Platform: PC
Developer: Cyan Worlds
Publisher: Cyan Worlds
Release Date: August 24th, 2016
Reviewed by Nips
It was probably a little over a year ago that I first heard about Obduction. Designed by Cyan Worlds, the creators of Myst and Riven, Obduction was released as recently as 2016 but still seemed to represent an older, more esoteric philosophy on gaming, where a game’s secrets were often given more import than the player’s ability to have fun. Thus, it basically flew under everyone’s radar, and I hadn’t heard about it since.
Being the serious, esoteric game reviewer that I am, you know I love me some weird and stand-offish games, and I knew I would be in for quite a ride. So I grabbed Obduction on sale and was more than pleased with what I got.
As Obduction kicks off, the player is introduced to a rather enigmatic scene where they are whisked away from home by some sort of alien presence and dumped into a strange, yet uncanny place. An arid, Arizona-style landscape is somehow tucked within a purple, alien landscape, full of mysteries that are begging to be explored. As I ventured farther, I found myself within an Old West type of town named Hunrath, smack dab within the middle of it all. Enticed ever forward, I found myself compelled to uncover the mysteries of Obduction’s crazy world.
Like the Myst series, Obduction is a first-person exploration game with plenty of emphasis on puzzles. Much to my relief, however, Obduction is not a point-and-click title like its predecessors. Instead, Obduction rides this really tight line between emulating the gameplay of the Myst series while allowing the player to explore a fully three-dimensional environment. However, if you find yourself inexplicably drawn to the point-and-click format, there is an optional version of the game that allows you to do just that, which is pretty cool.
So, delving deeper into the world of Obduction, it doesn’t take the player long to find out that there are (or were) other people who have also been sent to this strange place. Everyone in the town of Hunrath has sought their way out one way or another, but it seems like there’s no one left to finish unraveling the mysteries of this inexplicable land. Working alongside an aloof companion known as C.W. (rendered in full-motion-video), the player explores the secrets of Obduction’s world in an effort to find their way home.
And this is where of the meat of Obduction really takes place. And once this game starts, boy does it start, and I mean with the ferocity of a Delorean going 88 miles an hour. Okay, perhaps a speed metaphor isn’t appropriate here, because the game is actually really slow and contemplative. What I mean to say is that within the first ten minutes of playtime or even sooner, Obduction just straight up leaves players to their own devices with no concrete explanations and no tutorials whatsoever. This may sound rather off-putting or standoffish for a game developer to do, but I would be lying if I said it weren’t a right breath of fresh air.
The first order of business in Obduction is to find your way around the weird “island” that surrounds you. Along the way, the player runs into a variety of speed bumps and obstacles that act as puzzles with a fair amount of grounding in the real world. Some examples include a dam, a power generator, a rail car with a mining laser on it, as well as doors that are all locked (for some super-convenient reason). For the most part I enjoyed how some of the puzzles had a real-world use, as if their design is first conceptualized based on their usefulness in the game’s world before they’re thought of in terms of how interesting they might be for a puzzle.
Yeah these still give me trouble.
Now, when it comes to the puzzles in Obduction, there are three different types. The first type, involves the player pulling certain switches, knobs, and levers in a clever way to open a door or divert power to a certain area. The second type is a little bit more cerebral, requiring the player to understand abstract concepts and numbers in order to come up with the right solution to key into an enigmatic panel. The third type, and most definitely the most unique, involves a bit of map-based puzzle solving, where understanding exactly where you are on the map and how your actions affect things in other areas is key to solving them. I won’t spoil exactly what this mechanic is, because it’s really cool when you first discover it. Over all, the puzzles are pretty challenging but accessible, with only a few standout puzzles I can think of that just straight up did not make sense to me like “how was I supposed to know that?!”
For most of the puzzles featured in Obduction, there’s a really good sense of physicality to them, as the player interacts with creative levers and switches that are fully-rendered in 3D. On top of that, plenty of the puzzles involve moving around bits of the map itself, encouraging a very intimate understanding with the world’s layout, like the pieces of a puzzle that fit together in right ways if only you can suss out their implications. The world of Obduction can be really fun to play around with, which goes a long way towards making the player more willing to complete the puzzles.
