-Preface-

I highly recommend you buy this game if you have VR! I know it's already a couple years old, but I wish there were more VR games like this so I want it to be very successful. -In my opinion- most VR games right now are either shooters/action focused, plain escape rooms, or simulators. This game is a story-rich adventure! It has a larger narrative and character arcs! It's simply a different genre than most VR games you can find right now. (I don't know why it's tagged as simulator, I guess all VR games simulate something, but this is not a real life thing you can do, so I wouldn't call it a simulator.)

Personally, and contrary to popular opinion somehow, I want the largest portion of my VR gaming to be pleasant immersive escapism. I only -sometimes- want to shoot things, be scared sh1tless, do stressful timed surgeries, dance, or get massively motion sick exploring/flying/driving. But that's 90% of the VR genre right now. It's surprisingly hard to find story rich VR games that are pleasant, (or longer than 30 minutes.) I am stressed in the real world, I don't need to immerse myself in a second, fake stressful world! (most of the time)

- What I liked -

This game does a great job of keeping you engaged with goals and puzzles that make you enjoy being in the world. It doesn't hold your hand on how to do everything, but it does still give you hints if you want them. It overall does a wonderful job of showing not telling and building on experience intuitively. It also very cleverly makes use of the same well sized space for every new "room" the player experiences.

The story is engaging if maybe lacking something, and the art and style is unique and nicely supports the gameplay. It's a puzzle game sure, but the puzzle aspect is a fresh and interesting concept. It reminded me both of animating something and of being an extremely efficient factory worker. I felt more like I was learning a dance or how to juggle in a really specific way, which was so much more fun than your bog standard escape room riddles and codes, and utilized the capabilities of VR extremely well.

- What I didn't -

I only have two criticisms. One, I don't love it when I am playing as a voiced character in VR. Half life Alex did this also and I didn't like it there either. I am dubbing this, "possessed-by-the-main-character-syndrome." Even if the story was exactly the same and I had maybe two unvoiced dialogue box options that lead to the same point, I would feel more immersed that I do when a voice that isn't mine suddenly comes from me. It's the one thing that breaks the extreme immersion you get from VR. Railroad me, sure, give me a backstory and a role even hell, but don't just have a character who just possesses me.

And two is that I felt like I needed a whole large empty room to play this game how I wanted to intuitively. You will -want- to be able to make big throwing motions safely in your VR space. It's not necessary per-say, but I was running into and smacking my office furniture constantly trying to throw fruits. This game taught me how to throw and catch better than my own dad, but it also punished me by making me accidentally smack a metal shelf repeatedly. It's doable with less space, but it's easier to be efficient with the puzzles if you can throw and walk. I crave an omni directional VR treadmill or a warehouse. One of the two.

- Conclusion -

Overall 8/10, I am so starved for this genre of VR game and the physical puzzles aspect was really fun! I had a great time playing this and would recommend it to anyone who asked me what to play in VR. My two points removed are for the MC possession/story, and my desire for more space.

This game was super fun, very pretty, I played it through in one go for 10 hours. This was a bad move. I recommend one new language per sitting so you can become fully immersed and invested in each language. The longer I played the more I relied on my translation after I had made it, and the less I was reading the symbols wholesale as something I had learned, which was objectively one of the coolest and most fun parts of the game.

If you love languages and translations and puzzles you're pretty much guaranteed to like the game. that being said I would rate it like... an 8.5 out of 10. It wasn't a life changing game (for me) but it does manage to keep things fresh with each new language and level in how you learn and engage, and the difficulty scaling was done really well.

I paid $15 on sale and I think I would have still been satisfied with paying up to $20 or so. That being said, if you aren't crazy to have it and can wait for a bigger sale, $10 for 10 hours would be ideal in my mind.