The Last Survey

You, a geologist, return from years surveying a company’s mines to present your report to the CEO, in an air-conditioned office on the 19th floor of a skyscraper. A powerful, well-written story about how alienating corporatism is: from beauty, from morality, from any kind of humanity. It’s about a specific impending environmental crisis that we rarely think about, but it reflects universally on CEOs’ practice in any field (see: how Facebook and Twitter refused to take action against misinformation, because it would be bad for the bottom line, until they felt they might face real consequences for their actions). I should also mention the vivid sense of space it creates - the soul-sucking neutrality of the office itself, painted with just words and simple animations. It resonated with me, and I think it would resonate with anyone who's ever worked a corporate job.

An artistically very well done visual novel. It was an interesting read. We play as a geologist tasked with providing a survey on the reserves of rare-earth metal excavations to the CEO of the mining company we work for. As we read, the text is illustrated with hand-drawn animations and sound effects. Looking at the animations is part of the game, which has a mechanic called Patience. If the player does't take the time to read the text and watch the animations, they eventually panic and leave the office, resulting in a premature game over. Overall, I found the point of view presented in the game to be pretty pessimistic. I don't think my choices were particularly bad, but I got a bad ending anyway. I will probably try the game again later to see if I can get a better ending.

[i] My Experience [/i] I likely saw The Last Survey on the same list that many other 2021 players of the game did - John Walker's "The Best Games of 2020 That You've Never Heard Of," featured on Kotaku. His description of the game piqued my interest, and I grabbed it recently when it went on sale. First of all, the game is exactly as well-written as Walker asserts and was a pleasure to read. Although I'm not sure that the story could have only been told in the medium of a game (as Walker asserts), a game seems a good a way as any to experience it. There are a few moments when you choose a dialogue option to continue the conversation and it's possible that this alters the ending, but there was only one choice that made sense to me at each junction. I don't tend to replay games like this, and I didn't replay this one either. I liked the way that the player is made privy to each and every thought of the geologist as they live this experience. It's surprising (but realistic) how many thoughts occur as someone sits in a waiting room, and this comprehensiveness helps the player truly enter the shoes of the protagonist. My favorite things about the game are some of the ideas that it e…

No saves, no resuming, and you can't even click through things you have already seen before due to the impatience mechanic. The game crashed for me after around 25 minutes, and now I have to sit through it again and patiently wait on every screen - otherwise the game restarts itself.

It told an interesting story about a topic that isn’t common in video games. I liked that it combined text with videos too. I also liked the replayability with 8 endings. The soundtrack was adaptive too and it changed based on good or bad decisions. ⛏️

recommended if you get this on discount because to be fair there is barely any gameplay in this game and its basically just a visual novel with binary choices. that being said i do like the art style and i did enjoy my time with the game. the vocabulary used in the game is for people who only understand intermediate/advanced english though as i had to look up some of the words but regardless the text is well written and gets the point across. the game is about a someone who has collected data and has to report data to a big boss akin to big brother, aka someone who is corrupt. they are hoping these data and findings will inspire the boss to make some sort of change but nothing happens, though it ends of a reassuring positive message. its a good concept and well made, however it is very short and again there is barely any gameplay as all you do is read text. so again get it on discount.