Close to the Sun, an ambitious puzzle/survival RPG by developer team Storm in a Teacup, released on PC this summer and on console in mid-November. Set in an alternate reality where Tesla was able to fully realize his most fantastical ideas and investions, the roughly 5 hour campaign stars Rose Archer, a journalist searching for her sister Ada aboard the Helios – a beautiful, art deco, steampunk ship, wonderfully reminiscent of Rapture from Bioshock one and two.
I played through my first campaign in one sitting, about 4 hours. I was looking around for collectibles but more focused on progression and story. The map is styled as a one-way design so generally you will not feel lost and there aren’t too many options for which way to go. There were a handful of larger, more open areas available for exploration, feels like about one per chapter, but overall this game is quite linear. There’s no leveling system so you’re not specifically rewarded for looking around, but it is beautiful and feels interesting to explore. In the beginning they really lean on the Tesla vs Edison feud, which I thought was interesting, and toward the end you can see the infamous pigeon (look it up if you don’t know the story there, it’s wild).
In many ways, this game felt like playing Bioshock, sans the combat. There was an Atlas/Fontaine type character, a Tenenbaum type character, and nearly all communication was accomplished via radios. In the very beginning, as Rose boards the Helios for the first time, what sounds like a Big Daddy scream echoes through the docking bay. The art deco meets steampunk style (with dead bodies on the floor) throughout the game also felt heavily reminiscent of Rapture. Even the chapter titles took names from Greek gods, like the locations in Bioshock did prior to Infinite. It’s clear to me that the developers took a lot of inspiration from the setting and feel of the original Bioshock.
As a huge fan of that first Bioshock still, it was lovely to experience how someone else viewed that kind of setting. The graphics were beautiful, the storytelling felt incredibly compelling, and the world-building was impeccable. I’m incredibly excited to see what the studio creates next, and hope to see a continuation of this story. They did allude to there being more to the story to tell at the end of the game, and I’m interested to see how they change and adapt a new game into the same universe. Will the next one have combat? Will we still be Rose, or will we play as Tesla next time? Or even Ada? Possibilities feel endless when the most malleable thing in the game is time itself.
Still, the game has it’s flaws. The since there is not any combat, gameplay relies on a series of running sections, and the sprint/run mechanic did not work consistently throughout the three times I played through the game. Considering one achievement is for completing the game without dying and there is not save/load option on console, it becomes incredibly frustrating to lose progress because the running didn’t work correctly in a really tight sequence. One sequence in particular, in chapter 8, is so tight that I’ve not yet made it in one try (though I’ve seen others on YouTube do so, so I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong). Separately, the core plot involves time travel and holes in time, which to me personally, has always felt like a cop-out in every movie, show, or game. Though I feel that Close to the Sun executed this better than most, anything messing with time can easily become muddy and confusing. Also – just a random glitch that happened on my first run – for whatever reason the machine hall glowed white. Only on my first run, so I’m not sure what happened, but it was so blinding and the contrast was so high that it was hard to navigate. I thought that’s just what the room was, but on my next run it didn’t look like that.
Overall I give the game 4.2/5 stars. It’s a beautiful game with a handful of glitches to work out (like the glowing white machine hall and weird running vs sprinting thing). I’m a sucker for a pretty looking game, and this on truly delivers. Plus, the storytelling was absolutely fantastic throughout, and the handful of characters were interesting to interact with. Anyone that is fascinated with the Tesla vs Edison feud would really enjoy this as well, as the first several chapters allude to that at length.
Glamming & Gaming 