Quick Look: Asemblance

finally.... wanna see what the fuzz is all about

After the talk on Twitter and on the Bombcast I really want to see this in action.

Isn't that apartment from a free Unreal tech demo? I distinctly remember exploring it in VR in different forms including as a tiny person on a tiny roller coaster...

Edit: It's not the same but the first room is very similar =)

Played this for about four hours yesterday, and I think I'm to the point where I've found everything except the final thing that required a Fez-like investigation from the community (wish I had played the game earlier so I could have participated). This sounded cool, but I didn't expect to be so immediately sucked in by it. Perfect balance of creepiness and vague sci-fi mystery for me.

I hadn't realized this was the first part of a planned series. Hope this does well, I'd love to see what they have in mind going forward.

I love Quick Looks that start with the Right to Censor theme.

@antivanti: That's modernity for ya

@petethepanda: Should this game be experienced going in blind? i.e. is it prudent to skip this QL?

@fightingchance: I would say yes. It is pretty short, depending on how engrossed you get into observing an environment. If you watch this QL, you will see maybe about an hour of your playtime (edit: I should say my playtime, it took me about an hour to get where they end, or maybe even less) condensed into the 24 minutes.

Love this game.

It Follows is a really stylish movie. I don't really like horror but the music and aesthetics were really good in it.

As for the game Ehhhh I'm not too much into this developing trend of groundhog day games where you slowly walk around and zoom in on stuff. I'm more into the Gunpoint/Hotline Miami type of indie experiences.

"That's some real Fargo lookin' ass scenery."

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool grain elevators. Is this studio (or maybe just their art director) from western Canada by any chance?

Vinny needs to see IT FOLLOWS. Best horror movie of the past decade, maybe.

I feel like an idiot because somehow I read this as "ambulance".

@bmillette: I'll be looking that up too as I haven't seen a good horror film for a long time.

Haha, I was just gonna say the same thing. I thought it looked familiar.

When Vinny went to ask @austin_walker Something instead of Alex, I got sad. (Not because of you, Alex, you're awesome.)

At 07:40, I thought Right To Censor were going to appear.

I doubt it had anything with how you shot this but this video made me literally throw up. It was the constant zooming in and while Alex was in the more well lit room when he went to zoom into anything my entire room started spinning and I threw up. I was feeling nauseous before that but be warned if you get car sick or motion sick this really bugged me and I've played FPS for 20+ years.

"Hey, should we maybe enable subtitles for the spoken dialogue?"

"No, it'll detract from the atmosphere if the player is focused on text at the bottom of the screen. The VO is really good, so people should be listening to that anyway."

"What about people who actually just can't hear?"

"Sucks to be them."

While it will be hard for them to fill Austin's gaping hole I'm always so happy to see GBeast content. They were good before Austin and will be more than fine after.

Was that the exact siren from the Right to Censor theme?

Looks like this is an interesting thing and definitely something I would have expected to be Austin bringing. Cool to see these games still being covered. Definitely owes a debt to spotless mind but seems to be doing cool stuff with it. Will have to check this out if time and money allows.

I think I'm going to play this after I tie up Inside. Seems like an interesting experience.

Seems real neat. I'm curious to see what's going on.

Ooooh, spooky! Interesting little exploration thing.

@daltimond said:

It kinda bothers me that just about everybody on the Bombcast (and elsewhere) is saying the game more like "Assemblance", like it's about assembling or something. I'm not hearing a lot of people put the right emphasis when it's actually "Asemblance", meaning something more like "un-semblance".

The voice really starts off making me think of Frank from Donnie Darko.

So, this is just going to be another story about how to deal with the loss of a child, right?

I just started watching this QL and thought the same thing. Not sure what it is about the movement/camera but I don't like it at all. Does it have low frame rate as you pan about? Is it the very slow movement speed coupled with something else? I don't know but I can't finish this QL as it makes me very uncomfortable watching.

This should be a $5 or less game. Stanley Parable was a unique and very interesting experiment, but this is another in a series of games that attempts to mimic it. The tension and atmosphere is decent but it quickly becomes frustrating. You just want to see what happens next, and the game has you looking through the same rooms hoping you find the EXACT spot where it wants you to look. Was interested at the start but it got old super fast.

@fightingchance: If it seems like something that you'd be interested in, I'd definitely watch as little as possible. But it couldn't hurt to maybe watch a tiny bit, just to make sure you know what you're in for (very vague story, repeating environments, etc).

Aggh, that moment when Vinny asks Austin a question instead of Alex is like a kick in the ribs.

It Follows is a laughable indictment of the notion that relentless moodiness and thousand-yard stares somehow are a valid bandage for a story that never scares and stalls out because its conceit has flaws it cannot even remotely reconcile. Pretty movie, engaging first act, but total emptiness after that.

I ended walking around in that dark facility for good 20 mins and called it quits. I was so close!

You know, this is an interesting subject, especially for this game. Much of the dialogue has tape warp effects and speed variations, making the sound of the dialogue important, but I just thought of a lot of really interesting and creative ways to visualize those effects on subtitles that would have been super cool to see.

Also, hearing people say this video made them sick makes me realize that the game made me feel a little queasy, too. Usually I attribute a quick, short rush of nausea to being too close to the screen or needing to check my posture or something, but I played through this game and also experienced several instances of nausea, and I normally don't experience any nausea at all. I think the zoom is too fluid, for starters, and given that zooming is how things are triggered, you tend to zoom a fuckin shitload towards the end trying to find the right trigger.

Also, I have to give the creators credit for their worldbuilding. There is SO MUCH to read in this game, and there was obvious attention put into writing the made-up science stuff that makes it believable and intriguing. Granted, it looks like the way to the 'true' ending took some doing that I wouldn't have wanted to do myself, but I definitely admire the effort.

honestly Alex kinda just played the whole thing. Yeah there is some other stuff, but really, if you watched the whole QL, you kinda have seen it

I'll third this. I had it playing on my second monitor and could feel myself starting to feel really off just by watching it. Enough to have to stop the video a little over 10 minutes in. Games rarely trigger my motion sickness anymore, but yeah, this game is pretty bad for me for whatever reason.

I can see why this game might make some people nauseated. It seems like the motion blur is too intense for how fast the camera actually moves. When the camera stops is where I could see it becoming disorienting. Didn't affect me, though.

Man, graphics are incredible

A real holodeck would have a treadmill floor like in that Jamiroquai video.

I think you might be on to something. I never get motion sickness from games (even here), but something definitely felt off about the camera motion - the camera seems like it should be moving faster than it actually is.