Review: Lost in Space
So far, I’ve been recklessly negligient of #VoiceGames for Google Assistant. Finally, here’s an opportunity to catch up: An enterprise-quality interactive story game based on the new Netflix series ‘Lost in Space’. Let’s take a deep dive into what this game has to offer!
What is the ‘Lost in Space’ game about?
In this interactive story voice game, you assume the role of an unknown survivor of a spacecraft that crash-landed onto an alien planet, close to where the Robinson family — protagonists of the ‘Lost in Space’ series on Netflix — crash-landed before you. Both your and the Robinsons’ objective is to repair their spacecraft in order to escape from the hostile conditions of the planet.
This seemingly overwhelming mission is broken down into five tasks, of which you have to adress three per session:
- Help Will choosing the right radio channel to receive an incoming message from his dad
- Help Will’s dad making sense of messed-up radio messages from their mother ship
- Help Will’s mom thawing the ice in which their spacecraft is frozen
- Help Will’s sister Judy cross a field of geysers to recover spare parts from another crashed spacecraft
- Help Will’s other sister Penny to determine the size of a population of predatory alien creatures
After the three tasks, the story gets interrupted — But in order not to spoil the game for you, I won’t tell you how. Anyway, at the end of the game, you get an evaluation of how well you did in supporting the Robinsons on their escape mission.
Sounds good! But what exactly makes this gaming experience engaging?
Oh yes, let’s take a look behind the veil of illusion! As usual, I’m sorting engagement factors roughly from obvious to hidden.
- High quality audio content
The speakers voices are, as far as I can tell, the original ones from the series’ cast, and the story uses a lot of ‘authentic’ sound effects from the series, like radio noises, alien creatures, geysers, noises from the crashing spacecraft, and even the occasional snippet of soundtrack. - No narration, just dialog
Every line of text in this voice game is spoken by one of the Robinson family characters (and an in-game computer voice at the very beginning and the very end of the game), with Will in the lead, and the other characters moderating their respective task and its introduction. - Point of view
Interestingly, you as the player are not the protagonist of the game — The Robinsons, and especially Will are, and you are just a random person that walks in on them and provides assistance.
This constellation has the benefit of getting you close to how they interact with each other and their environment in the series, but it comes at the cost of being somewhat less engaging than as if your character was the protagonist (like in the ‘Mr Robot’ or the ‘Wayne Investigation’ Skills). - Various question types
The game lets you make nine or ten choices, depending on whether you help Will’s mom or dad. Of those, four are yes-no question questions that are either fake choices (‘Can you hear me?’) or modify the difficulty of the following task: If you give a positive answer for ‘Do you remember you geology training?’, you get more difficult choices for the following question about which material is suitable for melting ice (like flourite, dolomite or magnesium) than with a negative answer (in this case silver, cobalt or magnesium).
Two of the questions are storyline questions, in which you select your task (e.g. ‘Do you want to help mom outside, or dad with the coms?’), and three or four are progress questions that contribute to your final score. Interestingly, (some of) these questions have an unusual and thus interesting form: They are open questions and ask about what the original radio message was, how many seconds lie between geyser eruptions, and how many alien creatures you counted. This deviation from the usual “X or Y?” scheme definitely contributes to the engagement. - Level of tension
I recently read up on storytelling techniques, so here is my layman’s analysis: The tension that propels the story forward comes from the player’s and the Robinsons’ motive of getting of this planet, which is in contrast with their general situation, which creates external tension. During the first tasks, equally with Will’s mom and dad, the tension declines, because neither do the parents convey a sense of urgency (their behavior is closer akin to that of a teacher), nor does the completion of the task intensify the external conflict. Both the density and the urgency increase again during the tasks of Penny, Judy and Will, but I personally think that some more drama during the first task could have improved engagement.
It still sounds like a high quality gaming experience! Which hooks does the game have in terms of retention, then?
In interactive stories — as well as most other games across different devices — good engagement ensures a baseline retention: Users want to enjoy more of the gaming experience, especially if there’s a promise of fresh content, i.e. unexplored storylines.
Beyond a good deal of this, ‘Lost in Space’ has basically one other mechanism that makes users want to play the game again: Feedback! At the end of the game, someone tells you how many tasks you have solved, and rewards you by assigning you to a special, interesting status. This double reward — number of points and status — provide a motivational combination of curiosity and ambition that I consider very likely to make users re-play the story at least twice.
What’s the overall assessment, then?
This #VoiceGame is definitely part of a recent trend of movie & TV franchises using voice games as part of a promotional campaign, along with voice apps like ‘The Daily Five/Nine’ (Mr Robot), ‘The Wayne Investigation’ and ‘Dunkirk’, which set the standard for evaluating this game.
However, compared to those three, I’d say it has the lowest level of engagement. I think the two reasons for this are the relatively passive role of the player (you are neither the protagonist, nor does your assistance make much of a difference for the Robinsons), and the decrease in tension during the first task.
Apart from that, the Skill is brilliantly executed by Creativity Incorporated, and very much worth checking out!
Where so you agree or disagree? What was helpful or interesting for you about this article? What would you have liked to read more or less about? Which voice game should I review next?
I very much care about my articles providing value to you, and by providing feedback, I can adjust more to your needs and interests. Looking forward to connecting here or at Twitter! :)
