Damaged Actuality is likely one of the most weird but instantly fascinating journey video games I’ve ever performed. For these the fitting age to recollect a few of the bizarre early days of the web, you could get a wierd sense of nostalgia. For everybody else, the otherworldly vaporwave environments that Damaged Actuality presents will merely be a pleasure to soak up.
At its core Damaged Actuality is an journey sport performed within the first particular person. It owes a lot of its design philosophy to traditional level and click on adventures whereas additionally borrowing some development parts from the Metroidvania style. The whole sport takes place inside an summary illustration of the web. The primary main space will ease you into all your primary talents: A sword to chop by pop-ups, a pointer that permits you to observe hyperlinks (grapple factors), a digital camera, and extra. To get every of those talents, you’ll discover the opening island, speaking to its denizens and fixing puzzles. It took me about an hour to complete the opening space and by the point I did I felt like I had already skilled a full sport. To a point it jogged my memory of the Nice Plateau within the intro to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild–an ideal tutorial that serves as a miniaturized model of the remainder of the sport.
All through the opening you’ll start choosing up on the underlying narrative behind Damaged Actuality. The plot, whereas not being too overt, offers with real-world themes of the open web. Given the commonly goofy tone the sport presents, I wasn’t anticipating to be as instantly invested within the plot as I used to be. It isn’t heavy handed, and for these simply taking part in for the enjoyable of exploring these worlds, the story largely stays out of your method. However for those who dig slightly deeper, characters are genuinely humorous, often-times subversive, and the underlying narrative thread is fairly participating.
Upon finishing the opening space you’ll transfer right into a central hub zone. From right here you’ll have entry to an assortment of different worlds, with world entry predicated on the variety of likes you’ve acquired. Likes could be obtained in quite a lot of methods: some are strewn out as collectibles throughout the varied worlds, however the majority are obtained by finishing quests. These usually all stream into a bigger underlying quest for that individual world. For instance, in a single world I wanted to revive energy to a central construction by fixing a collection of puzzles in outlying temples. Some had been primarily based on utilizing a brand new potential to see invisible platforms and objects. One other required me to resolve math issues utilizing values hidden all through the atmosphere.
Normally, you’ll end up finishing most goals in a single world earlier than transferring onto the following, merely in an effort to have sufficient likes to realize entry. That being mentioned, every world additionally enhances a number of of your talents, and returning to earlier worlds with new talents usually yields new rewards.
Damaged Actuality’s roots are on PC, and every now and then that reveals by on Change in lower than flattering methods. For instance on-screen prompts and menus are navigated with a cursor. This makes clicking by textual content packing containers or navigating by your map and quest log a chore. To the sport’s credit score, it does help you work together with all of this stuff through the contact display screen, however on the finish of the day correct button mapping for these parts can be a lot most popular. Along with contact controls for interacting with prompts, Damaged Actuality additionally presents help for movement primarily based aiming which could be toggled through the minus button. Whereas there isn’t actually any quick paced fight you’ll want to fret about, I did discover this helpful for a later digital camera improve that requires you to focus on a number of (often small) objects in sequence.
Change efficiency total is basically good. From time to time a extra advanced space could cause momentary body drops, however more often than not the sport runs at a secure frame-rate. I did discover what was seemingly some type of reminiscence leak, the place after I had left the sport working for a number of days the body price appeared to get considerably worse. A fast reset and efficiency was again up the place it ought to be. I’ll be aware that the solo developer has instructed me he’s already engaged on a submit launch patch. Given the superb efficiency of his different Change launch, Astrodogs, which I reviewed again in 2022, I really feel assured that these minor efficiency points might be addressed.
Damaged Actuality is a type of considerably onerous to categorize video games. Whereas I can select particular person items and examine them to different issues, as a complete it’s a very distinctive expertise. At a number of factors I merely stopped to take it in, or say aloud “that’s actually cool”. However it does all this whereas by no means taking itself too severely. The Change model comes with just a few minor hiccups, however not sufficient to bitter the expertise. What you’re left with is an unimaginable journey full of gorgeous worlds, enjoyable puzzles, and witty writing. Damaged Actuality is a type of video games that’s simply enjoyable to spend time in.
