My time spent with the first few hours of Observation feels a lot like an adventure game with a strong sci-fi thriller kick. Like most adventure games, there are a number of environments to poke around in and a set of verbs you can use for interacting with them—scan this, rewire that, establish a link over there. There’s a tactile feeling to Observation’s puzzles—linking to different objects requires you to pair with a three-digit code, rewiring devices requires you to trace a prescribed pattern through a blank grid, and various systems have a very analogue feel, worked with dials instead of touchpads. Taken in conjunction with SAM’s limited perspective, Observation does a tremendous job at making you feel claustrophobic and tense, as your limited agency hampers your ability to respond to urgent crises.

Things get...very strange aboard the Observation.
Things get...very strange aboard the Observation.

This also, however, makes Observation feel slow and stilted. Most times this is okay—swapping between cameras and rooms, examining them carefully, and linking to various devices as you look for clues and ephemera has a nice, deliberate rhythm to it. Less pleasurable are the sequences when you have to move around via floating spherical probes—partly because the zero-gravity controls and camera made me dizzy, and partly because controlling the probe is tedious work that detracts from the more intentional pace of the story.

Advertisement

Observation takes its time, giving you a number of small, distracting crises to solve as a larger existential one grows in urgency. Something is wrong with SAM. Something is telling you to take Dr. Fisher far from Earth, and you can’t seem to help but comply. Messages flood your screen unbidden, you have no choice but to comply with directives not given by Dr. Fisher, and something is infecting the station, killing those on board. I want to know what’s wrong. I want to know if I’ll turn out different, or if I’ll bring about the same doom that AI always seems to summon. I’m not sure which answer is better, and that’s a credit to Observation.