The Bradwell Conspiracy Review
Ever since Portal came out in 2007, there has been a steady stream of games trying to replicate its success. Most of the time, these games are first-person puzzle games that gives the player a weird device that does something incredible and a series of dangerous environments that can only be traversed through the use of the weird device. More importantly though, there’s always a mystery to be solved. Games in this vein include Antichamber, A Story About My Uncle, The Turing Test, and most recently, The Bradwell Conspiracy.
In The Bradwell Conspiracy, players step into the shoes and smart glasses of the most unlucky charity event attendant that has possibly ever lived. Waking up after a tremendous explosion at the newly opened Bradwell Foundation Stonehenge Museum, players are told by the AI in their smart glasses to evacuate the museum, as terrorists have recently detonated a bomb on the premises. Soon after, players are contacted by Amber, the only other person left alive in the ruins of the museum. Not being able to speak, thanks to severe damage to the vocal cords from smoke inhalation, players can only communicate with Amber by taking and sending pictures with the smart glasses. Moving through the facility, players will arm themselves with the Substance Mobile Printer, or SMP, a portable 3D-printer capable of instantaneous creation of objects at a distance from a strange matter known as “Substance.” Using the SMP, players will move through the museum and a Bradwell Foundation facility looking for a path to safety and shining a light on a few things The Bradwell Foundation would rather be left in the dark.
Despite the developers going to great lengths to come up with the SMP and the surrounding fiction necessary to explain its existence, the SMP doesn’t do anything too amazing and isn’t that fun to use. Whereas games like Portal gives players interesting tools, the portals, to work with, most of the puzzles in The Bradwell Conspiracy effectively boil down to “retrieve item from one place, then set item in different place.” Typically, players will find or be given a blueprint or two for the object the puzzle requires and a supply of Substance. Then, it’s a simple matter of plugging the correct piece into its designated socket. There are actually very few puzzles in which players are allow to place their conjured objects free-form, most of the time the correct object with have one pre-established placement to solve the puzzle. There’s a healthy amount of “place long flat thing to cross gap” instances as well. It doesn’t feel like it requires the existence of a near-magical 3D-printer, just someone with a strong back. Further, very few puzzles actually require the ability to place an object at a distance due to obstacles or a lack of a place to stand nearby. It’s a real shame because the idea of the Substance, enigmatic matter that can be made to serve apparently any purpose, is a fascinating one and I feel like the rudimentary puzzles of The Bradwell Conspiracy don’t do enough with it.
Unfortunately, the spaces between the bland puzzles aren’t much of a help to the game. The first thing that I noticed that bothered me about The Bradwell Conspiracy’s setting was how bizarrely quiet it was. For stretches of 10 to 15 minutes at a time, there would be no music or any other sort of background sounds at all. I’m not sure if this is because the developers wanted to set the mood of an abandoned facility, wanted to build tension, or because they couldn’t afford their composer for quite as long as they hoped, but I found that the lack of any audio only increased my boredom and frustration with the game. Worsening the problem, because The Bradwell Conspiracy takes place in an abandoned place of employment, there are small artifacts of the now-evacuated employees in the form of books that give players a look into their personal lives. Normally that wouldn’t be a detriment to the game, but the people who work for The Bradwell Foundation are the most boring people I’ve ever met. Aside from a few parody romance novels, the books, which are the only humanizing elements of the entire building, are solely about complex scientific topics. I find it impossible to believe that not a single employee has any little tchochke or family photo to decorate their desk, or even a book on hand that isn’t related to their job. I refuse to believe that the same people who invented a device that can instantly build anything from a statue of a cat to a fusion battery are so lacking in imagination as to limit their hobbies to things that only apply to their job.
Mercifully, not everything about The Bradwell Conspiracy is a letdown because the writing and voice acting for this game is genuinely delightful. While the overall plot is mostly just a fairly standard corporate secrecy story, the dialogue between Amber, the AI of the smart glasses, and the silent protagonist are quite fun. Amber is an extremely entertaining goofball with quite a lot of energy that plays very well off of both the totally silent protagonist and the very literal AI of the smart glasses, and the AI itself plays an excellent straight man to all of the wild stuff that happens in the game. This dialogue goes a long way to helping the game get through its tougher moments, but can also be frustrating in its own right. Players are supposed to be able to send pictures to Amber, not only to solve puzzles or report progress, but also to have her give hints about what to do next. However, most of the time I tried this trick, Amber wasn’t able to understand what I was trying to get across. It’s sensible that communication through only pictures would be difficult to interpret, but this is a video game after all so a little bit more adaptability would’ve been appreciated.
All in all, The Bradwell Conspiracy can’t be faulted for its ambitions, but it can be faulted for a lot of other things. While the writing and voice performances went a long way to keeping my interest during what would otherwise be an unremarkable, and sometimes bad, video game, not everyone can be soothed in the same way. The game is maybe four hours long, so if you’ve got a spare afternoon to spend with a fun woman and stuffy robot, I’d say pick up The Bradwell Conspiracy once it’s on sale. Otherwise, you’re fine to skip this one.
Buy this game on sale
It’s worth playing, just not at the price they’re asking
