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Fractal Space Demo Review (Xbox One)

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I recently decided to start making a list of interesting looking Xbox One game demos to try out, and I figured as long as I’m trying them out, I could review them too! It might seem strange for me to be reviewing a games demo over its full release, but I can’t always afford to be buying new games, and sometimes I want to buy a game but it has DRM or it’s from a company I don’t want to give money to so I just play the free demo instead. Speaking of such -many companies won’t even put demos out for their games anymore, (or if they do it’s a limited time only DRM affair) so as a potential customer, I want to let y'all know that getting try your game before I pay for the full version greatly increases the chance of me being interested in doing so!

All that said, onto my review of this charming little game demo, Fractal Space!

Fractal Space is a puzzle game that combines elements such as platforming, target shooting, and riddle solving. One can find some similarities to Portal in some of its puzzle gameplay, particularly the use of cubes and deadly lasers, but don’t let that make you think it’s just a lazy clone - the game is very competently designed and I had a lot of fun solving the puzzles and progressing through each area. The demo has a pretty satisfying length and I have to admit I didn’t actually get to finish it due to a riddle I couldn’t figured out, but I played enough to know I like the game - which is the ultimate goal of a demo.

The sound of the game is very pleasant, consisting of chill electronic music and pleasant banter between the protagonist and a disembodied voice that spoke to them. The story revealed in the demo is largely a mystery, so I expect this to be the sort of the game where you learn more about the protagonist and the strange environment they’ve ended up as you progress through the story. I found the personalities of both characters very charming, and they both have cute accents, too! The player character comes across as sounding Australian, and the disembodied voice reminds me of BMO from Adventure Time.

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Visually, the game starts of with a nice looking outdoor environment as it introduces the player character being stranded in an ocean and eventually washing up onto a little island where they end up being taken into the game’s main setting, “the space station”. The space station has a nice visual balance of being pleasant to look at without being too busy, which is important for a puzzle platformer game because the player needs to be able to focus their eye on platforms and interactive objects at all times.

The only issue I really encountered with the demo was that it didn’t seem entirely clear with its rules of where you could place the cube items. There was a notable instance pretty far into the demo where I thought I could use a cube to block some laser doors, as they had been used for blocking lasers before, but that suddenly wasn’t work this area. I figure this was the developers way of saying “no, the solution forthis puzzle is something else” but it was a bit jarring for me. I had also a few instances where I put my cube down somewhere and it would simply vanish for seemingly no reason! Seeing as this a demo, hopefully these little problems have been fixed in the full version of this otherwise very solid puzzle game.

In addition to being available on Xbox One, this game also seems to be on steam and smart phones if that’s more your speed. Judging by the demo, it seems like a good one!

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