Close to the Sun Reviews
So all in all Storm In A Teacup have done a great job with Close To The Sun. Its story driven action, combined with puzzle solving and the unnerving fact that you can’t defend yourself, all gets packaged up into a nice neat bundle of joy to play through. Close To The Sun thoroughly deserves its Thumb Culture Gold Award
I was intrigued about Close to the Sun from the very first time that I saw the trailer and the original concept art. The comparisons with Bioshock, which can never be a bad thing, are many. The ocean setting, the art deco style, the communication via radio and the scientific element of the story. However, this is where the comparisons stop. Close to the Sun is a game that deserves its own identity and will offer a different experience to Bioshock. Read on to find out about my time aboard the Helios.
If you like story-driven suspenseful horror games which aren’t too scary, Close to the Sun is perfect for you. With it’s beautiful Art Deco design, horrific scenes of gore and brutality, incredible inventions from Nikola Tesla, and an engaging storyline, you’ll be hooked from the moment you step aboard the Helios. I found some of the narrative predictable and muddy towards the final chapters, but the overall experience was very enjoyable and entertaining. If you go into the game thinking it’s going to be like Bioshock, you’ll be disappointed, be open-minded and you’ll enjoy it a lot more.
Close to the Sun is just not that great of a game. The low price certainly works in the game's favor, but even then, it is difficult to recommend without considerable hesitation. The setting, the concepts, and the ideas presented are all fantastic, but the actual execution, the simplified gameplay, and the lack of resolution on multiple plot points left me very disappointed.
Close to the Sun is a spectacle piece for the explorative player that is well worth sinking time and money into. Despite the horror label, the game is not so scary that it cannot be enjoyed by everyone. The game may be short with a frustrating conclusion but this should not deter players from picking up this title. From highly detailed environments to smooth gameplay, Close to the Sun is a short, but unique experience that deserves players attention.
Grounded in the limbo between reality and fantasy, Close to the Sun is an intriguing, and at times terrifying, walk through a world where Nikola Tesla’s ideas and nightmares came to life.
Close To The Sun is a walking simulator game with interesting storytelling. The story is interesting but that's all
Review in Turkish | Read full review
Close to the Sun's art direction, themes, and basic ideas are going to draw many in, but once the story gets started and the gameplay fails to advance, they'll be trying to jump overboard.
Close to the Sun is a hugely ambitious title from such a small team. It doesn’t quite stick the landing but it’s a (mostly) great experience and one that sci-fi horror fans will enjoy.
Maybe the most damning thing I can say about Close to the Sun is that the main story it’s so interested in telling—the story that everything else on the Helios funnels you back toward—just isn’t the least bit surprising. All of it borrows pretty heavily from the BioShock playbook, and all of the plot points it trots out have been done better (and far more shockingly) elsewhere. The portrait of Tesla it presents seems conflicted—and I hoped Close to the Sun would attempt to close the distance between the egomania that would prompt a man to build statues of himself and the gentle humanity Tesla shows elsewhere — but the game doesn’t do anything to dig into those contradictions. That’s the consequence of all those chase sequences. Close to the Sun just doesn’t have the time to dig into anything. It’s got somewhere else to be.
"The only problem with the experience, is the performance, a problem I can’t look past, and a problem I hope the developers do acknowledge through an upcoming update, or at least give an explanation as to why their game was limited to a single core on a CPU. If they can fix that, then this game has it all, and it’s 10-hour adventure is – regardless – a quite remarkable one that uses Greek mythos as its foundation."
I think it’s a very bold, brave, and intelligent game that smartly weaves its plot together through a mix of dialogue, environment, and suspense. Storm in a Teacup are one of the most promising and talented new studios out there and while this game isn’t perfect, there’s enough in here to convince me of their vision and ambitions. I cannot wait to see what they do next.
Close to the Sun wants to be Big Important Art, but it tries so hard to be Big Important Art that it undercuts itself.
If you’re looking for a narrative-focused horror game which isn’t ‘too’ scary, Close to the Sun is for you. Visually the game looks beautiful, despite the piles of body parts and blood-soaked walls, with the Helios’ decorations being a brilliant replication of Art Deco interior design with a hint of Steampunk engineering. The story will have you hooked, as you go out of your way to fill in the blanks and find all of the hidden collectables, bringing you to a conclusion which I hope spawns a sequel at some point in the future. Despite the issues, which I mentioned in my review, the overall experience is one which shouldn’t be missed regardless of whatever platform you prefer to play on.
Close to the Sun is certainly an enjoyable journey, one that does include some jump scares and horror moments along the way while exploring what is a bit of a disturbing view on an alternate timeline.
I don’t know how simply I can put this: Close To The Sun is brilliant. I’ve already gone back to play it and I’m still getting caught out by the jump scares and the wrong-turns when being chased. It’s bloody fantastic. The game encompasses all of the best parts of survival horror games, brings to life alternate realities with adaptations to non-fictional characters such as Tesla and his wacky inventions, and really grips you with the storyline. If you haven’t already got hold of it, go and get it. However, I can’t just let the graphical deficiencies slide, so as much as I like the game and I do recommend it, I’ll be giving Close To The Sun a Thumb Culture Silver Award!
For anyone that plays lots of games, Close to the Sun is sadly not going to impress. While the aesthetics, graphical fidelity, sounds, and backstory does have the means to intrigue a lot of people, I feel that the average avid gamer will drop off after the first hour.
Close to the Sun’s level design is broken into chapters with some clever placed collectables enhances the need to explore and the willingness to find out where the story is going. This very nature will ensure that you won’t put this stunning game down, until it’s finished. Just like a good series on Netflix, you will find yourself binge playing, it’s that good. A true work of art!
Leave it to a game focused on Nikola Tesla’s boundless imagination to seldom demonstrate the same kind of inventive spirit.
Conceptually at least, Close To The Sun is actually a really intriguing game. Combining elements of Bioshock, Sherlock Holmes and first person horrors, Close To The Sun attempts to capture the same wonder found in those titles but fails to really capitalize on that as well as it perhaps should. Admittedly, the opening few chapters are pretty good at building up the tension but soon after the game devolves frustratingly into a series of chase sequences and puzzle-platform sections that don’t always work well with the narrative.