Oracle

This is a walking simulator that excels in its stunning environments, really showcasing the engine's capabilities. However, the story is a bit hard to follow, and despite nearly two hours of gameplay, I couldn't find all the locations. If you're all about immersive landscapes and don't mind a bit of confusion with the narrative, this is a solid choice. But if you're not a fan of walking simulators or need a stronger story, you might want to skip this one. It lands somewhere in the middle for me, making it hard to fully recommend to everyone.

This isn't a game; even calling it a walking simulator is a stretch, as there is no progression to it. Essentially, this is a Unity 3D engine and assets demo. To make up for the lack of any world interaction, it is sweetened by fragments of a "lost love" story and showers the player with achievements that are simply "participation trophies."

Visually, it does look pleasant to the eye, with some expected texture and story jank. Seriously, what's the deal with all those skulls? And the skirt part... The story itself feels like a translation from a foreign language, but the narrator has a pleasant native English voice, so it went okay.

What surprised me was the effect that forced pauses in narration (while you walk to the next location) had on my perception of time and the story. Initially, I was longing for a steady stream of information or emotion, because that's how we live these days, and there was none. In the end, it felt like when I used to read books before the Internet, taking my time to read at my own pace and think about it.

Even as it has no replay value, I do not regret spending a bit of my time experiencing it.

A walking simulator with a beautiful environment that really shows off what the engine can do. The story was hard to follow for me and I never did find one of the locations despite nearly 2 hours of playtime. Overall, if you want to be immersed into a beautiful environment and the story isn't that important to you, then I'd recommend the game. If you are not a fan of pure walking simulators, then I'd suggest avoiding this one. I wish steam would give us a "meh" option, because this one falls firmly between!

I played this game as part of my under $5 series on YouTube. You can find the video here: https://youtu.be/AFhyFQy53SY.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☑ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☑ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☑ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☑ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☑ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☑ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☑ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☑ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☑ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

For a game that was meant to take 30 minutes I spent over 3.5 hours looking for the last achievement which was making me so angry but I finally found it and the game finished once I did. I enjoyed it.