Dr Livingstone, I Presume? Reversed Escape Room

There's a bunch of good in [b][i]Dr Livingstone, I Presume?[/i][/b], but is ultimately hampered by some issues. + Fully voiced + Discover the story through scattered letters and audio comments, or keep it minimal and only listen to the audio comments when entering new areas + Story depth; although fantastical, makes the premise believable and care-able + Varied puzzles + Multiple differently themed rooms with a connecting relation/story * Main story progression upon entering a room completely locks interactability; you basically have to wait until the solo dialogue completes * ~3h playthrough - Some puzzles need a hint system or an option to skip; I got stuck multiple times; there is no direct, explicit, or repeated guidance on what to do next - Washy visual bloom, especially when turning the view, plus stuttery at times; felt nauseating at times - Some audio comments cut off when you move into the next audio comment area or interact with the next element with audio comments - Audio from way earlier sections plays at random, unrelated to any interaction - Some of the interactions are non-obvious and clunky; be it not being visually obvious or mouse movement to game element movemen…

Well, I sure wished there was a neutral button, this game deserves that. On the bright side is the art style and the atmosphere, they are built well, no rooms look like they have been copy/pasted, background music is nice and chill, it has voice acting and it tackles a story about a subject I never saw covered, Dr. Livingstone. But that is about it for the good stuff. On the other side, the game has some horrendous controls, tedious exploration, tiny interactive areas, hard to see objects and meaningless side interactions. Starting with the controls, the movement itself feels sluggish, and the crouch is even worse, you can barely move while crouching, meaning, you gotta stand up – walk – crouch – stand up again – walk – crouch (repeat as many times needed). And the controls for puzzle aren’t much better. The puzzles themselves I do not mind, but the tediousness of the controls is what makes them harder that they should be. The game has those kind of controls where you gotta spin the mouse around or drag a lever while holding the mouse button, but they are bad, often times I found myself dragging the mouse into the second monitor, or making circles with the mouse only for the obj…

Good Game. I cry too easily. It was just slightly annoying how closely you have to look. Some things are easy to miss.

[h2]Visually unclear, sluggish and clunky[/h2] The story and VA is good. The African setting is a breath of fresh air in the Escape Rooms genre. But thats as far as the positives go. The puzzles are mostly just not well designed, often either obtuse, rely on moon logic too much, or just not creative. I have seen some of them a hundred times. Plus they are often visually unclear, as the colour palette is pretty much limited to shades of brown and dark yellow (or other monochromes depending on the room). You often can't see the goal or the interactable elements clearly. That combined with sluggish, janky controls and interactions, even with mouse sensitivity cranked up to max and a generally glitchy UI and inventory makes this a frustrating experience. Also you can't just put nothing interactable in 99% of the drawers and hide a crucial progress item in the remaining 1%, unless you want to screw with your players. The gameplay is around 3-5 hrs, but I am not sure it is worth the effort.

I think I recommend it on the whole? But it certainly had some frustrating elements. I don't think the physical interactivity with objects added anything for me, only frustration. It's the sort of idea you think you wish a game had until you try and it realize it was a mistake. There were at least 2 puzzles where I knew precisely what I needed to do, but the way you manipulated objects made it difficult to tell if you were doing it how the game wanted you to. "Reversed escape room" doesn't really... mean anything mechanically interesting. Other than the fact you're finding keys to get further into a house rather than out of it. Don't read into it too much. *DO NOT PLAY THIS WITH CONTROLLER* I realized my mistake too late and tried playing the second half of the game on my desktop, but the game doesn't have Steam Cloud. It's really fiddly, especially with the physical interactivity. All of that aside, the game has some stuff going for it. The rooms are very hand-crafted and look unique and intentionally designed. The story itself is an actually interesting bit of imagined history we don't see portrayed often. And some of the puzzles were genuinely delightful to solve.…

I nearly cried in the end, it was so beautiful and the puzzles werent super easy but not too hard either. I would really recommend this game