REVIEW: Pneuma: Breath of Life

There is a special place in our hearts here at ICXM for indie developers Deco Digital and their new title; Pneuma: Breath of Life.

Back when we were starting out (as XboxMAD) Joe (Brammer) and his team were kicking into gear with the development of Pneuma, and they were one of the first teams to interview with us and help us get on the road. As a result we’ve kept close track of the game’s development, as well as the team themselves.

It’s been a long time coming, but I’m excited to say that Pneuma: breath of life has proved to be the great esoteric, theological, story-driven puzzle game that Deco have been striving so hard to create.

Going into this game, you have to understand; this isn’t some twitch reaction FPS or cave crawling adventure game. Pneuma is something very different. This is a dialogue-driven, thinking man’s exploration of existence. It is the essence of logic distilled equally between the narrative that permeates the game and the conundrums you are constantly faced with. Sounds crazy, right? Well, yeah, it is. It’s totally distinct from any console game to date, and it works.

The game starts with you coming into existence. You literally come from nothing in the most existential sense of the words. From that moment on, your game and everything you experience is narrated by your character (voiced by the excellent Jay Britton) in an external stream of consciousness. This is equal parts hilarious, witty, thought provoking and baleful.

The narration takes you through your character dealing with his sudden and unexpected genesis. As you walk your surroundings (which form around you as you play in the style of an ancient Greek temple that grows and reacts to you) your character muses on who he is and how he seems able to interact with everything around him. The quick conclusion he reaches is that he is, in fact, a god. From then on he explores what it means to ‘be’ and his place in the universe. As his witty banter continues throughout the game he considers the meaning of life and the concept of free will.

I’m not going to tell you where it goes from there, but its crazy, fun and genuinely interesting. A lot of the points that are explored in the story are genuinely thought provoking, and are a perfect match to the logic problems that you are being faced with. Make sure you keep the sound up and take your time exploring the play area, because you’re gonna want to hear all the dialogue.

As to the game itself, it’s a puzzle game in the most fundamental sense. In fact, in gameplay terms this really takes me back to ‘old-school’ PC brainteaser games like 7th Guest and 11th Hour (yeah, I’m *that* old).
The gameplay consists of a series of environmental puzzles which you take on from a first person perspective. You have to enter each area and work out how your actions affect it and how you can manipulate it to allow you to progress and move on to the next area. There is no HUD, no health bar, and a fantastically minimalistic interface.

Initially the puzzles are as simple as ensuring you are in (or out of) the line of site of various sensors as you move towards the next doors. However they soon become far more complex and have you finding patterns in mosaics, rotating combinations of towers and directing beams of light.

The learning curve is really nicely measured. My experience was that the game offers you steady progress and a nice level of difficulty to keep you thinking. There were a couple of occasions that left me genuinely stumped, but the frustration is counterbalanced by the Eureka moment that comes from finding the solution. This is also where the longevity of the game comes in. You will often spend a significant time in a single room, exploring the situation from all angles and working out from the artefacts available first what the puzzle requires of you and then how to achieve it.

The one downside to the game is one which is unavoidably inherent in all puzzle games of this type: a lack of replayability. The narration is great, and the puzzles are a lot of fun. The problem is, once you work out how to solve a puzzle there is little reason to go back to it. This means that the 8-12 hours gameplay may be all you are going to get out of it (at least til you’ve left it long enough to have forgotten all the solutions!). Of course, your actual playtime is going to be entirely dictated by your abilities with the puzzles. That said, the story and dialogue in the game are of such a quality that it would be a genuine shame to rush through either.

Ultimately, in my opinion at least, any issues with playtime or replay value are answered by the fact that this is an indie title and comes to you for a bargain £15.99/$19.99 (buy it here)

Pneuma: Breath of Life is a great title, which makes you laugh and think. Most of all, it’s a really welcome change of pace from the plethora of shooters and sports sims out there. If your gaming needs include a fast pace and a test of your reactions, Pneuma isn’t going to tick any of your boxes.

However, If you like a game with a cerebral edge and fancy something a bit different then I recommend giving this a go.

^HooksaN (@HooksaN)