Cold Start: The Callisto

I'm editing my review because of the update on Nov 2023. The developer is a scam artist and paid the main voice actor $60 for all his voice lines, threatened to destroy his voice acting career, lied to attempt to gain sympathy in a game dev discord. I bought this game as the game dev's friend when I was still friendly with him but after watching the meltdown of lies that he pulled with this game I would want nothing to do with him.

After wasting an hour of my life on this game I wanted to know if the developers would ever deliver on giving this game the updates they promised. However, the more I looked into the company, the more I started to distrust the developers and the company as a whole. In this case, GiB Games have (most likely) ditched supporting this product indefinitely, only updating the game with a desktop mode feature and nothing else seemingly since its release over a year ago. With the game still being completely riddled with bugs, visual glitches, glaring UI difficulties, puzzles that make no sense contextually, having rampant amounts of AI generated artwork that isn't consistent, lacking an art style, zero optimization, and no support for Windows Mixed Reality users. They have also announced that they have started development on another game, SCP: INFOHAZARD on their website (https://gib.games). Which makes it apparent that the developers have not at all learned their lesson from this endeavor. Either those working at GiB Games are blissfully amateur or they are running a scheme. It’s also important to note that a negative review of this game that went deeper into the company’s misdoings was m…

The best way I can describe this game is "scuffed". It feels very much like the GIB Games first attempt at a Unity project. The first puzzle, required to actually get into the game proper is bugged in such a way that the panel that you need to pull down gets stuck on an anchor point. At one point, I managed to glitch the wall out of it's stuck pivot point, and continue the game. From there, I managed to make it into the lobby, pick up an important card that had exposition. It took entirely too long for me to notice the very small text that I needed to pull the trigger to play the audio. As I went to pull the trigger, the card flew out of my hand, and would not replay the dialogue again for life or money. I then proceeded to teleport past the door into the elevator entrance, and fall out of the world entirely. This got me an achievement for dying. The physics tries to fight you any time that you try to pick up any object. The first puzzle, required to actually get into the game proper is bugged in such a way that the panel that you need to pull down gets stuck on an anchor point. At one point, I managed to glitch the wall out of it's pivot and the game graciously allowed me to…

Disclaimer: I've received this game for free via Curator Connect. Cold Start: The Callisto is a sci-fi VR adventure/detective game. CS:TC has an interesting premise but currently is unpolished and buggy. It would require a lot of bugfixes and streamlining to become good. And it is not getting any of that, since the game development was "postponed indefinitely" and most likely just abandoned in favor of another project. The idea of sci-fi VR detective game is actually great, and I am puzzled why no one has successfully made it yet. The blueprint for an immersive and fun gameplay mechanics is right there: in almost every detective sci-fi movie you can see an investigator opening several virtual screens/workspaces in front of them to toss photos, articles and clues between folders with hand gestures. CS:TC does none of that: all of the gathered data is handled on one tiny virtual screen that looks like it was made for a flat game rather than VR. There is no way to sort, group or archive anything, it's just a plane clunky list that you have to scroll down to find anything relevant to the case. This list quickly gets filled with useless lore articles and outdated information, until i…

Seems like it has the potential to be pretty solid. The major bugs I noticed were loading issues when walking through doors, and audio issues where it would cut out and sound robotic. The performance is really great, i had no frame rate issues whatsoever. In terms of design, I find it hard to know what I'm supposed to do next at some points, it isn't exactly clear and I find myself wandering without a clue what I'm doing. Other bugs I noticed were tips being covered up by geometry and I couldn't read them. It would be nice if there was a map and potentially quest markers, something to help lead the player. Sometimes I can walk through geometry and sometimes geometry will unload. It would be nice to have a menu where I can see the controls as well. Other than that, it was a fairly enjoyable experience for what I've played so far.

Its a really fun game that's much better with VR than on desk top but with lots of little Easter eggs and an intriguing story. I hope I get to see the final product. Definitely going to look at VR headsets now so i can pet the robots