Sometimes it seems like video games are designed completely insides of voids, away from the influence of the outside world. Sometimes you end up with something amazing and beautiful like Vib Ribbon and sometimes you end up with a game that lost the thread halfway through everything like Interspace. Half a mixture of flight game, and half a mixture of whatever was left lying around in the studio loft this was clearly made in.
If the game was simply a case of form before function the game might have some legs to stand on, but it is almost as if they tried to make an art piece before any of that – and then failed. The game reeks of being designed from the ground up by being influenced by every indie hit title that has come out since 2008, without picking out any of the actual gameplay elements that made any of the them work. What comes out feels hollow and as if it was designed by computer algorithm.
Mechanically the game is a mess. The player interacts with the world by flying, but the ship always seems to move entirely too fast, even when going at the slowest speed, yet the fastest speed has a strange way of not being that much faster than the standard speed. Most interactions consist of fetch quests or simply bumping into objects, meaning the player’s impact on the world feels about as weighty as the paper ship the player pilots.
Probably the most interesting thing that can be said about Interspace is that it is being released on pretty much every console, which means that it was able to pass all kinds of quality assurance testing. That is probably more praise than the game itself deserves in any form, mainly because forgettable isn’t long enough—or harsh enough—for me to actually call it a review.