J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars
J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is an innovative narrative driven adventure game which is being developed due to overwhelming support from a successful crowdfunding campaign.
The story centers on Rachel Manners, a 35 year old astrobiologist. She is a member of an elite group of scientists, chosen to embark on one of the most critical missions ever conceived on Earth. Now Rachel is alone, orbiting an unknown planet. Her only companions are J.U.L.I.A., the space probe’s artificial intelligence and Mobot, a huge reconnaissance robot. Together, this unlikely trio will explore the mysteries of this solar system. But are they prepared for what they will find?
story
After countless years of careful space observation, the enormous telescope Chandra 17 suddenly locates a solar system quite similar to our own. As all earthly observatories turned their attention towards this new discovery, a signal of artificial origin is detected from deep within the system.
Reaction was immediate and a mission plan was conceived. No expense was spared in the construction of a massive space probe. It was designed and equipped to be ideally suited for the ultimate challenge: to meet and study extraterrestrial sentient life-forms. Equal care was taken with the crew. Only the most prominent scientists were selected and trained to ideally represent planet Earth. Everything was perfectly planned and success was certain. Yet somehow, everything has gone terribly wrong…
Now, imagine being jolted awake by an emergency alarm. As your surroundings come into focus, you realize you were deep in cryogenic sleep on a vast space probe. But why you are there is an elusive memory. Disoriented, you rush to the control room searching for answers. Once there you learn from the ship’s AI that not only have you been asleep for decades, but you are also the last surviving member of the probe’s crew.
To make matters worse, the probe is severely damaged by a disastrous impact with a passing meteoroid swarm. First, you must make repairs. Not only is your own survival at stake, but you need to find out what happened to the crew and why you alone survived.
Are You Prepared to
- step into the spacesuit of Rachel Manners and find out why she was the sole survivor of this ill-fated expedition?
- utilize an ingenious MOBOT – a mobile robot designed for planetary exploration to investigate this solar system and all its wonders?
- solve the mystery of the mission’s failure and locate the missing crew?
- travel to six unique planets and uncover their secrets?
- solve puzzles, gather clues and communicate with the most temperamental artificial intelligence ever designed?
- Are you prepared for… J.U.L.I.A.
Game Discussion
Steam User 9
A compassionate game about being kind to Robots!
This is a very interesting futuristic sci-fi game about space travel, it's a point and click adventure that is very soothing and calming. You visit interesting planets with backstories, speak to alien creatures and try to find the mystery behind what happened to the rest of the crew.
Story: Interesting
Very sci-fi and mystery, love the futuristic aspect of it. Of course you are travelling to a lot of planets after being awoken from your cryogenic sleep by your AI companion JULIA. You look at data entries, investigate the broken bases left by the crew and your job is to literally piece together what happened. It's an interesting story about compassion, mercy, a good narrative about doing what's right if you actually find aliens to talk to one day! There are two endings for the story. Story is well written with some easter eggs hidden inside. *check out achievement "unexpected visitor" * Love the plot twist also at the end. The story do not end with the main game but in the DLC.
Characters: Julia and Mobot best comedy duo
You only have a few characters to interact with since you are basically sort of stranded in space, your two AI companions. I love how they interact, Mobot is very witty and Julia sometimes serious. Rachel manners, hmm she is can be a bit of apathetic scientist, i don't really feel much about her. There also typical aliens on different planets, outer dimensional beings that mastered time, space and mind? Anyways, an interesting array of characters for sure. The chemistry between these two amusing characters is something definitely will keep you entertained.
Gameplay: Hard
You have to think a lot for these puzzles, they are so incredibly well crafted but sometimes the solution can be a bit simple than we think. You investigate, gather items, samples, DNA, analyze them also. You can upgrade Mobot too. You collect the data pads and can do hacking. You learn foreign languages and try to understand the ancient alien history of this solar system. There are a lot of different kind of puzzles. There are mind-o-matics where you piece together the story also. There are also circuit like puzzles which required sometimes a lot of tries and thinking.
