this game is so cool! the oppressive atmosphere is really immersing, sound design and vfx interaction really pays off here. the story, and the way it’s told, are very compelling, i’m very invested in finding out what has happened to this world. bio-Synthetica reminds me of the game Lone Survivor in the way it juxtaposes high-fidelity audio with impressionistic pixel art to sort of coax the player into “filling the blanks” by imagining horrific things.
not to say that the combat is bad, but exploration mode is a way more polished experience. combat is fun (and i am a big fan of RPG combat in general), but i do have a hard time imagining how the integrated experience will work without breaking some of the immersion of pure exploration mode. i’d be happy to be proven wrong here!
playing on keyboard, the controls aren’t bad but maybe a little finnicky. in combat, having to press left/right to select enemies that were arranged vertically was a little weird, and i found myself wanting a little more control over documents and audio: specifically, i wanted to page back and forth through documents, and i wanted to be able to stop audio.
i thought the voice acted notes added a lot to the atmosphere, with the exception of the son’s scared voicemail left for his mother which sounded very forced and fake to me (no disrespect intended to the voice actor).
overall this was super fun, extremely well-polished, outstanding atmosphere, interesting combat system. i’m certainly looking forward to a full release~