Story and Pacing:

You take the role of Selim, a presumably young engineer aboard “The Vessel”, a relativity small space ship with 11 passengers…or maybe there’s more? Who exactly our character is and the purpose of the ship we’re aboard is unclear through out this very small demo, which is actually a good thing. Because there’s no pointless information thrown at us, we’re able to get control of our character quite quickly, but it wouldn’t hurt to have the credits skip able in a later version!

Game Play:

Right from the word go, it’s fairly obviously this isn’t your bog standard rm2k3 game, it’s not even an RPG. It plays just like a mystery game, in which you wander halls, collect items and talk to your fellow ship mates, I imagine sooner or later it will turn into a survival horror, it certainly has all the ingredients for one. A feature I did like was that you can interact with EVERYTHING, however it’s not always interesting, and it didn’t seem to give me any reward for doing so (No hidden items to be found).

There’s a simple CMS in which you can view inventory and save your game…that’s it. I haven’t a clue if that’s all there will ever be, but it’s fully functional and spins on screen rather nifty, you can call it up anytime.

Graphics and Sounds:

If there’s one thing this game does right, it’s graphics and atmosphere! Cleverly done lighting effects and dark hallways set a brilliant and appropriate mood for the game. I was very impressed in this department. Mapping is decent, I could not find any errors (And I’m like a hawk with these things) it’s dark without being too dark, and all the character sets fit perfectly with the chipsets.

From YDS’s beautiful singing to a full MP3 soundtrack, Muse is certainly a joy to listen to. A couple of random RTP doors sounds here and then are my only small complaint. Who ever chose the MP3’s deserves a pat on the back.

Overall:

Honestly, there’s not enough content for me to probably judge the game. As soon as it gets interesting…it ends unfortunately. I’m very interested in seeing how this game develops and I’m hoping there’s more game play elements to come also, although the demo kept me interested, hall wandering isn’t my cup of tea…. I think that just about covers it.