This review focuses specifically on chapter 2 of AR-K; any commentary on chapter 1 is for the context of chapter 2. The culmination of all 4 chapters together may, for better or worse, be better or worse than chapter 2.
Chapter 2 of AR-K resumes the morning after the end of chapter 1. Alicia, AR-K’s snarky heroine, wakes up in bed after another night of passion with the mystery man from chapter 1, now known to both the player and Alicia. Her soberness imbues her with a more fervid sense of determination than the vague motivations of chapter 1: investigate the sphere, and discover whose carnal delights she had enjoyed; while also composing an essay for her class.
She must still compose an essay in chapter 2, but the focus is much more squarely on the mysteries of the sphere, and the (possibly) dubious reality of the utopian setting (AR-K is ostensibly an artificial recreation of the world, floating in space: thus ark) which adds a layer of tension that was sorely lacking in chapter 1—without betraying the promiscuous campus antics which formed some of the more charming facets of chapter 1.
Specifically to offset Alicia’s brashness.
Alicia manages to successfully straddle the line—most of the time—between being a relatively unique heroine by simply combining cliché adventure game smarm with Hollywood campus candour, insufferable confidence and inconsiderate hedonism; or an obnoxious Mary Sue slut (it’s a matter of perspective). But most of the other characters are bogged down in the awkward script; delivering their incongruous lines with an overcompensating enthusiasm.
An overabundance of swear words mars the tone of chapter 2; a blemish born not of prudishness—but of narrative construction. Over the course of one night (between chapter 1 and 2), characters appear to have grown inexplicably, and also irrelevantly, vulgar vocabularies which, when combined with the second-hand dialogue (Spanish to English), result in lines but impossible to deliver attractively. Which makes Ash Sroka’s performance as Alicia all the more impressive.
The addition of a fourth wall-breaking narrator does not successfully crystallise these fragmented performances but, conversely, is another incongruous inconsistency in the vocal collage.
Claudia Black, in the tradition of Ellen Paige with The Last of Us, offered her likeness but not her voice to AR-K.
The lip synching in cutscenes also suffers from the translation, with no synchronisation between the English dub and the mouths of the characters; a problem easy to solve even on a small budget. There’s no need to re-animate: simply write and direct the translated dialogue to synchronise with the movements of the characters’ mouths. While this technique can result in an awkward syntax; the syntax is, already, awkward.
However, there is something genuinely charming about the chunky, archaic quality of the visual aesthetic. Alicia moonwalks through the environments, and the pervasive ugliness and awkwardness pleasantly recalls the adventure games of old from an era when two-dimensional pixel paintings were replaced with the first innocent forays into three-dimensional worlds where chunky and three-dimensional characters were then placed in fuzzy, pre-rendered backgrounds. It’s a more original indie aesthetic reduction: an easier way to render the world; but without the pretensions of pixel art or more than merely aesthetic minimalism.
Is it a nerd or a hipster?
Unfortunately the interface is no less awkward in chapter 2. There is a genuine danger of losing track of an item’s purpose due to the often indistinct illustrations, and Alicia will only comment on some items—a simple, obvious solution which, if applied to all items, would have provided the player with a relatively unobtrusive reminder of their current goals in relation to an item with which they may have had almost no interaction after initially finding it almost an hour ago.
This lack of direction is even more pronounced in the construction, composition, and order of the puzzles: Alicia declares several vague goals at the outset—some of which can be solved in the order of the player’s own choosing—but the abstruse nature of the solutions to some of the puzzles, and the inconsistencies in composition (now and then it is possible to accrue items before there is conscious reason for doing so; but other times, even if their future use is readily apparent, Alicia herself must be cognizant of their purpose), result in a tepid fluency—or lack thereof.
The first line of dialogue was donated by Jerry Seinfeld.
Even more egregious are the glitches that directly affect the puzzles. Beyond the frustrating, but forgivable, kinks such as the intermittent removal of the ability to click on objects or characters, whole swathes of dialogue, items, and questions (which must be awkwardly selected from Alicia’s PDA, then dragged onto the character who the player wishes to ask—rather than conveniently selected from a transient tree of dialogue) disappear at the whim of the code.
And the greedy code thus devoured an entire puzzle: the items and questions required to solve it never became available to me but, due to the non-linear nature of the puzzle composition, I blundered my way through the game to a point where it was impossible to solve the puzzle and: voila! the item that the solution to the puzzle produced was magically rendered in my inventory. And, soon after, I was left completely directionless when Alicia’s instructive dialogue failed to trigger.
But chapter 1 at the time of release also suffered from similar, more egregious and damning glitches than the merely awkward ones which it still suffers from; so, in the future, these issues may also be resolved in chapter 2. Even if they are, there are still the awkward construction of puzzles, the awkward translation, and the awkward performances to endure. Nevertheless, there is a certain charm to this awkwardness: it is a pity that it can only be wholly enjoyed, here, in the visual aesthetic.
