Review for relicta. Game for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Google Stadia, the video game was released on 04/08/2020
The truth, as we know, is often a question of points of view and above all it is malleable matter in a positive or negative sense. We all bend the truth in our favor - almost always - as if it were physically tangible, as if it were a cube capable of changing shape, polarity, substance. Relicta, debut of the Valencians of Mighty Polygon speaks precisely of our with the truth. Relicta is a physics-based first-person puzzle game in which the combination of magnetism and gravity will allow us to discover the secrets of the Chandra moon base. Alone and abandoned in the darkest corners of the Moon, our scientific mind will be the only thing that can keep us and ... our daughter alive.
If we were to say what Relicta reminded us we would definitely say Portal 2 and The Talos Principle but with a Subnautica pin we wouldn't know where exactly it comes from, probably from the colors and environments represented.
In recent years, there has been an exponential growth in the potential offered by physics-based video games. Although the latter often represents a limit rather than an opportunity for the video game, many development studies have focused on what surrounds the actual gameplay, namely: plot, music and graphics. By increasing the immersion in the created world, the limits of the puzzle game are less visible. This is also the case with relicta, which certainly does not offer great innovations from the point of view of the actual game, with these cubes that must be moved thanks to magnetic gloves able to bend gravity and magnetism at will. The aim is to advance in what, in fact, it is nothing more than a long tunnel that changes skin and color palettes at each level.
Not even the environmental puzzles stand out for particularity. If in the early stages of the game the tutorial is very present and exhaustive, it runs out very soon and already expires at the second level in a series of almost incomprehensible sentences that do not help to understand the mechanism of polarity inversion through gloves.
What therefore surprises most of relicta is the graphic care and the care of the plot. In the first case we are faced with a precise game without any smudging, but it must also be said that since the gameplay is very slow and relaxing, the ability of the developers to make everything perfect in an environmental context characterized by rapid movements has not been put under stress. and above all continuous interactions with the game environment. Stay anyway a great sight, with well-crafted lighting effects and a graphically consistent game environment, especially when you begin to see new biomes of this terraformed Moon.
This "terraforming" of the Moon gives us the hook to talk about the plot of relicta. Nothing very original, for heaven's sake. The Moon was terraformed from the humans of our time but for Dr. Patel and the other scientists at the Chandra base it is still a mystery how they were able to do it. The answer lies somewhere in the maze of this labyrinth full of buttons that open doors that lead to other environmental riddles that lead to other doors… Repetitive? Yes. But the guys from Mighty Polygon were good at introducing some physics-based variation, putting in teleporters for the cubes that go on the buttons that open the doors and polarity changes in order to move those same cubes.
In Relicta we cannot speak of an exciting longevity, this is certain since with a little effort the game ends within a few hours. Another criticality must be found in the between gameplay and plot: although the latter is not original, it is still intriguing but just cannot stay attached to the environmental puzzles to be solved in the actual game. This neckline is there, it is important, and it weighs a lot in the final economy of the game which remains enjoyable for graphics and plot but becomes too repetitive where it should stand out.
► Relicta is an Adventure-indie game developed by Mighty Polygon and published by Ravenscourt for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Google Stadia, the video game was released on 04/08/2020
