It is born from a one man (for now) team's nostalgia for 80s and 90s vibes - fashion, color themes, hairstyles, and the objects we have lost to time such as tape cassette players, vintage computers, slide projectors. And of course the mythical Sierra and Lucas Arts adventure games.
The game is heavily inspired by The Dig, Loom, Zak McKracken, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, King's Quest, Space Quest, Codename: Iceman, Leisure Suit Larry etc.
You probably want to play with both the CRT effect and VHS color bleed just like on a C64 on your mom's TV. But, they can be disabled as well. If you click on the screenshots on the right, the reflective screen bezel you see is actually emulated too (courtesy of ArcCabView and Reshade).
** Reshade is windows only so if you have Mac/Linux it is recommended to play using emulation or you lose bezel and the color bleed which are a nice touch IMO
THEMES
The themes are sci-fi, psychology, government conspiracy and space-dominatrix, in roughly equal parts, with a heavy emphasis on narrative and story telling.
SCI-FI
Angelgaze explores the possible overlap of existence, consciouness and mathematics from an informed scientific and philosophical perspective. It deals with topics such as the mathematical universe, consciousness being intricately linked to physics, and more, in a way that Max Tegmark, Penrose and Hameroff, and David Chalmers would not find too objectionable.
PSYCHOLOGY
Departing from the humorous and light hearted streak of a lot of point and click aventures, Angelgaze develops intriguing characters with an emphasis on personality types, political and institutional biases, sociological context and jungian shadow.
The protagonist is Kian, a young ENTP-ish intel operative who is also an amateur novelist. He is hired because of his ability to decipher people and handle sensitive situations.
He must safeguard Joanna, a nerdy INFP girl who is more than she appears, as they travel in a way that no one has ever imagined possible. No one except for Dr Crowe, a mysterious INTJ female genius scientist.
Oh, and many of the donors are rich evangelicals that believe the project is a fulfillment of prophecy.
But there isn't much time left, and Kian will be put to the test when his own weaknesses are confronted. Furthermore, can humans even deal with such power? Or are their minds too feeble?
CONSPIRACY
Everything your government told you through its main stream media mouthpieces is a lie. Why did they go to such lengths to conceal what's really going on? Why was the Apollo program halted? Why is it raining so much lately? Why is there a 100 mile no fly zone over a deserted former party town? And why did the Department of Defense and NASA decide to hollow out the interior of a mountain? It can't be dream research - you don't need to be under two miles of rock for that. Don't drink the kool-aid... do your own research folks. Or... just play as Kian as he is brought into the inner echelons, and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
SPACE DOMINATRIX
Well, more like dominatrices, a whole "fascist empire" of them. The inspiration comes from space amazon warriors in vintage comics, the episode "I am woman, hear me roar" in S1E6 of the 1987 series "Otherworld", evil Diana from "V", the 1983 the tv series, and the 1985 movie Lifeforce about a sexy vampire invasion, just to name a few.
However note that the demo does not include this aspect because it comes later in the story.
SPERGATRON 3000
Angelgaze is extremely brainy for a point-and-click adventure. The narrative is deep and complex, at least by adventure game standards. To the inventory puzzles characteristic of the genre, it adds a "thinking" type of puzzle based on combining facts, drawing conclusions and revising those conclusions based on new evidence, which then enables the character to think of new actions to undertake to move forward.
In Angelgaze, understanding is the real adventure.
If you are tired of the usual tropes and want something seriously new and unusual, or if you just want the old tropes back as we used to have... this game is for you.
