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The Last Survey

The Last Survey

This short story hooks us from the very beginning.

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Why aren't there enough PS5 consoles in stores? Will the problems to get a Switch return when the OLED model debuts? And don't even get us started on the latest graphics cards.

It's a fact we're squeezing the planet dry (droughts are being caused these days by power companies in Spain in order to get more money due to the electricity bill disaster). However, it has rarely been narrated as in The Last Survey, a somewhat-playable short narration created by Nicholas O'Brien, with music by Lewin Kopenhafer, and editing by Essay Games.

The Last Survey
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Released a year ago on itch.io, it's already on the Nintendo Switch's eShop and Steam ready to stir the consciousness among a much wider audience for less than four euros. It's a short trip, a one-sitting read livened up by shaking charcoal-style black and white illustrations and a haunting melody.

It cannot be otherwise when you're being told that the end of the world as we know it is approaching and your character is the only one who knows and admits it. This geologist has had to deliver the news, evidence in hand, to the director of a multinational mining company based in Brazil that, as he knows well in advance, the mining veins are practically exhausted. The impact of this information goes far beyond the business world, because it's not enough to close companies and fire workers —who are already exploited. This report leads to the conclusion that there will be commercial, territorial and political conflicts due to the scarcity of these minerals such as nickel or cobalt, essentials to produce electronic devices.

The Last Survey

The author of this story manages, in record time, to get the player and reader into the situation, creating an empathising bond with the main character and a terrifying feeling for a future which doesn't seem so unreal. It just takes a few minutes to feel the sweat on his hands before entering the office, as empty in the material as in the immaterial. To share his fear of choosing the exact phrases required to leave a minor mark in such a cold and calculating mind of a "superior being" —in power and mental strength.

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These slight choices are the conceived gameplay by O'Brien in The Last Survey. There are seven or eight, no more, if you can reach the end of the story, and that's an important if, because you may not reach the end if you make "wrong" choices. I use quotation marks because I believe everyone should be able to say whatever they like in a situation like this one —regardless of whether your are going to reach the end of the story or whether you might have to start over.

The Last Survey

It should not be interpreted as an adventure to find your own ending as they try to sell it, since taking one path or another just deviates a couple of paragraphs from the text, and then converges again in a calm point, which is probably very descriptive, of the essay. Or rather, it actually leads to an abrupt ending. But there are no real paths.

It's a very interesting short story, written with a fine pen —in refined English which demands a high level of understanding in the language, or several uses of a dictionary for those of you non-native English speakers—, to spend some time in front of the screen realising the world is being fucked up. Oh, and how you manage the pressure of telling the truth or saving your own arse. Because someone has to choose it. In The Last Survey it's just you. Or not.

The Last Survey
08 Gamereactor UK
8 / 10
+
Short narration with such a nice tempo. A must-address topic in real life. Easy to empathize with the main character. Drawings and music really fit very well.
-
Decisions hardly alter the content. The multiple-ending thing is an euphemism.
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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