First-Person Puzzling On Jupiter's Moon: The Turing Test
Europa you likey?
While much of E3 is dedicated to the big guns, it's always nice to see what the little guys have up their sleeves too - like The Turing Test [official site]. It's a first-person sci-fi puzzle game from Pneuma: Breath of Life developers Bulkhead Interactive, and echoes the likes of The Talos Principle and Portal. I had a wee bash of it at Rezzed earlier this year and the short demo piqued my interest.
The latest trailer, shown at E3's PC Gaming Show, goes behind the scenes with the devs. As such, The Turing Test has caught my attention again.
Playing as International Space Agency employee Ava Turing, you're sent to a base on Jupiter's moon Europa but begin to doubt the ISA's motives and take it upon yourself to uncover what they're up to behind the scenes. This, in essence, involves engaging a series of logic puzzles that you learn can only be solved by humans. Just as well you showed up, then. It's all typical sci-fi fare - you're even directed by a disembodied robot voice (shock) - however Bulkhead do hope to "tell a story that could actually be true." Here they are on that and more:
Again, the small section of demo I played in April wasn't overly long and, as it kicked off at the start of the game, the puzzles weren't overly challenging either. Most involved shifting power cores from one location to the next, however Bulkhead have mentioned switching "between multiple perspectives" in order to crack its conundrums. The stuff shown up there also looks a lot more complicated than anything I came across. Getting to grips with how the energy manipulation tool reacted differently within each chamber was good fun, though, and as such I got a real sense that there's an interesting game at work here.
The Turing Test is due out in August.
Don't miss the rest of our E3 2016 news this week.