Mindscape” chapter and “Mars Memory” simulation, I never got credit for them. I also swear I did the “Sharpshooter” achievement correctly but it did not unlock either. But I do plan on trying those sections again next week to see if was just a temporary glitch. Even though it appears that all achievements are working, there is evidence to support that there are glitches and players having a difficult time getting them to unlock.
Summary
The ending of the first episode of Elea is worthwhile to get to and naturally leaves it open-ended for the second (and probably third) adventures. I am eager to see where this goes and will certainly play this game at least one more time through to mop up some of the glitches and strange happenings that I went through on my first play-through. The graphics and sound are top notch and to this point I have rarely come into contact with any game that matches it in presentation.
However, all of the immersive story, wonderful bells & whistles are hurt considerably by the gameplay and achievements. Elea is hard to control and the instructions given are not very intuitive as you make it from one scene to the next. Furthermore, many of the achievements do seem to be glitched, at least a little bit as you try to get them unlocked for the umpteenth time. With that said, I can recommend this game to those players with a little bit of patience and those willing to give the game just one more try to get over a particular hump or section. I do feel that the adventure is finished for now, but the story is just beginning. Take care and enjoy.
Disclaimer: The reviewer received a free digital copy of the game from the publisher. He played it for nearly eight hours which included inspecting every object he could lay his hands on (and many objects that he couldn’t), unraveling the mysteries of space and realizing that Elea’s husband was something of a prick. Though Elea is no flower herself as she happily likes to drug her fellow space-mates with tainted coffee. He also managed to gain 9 of 19 achievements.
| Graphics: |  (9.5 / 10) |
| Sound: |  (8.0 / 10) |
| Gameplay: |  (5.0 / 10) |
| Replay: |  (6.0 / 10) |
| Overall: |  (7.0 / 10) |