Similarly to The Witness, the world of Obduction goes all over the place with several branching paths that each offer a different sort of progression. This in mind, it seems almost like some of the puzzles were designed for the player to give up on them, going to work on something else while the first puzzle stews in their mind. This is a great puzzle design concept in theory, but the only problem in Obduction’s case is that the map doesn’t branch quite enough for this to work. At the most there will be two or three different branches available at any given time, and oftentimes as few as one. Because of this, it’s really hard to find other things to do, making you feel like you’re just running into a series of brick walls the whole time. On the other hand, The Witness, one of my favorite games that is also inspired by Myst, features 11–count ’em–11 distinct areas that the player can freely travel to at any point in the game, giving the player plenty of things to do if they get stuck in a single area.
Of course, Obduction is not like The Witness, because it’s not trying to be. Cyan Worlds isn’t interested in making a game where you interact with little panels; they wanted to make a game where you solve puzzles in the real world! But, with adventure games like that, featuring open-ended systems and nebulous solutions, things can get a little confusing since it’s not always clear what you can and can’t interact with. Perhaps one of the biggest criticisms that could be levied against Myst and Riven is that their puzzles were a little too esoteric, relying excessively on video game logic where you had to basically read the minds of the developers in order to solve certain puzzles.
In my review on The Witness, I lauded it for its decision to allow the player to interact with its world purely through puzzle panels, eliminating any opportunity for the player to be confused about what they can and cannot interact with. One way the developers of Obduction managed to eliminate excess confusion is by not letting you pick up stuff. In a lot of puzzle games, finding objects around the map and using them on people or things is a crucial part of the puzzle-solving. In Obduction, however, the tools you need to solve each puzzle already exist in your mind, and the only things that you pick up are the bits of information found in journals, cassette tapes, videos, as well as your raw knowledge about how the game’s world works.
Now, this doesn’t mean that Obduction is foolproof. Since the game takes root in 3D space, it is inevitable that the player will miss a switch, button, or lever from time to time, severely inhibiting their ability to solve the puzzles and even convincing them that they’re doing something wrong while the only problem is that they simply didn’t see a miniscule thing on a table or wall. For instance, when my brother played this game he got stuck on the very first puzzle and quit because he didn’t see a switch sitting near a door. That’s bonkers. I even got extremely stuck once because I didn’t realize you could flip over items of interest to find important hints and inscriptions. These kind of trip-ups can be absolutely devastating to the player’s momentum, making the game feel a lot less fun and more like a chore.
Obduction is not a particularly long game; there are only a few areas worth exploring. The biggest contributor to Obduction’s length would probably be the sheer difficulty of the puzzles, themselves. Most of the puzzles are pretty self-explanatory and not all that hard, but they can often take a while. One key component to designing a good puzzle game is to shorten the time between the player’s “Aha!” moment and their actual completion of the puzzle as much as possible. In Obduction’s case, the core mechanic takes so long to perform that the player will often be stuck trudging through the same puzzle for quite a while, despite having figured out the solution quite a while ago. This is not a good thing, as it encourages a ridiculous amount of backtracking and loading screens.
Despite this, what really riveted me to this game was its focus on atmosphere. Instead of inundating the player with tons of music and dialogue, Obduction keeps itself relatively silent, relying on the ambient sounds of the environment and machinery to keep the player focused. Much like how blind people develop better senses of hearing, Obduction’s judiciously sparse atmosphere allows for an intense focus on its core components, immersing the player that much more.
So what about Obduction’s story? In all honesty, I rather liked the story. The main reason for this is that Obduction doesn’t beat you over the head with its story, as most games are wont to do. There are journals and audio logs stashed all over the place, but if you’re not interested in that stuff you simply don’t have to worry about it. But, if you have a mind to dig into the game’s lore, there’s actually quite a bit of depth to it. Unfortunately, not a whole lot of this depth is conveyed during the actual gameplay, giving you the feeling that you’re more of an observer or archaeologist uncovering an interesting story that has already happened before you even got there.
And, in all honesty, that isn’t a terrible summation of Obduction. This game is a patient one, offering up just a few secrets and glimpses of a world that feels far more vast and complex the deeper you go. For a 3D puzzle game, Obduction’s puzzles are fun and mostly intuitive, if more than a little time-consuming. The story is good and well-developed, though not the most amazing thing I’ve ever encountered, and there are at least a couple “Wow!” moments offered up that really do justice to the game’s mysterious nature. I didn’t outright love Obduction, but at its peak I had a really good time with it, and it most certainly is one of the more unique games I’ve played in a while.
Nerd Rating: 7.5 out of 10
