Observation
Things get weird in No Code’s stylish sci-fi thriller
I have freedom of movement, using thrusters to propel myself
Dr. Emma Fisher is having a bad day. Her space station, which is supposed to orbit the Earth, is now floating near Saturn. The rest of the crew are missing. Things keep breaking down. And SAM, the station’s soft-voiced AI assistant, seems to have become self aware. But here’s the cool thing: You control SAM, and so you are, essentially, his self awareness. Last time I played Observation, a new game from the creators of horror anthology StoriesUntold, it was a pretty gentle introduction to the idea of being an AI. For the first hour, Fisher doesn’t even know her station has drifted away from Earth quite so severely. And so you help her restore power, open doors, and fix problems around the station.
But when the grim truth of her predicament becomes clear, things get more intense. I play another section from later in the game and Fisher is visibly more desperate, but still holding it together. She picks up an orb-shaped drone and transfers SAM to it, which allows me to float around the station. I have freedom of movement, using little jet thrusters to propel myself through the zero gravity corridors of the station.
I can still leap instantly between static cameras—and that’s actually a quicker and more convenient way to get around—but this drone lets me study things up close. I float my way into the quarters of one of the missing crew and scan their personal laptop, reading emails, and listening to audio logs. I’m told that a lot of the story in Observation will be conveyed this way, and you’ll have to do some investigation if you want to decipher all of its mysteries.
The station is based on the International Space Station, and so there’s no clear ‘up’ or ‘down’, which makes navigating with the drone quite tricky. It takes me a while to get my head around the space, and I keep bumping into things, which makes the screen stutter and glitch. Eventually I find a device that Fisher wants me to activate to help her restore power to part of the station.
When I interact with the device, a strange, impenetrable computer interface appears on the screen, and Fisher tells SAM that she has no idea how to use it. And this is where my first puzzle comes into play. If you played StoriesUntold you’ll know that developer No Code loves complicated puzzles that have you reaching for a notebook, and Observation is no different.
But I like how this reinforces the fiction, because these interfaces were never designed for people to operate. It helps sell the idea that you’re controlling a semi-sentient AI, and not a human. The director, Jon McKellan, whose background is in designing user interfaces, tells me he’s purposefully breaking established UI design rules in the game for this very reason.
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At any time I can bring up a schematic of the station listing active cameras and switch between them. And if the drone is near one of the cameras I can take control of it. I ask McKellan if he’s worried people will just want to stay in the drone all the time, but he says that it’s actually a rather slow and clumsy means of transport, and using the cameras is more efficient overall.
After helping Fisher with various tasks around the station, something really strange happens—but I think it’s best if I let you discover it for yourself when the game is released. There was a touch of the paranormal about it, and I was not expecting that at all. And so another demo ends and I’m extremely desperate to play more of this very weird and very interesting sci-fi game.