VICCP Review

VICCP is a neat idea for a puzzle game…but feels like it never really reaches its potential.

Category: Reviews

Written by: Graham Thomas on July 9, 2019

Genre: Puzzle

Developed by: quasardeep

Published by: quasardeep

Release Date: June 21, 2019

Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux

VICCP basically plops the player down in front of a console.  No introduction, no voiceover, and with barely a title screen, you find yourself immediately faced with a bunch of shiny looking buttons, a telephone, a monitor, and a cup of coffee.  For reasons unknown, you’re in charge.  And after a sip of coffee, it’s time to get started on…whatever the heck it is you’re in charge of doing here.

The whole game takes place here, in front of the console (VICCP stands for Very Important Central Control Panel).  You’ll be pushing buttons, manipulating dials, and bashing clunky old keypads to solve various logic-based, slider, and rotary-style puzzles.  You’ll need to sift through documents and dig in to the console’s computer system to retrieve information to help solve some of these puzzles, and at times you’ll issue commands on the computer system that will initiate events on a display in front of you.  Certain sequences of actions will lead to a kind of ‘ending’, and there are multiple endings that all branch entirely from one another.  The idea with this game is that you play through multiple times, unlocking the different endings by manipulating the console in different ways that lead you down different pathways and puzzle sequences, all independent of each other.

It all looks really cool. Visually, the game has a great retro aesthetic to it.  The console is really nicely designed.  The old school feel of the monochrome monitor and bulky keypad, the cassette tapes you slot in to clunky brackets that make that oh-so-satisfying click, its knobs, dials, and sliders – it all feels really nice and interactive.  I loved digging through green menus on the console’s monitor to find files and images to help solve puzzles.  And the way the gadgets and gizmos reveal themselves through the console is very pleasing.  Panels slide back and compartments pop open to reveal hidden objects and new puzzles to manipulate.

The game is supposed to be in the style of a similar game released in 2015, Please Don’t Touch Anything.  That also saw you plonked in front of a bunch of panels, flicking switches, turning dials, and solving puzzles to find multiple endings.  I would also compare it to The Room games, the puzzle ‘escape room’ series where you unlock the secrets of a mysterious box (for an overview, Cindy favorably reviewed the third installment in the series back when it was released in 2016).  But it’s a comparison that I think highlights the biggest shortcoming of a game like VICCP.  The Room works wonderfully because it’s a single ending that requires you to work on multiple puzzle sequences.  The puzzles are all interlinked.  Items or clues needed to advance in one puzzle will be unlocked while completing another, giving you the satisfying ‘aha’ moment where you finally get what you need to be able to go back and work through that puzzle you got stuck on previously.  Everything is interlinked and interdependent and it’s a master-class in puzzle design.  It all works to give you this overarching feeling that everything you’re doing has a purpose, even if your ultimate goal is essentially just to solve the puzzles.

VICCP’s puzzles are quite well designed, but they’re not interlinked, and the multiple-endings leave you feeling like you’re just solving a bunch of isolated puzzles with no real goal or objective.  You just fiddle with a bunch of knobs and dials, solve some puzzles, and then all of a sudden something happens and you’re done.  In fact, there were times when I wasn’t sure whether what had happened even was an ending.  The game would just abruptly stop, the console resetting itself to the beginning.  It took me a while to figure out that the red lever that pops up every now and then indicates an ending.  The game just doesn’t do a very good job of sign-posting these things, which makes it feel a bit clunky and under-developed at times.

I find the idea of a dynamic digital-esque puzzle machine really appealing and aesthetically I feel like this game nails it.  But it lets itself down with a lack of scope.  If all of the things I’ve written about so far have piqued your interest in this game, then you may find yourself a little bit disappointed with it, too, unfortunately.  Because it’s all a little bit thin.  There’s only a couple of documents to sift through.  Only a few directories to root around in on the computer.  And the ‘endings’ are pretty simple affairs narratively speaking, which means you don’t really get a payoff for what you’re doing.  The whole thing left me feeling like VICCP was a really cool idea that hadn’t been given the time and attention required to make it in to a really cool game.

Grade B-

+ Interesting premise for a game +Console is really well designed +Puzzles generally work – Thin narrative – Needs better sign-posting for achievements/endings          – Limited Scope

Trailer:

System Requirements:

MINIMUM Windows

• CPU 3GHz Duo Core Processor
• 4 GB RAM
• OS Windows 7/8/10 (x64)
• Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 450 or higher with 1GB Memory
• Direct X Version 9.0
• HDD Space 2 GB available space

MINIMUM Mac

• CPU 64-bit processor and operating system
• Mac OS X 10.12+
• Intel Core i5 Processor
• 4 GB RAM
• Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 450 or higher with 1GB Memory
• 2 GB available space