Review of Ether One by Houie
Good attempt at this genre.
Play time ~ 22 hours (until I ran in to the bugs that blocked my progress and when I gave up due to some of the “why would I do that” puzzles).
This game is more about exploration than puzzle solving, although it does have a fair number of puzzles and some of which are fairly good.
It has decent voice acting, although sometimes hard to understand behind the static-radio quality; it seemed intentional but degraded the experience a bit for me.
I would also have liked a bit more music in the background; as opposed to the emptiness and eeriness that is in the game now.
The game boasts the potential to raise awareness of dementia which is a noble cause. However, it also has storytelling that tells of violence; to make it worse, it is told in a way that is like being told to children, which doesn’t seem very family friendly…
Lastly, The puzzles range from mind-numbing easy to “why would I think to do that”. To make things worse, several of the puzzles are bugged and I could not restore all the projectors because of it, this is very frustrating. FYI, here are some (WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILER):
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BrimCliff Mines: DO NOT EXIT this area when you are doing the reels puzzle, otherwise a reset will cause you to lose a reel. Similarly for the Bible puzzle.
Pinwheel Village: When doing the piano quest, the rope pulling wasn’t working for me. To finish the Export area projector, you need a sharp object. If you had previously got rid of your broken bottle or previously already used the Presser machine in the Brewery, you may be at a loss…
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Time Played: Over 20 hours
Difficulty: Hard