The Turing Test

More Than Just a "Portal" Clone in Space
It is incredibly difficult to release a first-person puzzle game where you shoot energy balls out of a specialized gun without the gaming community immediately pointing, yelling "Portal clone!", and moving on. That unavoidable comparison is largely why Bulkhead Interactive and Square Enix’s 2016 sci-fi title, The Turing Test, never quite reached the massive popularity it deserved.
But dismissing this game as a simple imitation is a massive disservice. While the inspiration is obvious, The Turing Test strips away the dark, sarcastic comedy of Valve’s masterpiece and replaces it with a serious, deeply introspective space-opera. It is a game that asks heavy questions about consciousness, morality, and the very nature of human intuition.
Logic vs. Intuition: Puzzles with a Purpose
The game explores the philosophy of Alan Turing's famous benchmark for machine intelligence, and it does something incredibly clever, it aligns the mechanics of its puzzles perfectly with its narrative themes.
In Portal, the world is brilliantly clean and well-defined. You place a box on a button, a door opens, and you walk through. It is strict, undeniable logic. The Turing Test lulls you into this exact same rhythm using an Energy Manipulation Tool to transfer power between circuits. But as the story deepens, the game intentionally breaks its own rules. You will encounter rooms where, if you try to follow strict, machine-like logical steps, the puzzle is completely unsolvable. You have to think laterally, cheat the system, and rely on human intuition to progress. It’s a brilliant way to make you actually feel the difference between how a human mind and an AI process problems.
Deep Space Isolation and "Alien" Vibes
You step into the boots of Ava Turing, an engineer awakened from cryo-sleep to investigate the disappearance of a ground crew on Jupiter's moon, Europa. Guided only by the station's AI, T.O.M., the descent to the planet and the exploration of the abandoned, sterile research base drip with incredible atmosphere.
It gives off distinct, classic Alien vibes. There is a haunting, creeping sense of isolation as you uncover what the crew was actually doing down there. Because it stays incredibly focused on this core mystery, the pacing is fantastic. It is a pure, story-driven single-player experience, no tedious scavenger hunts for hundreds of pointless collectibles, and thankfully, no shoehorned multiplayer modes to dilute the tension. It’s just you, an AI, and the cold reality of deep space.
Pros:
Thematic Brilliance: The way the puzzle design naturally weaves into the philosophical questions about human vs. machine intelligence is masterfully done.
Thick Sci-Fi Atmosphere: The moody, isolating environment of Europa feels genuinely lonely and tense.
Focused Narrative: A tight, gripping story that respects your time without padding the runtime with unnecessary bloat.
Runs Like a Dream: It is incredibly well-optimized, making it a fantastic title to run at high frame rates on a strong PC or lounge with on a Steam Deck.
Cons:
The "Clone" Stigma: It takes a few chapters to shed the feeling that you're just playing a knock-off, which might cause impatient players to bounce off early.
Visual Repetition: Because you are in a research facility, a lot of the puzzle chambers share the same sterile, modular aesthetic, lacking the visual decay or variety of its peers.
Low Replayability: Once you know the twist and the puzzle solutions, there isn't much mechanical reason to return, though the story is worth reflecting on.
Conclusion
The Turing Test is a deeply underrated gem for anyone who values a strong narrative as much as a good brain-teaser. It uses the framework of a puzzle game not just to challenge your reflexes, but to challenge your philosophy. If you love a good, isolated sci-fi mystery and appreciate games that prioritize a cohesive single-player vision, this trip to Europa is absolutely worth your time. Just don't expect the AI to offer you any cake.

Turing Test is about Eva Turing waking from her cryogenic sleep. Her mission is to start when the base on Europa, a moon on Jupiter is completed by her team. T.O.M the project AI and guide wakes her. The base is ready but the team is missing. She shuttle lands on an icy Europa base. What starts as a simple search and rescue mission turns into a horrifying mystery of humans and machines, Control and moral ethics. Of humans controlling machines/AI or vice versa. As reasons of the vanishing of her team starts getting clear to her shock, the question of who is controlling whom and what game is being set up by her employees ISA gets darker.
The story is decent graphics good. BUT the game is very boring. You have a gun but it is an Electro Magnetic Tool EMT gun to pull out or fire energy balls to open or close doors. The missing crew members have changed the base design leaving a series of puzzles that need both human and AI to solve. These are all engineering puzzles where you must use EMT guns, move things around, figure out sequences to open - close doors, use of cranes, magnetic pullers, lifts etc to move past the areas in the base towards the final area where the answers are. Imagine an Alien Isolation game but with no aliens to kill? Chapters 1-4 are boring. From 4 end things get interesting when Eva learns she has AI chips implanted in her allowing control of her actions and she can also enter use mechanical things like robots, drones, security cameras, cranes using that AI. So things get interesting as puzzles get complex and you use vast teleportation in objects to help activate switches. Working parallel merging with robots to unlock puzzles at other ends etc. You use massive destructive guns only thrice. Twice to break cranes, containers to clear your way. Last 3rd use is at game end in the epilogue where you make a moral choice for 1/3 possible endings. All 7 levels have a side quest a side area in each map at halfway point a small phase door in connecting corridor where you solve mechanisms to find the truth of the mystery of what happened to your team. Notes, objects, audio logs etc. The whole base is now a designed puzzle.
Graphics is good. There is a Star Trek, Star Wars ship interior feel but its repetitive same old type rooms ♥♥♥ puzzles one area after another area. They should have throw in some gunfights with aliens. Its a Star Trek like walking puzzle game in end. The length of game does not fully do justice to story as there is nothing different to do thats what makes it boring and unsatisfactory. Still its worth 1 play if one has nothing better to do. The consistent blue, green, red lighting in the whole game rooms induces some motion sickness. It may take you 2 hours to 5-6 hours depending on how much you can move past rooms fast. Best buy cheap at sale.

The Turing Test is a puzzle game that feels somewhat similar to Portal.

The game is set up in rooms, and each room has a different puzzle you must complete, with there being 7 total chapters (each chapter has like 10 rooms). The puzzles were very interesting to play through, and most of them had a good blend of difficulty (difficult enough for me to think, but I never got hardcore stuck on any). There is an overarching storyline that dives into the philosophical nature of the turing test and a degree of morality (esp at the end). If I had one gripe, it would be that I wished the game was longer (I beat it in ~5hrs)

I honestly enjoyed my time playing the Turing Test. If you were a fan of the Portal games, you will probably enjoy this one too.

Clunky controls and light story. And that's about it for the cons.
Phenomenal atmosphere, wonderful puzzles and overall fascinating plot. A breeze to play if in the right mood for solving tests

A very interesting PORTAL-like puzzle game with Sci-Fi and Philosophical tones. Half puzzler, half First Person Explorer.

If you like/liked PORTAL and The Talos Principle (and their sequels), I'd DEFINITELY recommend this!

Temu/Great Value version of Portal/Talos Principle, but i dont mean it in a bad way, if you want more of those games this gets the job done, great graphics and voice acting, it seems the story gets a lot of hate but i found it decent

Kinda short (took me little more than 6h im not good at puzzle games, granted i didnt do any of the Optional puzzles which apparently are much harder) and definetely on the easier side, if you struggled with Portal this should be a cakewalk

Specially on sale this is a no brainer imo

This is the first game I got 100% on achievements, so it's a little sentimental to me.
That said, it is a good puzzle game and I thought it was fun.