One smart thing SIMULACRA does is with its sound. You can ‘match’ Anna with new dates on the in-game app and some of the conversations you’ll have are just like those you’ll have seen plastered all over Twitter. The game also has some pretty smart social commentary on dating apps too. The ending will be divisive – that’s all I’ll say. Without spoiling it, SIMULACRA takes some very peculiar twists and turns that I’m not sure you’ll ever see coming, even though they’re telegraphed from very early on. Complete with delayed replies, typo’s and dodgy grammar, these conversations feel very real and help build a lot of immersion in this mystery. These conversations, entirely via text (because calls can’t be completed thanks to your broken handset) feel truly realistic. The plot to SIMULACRA has you interact with a number of other characters from Anna’s Ex, her friend and a guy she met on a dating app. Some of her images are also broken, here you have to choose from a number of layered versions of the corrupted image in order to complete them, like a jigsaw that has to be done in a certain order.
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There’s capital letters and full stops to help you with the start and the end but you’ll often have to read the context of the conversation to figure out the rest. Some text messages are broken and in order to fix them, you have to piece them back together in the right order from a selection of words. On top of the phone based mysteries, there’s ‘malfunctions’ to deal with.
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Need a pin code to get into Anna’s emails? Maybe there’s something in her phone that could give you the answer.
SIMULACRA plays on the players existing knowledge of mobile phones to make this into an ever developing puzzle. What has happened to Anna? Why doesn’t she want to be found? Jabbr is the in-game version of Twitter and even this has Bob Ross meme’s.Īnna’s phone, her messages, pictures, video blogs, social media posts all give you a glimpse into her life and you have to use these, in conjunction with conversations via text and messaging apps with supporting characters, to discover her fate. The phone then reboots and the mystery begins. It’s of a woman, Anna, and she’s in some kind of trouble but she pleads with you “don’t try and find me”. You’ve somehow come in to the possession of a mobile phone and as you try to unlock it, it becomes immediately apparent that there’s something off with this handset and you’re treated to a truly chilling video. SIMULACRA is a “found phone” game which has you play as…well…yourself. Don’t get me wrong, the game is still enjoyable but without the tactility of having it in your hand and having it look like identical to a phone UI, it’s one extra interface removed from my original experience with it. Unfortunately, some of that charm is lost in the port to consoles. In my 2017 review I said “ There’s a lot of thought provoking points packed into this game, all of which are uncomfortably realistic, which combined with its Black Mirror-esque supernatural plot devices makes for an enjoyable time killer” and that’s still true. It was so good, it managed to convince a bunch of strangers that I was a thief trying to bust my way into someone’s phone.
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It perfectly replicated the feel of using a phone, right down to the Android button placement to go home or return. That was one of the main selling points for SIMULACRA for me. I finally managed to defuse the situation and avoid a public lynching by showing them the game and my actual phone screen once it was shut. I explained, which was no easy feat given that “I’m playing a game about trying to solve a mystery by nosing around someone’s phone” sounds like a terrible excuse a thief would make up. I’d nonchalantly been trying to guess a pin on this game in plain view of everyone around me and to them, I was trying to break into some woman’s phone.
Then it clicked – I’m playing a game that replicates a phone’s user interface so well that to them, it looked as though I was trying to break into someone else’s phone. This is when I realised the people either side of me and from across the aisle were eyeing me up suspiciously. Before I could do so, she nudged me again and said “I don’t think that’s your phone”. I said “Yeah” a little confused by her question and went to put my headphones back in.
It was when I was playing it on the tube that it happened – the woman next to me nudged me in the side and asked me to remove my headphones, so I did. When I wasn’t at the expo, I was playing SIMULACRA. I stumbled over SIMULACRA on the Play store and it immediately sucked me in. I was there alone for a few days and had forgotten my PSVita, so I went on the hunt for something to play on my mobile. I first played SIMULACRA in 2017 while I was visiting a game expo in London.
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