[Disclosure: Product key received for free]

Recently I had the opportunity to try out TechnoTsunami’s early access debut now that the game is currently on the Steam store. TechnoTsunami is an adventure game by solo dev Neon Castle. Set aboard a retro-futuristic art deco space cruise ship where humans send their consciousness to relax in robot bodies while they go about their lives on Earth. You are a collector, and as with many things in this game what this means will not be explained to you, but essentially you collect things from the future for reasons.

There are some rather interesting tidbits in the lore explaining how humanity established space travel in this alternative timeline. During World War 1 a highly magnetic metal was discovered that when split allowed for objects to be essentially teleported between the two poles across great distances. Following this discovery humanity began space exploration by first sending up monkeys followed by human spirits. In-between there were experiments involving that lead to discoveries of time travel of objects, but this wasn’t entirely clear to me. Both these combined leading to the formation of the space fairing cruise liner you discover yourself on.

Overall despite a few grammatical issues, the lore is passable with a slight intrigue to it. These notes also serve as your sole guide throughout this Techno Tsunami. No other indication of how or even where to proceed will be offered other than your main task of powering an elevator. A task I was unable to complete. I remain unsure if that is a result of it not being possible or if I had simply missed a key item or note during my explorations.

Starting the game drops players unceremoniously into a locked room with your first task being to escape. On the ground lies a body that you will discover in your journal is your first side quest. Before attempting to kill you, he had swallowed “something” important and you need a doctor’s bag to cut him open and retrieve said something. Your only clues on how to escape are a recording that doesn’t have a voice-over yet and a note. The recording instructs you to find the safe which turns out to be the clock and the solution is the time in the note. There is no indication of either of these and you will only discover the fact the clock is a safe by jumping on top of the table to look at the clock.

I will say while the game does not hold your hand in the slightest it is at least less convoluted than other adventure games. You’ll feel smarter after going through this because all progress will have to be ripped into existence from your huge big-brained deductions. In this way, the game accomplishes the feeling of having to discover everything for yourself. As you would in a real adventure.

After the starting room, you’ll find out from a hacked turret that you are a collector. This will not be explained, but you are stuck in space and gamers are natural hoarders, so the game manages to get by without needing to explain it. Each item you find will give you a minor boost to your stats/abilities. Something I believe will be more important later in this game’s development but was aside from the boosts to item capacity largely irrelevant.

Having circled the first area about 3-4 times over I concluded that the blueprint of the level that showed a potential exit was backwards. Driving me to check all three rooms hoping the exit wasn’t in the forth room whose code through the entire play-through I was unable to deduce.

Eventually, after crouching under a table that would be exactly in the right place I discovered you can break some grates and managed to escape the starting area to discover combat is rough.

After you get a gun it becomes more serviceable, but melee attacks will nearly always hit you while bullets appear to require more accuracy or they’ll miss. Shooting is surprisingly solid. Headshots will cause more damage than body hits and when you miss it’s because you missed rather than of the game.

At present, the game lacks direction. There is the main task to power an elevator, that you will discover requires you to find a fuse for the power room. Something I wasn’t able to find during my play-through. I was able to complete the majority of side quests if they were applicable to be complete. One notoriously difficult puzzle netted a laptop I couldn’t pick up, yet that was the only quest I was unable to complete because of a bug. The others invariably involved either not being completely able or appeared as such because I was unable to fix the power to proceed any further.

For the duration of my time with the game, I killed the boss, grabbed a few items chuckling a bit at the number of people I saved from various deaths or walking around oblivious to everything. I don’t think there is a significance to this, but it was rather amusing.

Overall the experience was rather rough. It became one of those games where I was looking at everything to find some means to progress. Doomed when I missed notes only to find them on a second or third sweep perplexed as to how I missed them in the first place.

It does feel like a solo developer project with assets being rather impressive till they wear thin with their repetition and lack of diversity in the initial area. It was frustrating having to go up to every item to discover which of them is interact with able or breakable. Naturally, these are elements of the game that the developer has said will be improved. As for right now, it would be better to hold off to see how the game shapes up after a few months of development.