Device 6 Review
The smartest game in the room.
I was lying in my bed, iPad in hand, surrounded on all
sides by scraps of paper containing crudely scribbled notes. For the
past hour, I'd been stuck on a particularly tricky puzzle that appears
early on in Device 6,
a strange and wonderful interactive novel from Simogo, the Swedish
developer behind Year Walk. I've been guiding my character back and
forth through this small chunk of an island, paying attention to every
detail in the engaging prose and imagery, trying to pluck the one kernel
of information I need in order to solve a combination lock at the end
of the area. Suddenly, like a bolt of lightning that immediately
precedes most revelations, the solution hit me: I rummaged through my
notes and realized that I had solved the puzzle about half an hour ago,
but didn't even know it.
My journey of solving this puzzle taught me some important
things. First and foremost, I was completely in love with the story and
presentation of Device 6. You begin your adventure as Anna, an amnesiac
who wakes up on an island brimming with a '60s Bond-esque aesthetics,
atmospheric jazz score, and a heaping dose of J.J. Abrams-style
mysteries. Unraveling the truth behind Anna, the island, and the strange
puzzles that populate it provides some of the most mentally rewarding
moments of any game I've played this year.
All of this unfolds in text, still images, and occasional
videos, but it’s done in a creative way that’s representative of the
path Anna takes as she navigates the physical
space of the island. Swiping across the
story is analogous with guiding Anna across the mysterious expanse.
When text scrolls to the right, Anna is heading east; when the words are
presented in the form of downward steps, she's descending a staircase.
When Anna encounters a mirror, the text is displayed backwards, forcing
you to hold your iPhone or iPad up to an actual mirror. It’s a technique
akin to the way Mark Z. Danielewski used typography to create a sense
of unease in his novel House of Leaves, and it creates a sense of place and movement unlike any other text adventure I’ve ever played.
The prose itself is extremely well written, effortlessly
hopping between humor and horror, all the while maintaining its central
air of mystery. The specific images and videos that accompany the text
add to the narrative while simultaneously serving as a source of clues
needed to solve Device 6's various puzzles, which are devilishly tough,
but always fair. Each of the six chapters reach a point where Anna hits
some sort of obstacle, and it then becomes up to us to retrace our steps
and take careful note of everything that we've read, seen, and heard in
order to pass. For instance, the end of one chapter had me jotting down
notes as I listened to a series of cryptic espionage messages looping
from the mouths of three stuffed bears, analyzing what each said in
order to discover which one was telling the truth, and ultimately using
that information to solve a combination lock which peeled back yet
another layer of the fantastic story. The rewarding information became
even more powerful because of what I had accomplished to earn it.
No matter how long a specific challenge may have taken me
to solve, I never felt like I was being treated unfairly. Device 6 lays
down its internal logic and core set of rules right from the starts, and
it's then up to us to pay attention to its context clues, which are
hidden (sometimes in plain sight) within text, imagery, sounds, and
geography. Few puzzle games have ever married these types of clues in
such a fantastic union. But if you do happen to get stuck, check out our incredible Wiki for tips on how to solve a particular predicament.
My playthrough ran over the course of six nights, tackling a
single chapter in each session. These ranged from a breezy 15-minute
run where a puzzle clicked immediately, to the nearly two-hour odyssey
of scribbled notes, crudely drawn maps, and an ultimate sense of great
satisfaction. Throughout my five hours or so with Device 6, I had to
uncover lock combinations, decode Cold War-era messages, and pay
attention to each and every adjective in the story in order to make my
way through its devilishly challenging puzzles. Perhaps best of all, the
end of Device 6's journey culminates with one of the most satisfying
payoffs I've ever experienced in a video game. Seriously, the final
chapter really ties the room together.
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