Interactivity: The Interactive Experience
Welcome to Interactivity: The Interactive Experience, an exhibition by Aetheric Games, featuring The Button.
In the world of “video-games”, interaction engineers have spent years rigidly defining the specialised and determinate ways that you, a “video-game” protagonist, may interact with your world. Here in this guided tour you will find them all, glistening with promise, awaiting the click of your mouse and ready to edutain you! Please enjoy.
Except for The Button. The Button is not for you.
. . . . . . . . . .
Interactivity: The Interactive Experience is a short meta-narrative experience about how our interaction with game worlds is limited by convention, in equal parts of awkwardly-funny and oppressive. Explore the gallery in first-person, solve a handful of simple puzzles, and find a way to push The Button.
Interactivity was previously released on Itch.io. This remade version has new details, textures, tweaked puzzles, more endings, achievements and haunting music by Miles Tilmann.
Steam User 47
Interactivity: The Interactive Experience is a short narrative walking simulator that is quite similar to The Stanley Parable, just not nearly as attention grabbing or variable in its gameplay. This is one of those average games that whilst I am reluctant to give a positive review, I also don't believe it deserves a negative one. Due to its appropriate price, I will mark it as recommended, but if given the option, I believe a 'neutral' category is better suited.
Pros
+ Interesting game concept (Stanley Parable, meta-narrative experience).
+ Narration.
+ Optional secrets to discover.
+ Achievements.
+ Alternate endings.
Cons
- The repetitive nature of the game unfortunately wasn't overcome by its slightly changing scenes and it becomes tedious, fast.
- 5 'levels' that barely change, with roughly the same puzzles each time.
Story
Without revealing any spoilers, the story takes a comedic approach and focuses on conveying how game protagonists (players) interact with their world.
Gameplay
As stated on the store page, players begin the game in the setting of a guided tour, to learn about the origins of switches, valves and buttons, but it is soon revealed that it isn't as straight forward as originally thought.
There are 5 stages and each stage is relatively the same, complete the very simple puzzles and move forward. No real new features are changed in each stage, however sometimes the puzzle pieces may be missing, a door is locked that wasn't before and so forth. Examples of puzzles include pulling levers, turning wheels to a correct position and entering codes.
Monitors line the corridor, advising players to NOT push the button and of course, this just makes pushing the button all the more exciting, but after a few repeats with little change, it soon loses its appeal and becomes boring quite quickly.
Whilst I consider myself a fan of this quirky genre, this title did not hold my attention. I found the surroundings dull and the dialogue lacking in the much-needed quips and humour that a game or 'experience' like this so desperately relies on.
Sound and Graphics
Interactivity: The Interactive Experience has a decent soundtrack that adds to the mysterious setting and in the beginning, this helped to pique my curiosity. It is also available for purchase on the store page.
Graphics were nothing special and definitely gives that indie feel. All models were repeated throughout each level, with the only enticing object being of course, the button. In this style of game, graphics are not that important, which makes the need for a gripping and humorous story even more important, and this is what the title lacked.
Price: Is it worth it?
The exact amount of playtime this offers will vary depending on if you're an achievement hunter, level of puzzle understanding, endings and if all 5 stages are completed. Generally, I'd say it averages around an hour and the developers make this clear on the store page, which I appreciate. With a full price of $AU6, I believe it's priced accordingly to what it offers.
Games like these have a small target audience and are difficult to master, making them easily lost amongst the mass of games in the Steam catalogue. This title is not something that I would actively recommend, but it is not one that I would advise against playing either.
Rating: 5/10
This review copy was provided to the OCG-Curations curator.
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Steam User 7
This game does so much right. It's very much a first person meta experience very similar to something like Stanley Parable. While this game doesn't quite hit the levels that game did; this is still well worth playing and the low price being asked. You'll get a solid 1-2 hours out of this without a problem and have some fun. The game in essence is almost like playing a "Spot the Differences" game and as you progress with each passing playthrough it's a treat to see what changes. I did however find one part to not be super clear and another part very easy to miss making progression through the game grind to a halt. However it didn't take too long to get back on track! Try this out and whatever you do; Don't. Push. The. Button.
Steam User 3
It's ok.
Steam User 1
7/10
As the name makes it quite explicit, Interactivity is a game about interacting with things. The goal of the game is to reach The Button, with some puzzles to be solved along the way and things changing each time the game is replayed, as you walk through what seems to be a museum about interactivity, with a narrator that explains things to you along the way. Some Stanley Parable feelings are felt during the game, though not in the same way.
Even with the game changing each time it's replayed, it's still a very short game, but an interesting experience while it lasts.
The only thing I'd like to have seen from the game is that despite how it changes things up, it never really does anything too extraordinary and never actually caught me offguard, even though I kept expecting the game to do that all the while. But perhaps that was something that was intended by the creators.
Recommended, specially since it's also a very cheap game and worth supporting the creators.
Steam User 1
This one is somewhat hard to describe and sum up.....it starts off as a first person puzzler/walking simulator, and then rapidly veers into a fourth wall breaking meta-narrative about player agency within a game. Really.
The graphics are decent (nothing jaw-dropping mind you, merely effective and adequate), the voice acting is amateurish (but again, it gets the job done), and the finale of the game doesn't quite live up to the promise of the preceding levels, but overall I would say this is a decent game, with some bits of real cleverness. Note that as a final caveat, some of the triggers for forward progress are a little obscure and will require some unprompted backtracking to see if something has opened up/changed; this wouldn't be a problem if these things were more clearly relayed to the player, but they're often rather arcane with little to no in game information given out. If you have to, use a walkthrough for when you can't seem to progress through the game; it's a little jarring given how simple/straight-forward the rest of the puzzles are, but there it is.
Recommended, albeit hesitantly....wait for a sale.
Steam User 2
Interactivity: The Interactive Experience is a cool, little meta-game about a big, red button. No spoilers here about what the game is really about as I believe you should go into meta-games with no prior knowledge. It can be compared to games with similar themes like The Stanley Parable where there is no hand-holding and you're free to choose what to do and even contains elements of Doki Doki Literature Club.
There are some collectibles that can be a little bit difficult to find but I managed to 100% Interactivity: The Interactive Experience in one playthrough. There are still some secrets I would like answered, perhaps there are ways to figure them out or they might just go unexplained forever, who knows?
Interactivity: The Interactive Experience is priced very appropriately. It might take beween 1-4 hours to complete depending how much you want to do but it seems like the story and discussion on the lore of the game might persist longer than the gameplay itself.
You can watch my full playthrough on Twitch or YouTube.
Steam User 3
An excellently unsettling experience- imagine The Stanley Parable with an atmosphere kinda like Portal's. And, for what it's worth, the puzzles are also pretty well-constructed and had me scratching my head for a few minutes at first. It's a tad on the shorter side, around an hour and a half, but for a $3.99 pricetag, I'd say it's worth it. I definitely ended up wanting more of this game once I finished it though, which is not a jab at the game, that's just to say that I love these kinds of games. My one and only criticism is that the final button press is pretty underwhelming in a sort of "is that it?" way compared to some before it.