TaComa
Living In A Black Box
Tacoma sees you recovering details of a space station disaster, as if exploring an interactive black box recording. You play a contractor on a job to download the AI, Odin, shortly after the station’s been abandoned. Odin records every sound and move the crew makes. Moving between Tacoma’s modules, you recover corrupted data and watch the team’s ghostly interactions.
The six are represented as coloured silhouettes, whose augmented reality interfaces you can access to read chat logs and emails. The whole event is a four-dimensional play you can rewind and examine. Pressing X sets the characters in motion, and you’re free to walk around and eavesdrop using LB and RB to scrub back and forth. The silhouettes are expressive enough to give a sense of each crew member’s mood, and as you recover more scenes you discover moments of quiet intimacy that give each a strong sense of individuality.
Each module’s packed with objects you can pick up, rotate and throw around. As you dig through belongings you might find a key to a locker. A door code in an email might grant access to a new room. These puzzles aren’t difficult, but create satisfying payoffs.
Grown over time “like a redwood”, Odin is part of a richly conceived SF setting. Tacoma’s owned by the Venturis corp, which keeps its crew in servitude. Odin’s calm voice and secretive nature evoke 2001’s Hal 9000, but play with that in interesting ways.
You can polish the game off in two hours, but it’s better if you take your time. It’s also worth replaying. When you know how it ends, small details take on fresh context. The latest in a series of short narrative games creating clever new ways to tell stories, Tacoma’s great because you must actively participate to uncover story beats and connect them into an overall narrative. Recommended for anyone who enjoys a well-constructed yarn in a compelling world. Tom Senior
It’s better if you take your time
In Tacoma’s future (2088), Amazon has opened a college, and SpaceX’s Elon Musk has served as President of South Africa.