REACTOR - Stylish Sci-Fi Horror Game with a Happy AI Buddy Who Helps You Research an Alien Lifeform! Available as Part of the Dread X Collection 3: store.steampowered.com/app/14...
This felt as sad as it was horrific. I felt bad that you, the player, wasn't fast enough to escape, but I feel even more sad for L.O.L.A., that was just the AI.
Yeah. She showed genuine concern when the lifeform almost hurt the main character and when she was losing her free will and suffering from memory loss.
@@jhonnoilcringeincarnato8593 And that body was left trapped in the strange fauna for millennia, as the protagonist is left to be stuck until he passes away.
I think it's really interesting how everything but the AI is black and white. It kind of gives me that feel that the AI is the only thing that gives "chuck" some kind of semblance of normal. It actually made me think and wonder if we would end up with AI's as a second companion because no one else is there. It doesn't seem like a new concept but this game just made me think about it some more.
The base should have had more plant life, besides the single one in the middle. Humans like a natural environment. There are different ways to make things more comfortable when you're stuck on a lonely gray rock for a year.
I always thought that would be an obvious step in human advancement; imagine a world where you're never alone and you have an artificial "mirror" entity that perfectly matches all of your tastes, behaviours and fits your ideal partner perfectly. You'd never be lonely, you'd have a best friend, life partner and lover all rolled into one. Everyone would have one. No-one would ever be alone. A horror game revolving around someone losing this soul mate / partner, or their mysterious disappearances leading to alien / eldritch / biomechanical / whatever mutations happening to people that could set up something pretty shocking and disturbing. I flip between robots with sentient A.I. or otherworldly "guardian angels" / "higher selves" being the best candidate for such a setting. Imagine you're born into a world where your higher self is tangible and there to keep you company, has done since the day you were born, then one day other people's start disappearing with no reason or warning and they begin to... _transfigure..._
Where I live, care centres for the elderly have experimented with giving robotic pets out to residents and have noted an increase in mood (And suspected increase in life expectancy because of improved mood). And that's just the result of having a robot around that resembles a baby animal like a dolphin which can only wag its tail and make a few cutesy noises every now and then. So it's not a foreign concept :)
I love the implication that the mental health AI who fell in love with its patient is the reason this guy signed on for 20 more years of this. After all, its a field therapist AI. He's gotta be in the field for her to take care of him
i haven’t even gone to the scary part but i imagine the ai is gonna betray you because there’s not a single sci-fi horror that doesn’t involve an ai betraying you
I forgot where I read it, but there is a story about a robot who dismantled its human friend because he is sick. The robot thinks he can just replace human's body part just like robot. More sad/tragic than horror.
I kinda wish she stayed helpful throughout the entirety of the game. It would have been more unexpected, and she could have been the one to call the rescue crew at the end! Even if it was too late.
@@combineshotgunsoldier7761 Moon is great because the AI is confronted with a very difficult set of conflicting orders but chooses to help the protagonist anyway
The enemy design would have worked better if they hadn't gone too far to make it traditionally "scary." For instance, logic dictates that whoever built this robot must have deliberately designed an angry fang mouth icon to show that it's angry. It would have been better to have this alien possessed robot going after you while maintaining a cheery face and voice.
You know what scares the shite outta people? Children's laughter. There is nothing cuter than a child laughing. But in the right context, makes the hairs stand up on the back of the neck.
It's possible that it had that face in order to cow intruders or misbehaving occupants. It's also possible that it generates its own faces and the lifeform made it generate a few that it wouldn't have otherwise.
Disagree. It would have been cliche. The creepy child's laughter thing has been done to death. I loved the sort of loopy no-nonsense British voice with the pink gnashing teeth. Worked far better for me (but that's just my personal opinion).
The child laughter thing was just just an example I think As for logic, the meltdown wouldn't have happened, and we would have escaped under logic. Fusion/Arc reactors just stop and cease to function on them being damaged. They don't 'meltdown', just overheat and stop reacting. Which means, the alien would have had no energy to grow and encase the planet, like in the ending where they got an entire bomb's worth of energy (and even uranium reactors don't go off like a bomb, it's heat and steam with radioactive waste). We could have lived and escaped
Me at the start of the video: okay, this is going to be a "friendly helper robot is secretly evil" game, isn't it Me five minutes in: If anything bad happens to Lola I'm going to destroy everyone in this room and then myself
I like the artstyle and the music of this game, and the ending somewhat reminds me of short cosmic horror story "The Creeping Mold" given how quickly it grew. I agree with the notion that the angry face at the end was overkill though, especially for reasons of in-universe logic. I also have to wonder how the pilot at the end noticed absolutely nothing amiss even if the base was gone.
