It seems like with every generation of media, there’s always the promise of the ultimate choose your own adventure game. We’ve seen it in all types of media from DVD’s to modern day video games. Some video games will come with different endings based on your choices made during gameplay like Mass Effect, but the core gameplay isn’t about decision making as much as it’s a minor facet of the game. Other games that utilize features like this, branch off into completely different timelines, unlocking new items or changing the course of another character’s story. Virtual Reality, still in its infancy, is the perfect medium for CYOA games. Signal Space Lab has launched Human Within, a game that uses several facets of interactive storytelling to engage the player and manifest different experiences.
In Human Within you follow the story of two sisters, Linh and Nylah. They are developing a way to enhance the human brain with technology. Linh, while testing out the technology, put herself in some type of a digital coma. Nylah finds herself locked in a room with a comatose Linh, wondering what their corrupt investor has planned for them. Throughout the game you actually play Linh’s subconscious, which is stuck in the digital world. As Linh, you will assist Nylah by hacking cameras and electronics to help escape their captor.
Human Within has 360 degree film sequences, VR puzzles, interactive Point Clouds and 3D VR environment sequences. As Linh, you help Nylah navigate through puzzles and full 3D rendered VR scenes. You’ll hack databases and cameras all throughout the city to get the clues you need to get through the game.
The characters and story were very interesting and kept me engaged enough to keep going. The puzzle sequences were fun. You are put in a small virtual space and given digital blocks which must be put together correctly to move on to the next sequence in the game. I could do this all day and they should really think about making a separate VR puzzle game! Since this is more like an interactive VR movie, you don’t get many chances to do the puzzles throughout the game, but they do get harder and very addictive. The story is broken down into chapters and follows the same beats throughout until you get to the ending, which seemed kind of abrupt. Knowing there are like 5 different endings and they want you to play the game multiple times to see the endings, I understood what they were trying to do.
Human Within is a great start to something that could be incredible. I know it took Signal Space Labs several years to achieve this game. There’s so much untapped potential that I believe this genre can be expanded to offer bigger budgets, more special f/x and longer storylines.
Human Within is available on the Meta store for $19.99.
