Event[0]

You find yourself in a life pod following a panicked evacuation from your previous craft. Alone, adrift in space, you miraculously find another ship in your path — the Nautilus. After docking, you approach a terminal to access this new ship’s system. And then you find the only survivor — the AI Kaizen.
Event[0] is a game that excels on its mode of narrative if not its actual story. Kaizen is a string of text on terminals, made audible by a crackling vocaloid text-to-speech interface. And the only way you can communicate with this new entity is by means of a text parser — typing in full sentences as you would on an instant message.
At first glance, the implementation incredibly robust. Kaizen can read tone as well as content, and responds to both. “Open Door” and “Could you please open the door, Kaizen?” both work, but Kaizen will remember that you have treated him cordially (or not). You can discuss non-critical path subjects, and he will accommodate that, straying into the realm of outright musing.
It’s here that the crux of Event[0]’s story spins. Kaizen is a cypher for you to discover. Is he a conscious being? Or just a collection of if/then statements? Given his state in the ship, he knows a lot, but does he know the true nature of things? And if he doesn’t, can you trust his judgement?
Compounding this, Kaizen is the sole source of information on the fate of the Nautilus’ crew. He ruminates on one of the former crew, Nandi, and describes her as “nice” — a moment that is humanizing, but also worrying as you realize that Kaizen has the capacity to judge the morality of another being. And moreover, as you press him on how Nandi died you begin to see the inconsistencies in the story — is Kaizen lying? Or is he simply mistaken?
The disappointing thing is that despite the excellence of the parser, it still retains many of the flaws. There are moments where Kaizen has something plot-relevant to say and will pointedly disregard any input. Or when he refuses to acknowledge a simple request because you’re using the wrong vocabulary. It’s immersion-breaking, reminding you that you’re not talking with an AI, you’re typing into a notoriously fiddly interface. Despite the advanced tech on display the seams remain all too visible.
There are some fantastic moments that make use of this, however. There’s an incredible sequence where debris hits the ship and you are thrown into space, still in your suit. You maneuver back to the airlock, only to find that Kaizen refuses to open it — he doesn’t believe that you are the same person. This leads to frantically trying to type something only the two of you would know as the oxygen in your suit slowly runs out. In that situation, typos become deadly. The text interface adds a strong element of tension as you try to calmly and rationally gather your thoughts in the face of suffocation.
I admired Event[0]’s dedication to its core conceit, if not the ultimate end product. It may be that they ran right up against the limitations of text parsing despite having come a long way with the tech. Though Event[0] tilts at a great experience, it amounts to mainly just an engaging diversion.