Personal Rocket

[h1]Under the Radar[/h1] Personal Rocket is a blend of the classic and the experimental - It's a feverish, crunchy story illustrated with a surreal art style, but is presented with a classic Sierra-style point+click interface and many hallmarks of modern Adventure Game Studio-created hits. The key art of this game kind of sucks me in - I find it very evocative, the dead-eyed stares, the clinical purple-pink shade of background, and the faceless man with a missile sticking out of his head. You know that this game is going to be a little different when there's not even a main menu - just a blank screen and a blinking cursor, where you need to work out how to start a new game on your own. Personal Rocket is a postmodern game about that blends the line between reality and fiction - one that tackles themes like capitalism, paranoia, and feeling misunderstood. Our character seems to be an ex-employee of a large Tesla/Spacex-esque tech company. He lives in a giant, near-vacant apartment complex, and spends his days as a shut-in, investigating his former employer, never going outside. One day, he stumbles on what he feels is A Big Conspiracy that will take this company down (no one…

This is clearly a labor of love and a very unique piece. A weird, often very funny, poignant and kind of eerie depiction of seclusion and paranoia. The puzzles could be a little bit more user friendly at times, but overall highly recommended.

Normally I don't like games with puzzles based on operating arcane machinery and deciphering cryptic instructions. Personal Rocket is not a solitary exploration game though. It has interactions with NPCs and inventory-based puzzles, and the twist is that the arcane machinery is old computers. It's quite amusing that things like a command-line interface (with some typing required), SATA cables, leetspeak and non-decimal numeral systems can be used in place of alien technology. If you don't want to figure out how to write numbers in different numeral systems or which axis and direction are chosen for the polar angle, you still might not like the puzzles. But none of the puzzles are difficult, and, in fact, all of them except for encoding numbers and typing can be easily brute-forced. The design is quite good in that aspect: a puzzle can be solved by going around knocking on every door or by realizing there may be a clue indicating the correct door. The dialogs with NPCs are quite short, but the writing is good, and there are some funny moments. There is no voice acting. The interface is fine, although it took some time for me to get used to the left/right mouse buttons being Look/…

Don't know why the good reviews. Game is boring and you need to understand programming / hacking / all this PC focused stuff to progress in the game. Background music is annoying too, personally couldn't find a single selling point.

yes

Very cool short (took me three hours) indie point and click, with a lot of personality. The puzzles require a good amount of reflexion and understanding the systems you operate in the game, sometimes some side internet research. Perfect for an evening of head scratching and feeling smart! By the people behind Imaginaria, which you should also play if you like original games that live at the edges of the industry.