Occurrence at JCR Outpost

[h1]What is Occurrence at J.C.R. Outpost?[/h1] J.C.R. stands for James Clark Ross. He was a British naval officer in the 1800's. He is remembered for his exploration of the Arctic with his uncle, Sir John Ross, and Sir William Parry. Furthermore, he is also known for his own expedition to Antarctica. You play the role of the new administrator of the outpost which is located in the Antarctic. Your aim is to gather scientific samples from under the ice. However, it quickly becomes obvious that things are not as they seem. This is because there is an ancient monster in the midst with the intention of killing you. Therefore, you will quickly discover that the game is one of cat and mouse. Due to the subject matter of the game older science fiction readers and viewers will immediately recall John Carpenter's, The Thing. It is also clear that the developer has drawn further inspiration from classic adventure games such as Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders and many more. As I am an older gamer and was raised on these types of games I was immediately interested in finding out whether Brizzi's writing and game design skills could rekindle some of those memories. [h1…

Note: This game was reviewed with a code provided by the developer this doesn't change my opinion about the game. Occurrence at JCR Outpost is an adventure game inspired by John Carpenters The Thing and classic adventure games like Maniac Mansion. It's not as scary as The Thing, but it's pretty fun. The story is you are a scientist in an outpost who is there to open a ice hole, but after opening it you find out that you let out a monster who can shape shift into your crew, so you have to figure out how to contain it. The gameplay is not a point and click adventure game, but more of a choose an action and see how it pans out. You also have to take care of yourself, like sleep, eat, and bathe so you don't black out and have to backtrack to some place. You're given a bar which tells you how much time you have left until you black out and before every action you have a nifty time counter which tells you how time you will use up doing a certain action. The puzzles are fairly simple. It revolves around exploration and using certain items in certain places. There's only one difficult puzzle, but after that it's a fairly simple ride. Now let's talk about the monster itself. The monst…

Let’s start very briefly and clearly, if you know barely nothing about Occurrence at JCR Outpost and screenshots looks interesting to you, don’t read any reviews and go for it. This way you can enjoy it. You’ve become an admin. Finally! Well ... The Antarctic research station admin. In a secluded area of permafrost you command tough guys who gather and analyse samples from under the ice. It’s not an easy job, you suffer from isolation, monotonous work and desire to make a breakthrough in research. And suddenly it comes, an ice crack was identified. Your job as manager is to drive to the cracks, blow it up using dynamite and figure out what’s in it and what new it brings. Simple task. But your command is not exactly an example of discipline. Guys can do almost whatever they want, and one of them unauthorised took the key from the garage with dynamite. First you have to find out who took it, and then continue on your mission. Occurrence at first looks like a retro adventure with the flair of movie The Thing and Lucasfilm’s adventure games from the ‘90s with the midi music and the sounds you probably don’t even need a sound card for. In fact, it is rather a mini puzzle adventure gam…

I died because you can't carry a weapon and a computer program tape at the same time, and you can't escape a room with one door. Very realistic.

This is an interesting adventure game, and in some respects it reminds me of Friday the 13th on the NES. I don't recommend getting this game at the base price of $10. It's pretty short (took under an hour to finish) with no replay value. Speedrunners might want to take a look at this.

Interesting design; providing you with a text-driven, time-sensitive, rogue-like, choice-based experience with a Commodore kind of visual design. If you can get into these particular styles and ideas, you probably are going to like this game. But only- LIKE. It feels like a love letter to games like Maniac Mansion and CLEARLY movies like The Thing, but lacks the divergent branches and real terrors that Carpenter movies and the SCUMM games were famous for. The gameplay feels like it probably started as something more ambitious, but this completed build feels under-baked in almost all aspects. Basic gameplay is this, your scientific crew are trying to break some ice sheets for science, but nobody returns the keys back to where they're supposed to go, so you need to go TALK to everyone to find them, all while your energy, hygiene and ability to stay away depletes. This talking is the problem, because after the chaos is released, and crew members become fewer, and the halls grow more empty, the TALKING is what's going to get you in trouble as you try to open all the outpost's doors. Once you unleash the horrors of the icy depths, one of your mates becomes an abomination, that's slowly…