Virginia Reviews
Players are offered no real choices within this tersely edited walking simulator, and yet the contemplative nature of the game keeps things feeling unusually satisfying. That’s because you’re given the imaginative freedom to engage with what they’re seeing, more so than in Dear Esther, such that the game feels like an interactive studio tour through a detective’s dreams.
It is easy to come away from Virginia inspired and reeling from the vision that the team at Variable state have conjured; it is impossible to come away unchanged.
I wanted to enjoy Virginia, but the nonsense ending left me annoyed and puzzled as to its meaning. Even playing a second time, I still am not sure what really happened. Some aspects I understand, such as a scenario in which the player character ascends to her bosses rank and basically becomes him down to both the smoking and tossing a file to the person at your desk. I had someone else play for any insight, but the continual edits and metaphysics left them confused as well. There may be something there for others, but for me it was simply a good mystery gone wrong, and not one I enjoyed upon completion.
Virginia is astounding in many ways. The way it conveys its meaning through visuals, character tics, a few hundred written words and one incredible score without uttering a single line of dialogue is remarkable. Confident and measured use of editing lends a sense of style, but Variable State's swagger turns to over-confidence in the final stretch and leaves Virginia on a befuddling rather than satisfying note.
Virginia achieves a level of complex and thrilling storytelling that is difficult to achieve without any words.
What an incredible year: after Inside, here's another software taht will influence and change the way we'll experience a story. Virginia is not a good game. Neither a good movie. It is something different: something new.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Like all of the best first-person adventure games, or "walking sims", Virginia works better than its movie inspirations because of the inherent interactivity that comes with telling a story in this medium. It goes all in on delivering a surreal, Lynchian narrative and hits that nail of unreality on the head, all the way down to leaving you wondering what exactly you just witnessed.
Virginia takes the adventure game to new places, and while not everyone might want to join in on the trip, those that do will be rewarded with a thoroughly mesmerising experience that stays with you long after the credits roll
It's rare for a game to make me swing back and forth a full 5 points on the score, but Virginia managed exactly that, and that's probably a sign of exactly how divisive this short piece of interactive story-telling is going to be. Let's settle around the middle.
While its basic mechanics and emphasis on story over gameplay won’t be for everyone, it’s a unique ride that mature and intelligent gamers should take, especially if they happen to be a fan of The X-Files or Twin Peaks.
Variable State's Virginia is by and large an unsuccessful attempt to make something interesting. An absolutely incredible soundtrack and great environmental art fail to lift the game from a bog of issues. There are some severe technical issues here, but real criticism should be pointed in the direction of the oftentimes incomprehensible narrative, which needed to be much stronger given the general lack of interactivity elsewhere.
Variable State’s title offers a different way of storytelling, but relies heavily on unrelatable and abstract imagery
It’s a game to savour and talk about for years to come, one that left me, just like the inhabitants of Kingdom, Virginia, speechless.
If you’re a little bit curious, or if you enjoyed any of the games with which it shares its DNA, Virginia may be one of the oddest and most fascinating things you’ve played in a long, long time. Vivid Virginia is a hell of a lot more than plain old “walking.”
With Virginia, Variable State has created a grounded piece of interactive narrative, free of the waffling conceit of the genre’s worst offenders, but not quite evocative enough to be a true classic.
As a whole Virginia is wonderfully cinematic, and a fantastic story to inhabit as it unfolds.
There are very few games as emotionally affecting as this. The story is thrilling, powerful and thought-provoking, and the music sends chills straight through your soul.
Virignia is an experimental title that blends cinema and videogame in an unique mixture. The story is rich in mistery and requires a lot of ability in reading between the lines but the experience is worth the challenge.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Virginia is an experience able to catch the player's attention thanks to its thriller style and its narrative resources. A good videogame with an outstanding OST recorded by the Prage Philarmonic Orchestra. One of the best indie projects on its genre.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
A mixture of quiet, reserved instruments along with dramatic strings and percussion give every moment of Virginia some levity, its change in tone, timbre, and style indicative of the weight of each scene in the game. When mixed with the camera’s specific framing the low-res polygonal visual design and clear progression delineation, Virginia is a marvel of sight and sound.