MO:Astray is the best hidden gem I've ever come across
This platforming puzzle action game is so good, it deserves Game of the Year by any standards. Even its game design is perfect, slowly introducing new movement and action mechanics at first, so the player can take their time to appreciate the story being presented. When you can't tell apart the tutorial from the game itself like in this case, you know the way it is done is simply perfect.
You awake from a laboratory pod as an artificial but biological being, summoned by what seems to be an AI of sorts. Although slightly malfunctioning, she helps you on your danger-filled path upwards to the surface. On your way, you encounter human remnants turned into some kind of zombies. Soon into the game, you accidentally become modified by a weird machine able to read their last thoughts.
This reading ability is how you explore the lore of MO:Astray. There is so much more to it, but the first things you find out are that you are on a stranded ship left behind by its fleet. Terrifying experiments were done until it got out of hand. Despite having played for nearly two hours, I haven't figured out why this zombie-poison cloud started, but it doesn't quite fit with the other experiments, so I'm eager to figure it out later in the game!
After getting through every single memory I could get from enemies, I can promise you they're very creepy. Resident Evil logs' level of macabre. But it takes a step further, because even children are getting experimented on. Instead of zombies, they are turned into weird alien-like dog thingies, all the while being awake and somewhat conscious about it in their childish minds.
Plants and rocky ground everywhere are a huge reminder of how it's all in the long gone past, since they don't belong to a ship, but a planet. All of these memories are ages old and there is nothing you can do to change these horrid events. Nor the ones involving people getting turned into the ship's fuel. But what you can do is survive. Putting aside all old monsters, you will eventually get to a point where you face the present, above the underground. That means whatever is alive at the surface.
The one thing I haven't talked about are the great puzzles, increasingly challenging parkour and action. But I'll leave it to the official trailer to do the talking. Watch the one minute video on YouTube below, coming straight up from the game's publisher channel, Rayark Inc.
