All the Delicate Duplicates
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for All the Delicate Duplicates
Stunning and dramatic. You won't be able to look away as this story unfolds around you.
All The Delicate Duplicates' moments of greatness – often coming from its experimental nature – are too few and far between stages of gratuitous reading and derivative searching. The final experience, marred by playing it just too safe, comes off feeling needlessly short and forgetful.
Do not be fooled by this one. All the Delicate Duplicates merely attempts to disguise a run-of-the-mill storyline by wrapping it up in pretty a first-person exploration dressing that has clearly been designed for future VR support. Sadly, the lack of interaction with the actual surroundings hurts it badly, luring players in with the promise of more to come, only to end succinctly without any effort required on the player's part, and then expecting them to do lots of background reading to get the full picture. On paper, the initial concept may have seemed like an intriguing new way to deliver a story. In reality, though, it proves to be an overly short and mundane chore of an experience that misses so many opportunities to be so much more than it actually is. An experience it may be, but it is an empty and lacklustre one, overall.
All the Delicate Duplicates shows remarkable integrity to its ambivalent tone and psychological themes, but it’s often the same integrity that renders its puzzle-solving mundane. Fans of resolution will likely find the ending underwhelming, but in terms of original world-building and character development, it’s an appreciable two-hour wander.
For the time that I spent it with, All The Delicate Duplicates really sucked me into its world, as I scrambled to understand the meaning behind the strange images I was seeing and the almost ominous mood I was experiencing. It’s a unique experience and one I can definitely recommend to anyone looking for something a bit more out of the ordinary.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8GJiJiAcupg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> A fantastic, mind-bending, transmedia tale of time-travel and family, All The Delicate Duplicates is a short but thought-provoking experience that's as engrossing as it is complex.
"That All the Delicate Duplicates is an interesting game, I cannot deny. However, boldness can only carry a game so far and I feel like this one partially fails to follow through. That its story requires several layers of hermeneutics in order to understand and piece together does it no services. One needs to understand some very basic quantum physics concepts, have the patience to wade through plain text back (and forth) stories, the will to play through the story several times and then try to piece everything together. On the other hand, All the Delicate Duplicates is very forthright with its experimental nature and I can’t deny that I found it at least conceptually intriguing at times. That being said, I think I’d recommend it, but not without a caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware."
