Shardlight Wadjet Eye Games gives you two things from its outset a strong female protagonist and a heavy setting of post-apocalyptica. Both of which promise a unique experience but then quickly falls into a series of safe tropes (government controlling the populace) that hold the promise of the game back. Though some of the puzzles work well, overall it's the lack of immediate class discord, or harshness in the world
Starting out your character Amy is tasked with fixing a reactor core for a post-apocalyptic city at the hopes of winning a lottery ticket for a vaccine to 'green lung.' Through this innocent task you're thrust into a class war between the everyday citizens who toil in post apocalyptica and the aristocrats who govern. For the most part the game presents each of these early plot points successfully, from a dying man's wish, to an asthmatic like fit for your character. These sections enabled the urgency of the plot to become apparent - dangerous jobs are taken by citizens to improve their chance of a cure, capitalising on their desperate measures. Mercy killings are rampant, and for all appearances life is cheap.
But the game doesn't carry on with it's life is cheap ethos, aside from killing a main-ish character later on, everyone in this post-apocalyptic world is accommodating. They act altruistically with every interaction, making sure that you're well looked after. This while refreshing seems to go against the setting of the game as something to be survived, and rather a community building exercise - something which the game could lean more heavily towards than pointing out a class struggle, that doesn't appear to be present, especially when all the characters you originally meet are autonomous and don't appear to be suffering from government intervention.
Green lung and the lottery seem to be the main points of contention for this class war, but with that the game doesn't present the plague as an epidemic, but rather something that people merely have to endure, and with that especially considering there's no direct stigma given for having green lung (though it is alluded to for other characters).
But this aside the game is a good one in it's engagement initially, with the immediate portrayal of a failing city, but the uncovering of the community and the stable political situation made much of the world fall apart. Far from being a hellscape of suffering it really just seemed that people were one conversation away from solving many of their woes.
If the threats portrayed within the game were indeed life threatening, or the lot of many citizens visibly made worse by the ruling class then this game would be much more palatable. As it is with the escalation of threats and the portrayal of political injustice it doesn't bring much new ideas to the themes presented. Going back to other Wadjet Eye Games, such as Primordia or Gemini Rue give a much more nuanced world where the world reflects much of the story. So while there are certainly sections which are presented well in the game - primarily the start - the execution overall lacks the polish of previous games.
