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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: Robot Invader Released: March 28, 2016 Requirements: OS: Windows 7 or higher Processor: Minimum, Intel Core i3 2.0 Ghtz or AMD equivalent; Recommended, Intel Core i5 4590 or AMD equivalent Memory: Minimum 1 GB RAM; Recommended, 2 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 450 or equivalent; Recommended, Nvidia GeForce 950 or AMD equivalent DirectX: Verstion 11 Storage: 500 MB available space Steam VR Supoport
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By flotsam Robot Invader I don’t know when or how I got this, but it came to the top of my pile recently. Released in 2016, whilst I can’t say it’s a ‘must play’ by any means, it provided several hours of low-key exploratory sleuthing. Set in rural Kansas in 1965, you play reporter Patricia Gable, looking for the story that will be her ticket to a bigger brighter journalistic future. A dead reclusive professor, who may or may not have been murdered, provides a promising opportunity. His house is the obvious place to start poking around. Which is where the game takes place, as you make your way through its various rooms, gathering items and numerous documents, opening secret passages and rooms, and solving various conundrums. Strange contraptions, masked manifestations and a possible killer await your coming. Document gathering is key to being able to piece together the back story and uncover what might have happened. All manner of things can be found, and they will be added to your document folder and are available for review whenever you like. That might be at the several times you are asked to review your notes to see how you are going – something like “who was blackmailing the professor?” Fear not though if you haven’t found or pieced together the relevant text/s. Such inquisitions are multiple choice, and answering incorrectly just lets you try again. So too if you die, which happened once and might have happened at least one other time if I hadn’t hidden fast enough. Which I learned to do after the first time it happened. You will also find various ‘musings’ which are the only voiced elements of the game. Everything else is read, including your unsatisfactory rummagings (e.g., “there is nothing useful here”). Limited ambient sound and occasional music provide the auditory component. It isn’t a hard game, and fulsome exploration should result in you finding the documents and items you need, enabling you to solve the various conundrums you will encounter. Some involve simply having found the relevant key, others are more elaborate. Weighing leeches stands out, and only one was somewhat obscure. It self describes as having some “psychological horror elements,” but it’s a fairly tame game creepiness wise. Five endings are available, and I came across one in the middle of the game, which was clearly not a good one. As usual, I just got to try again. It’s somewhat drab visually, and each scene pivots around your curser. Little footprints will indicate you can go somewhere, where you will again pivot the scene in order to explore it. Your curser will react to a hotspot and might be look or take or use. Left click does most things, but TAB or right click will bring up your inventory, which floats in front of you. Click to review or to use. Patricia will automatically add relevant details to her profiles of who might have dunnit, and current objectives are also updated as you go. The documents you gather will be sorted by type, and just pick the relevant floating folder to revise. What I never found was a way to work backwards through the inventory, which meant if I wanted to read a journal article after having read a newspaper clipping, I had to exit the inventory and come back in. It was a small thing but a tad irritating. The game saves automatically on exit, and you choose ‘continue’ to pick up where you left off. It uses a single save point and no other saving is available. I mentioned five endings and once you complete the game you can ‘continue’ to see some of the others. I say some of because near as I can tell, two of them only occur earlier in the game. The major endings (good, not so good and bad) are however available. I should say you can play in VR, which 10 years ago might have made this cutting edge and probably explains the floating inventory and the way subtitles are displayed. I played on: OS: Windows 11, 64 Bit Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB
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