After watching a slow-moving office suspense thriller earlier this 12 months, I’ve been searching for that feeling of dread and company worry in nearly each type of media. Whereas it isn’t the surrealist horror I used to be anticipating, Flat Eye lastly gave me that feeling again. It takes the downfalls of expertise on humanity and our need to advance and creates a pseudo-mundane administration sim.
So you’re employed for Eyelife and should handle its Flat Eye Station. You management and order across the clerk of your rent to maintain the gasoline station operating easily. However from the “tutorial” display, which performed extra as a sinister corp worker introduction, it’s clear being a gasoline station supervisor isn’t all that job requires.
All in a day’s work
Flat Eye has a Sims-like gameplay move. You click on on objects or folks and select from a small menu of actions. As your clerk strikes across the station engaging in these duties, a move bar seems on the backside of the UI to maintain observe of what they should do.
As a supervisor, you don’t simply order the station clerk round. Their success is your success. There’s even a compulsory “luck system” that units very real looking however hard-to-attain objectives for every day. You possibly can even achieve tech factors that let you purchase extra modules, which enhance your station. As you achieve the belief of EyeLife’s AI, you unlock the potential for extra modules. Failing doesn’t really feel like an possibility regardless of the place your morality could lie.
Frankly, Flat Eye is fairly simplistic by way of the precise administration gameplay. It doesn’t go as deep into store and buyer repairs as different video games do. You do nonetheless handle station modules and an influence/useful resource grid, however that’s all simple to navigate. With lots of the give attention to the narrative, the gameplay, even when hectic, doesn’t really feel too full or convoluted. You possibly can simply preserve a store and decide up the bits of narrative that come all through the day. So far as the story of the sport goes, it’s advised in a number of kinds.
Maintain your eyes open
You might have a desktop the place you possibly can learn transcripts, chat with different managers or supervisors, and run your station from a extra hands-off method (all whereas watching your station clerk by means of a hidden digicam). By all of those communications, it turns into clear that regardless of Eyelife’s employee-first angle, the primary aim of the corporate is to personal and management. Early on, you get a message from the CEO about open communication and the way nice the corporate is just for the dialog to finish with a notification that “ALL INCOMING MESSAGES BLOCKED BY USER.”
Conversations with different managers really feel equally nefarious. I loved the method of slowly studying extra concerning the firm and my function in it, so I received’t say way more. However your function within the sport is that of somebody who exerts the identical oppression that’s positioned on you. Within the chain of command, you fall within the center and should resolve how far you need to go in your managerial duties.
Probably the most attention-grabbing facet of Flat Eye’s story-telling comes from the premium prospects. They’re NPCs which have their very own lives, personalities, backstories, and opinions on the best way humanity is utilizing expertise. Some premium prospects appear fairly innocuous, whereas others are decided to get their level throughout. As you add extra modules to the station, premium prospects will are available to touch upon them and the encompassing world. Speaking with them may have a number of outcomes primarily based on how you’ve gotten your clerk work together with them. An early encounter got here after I put in a rest room in my station that collected bio-data from prospects. That introduced out a buyer who actually challenged my customer support (and by default me and the corporate AI) on the state of the world and the dearth of autonomy and information we actually have.
Prospects first
Flat Eye could also be a sport about sinister expertise, however its builders nonetheless respect the folks taking part in the sport. Naturally, a sport like that is going to try to method severe subjects associated to human autonomy, worry, ache, and dying. Together with a warning on the Flat Eye’s Steam web page, a fairly detailed content material warning system is included within the sport.
You possibly can customise what number of warnings you need to get for particular triggers. I performed with all content material warnings enabled, and with none to offer a gauge of how accountable the sport is when dealing with triggers. I clearly can’t say how anybody aside from me will reply, however the warning system is nice. There’s a really clear warning about what the content material will comprise and offers you the selection to see it or skip it. You even have the prospect to skip content material whereas in it. It’s within the particulars, actually.
Speculative fiction, even when barely terrifying, is enjoyable. Sadly, oftentimes when it’s technology-based it veers into unrealistic soapboxing. Discussions on how harmful expertise could be have been occurring for years at this level they usually really feel cartoonish in the best way they attempt to create this worry of the unknown future. Flat Eye specializing in expertise at a company degree is what makes it really feel grounded and recent.
Regardless of a few of the extremes the sport goes to, lots of the big-picture stuff feels near dwelling. Within the eyes of a mega-rich CEO, we’re all the identical, and we’re all disposable. As a substitute of feeling like there was a lesson at each flip, Flat Eye portrays a number of sides of the identical dystopian cube.
