D-topia (XS) - Review

by Lee Mehr , posted 2 days ago / 967 Views

The letter 'D' in D-topia is deliberately playing with its two most closely associated words. Not to be confused with dys-topia, for starters; no, life within this far-future village is rather tranquil and outwardly decent. Given the circumstances of being lorded by an AI tasked with crafting a u-topia for humans, getting to this point required ages of iteration. Of course, any sci-fi fan would ask the pertinent question: "utopia according to who?" To what degree has individuality and freedom been stripped away to get here, and what are the consequences should one not conform to this… soft technocracy? Marumittu Games explore those quandaries (and more) with an intriguing insight – and also puzzles!

Step into the synthetic shell of Shiro, D-topia's newest Facilitator: a rare & specialized occupation for androids meant to handle problems with this complex and its residents. The mornings are all about preparing for the day – like a normal human would – and working at the factory requiring you to complete logic puzzles seemingly plucked from The Witness; granted, Johnathan Blow didn't invent line mazes, but its clean interfaces feel so reminiscent. Even its more daunting conundrums feel therapeutic, especially when complimented by Kenchiro Saigo's lo-fi melodies. After that, afternoons involve exploring its hubs – town square, loading docks, etc. – and handling concerns foisted upon him by distressed NPCs.

Pre-work morning routines can also be disrupted by side character dilemmas and small mechanical nuisances, but they're served more as a primer for afternoon affairs. Whether preceding or following Shiro's puzzle tasks, handling these specific problems involves going to 'block side': the true reality of D-topia's mechanical inner workings. The antiseptic, brightly-lit hallways filled with white-shelled service droids are replaced with hard surfaces, exposed wires, and uglier true forms of those robots overlayed with a bluescale visual filter. Through this lens, you're able to spot and address visual glitches within the environment and residents; sometimes said issues are caused by mice (which can only be seen through block side) while others can be connected with faulty brain chips.

These micro-quests can be ameliorated by solving simple logic puzzles, but some of them don't stop there. Specific ones are connected to personal dilemmas that require thinking through an ethical decision. In keeping with his Facilitator role, Shiro's synthetic mind palace is a flowchart in which he internally addresses the central problem, breaks down subsequent contentions at play, and arrives at a conclusion. Just a few extra steps above a good/bad/neutral choice system, but it congeals with the game's broader themes and visual design.

Marumittu's strengths stem from learning more about this alien world through environmental and mechanical discoveries. Shiro's first impasse is dealing with a "defective" resident on the verge of getting his third strike (funny how baseball rules still pop up in the distant future). Given the AI's mindset about maintaining order, should we enable a higher authority to send him to a lesser -topia, or perhaps lie for him and hope his aggressive outbursts will subside? The more dilemmas you face, along with the strange dual worlds, the more you understand just how different these people are. The block side in particular is a funny one because that angular world is technically the real one while its Star Trek/Apple aesthetic crossover is a curated fiction.

It's a sci-fi story that fuses the alien with the familiar. Modern societies run sharply athwart genetically pairing potential soulmates like in D-topia, but technologies like CRISPR show we're less averse to tinkering with reproduction. All of this is presented in clean, brightly lit areas, and with Chibi-esque character models, as a means of papering over the implications. The pitfalls of broad-based solutions for such a variegated set of individual personalities are uncomfortable to consider without veering towards bloody ends like HAL 9000. Through meticulous iteration, this community has grown to accept certain limits, and even suspicious inequalities like privileged access to certain locations; even with zettabytes of processing power, this computer overlord can't avoid a society of haves & have-nots.

There's no fixation on mind-blowing reveals either. Whether your Facilitator's dialogue choices commend or admonish other residents, he stolidly does so – in keeping with his programming. A more modest, pared-back approach marries with the subtly-repressive doldrums of his daily work life. By its very nature, the cycle itself can't help but tempt anyone into interrogating a greater purpose. Do brainteasers like line mazes, sequential number pathways, & Minesweeper-like node selections solve some greater mystery for this supercomputer? Is the Facilitator somehow fueling this place through work? What's being communicated with optional overtime challenges?

Unfortunately, most of said answers are too flimsy for their own good. In fact, there's more… "ludonarrative harmony" (pardon the pretension) in its most simplistic mini-puzzles scattered about the world than in everyday work; granted, those examples – mostly during overtime – are more mentally taxing and engaging, but their broader point isn't properly explained. It's the means to engaging in empty purchases for your residence, or perhaps wasting on snacks and energy drinks. One could argue a point's nestled within Shiro's consumerist opportunities, but it's not as visually creative nor thematically consistent as something like Mosiac. It's missing real bite.

Those kid gloves transfer over to Shiro's ethical dilemmas with important NPCs too. Like mollifying the aforementioned third-strike resident, most of these situations are about whether or not to contort the rules for individual happiness over the collective. Their empathetic personal tales tap into the difficulties of a universal rule set dictated by reams of computer code. The problem is virtually every one of these issues can arrive at a cozy solution. Good, neutral, and bad ending splits only work if each one comes with a set of definable & challenging drawbacks.

Where D-topia risks becoming a Zzzzz-topia is through structure instead of mechanics. On the surface, there is something to its peculiar fusion of sterile futurism, Chibi-like character models, logic puzzles, and character dilemmas that remains interesting enough. The fractures form once the routine is understood. There's intention behind its tedium, but the argument loses traction after running – yet again – to the same terminal to go into the block side and scour the same place you just walked to in order to ensure you didn't miss anything. Certain brainteasers, mostly Shiro's overtime examples, have solid A-ha! moments, but they serve more as speedbumps to its broader narrative goals. For an AI designated with a utopian vision for humanity, you'd think it would strive higher.

Contractor by trade and writer by hobby, Lee's obnoxious criticisms have found a way to be featured across several gaming sites: N4G, VGChartz, Gaming Nexus, DarkStation, TechRaptor, and Cubed3! He started gaming in the mid-90s and has had the privilege in playing many games across a plethora of platforms. Reader warning: each click given to his articles only helps to inflate his Texas-sized ego. Proceed with caution.