Cradle Review

Yet once the story begins in earnest, Cradle starts to go awry. The broader fiction is fascinating in terms of its subject matter, positing a future where beauty has an objective numerical value. The ramifications for society are far-reaching. Some effects are fairly innocuous, like being able to sell flowers at higher prices based on their beauty value. Others are far more sinister, such as how society fragments into castes, and how it treats those deemed to be "Ugly" by the number emblazoned on their chest.

Where Cradle goes from there, I'll leave for the game to reveal. But it's a complex fiction rich in detail, and Flying Cafe deserves credit for the world it has created. Of course, the confined nature of Cradle means you don't get to see much of it, but in the right hands this could make the game even more enticing.

Sadly, Flying Cafe's hands prove ultimately to be the wrong ones, letting a potentially brilliant narrative slip through its chromed fingers. While the world and its fiction are impressive, the way the story is delivered is appalling. In particular, the dialogue is numbingly bad, with monotone voice actors droning out some of the bluntest exposition you'll hear outside of a Dan Brown novel. Granted, Flying Cafe is a Russian developer, but that doesn't make the character interactions any less of a trial on the old lugholes.

Speaking of which, I found it difficult to muster much enthusiasm for Cradle's cast. Enebish , the protagonist, is an empty vessel, while the robot lady whose name escapes me is about as engaging as you'd expect a talking vase to be, and that's despite her mysterious and chilling back-story. The only character even remotely intriguing is Tabaha, a grouchy, dismissive flower peddler who seems to think Enebish's sudden bout of amnesia is all a big, unfunny joke. Again though, his spiky charisma is held back by the flat voicework and the tedious question/answer conversations.

I could have forgiven the stumbling storytelling if the game itself kept me engaged through its lovely object-based puzzles. Sadly, these too fade into the background as Cradle goes on, replaced with a sequence of cube-tossing minigames. Not only are these utterly insipid, the sluggish movement and slippery jumping feel ill-suited to challenges that require some nimble first-person platforming. The only saving grace is that you can skip these games after your first failure, although I feel like this shows lack of confidence from the developers in their work.

The ending is pretty abrupt as well, racing out of nowhere to wrap everything up like an overworked parent on Christmas Eve. By that point though, I was ready for it, and Cradle isn't a particularly long game. It's such a disappointment. I don't think I've ever played a game that I've loved so much at the start and hated so much by the end.

What's even more frustrating is that I can see all the great ideas within it, just dying to be explored. I hope Flying Cafe get the opportunity to take another stab at Cradle's world, with something bigger or simply better thought through. For the first hour it's everything I want from a first-person adventure; unique, attentive and thoughtful. Focus on these elements, add more spark to the characters and more snap to the dialogue, and Flying Cafe would have something really special on their hands. But as it stands, there's no way I could recommend it.