Return to Grace — a bite-sized adventure accompanied by quirky A.I. companions and environmental storytelling
Return to Grace was not a game I had heard of until it was quietly dropped onto GamePass a couple days ago, and the synopsis immediately intrigued me. A powerful A.I. named “Grace” mysteriously lost hundreds of years ago, taking records of what could have caused its disappearance with it; you play as an archaeologist named Adi, determined to find out what happened back then.
The game immediately introduces one of its biggest factors: A.I. companions that appear to be sentient. Adi has been accompanied by an A.I. called “Allen” on her journey to the fictional moon rumored to have housed Grace. She talks with Allen as if he’s a friend and he frets about her safety with genuine care as if she his friend too. This will become a common theme throughout the game, as you meet many new A.I. personalities, all having been old servers in Grace’s programming.
As you walk through Grace’s old infrastructure, these A.I.’s both guide you and challenge you, as well as providing limited information — they too are in the dark as to what happened to Grace. Along with them and the environment, a story unfolds.
I absolutely love environmental storytelling, and this game does a great job of it, allowing you to listen in on voices from the past, piecing together what happened all those years ago. Minimal puzzle-solving is thrown in in order to access this lore in the form of keypad patterns and finding sweet spots with Adi’s comms pad. Ultimately, gameplay is minimal in this game that could almost be considered a walking simulator, but if you are a fan of narrative gameplay then you’ll enjoy yourself.
It only took me 2 hours to complete this game, but during this short and sweet adventure, I grew attached to several of the A.I. companions, as well as Adi, who you have the option of having open up to one of the A.I.’s. It’s difficult to form player attachment to characters that you spend such a short time with, but this game manages to do it.
The idea of A.I. having gone dormant long ago isn’t unique to video games, but this experience keeps itself fresh with its environmental storytelling and dialogue between Adi and her A.I. companions.
I found the game to be an absolute delight, and was tickled by the excessive achievements that you can earn all being named after famous movie quotes. Touches like that tell me that the devs really love the game they’re making, and that makes playing it all the better.
This game from Creative Bytes Studios gets a solid 4.5 out of 5 stars from me, and can be found on al consoles and PC.
