Analogue: A Hate Story

Zach Goodier

Analogue is a story about you, a recovery agent out in the galaxy, finding a lost colony ship that was Earth’s very first vessel to leave our home in search of new homes for human kind.  However, the ship appears to be abandoned, except for a lone AI unit that has been the lone caretaker for the past several centuries.  Your job is to search through the ships records, and try to figure out what transpired that led to the disappearance of the crew and passengers.

*Hyun-ae can be insecure, but charming enough.

This game is very short, but for the low price tag, it’s still reasonable, even if it leaves you wishing there was more to the core story.  One other perk this game has is that there are multiple endings, making it’s hour or two of playtime worth at least 2 additional replays, so if you want to get all the endings, figure on about 8-10 hours of game time unlocking everything, and the story is interesting.  You work with the ship’s AI, *Hyun-ae (the “*” is silent, to mark her as an AI), to uncover all of the ships logs to piece together the mystery of what happened to the ship during its lengthy journey. 

Logs have all sorts of information to help you investigate the ship

There are only two main characters, aside from yourself,  the AI’s *Hyun-ae and *Mute.  *Hyun-ae appears as a willful schoolgirl, who seems eager to help after many long years in low-power as the ship powered down due to inactivity.  *Mute is a younger looking girl, but is very outspoken and disapproving of *Hyun-ae. There are reasons for this, but that would be spoiling it for you, and the twists in                                                                                                        this little mystery are what keep things                                                                                                  interesting.

You can get alternate outfits, which are good for... things.

If you don’t want to read, just stay away, since all communication with your AI ladies is through reading and binary responses.  And to progress in the story, you have to read logs and discuss them with the AI’s, so reading is required here.  However, to reward you for your efforts there are plenty of interesting characters from the logs, and their stories range from tedious to scandalous, as you find love affairs between noble women and call girls, and infighting between clans as they fight for favor in the royal court aboard the ship.  Perhaps the biggest mystery is the “Pale Bride” who is involved in most of these events. 

*Mute is more outspoken, and has a grudge against *Hyun-ae.

Overall, this is a light, fun game that offers a little mystery to draw you in, and rewards you with some replay value as you try to piece together the remaining logs and find the truth at the heart of this mystery, which makes you seek out the other endings you haven’t unlocked yet.  The only real downside is that the story itself feels so short once you really start working through it.  Still, the moral dilemmas, on top of the struggle to find every clue to the mystery makes this seemingly simple indie game become a very enjoyable journey as you delve deeper and deeper to discover the heart of the story. 

Good:

-Light game that lets you play for brief stints, making it easy to pick up and put back down at your leisure.

-Some good replay value, between multiple endings and filling in the remaining log files.

-A mystery that tempts you to keep digging deeper.

Bad:

-Story feels rather short.

Scully Rating: 8 out of 10