Shortly after recovering some mobility, a station alarm goes off which Fisher instructs SAM to investigate. Before she can speculate what it is, another alarm goes off. But it never spells anything out for you, encouraging you to think and observe as the story slowly unfolds.You can fatten your understanding of the plot up with those optional audio logs and documents, but even then a lot is left to your imagination. My only gripe is that I never really felt like SAM was experiencing any kind of moral conflict, or that he was battling the mysterious forces invading his programming. You can ask Fisher to repeat her last command, but a lot of the time this acts more like a cryptic clue or a subtle hint than an explicit instruction.Observation's other great strength is its story and how it tells it. Who, by the way, are also missing. But something seems to have awoken in you. Observation's plot is incredibly compelling, with a fascinating, mind-bending sense of mystery that kept me hooked from beginning to end. Its systems are malfunctioning, a fire has broken out, and the on-board artificial intelligence, SAM, is acting strangely.
He loves sci-fi, adventure games, taking screenshots, Twin Peaks, weird sims, Alien: Isolation, and anything with a good story. The player, by manipulating Sam, can control various elements of the station, such as opening or closing hatches, activating safety systems and the like. This feeling of being at the mercy of technology, with only a thin layer of aluminium between you and an endless cosmic void, adds an undercurrent of tension.When you've located something Fisher is looking for with one of your cameras—a damaged module, say, or the source of a fire—you can respond to her request. It was a little jarring, I must admit, playing as a super-intelligent, self-aware computer, but still having to use a notepad to make up for the limitations of my stupid organic brain.Each puzzle is represented by a wonderfully stylised interface, with the kind of hard, functional design you'd expect from something that was only ever meant to be accessed by a machine.

New York, As SAM goes to try to restore basic life support, he interacts with this station's SAM, learning that there was a secret mission that Jim was to follow, based on the discovery that embedded in various star patterns was a specific DNA code and a point in space to be at. He lives in Yorkshire and spends far too much time on Twitter.Receive news and offers from our other brands?Receive mail from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors?The best HDMI cable for PC gaming in 2020.

Set on an Earth-orbiting facility, Observation sees players take control of SAM, an onboard AI, assisting crew member Dr. Emma Fisher after a mysterious event damages the station and seems to cause the rest of the crew to vanish. Things are not looking good for Dr. Emma Fisher, the reluctant, resourceful hero of this sci-fi thriller from the studio behind Stories Untold.But what's interesting about Observation is that you don't play as Fisher. She sets about working with SAM to access the other parts of the station.

As a puzzle game it offers a fairly stiff challenge, but nothing that will truly stump you.The only real struggle I had was getting lost in the labyrinthine, maze-like tunnels of the station while controlling the spheres—at least until I discovered a waypoint system that, when you choose a module on the map, leads you right there. The station is governed by a series of arcane, complex computer systems that are beyond even Fisher's considerable talents, leaving SAM to make sense of them. In fact, he's not much of a character at all, which I found a little disappointing. Everything you need to know about Observation. She will also ask you to unlock jammed doors, recover data from laptops, and reboot systems, including re-establishing communications with Earth and activating a tracker to find the lost crew.SAM isn't always confined to the Observation's network of cameras. The game's plot focuses on what's happening to doctor Emma Fisher during her mission on the Observation space station that orbits around the Earth in year 2026.

A flicker of self-awareness, perhaps. SAM informs her that module 12 has become dislodged, and severe stress is being applied to the station, prompting recommendation for her to eject it.They eject the loose module, and the station stabilizes. I also noticed while floating around in an aimless daze that the game, correctly guessing I was lost, automatically set a waypoint for me.

He is also unable to locate the other crew members, who are missing and cannot be contacted.As Emma restores limited functionality back to SAM, he attempts to re-interface with the rest of the space station and reconnect to his own components.

This page will serve as a hub for all of the puzzles in the game.

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But more on that later.More than once I found myself reaching for a pen and paper.The Observation is a place worth exploring.

Sam may be instructed by the crew to perform specific tasks, and Sam can reply by finding the task element of interest (such as the status of a station module) and report back to the crew.The story opens aboard the multi-national space station.She manages to reboot the stations integrated AI, SAM (Systems Administration and Maintenance) which controls the station's systems and functions, and is the role the player assumes.After performing basic diagnostics to find out what happened, SAM receives a transmission of unknown origin, containing co-ordinates to an unknown location.