There’s a small file on my desktop and in it is the list of all the games I intend to review. It’s also a file of missed opportunities, listing off the games I thought would be worth a look in but never got a chance to play. Many of the games have been in there for quite some time, long enough that I often forget what made me put them there in the first place. ADR1FT is one of those games and, whilst you can probably guess why I put it down, I certainly don’t remember it being billed as a walking simulator in space. Regardless ADR1FT is best described as the unofficial game of the movie Gravity, even if it was conceived long before the movie’s release.
You awake in your spacesuit with destruction all about you. Something’s happen, something bad and your spacesuit is quickly losing oxygen. Worse still your suit’s propulsion system is broken, forcing you to use the very oxygen that’s keeping you alive to move around. There’s only one path to safety and that’s to revive the crippled station to the point of being able to launch one of the escape pods. To do so however you will have to traverse the wreckage of your once mighty craft and find out just what caused this catastrophe.
ADR1FT has a beautiful, futuristic aesthetic to it. The undamaged parts of the space station are almost exactly as you’d expect them to be: clinically clean and densely packed together to make the most of the limited space. It’s interesting then to contrast them against the utter destruction that abounds outside with pieces of space debris flying around everywhere. This is most certainly done as an aide to the overall plot, giving you a glimpse into the past which has now been shattered. Of course the best visuals come when you take yourself far away from the station and take in the glorious vista below. That might just be the space nerd in me though.
ADR1FT is, well, I guess you’d call it a space-walking simulator since you don’t do any actual walking in it. Your job is to repair the space station’s various subsystems in order to activate the escape pod that can take you back down to earth. To do this you’ll have to repair at least 3 critical subsystems, all of which require the same routine of activating the mainframe, manufacturing a new core and installing said core into the mainframe terminal. The challenges you’ll face between each of those will be different, depending on what arm it was (organics, navigation, power, communication) but it will all come down to the same mechanic: trying not to bump into anything and not running out of oxygen.
Navigating the environment is more challenging than you’d think it would be, mostly because it seems like your spacesuit is made out of paper. Any slight bump is enough to send cracks across your screen and turn the UI into a wobbly mess, making the already taxing task just that much more different. To the developer’s credit though this does work as a good motivator to not hit anything and you’ll likely improve rapidly. The movement mechanics are mostly accurate when it comes to movement in space however there are some limitations which prevent you from speeding through everything. For long time walking simulator players this probably won’t come as much of a surprise as it’s par for the course in this genre.
That slow speed however does make it a rather tedious affair at times, especially when you get turned around or misjudge where you’re supposed to go next. Done correctly I’m sure the game could be completed in as little as 2 hours however it’s quite likely you’ll get lost enough that that time is doubled. This would be ok if exploration was rewarded aptly but in ADR1FT it unfortunately isn’t. Sure you might uncover an audio log here or another collectible there but it’s not enough to drive you to do it more. It’s a shame because the voice acting and writing are quite well done, there’s just not enough of it to make me seek it.
As I mentioned before the main plot of ADR1FT is driven through various pieces of dialogue drip fed to you through audio logs and walls of text hidden throughout the environment. There’s enough to get a sense of what could have led to what happened on the space station but some of the larger questions are left unanswered. It’s a shame as there’s a lot of potential avenues left unexplored, some of which could have given the story a lot more depth and interest. Indeed it feels like ADR1FT falls into the same trap that many similar games have done in the past: letting the game mechanics get in the way of telling the story. If more of the main story was fed through more accessible means I’m sure I’d be singing a different tune.
ADR1FT is a gorgeous space-walking simulator but little beyond that. The infinite expanse of space is expertly contrasted against the almost claustrophobic interior of the space station, giving you a sense of what came before and where you must go. The space walking is done well, with the expected kinds of limitations put in place for this genre. Unfortunately this slow movement hides much of the game’s dialogue which hampers its impact significantly. Overall I feel that ADR1FT is a well crafted game, and one worth playing just for the glorious views it provides, but unfortunately doesn’t deliver much more beyond that.
Rating: 7.5/10
ADR1FT is available on PC right now for $19.99. Total play time was approximately 4 hours with 45% of the achievements unlocked.