A Falling Star | Adr1ft Review

Adr1ft promised a mysterious tale of waking up in space, all alone, low on oxygen, and your space station shredded to pieces without any idea of how it happened. Navigating in zero-g’s was supposed to be a unique method of gameplay as you try and figure out what the hell happened. In reality, all the mystery and intrigue floated away all too soon. Instead, you are left with a very dull rinse and repeat game could’ve been so much more.

Walking simulators are becoming more and more popular. Firewatch, Everybody’s Gone to Rapture, and probably the most popular, Gone Home have all been fairly successful.  Adr1ft is made by the same developers as Gone Home so one could assume it was going to follow the same tactic (which it does). You float around listening to audio logs and reading emails to piece together what happened. It’s very similar to how you explored the empty house in Gone Home to discover what took place. Gone Home was about very personal stories and many could say that’s why it was so successful.

Adr1ft attempts to make its story reach the same intimate level, but frankly, it falls completely flat. It didn’t take me long to figure out what happened on the space station and who was at fault. That was a main drive to completing the game, but reaching it so early left me expecting more. There must’ve been some twist or some other secret to discover? Nope, that was it.

Admittedly, there could be something I missed. I won’t pretend I uncovered every single audio log or read every email front-to-back to make sure I didn’t miss something. I casually explored and checked things out when I could. It left me with a very dull sense of purpose as to why I should care at all about anyone.

Maybe I’m cynical or maybe I missed something, but I didn’t care about a single character Adr1ft introduced in the audio logs. In fact, they all seemed very generic and cliche. You have the person having problems at home, the person who has an addiction, the person who is disconnected from their parents, the person striving to be the best regardless of the consequences, and so on. I understand that these are supposed to be real people, with real pasts that follow them wherever they go including high above the Earth’s atmosphere. Still, it was all too obvious and trying too hard to get you to feel for them. I can only speak for myself, but these characters didn’t grab me in any way.

It would’ve been great to get a few minutes in the beginning of the game with some of these characters. I understand that was probably not done on purpose, but it would’ve gone a long way to get me to care when I see a dead body floating around. Instead, I just smacked it with my hand to see if I could send it flying towards Earth.

I will say the performances for these characters are spot on. I could feel the pain and suffering when someone was talking. It was sold really well, but once the audio stopped playing I already moved on to figuring out where I was heading next. Even right now I don’t think I could name a single character in Adr1ft. They had no real substance to try and bind me to them. Sadly, that’s a problem Adr1ft struggles with entirely.

Adr1ft is beautiful. It should go without saying the stars in the distance, Earth lit up with the lights of the cities, and the spinning broken pieces of the space station will all catch your eye. I can only imagine how incredible it all would feel in VR. I was stuck with my small computer screen, but even then I could still fully appreciate the amount of work that was put into making Adr1ft feel vast.

It isn’t only outside the space station where the beauty rests. The white hallways may grow tiring, but opening a door to discover a cherry blossom tree in full bloom was an unexpected joy. Water droplets floating around and descending through a long passway filled with vegetation really showed how this now broken space station was a thriving scientific achievement. It all looked amazing, but it was traversing these areas that drags down Adr1ft from being something truly remarkable.

I’m not talking about the actual control mechanics. They are confusing at first – and a little bulky – but once you get used to them they make sense. It’s not about moving the entire time but setting yourself on the right course and drifting there. This sounds peaceful aside from every move drains your oxygen. It’s very similar to how in Gravity or The Martian it all comes down to exact specifications. You cannot boost all around constantly correcting your course. You line it up and then make tiny adjustments if need be. Moving feels free and is really enjoyable once you get use to it. I was spinning around objects and rushing to find a floating 02 can before I took my last breath hoping the risk of extra speed wouldn’t cause me to run out of air earlier than I planned for. The controls never got too disorienting. You can always right yourself and come to a complete stop at the touch of a button.

There is a peaceful tranquility to drifting around slowly through the environment.  The problem comes with how slow this method can be after a while. That wouldn’t be a problem if it the tasks you are given ever varied but everyone is the exact same. There are no puzzles and no real gameplay aside from floating to a location and hitting a button. Do that four or five times and you have Adr1ft in a nutshell. Eventually, you want to speed through it all because you’re bored and hoping the next task you complete will be different. But it never is. 

Everything feels new and exciting the first thirty to forty minutes, but two hours later it gets old. I used to set myself on the right course and look all around admiring the stars or the detailed station as I slowly floated along. After an hour it all grew old and I wished I could get to my next destination faster. I started to pull out my phone as I waited for my astronaut to float where they needed to go. 

I wasn’t expecting brilliant puzzles, but a little diversity would’ve gone a long way. The character stories and mystery behind what happened was supposed to drive your motivation, but those both fell flat for me. That leaves me with gameplay that never changes over the course of the entire game. Eventually, you don’t have to worry about your oxygen anymore. Without that worry I lost all sense of urgency in navigating the station. It actually makes the pace slow even more towards the end. This is the exact opposite of what I thought would happen. I thought I would be flying faster through more open areas with newfound speed. Instead, now that I didn’t have to get to my location before I lost my air, I could take all the time in the world.   

Not too mention trying to navigate using a 2D map in a 3D plane is crazy confusing. I never knew if the objective was above or below. Sometimes it would be the exact location where I needed to reach and finding the path was left up to me to bumble my way around. Other times it gave me a point-to-point path where I only had to follow the marker exactly. Sometimes you would be in open space and the marker would point in one direction. In that direction there would be three floating pieces of the space station in the distance. You wouldn’t know if you picked the wrong one until you ran out of air and had to restart the checkpoint.  A simple overlooking map would’ve fixed many of these issues for me.

Adr1ft is beautiful and it shines with it’s EVA free mode. You can float around without worry of oxygen. I would put on some classical music and explore the station. It was relaxing and immersive, something I can only assume VR would make infinitely better. In that sense, Adr1ft is a great simulator to mess around with. However, as a game with a narrative plot, characters, gameplay mechanics, and a start to finish point, it fails. The story was uninspiring, the characters were dull, and the repetitive structure that lasts the entire game made Adr1ft feel like a slow chore. There was a lot of potential to be found here, but Adr1ft isn’t for anyone looking to have an exciting space adventure. It’s for people who have some time to kill that don’t mind looking at pretty scenery as they float slowly from point A to point B. 

This review is based off a review code of the PC version of Adr1ft developed by Three One Zero and provided by 505 Games.