Gone Home was highly praised by critics despite the gameplay involving walking around a large house, looking at random objects, and uncovering the story - which had no twists and barely developed further than the note you find on the door in the opening scene.
Tacoma is Fullbright's follow-up game and is similar in style. This time you are walking around a spaceship, but the story is more interesting, has some plot twists and an interesting mechanic.
You are tasks with recovering the ship's AI, but on your way, you use augmented reality to replay sequences of the former crew-members. They are visualised by coloured silhouettes. You see them find out that their oxygen supply is depleting, and they have lost contact so can't signal for help. They come up with a plan to try and survive, but aren't confident of their chance of survival.
When you see these scenes, you can pause, fast forward and rewind. Often the crew members may be together, but then will often move to different rooms. So you stick with someone, listen to their story, then rewind and follow someone else. You repeat this pattern to uncover the story from each of the member's perspectives, then you are allowed to move to the next section of the ship.
It's an interesting mechanic, but starts becoming dull near the end. However, this is a much more engaging system than the gameplay in Gone Home which was non-existent. Towards the end of the game, you do get some plot development, and then the ending is actually really satisfying.
The story is good but not amazing, the augmented mechanic is cool at first, but grows old fast, and the exploration is very linear. I'm never a fan of these story-driven experiences but this is one of the better ones.
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Tacoma is really disappointing, even more so considering how i liked Gone Home so much. Basically you get to rewitness what happen to a crew in space through ghost diaries. While the voice acting is well done, the story is really nothign new and it lacks a strong emotional ending. Considering the big development time, the end product is very passable.
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