Yeah, it was odd that their response was just "this isn't a desert planet, we must have the wrong coordinates". Not going to remark on how weird it is that everything's covered in meat? Is "meat planet" a documented astrogeological phenomenon in this setting, common enough that nobody finds it worth mentioning?
And how the reactor wouldn't go off with a bomb and give it infinite energy to kill us and encase the planet. It wouldnt even meltdown, regardless if it was an arc reactor like the name said, or uranium.
@@bloodstormwolf9512 Yeah, from little I "know", an even remotely futuristic reactor would just shutdown instead of suffering a catastrophic, explosive meltdown. That part at least I will handwave, however, given modern fiction seems *always* to get that wrong and given it could have been something alien lifeform, malfunctioning A.I., or even the company cutting corners did.
Why do these childish horror games... work so damn well? It was like the game submission 2 days ago. Squiggly killing a donkey in a church under a :-) Sun. Seriously WTF?
I think a lot of them are inspired by games like pony island, as that seemed like a pretty innocent puzzle game at first, but then it had some really strange horror elements later on.
I know that the reason why it showed a body at the end was to show us that the meltdown didnt work (although the entire planet being red was proof enough of that) but i guess it did destroyed the base since the rescue ship didnt find it, if the base was destroyed shouldnt the body be destroyed too? I know that i am overthinking this since its a 10 days game but i still wanted to comment about it.
Probably just that the astronaut got to a survivable distance when the reactor exploded. Any tiny bit of the organism that survived would be able to expand until it eventually consumed him, regardless of whether it attached to his suit during the escape.
I think the sheer heat caused by the explosion made the organism grow at extreme rates Although, aren't arc reactors unable to explode? They just sorta shut down.
"happy AI buddy" *Something is wrong, i can feel it* EDIT : SPOILER . . . . . . . . . Jesus fucking christ, its the Assimilator alien type (like the movie Annihilation) but more OP as it can take over AI
Of all the games in the Dread X collection, I like this game the most. It's stylishly made, graphics are simple yet captivatingly beautiful. And the music effectively builds up the sense of impending doom as the game progresses. Kind of expected that the environment and the AI will take a turn for the worse and turn on you. But the fateful journey as a space astronaut in a foreign and unknown planet is just amazing. I particularly like the AI, with its pink emoji face and it doing half-squats while conversing with you.
The part when that AI buddy went rouge made me feel sad. It reminds me of Void Terrarium, where two AIs loyal to mankind ultimately destroyed each other. Such a tragedy that while their modus operandi are different, they both meant the best to us, and the more laid-back AI is very adorable as well
so, the protag got stuck working in that lone observation post for a very long time with just a friendly helpful ai buddy as companion. no wonder protag only sees gray colors everywhere. except the ai buddy's purple face due to it being the only lively thing close by for who knows how long. then the unknown and suspiciously dangerous alien element invades. and turning every colors into red haze of madness & hate. no happy endings here.
I think this was masterfully done, the soundtrack perfectly sets the atmosphere of dread and urgency, and ending on a cliffhanger was a nice touch. Would love this to be fleshed our in a longer format and more detailed worldbuilding, although this itself shines as a finished product.
Man the tension throughout the game really was different.. I just knew something would happen to poor LOLA, and somehow I cared for the AI despite bring initially put off by her behavior at the beginning
One thing that got a little in my way of enjoying the game was how an alien life form is somehow able to interface with a sophisticated digital circuit, understand foreign AI protocols, and manipulate them in such a way as to obtain desired behaviour (including accessing the 'evil red face' mode lmao). I really liked how the AI being nice to you wasn't a setup for 'obsessed love AI' or anything like that, but it was a little disappointing to see how that played out. Regardless, good luck on your future endeavours, dev!
Definitelly he walks like he knows what he is doing, which it "may" seems he record the game during second playtrough. But, it could be that he does edit on over some parts where he is stuck for longer than expected.
I like the "pop" style, makes it unpleasant in a different way. There's an interesting bound between human and AI. The ending is simple but eerie and effective.
Dies Irae has lost it's meaning ever since Frozen 2 using it out of the real context. Dead by Daylight and other death, funeral, and horror related stuffs are still on the same context
No commentary, good play through, and interesting games I’ve never seen? You sir have a new subscriber. I’m going to actually watch the adds in your videos so you get full revenue for it?
Question is...why man even needed to be on this station? AI registered meteor itself and extracted sample without any help or command to do. I pretty sure it would drive baggy to crash-site too without problem.
