List Image

Event[0] PC Review

Let’s open this one up with a warning; writing about this game is going to be a struggle without giving too much away, so feel free to head on down to the TL:DR (Too Long Didn’t Read) section for a spoiler free review.

Event[0] is a game about building a relationship with an AI called Kaizen, aboard the Nautilus the ship it controls. There is one strange thing though, it seems to be locked out of various aspects of the ship, hmmm interesting.

The intro to the game and the main story setup comes in the form of a short text based adventure, with somewhat limited choices. This gets you ready for the main story, which starts with the ship that you were on the Europa-11 has met a catastrophic ending and everyone has been forced to abandon ship. You are stranded aboard an escape pod floating through space when the pod finally finds a ship floating somewhere near Jupiter and the pod docks. The Nautilus is where you find yourself and where the next part of the story unfolds.

The first thing you notice when boarding the Nautilus is that there is an old looking terminal with a CRT monitor nearby, when I say old I mean old! It turns out the Nautilus is a ship from the 80s that has been sent here to never be heard from again for some unknown reason. Upon interacting with this terminal you are greeted by Kaizen the ship’s AI who even from your first interaction seems off kilter. After some typing and niceties, it lets you into the ship properly, however at the next terminal Kaizen seems to be stalling you.

Event[0] Waiting

The majority of the game is spent walking around in low lit rooms and corridors attempting to access the bridge by conversing with Kaizen. You will find Kaizen terminal near every door, airlock and elevator. The puzzles in each area are based around searching for the correct things to gain an insight to open doors or the means to access somewhere you couldn’t before. Some of the puzzles are harder to solve but most are fairly arbitrary but if you get stuck you can always ask your AI buddy for some help… that is if you haven’t offended it.

How you speak with Kaizen affects how the story unfolds and how difficult things become for you. Keeping Kaizen sweet seemed to be the best approach for me and I found it actually aided me in achieving the main goal. You quickly learn that Kaizen wants the singularity drive destroyed before it will take you back to Earth, this seems strange as the name of this drive kind of infers it’s needed for quick space travel. Destroying the drive was the route I took but there are multiple endings so depending on what you choose and how you react with Kaizen you’ll end up with something different.

Event[0] Piano

The graphics and sound are great and I’m loving the 80s feel of the ship. Walking around it looking at the various bits of tech and personal belongings was interesting especially the old style computer terminals. The sounds are very Star Trek with whooshing doors and sliding noises that make all sci-fi games involving space ships just awesome. The noise made from typing in the game was one of my favourite with a nice satisfying clickity clack.

After eventually gaining access to the bridge and traversing towards the bridge you see drawings, rants and scrawling’s that seemingly put you on edge as you draw ever closer to the conclusion. After getting to the bridge and starting the destruction of the singularity drive another persona seems to come out of nowhere encouraging you to not destroy the drive. I however ignored this as my buddy Kaizen wouldn’t screw me over. Well I was wrong the ship seems to come tumbling down around you. The new persona which is one of the ships previous inhabitants urges you to get into a chair nearby to save yourself. This pulls your personality into the computer. You again traverse down the same corridor this time looking much better than it previously did but you are like a whisp of smoke floating down the corridor along with your new ghostly pal. The apparition is telling you some pretty forgettable information and then you’re hit with a blaring white screen… the end… I’m sorry what? Not the ending I was expecting.

Event[0] Terminal

TL:DR

Event[0] is a visually appealing game with some great sounds to boot. The story however seems loose and doesn’t get fleshed out enough. The premise of the game is great but it feels like everything around the AI interaction could be written off as padding to extend the game. I kept the AI on my side and finished in 114 minutes which was short but still fun. The effort that went into crafting the responses to the written input was nothing short of amazing. There could have been a lot more game with such a great underlying premise but it just wasn’t there. I recommend this game as something refreshing but don’t say I didn’t warn you about the padding.

7 out of 10

Platforms

PC