Art and Music: Great!
I love how atmospheric and calm the game feel, space travel is truly a wonder. The music is great, loved the ending song. The art is very nice. The voice acting also extremely good.
Achievements: Straightforward
Achievements are easy to get relatively, but i heard in the community that some of them can be bugged. So checkout an achievement guide first. I did not try to get all of them especially "Luditte" because it required me playing this all over again and I did not purchase the DLC too. But i collected whatever I could.
Overall
An interesting sci-fi adventure/mystery that will calm you down. If you are a space enthusiast who don't like super heavy sci-fi or just want to experience a light puzzle game this is right up your space route.
Steam User 1
Very puzzle-y point and click with a classic sci-fi story. The pre-rendered 3D backgrounds are beautiful. The framing of the gameplay is a refreshing twist on traditional point and clicks, without changing the formula too much. The bulk of the gameplay is in the puzzles. You won't be trying to combine items or work out what to use where; instead, you'll be decrypting cyphers and solving riddles. Shoutout to the blueprint minigame that nearly drove me insane (i solved it though!!)
Steam User 2
Great point & click adventure game with interesting mechanics and good range of puzzles. The story is tense, the graphics are great for its time. Sound and spoken voices creating a good atmosphere.
Steam User 1
What a ride.
This is one of those unknown hidden games. It starts In media res, there's a fire on your ship and you need to puzzle your way out of it. The plot then starts, you are trapped in space with J.U.L.I.A, a sentient AI and Mobot, a cool robotic buddy who is your physical presence in every investigation you do accross the galaxy. Your main goal is to understand what happened to your crew.
The game is a mix between classic Myst, observation games like the Sherlock Holmes Series, and minigames like Hidden Object games. It works perfectly. The atmosphere and wonders of each planet are the high note. More planets become available as you discover new clues.
This game, is technically an enhanced remaster, the previous game, while similar was not as polished. Most of the game content is very enjoyable with some notable exceptions like a translation puzzle which I found lacking directions on the rules.
It's easy to feel overwhelmed at first with the amount of descriptions and technical sci fi jargon, but the game does a really good job of explaining most of what's going on. Better yet, already examined hotspots are removed once they serve no purpose.
The voice acting is quite good, much better than most indie endeavours. This is a great game for adventure and puzzle lovers.
Steam User 1
It's a sort of science-fiction storybook with limited animation and graphics reminiscent of Syberia, the story is engaging, and the voices are good, particularly the robot, who is charming.
Still, I have so many reservations about giving this game a thumb's up, all of them having to do with how laborious and time-consuming, without being gratifying, the puzzles generally are. It's like having to walk on a treadmill for what feels like forever in order to get the story to advance.
It's entirely understandable -- this was put together by two people, and the puzzle mechanisms that were available and manageable by such a small team are necessarily limited -- but there could perhaps have been choices made to do one thing well rather than many things in often infuriating ways.
Steam User 0
I enjoyed this game but I'm going to give it a qualified thumbs up. It shows its age as an indie game (re-) released in 2016. Some of the animations are jank, some of the dialog falls flat, bits of the voice acting is odd; several of the puzzles are just obtuse with poor hint explanations. The story isn't exactly boiler-plate but isn't very inspired. The Luddite achievement is just plain stupid and counter-intuitive, forcing a second playthrough whether you want to or not. On the plus side, many of the graphics are lovely and a very few are uniquely done. The 13 hours spent was largely a good time, with about 2 of those spent in confused frustration, so take that for what it's worth.
Steam User 0
The game had a really good story and puzzles. It liked how it made me break out the pen and paper to write notes to keep track of the story. While this is strange for games today, I found it to be a good break from the norm and harken back to when I can notes and personal game strategies for each game I played. The game looks older, but it still plays like a new point and click adventure, and was well worth the price. The only slight negative is that the game is only in Full HD and there is a lot of screen tearing during the cut scenes, but this doesn't take away from the story.