You have a couple of different kinds of games. You have your action and gameplay based games. But then you have your game where storytelling takes the foreground. Replica is one of those games. It really makes you feel something when discovering more about the story.
Cellphone based novel
Replica is a visual novel game played with puzzle elements you play within a cellphone. You as the player called Tom, are threatened by the Homeland Security to find out information about the suspect to be able to see your parents again. The game revolves around a mysterious cellphone from a suspected terrorist. The city has been a total mess. There have been terrorist attacks all around the area. There has been a bombing of a bridge with at least 100 death and 300 injures. The suspicion is that these are acts of anti-government organizations.
The owner of the phone frequently has visited locations that are connected to these terrorist activities. Homeland security has introduced a program that hacks personal cell phones and PCs. They are going to use it to inspect suspects of terrorism, to ensure the security.
Collect evidence to prosecute the terrorist. Peer into the private lives of the people that have connections with the suspect. Look through search history, social media, text messages and more to reveal the suspect’s real intentions.
Discover all endings
Each choice you make impacts the story and fate of your character, the suspect, and the city. One playthrough will only be like 15 minutes. So you think the game is pretty short, but the game offers more than 10 different endings depending on your choices. The passwords you obtain don’t change so your playthroughs following your first one will be completed faster.
The game offers a nice reboot function. This makes you go back to before the moment that you made a decision that ends the run, so you can continue your run where you left off. This makes it easier to discover all the endings and go on your quest to find the true ending.
Not developed with consoles in mind
You can tell that Replica was at first design as a mobile game. You move through the game with a cursor that is moved with the left stick. The cursor is locked to a too small grid. This causes the cursor to move to the invisible intersection on the grid without you moving the stick. So don’t worry it’s not your controller that is acting up. Since the gameplay is within a phone in portrait mode, you have massive blank areas around the sides. There is some kind of artwork, but I feel this would work way better on a real cellphone. This isn’t a big deal since after a while you will forget all about it since you’ll be drawn into the story.
Conclusion
For only 5 bucks the game is a fun game to pick-up. It isn’t groundbreaking and won’t give you any replayability value besides trying to get all the different endings. The game definitely makes you think and be engaged in finding out what happened.
