divergence

Divergence is indeed a bit of a divergence for me. It's not normally the sort of game I would be drawn to, and even if I'd seen or heard good things it would probably slip down my list of 'games I have to play' as other more homogeneous games rose up in the foreground. I'd get there eventually but not with any degree of alacrity. This just goes to show that every so often it's good for the soul to be pushed outside your comfort zone, because Divergence has some very strong and interesting aspects, though unfortunately also one very weak and frustrating one.

The first and most obvious highpoint are the graphics, they tell a story all on their own with a rich and varied palette from the pastel hues of the corridors and walkways of the station to the ethereal mood encapsulated by the phosphorescent flowers glowing softly in the shifting spaces not to mention the stark and terrible beauty of the station's exterior. It's such a shame you only see it in the opening sequence and closing sequences.


This game seriously brings the pretty

The game opens with little in the way of exposition, just that lovely exterior shot (ok I'll stop waxing lyrical now) being subjected to some kind of disaster and then what is possibly the cutest space pod every seen in a game landing on the surface and you find yourself in control of a fully space-suited individual. Given you've turned up inside the station and our unnamed protagonist hasn't removed his helmet you know something has gone horribly wrong. Luckily for the player the developers have included mission and briefing notes around the facility to fill you in on some of what has occurred, the rest is up to you to discover and if you are clever enough escape from.

In addition there is a disembodied voice on the radio, offering to help you and guide you through the dangers and pitfalls of this abandoned lunar base. I imagine that is where the theme of the jam which gave rise to this game comes into play, most especially in the deprivation end of the spectrum, evidenced by the apparent lack of anyone else human on the station. Though the term abundance is later used in the game as a clue to a larger picture in relation to true deprivation.

Game controls are minimal, with the tab key opening up your inventory and left and right arrows allowing you to select any item you wish to use or peruse in regard to the various documents and notes found throughout the base. If you wish to converse with the mysterious voice on the radio you simply access it via the menu and you'll get a few extra pieces of information or a clue as to where it wants you to go next. Save is automatic and only available at save spots but they are pretty ubiquitous and placed appropriately in most instances. Though given the glitches mentioned later being able to save all the time would have reduced irritation somewhat. There is a downside to this system however in that there is only one automatic save file so if something goes wrong you can't reload to an earlier point and continue. However you can get around that by grabbing a copy of the save.json file at each point and creating a separate folder to hold them in and reverting to them in the case of an issue.

The music and sound effects are very atmospheric, and really help in immersion and in a growing sense of dread as the game progresses so I have to seriously congratulate the developer's in their choice there. I didn't run across a single instance where the music felt jarring or out of place, except where jarring was the intended emotional response. Though oddly the music seemed to drop out sporadically and return after a I'd been Fragged or Eaten.


So if it's not command on the radio, who is it?

The transition rooms where your surroundings diverge from the expected are wonderfully portrayed, with a very smooth transition from one state to the next. It is such a shame that the same cannot be said for the movement within these rooms, and this is where the game starts to fall down. For a game based on the premise of exploration and puzzle solving the inability to move freely within certain spaces is quite a bugbear. Luckily it doesn't happen everywhere but in those places that it does it really lets the game down.

Part of this problem is ascertaining which areas are passable and which are not as there are very little in the way of visual clues to enable the player to work that out and since some of the instances where you need to get past these obstacles are where you are being pursued you don't have a lot of time for careful exploration and examination. There is also the fact that the transition at times seems to shift the player a space either left or right as it passes and ends up fragging you when you were from all visual clues in a place of safety.


If a damn plant stops me now I'm going to be peeved.

The biggest and most disappointing of these issues is the Pandora's Box puzzles which act like a sort of lantern of changed reality around you. As you move it so too does the environment change, this is visually stunning and really very innovative in regard to a puzzle. It's taking the standard push puzzle and giving it new and interesting life, but given the passage issues there is a very high probability of getting permanently stuck as the box gets wedged in a corner somewhere and you are trapped within a sphere of altered reality with no way to access the areas of the base that will let you leave the room and reset the puzzle. It is an absolute lesson in frustration. It is even worse if that scenario plays itself out after you have mostly cleared an area because due to the checkpoint saving system if you have to restart you lose all that painstaking work.

I will admit that did make me walk away a few times before the visuals and the mystery drew me back. But it really does need to be fixed; the ability to pull the box towards you as well as pushing it away would alleviate the majority of the frustration, though it does not deal with the other passage issues already mentioned.

Forging on in the face of adversity your character travels from room to room, collecting notes and building up a likely scenario for what transpired on this lonely outpost of the human endeavour. I won't spoil it for anyone who reads this because the mystery is actually quite interesting and obviously well planned and the exposition was handled very well. It's not necessary to garner every note and mission log in order to form a hypothesis of the events that transpired but each addition piece of information adds to the final picture. That sort of narrative balance is hard to get right but the developers have managed to do so, and I appreciate the effort in that aspect of the game. There appears to be multiple ending options dependent on how many of those notes you did manage to acquire but given my frustration with the passage issues I wasn't tempted to go back to pick up the two I appear to have missed.

All in all I'm glad I diverged from my usual routine to try this one out, and I did find many aspects of it interesting and entertaining, but ultimately I was stymied by the game play issues and found the experience ultimately less satisfying that it could have and indeed should have been.