I’m in a Yurt on a Mongolian hillside. We’re not in 2015 anymore, a fact given away by the lifeless android woman resting on the table next to me while I work. What am I working on? Well I’m cutting up fruit so I can prepare breakfast for a mysterious creature I know only as Ongots. I’m preparing fruit, on the floor of a shanty. Welcome to the futuristic world of Cradle.
How did I get here? Good question, the game opens with you waking up on the floor with no idea of how you got there, or even who you are for that matter. On the table sits a piece of paper with my first real task: prepare breakfast for Ongots. My directions are simple enough, put the red pot on the furnace, boil some water, cut up some fruit and herbs and serve. Simple in explanation, somewhat complex when you’re residing in a strange house without your memory.
It’s hard not to feel immersed in a world that functions like Cradle’s. Nearly every object in the Yurt can be inspected, picked up, or used in some fashion or another. It takes me awhile but I eventually find the red pot and slap it on the stove. Next up, some water. I navigate the kitchen, thinking reasonably about where I’ll find a cup or pitcher. Eventually rifling through some drawers reveals a drinking glass and I fill it at the sink and dump it into the pot.
I load the furnace up with some crumpled up paper and wood located in the bins nearby. Objects like my newfound wood can be picked up with the left mouse button, a second click drops it at the intended target. Hitting the right mouse button will hurl the wood across the room, but it’s not in my best interests right now. I also have limited inventory space in which I’m able to store items by hitting the E key. Like most things in Cradle, the control scheme is simplistic and standard, yet engaging.
It takes some time but I finally notice a lighter resting on the desk near where I woke up. I stoke a fire and toss the lighter across the room. Time to get some fruit. The game directs me to a nearby lake where some trees contain the fruit I need. It’s immediately apparent that I’m not going to be able to reach my harvest. I head back to my shanty and scoop up a tea set from the table and before long I’m hurling tea cups at the tree to knock down my ingredients.
It’s been 45 minutes. I’m having a great time.
Most of your tasks in Cradle follow a similar theme of simplicity. You aren’t fighting any space aliens, the average threat to your life in the world is small at best, it’s probably not what you would expect even after looking at screenshots or watching the game’s trailer. There’s literally a moment where the game asks you to fish a remote control out from underneath a bed.
Eventually the story requires that you explore the abandoned theme park nearby and unfortunately that’s where some of the game’s more tedious elements start to arise. Cradle’s weakest moments manifest in the form of the major action/puzzle set pieces: a series of VR missions that involve collecting cubes while an unusual looking enemy cube with dreadlocks destroys the room around you. Each VR mission grants you a component that you can use to rebuild the robotic woman in your living room. Because you’ll be finding and installing multiple parts on your companion this creates a somewhat tedious travel routine that sees you constantly heading to and from the amusement park.
There are some frustrations outside of the game’s VR missions as well. Cradle feels poorly optimized in general, even when playing on a GTX 960 with graphics turned down I still had a significant amount of stutter, especially when first starting the game. The Yurt seems to be the most troublesome, which makes sense considering how many objects are littering it that you can interact with. I also found myself snagged on elements in the environment and had to re-load the game a few times. For the most part checkpoints in Cradle are frequent enough that loading is trivial.
There are some hazards in the game and for the most part they’re trivial. Falling from a great height can sometimes imply death, but all that happens is the screen blacks out for a second and you find yourself standing right where you landed. There are some enemy mobs roaming around as well but for the most part if they catch you the worst thing that happens is you get flung across the screen a short distance. There was one segment of the game where I had to use a tool in order to harvest some flowers, but I found that if an enemy came into contact with me I would lose the tool and have to re-load the chapter entirely. I’m not sure if that’s a bug or just a poorly designed attempt at difficulty, but it was the only time the enemies posed a threat of any kind.
Sound design in Cradle ranges from good to great. The soundtrack is subtle but picks up nicely when necessary. Early on the majority of the game’s story is told through text but as you progress a healthy portion is voice acted as well. While for the most part the performances are fine, the main character’s voice does sound a bit out of place and surprisingly uninterested in his bizarre situation.
I don’t want to spoil anything but I will mention that the game’s ending leaves a lot to be desired if you’re the type of person who needs closure. There are lots of hints as to what exactly the story Cradle was trying to tell was, but the resolution barely feels concrete, even if you’ve been hanging onto every word of dialogue. The game wraps up around the four to five hour mark depending on how much you explore, not an unreasonable runtime for its $12 price. This is entirely speculation, but I can’t help but think that the game ends, not when the narrative calls for it, but perhaps when business called for it instead. Cradle has been kicking around for years and years, and its abrupt ending really makes me wonder if the team got to a point where they just finally had to get something out the door.
Cradle manages to create a fantastically unique world to explore and the worst thing about the game is that it doesn’t let you see enough of it. I started out very strongly feeling I had a perfect score on my hands but slowly scaled my opinion back as the game kept asking me to backtrack and repeat the same VR missions over and over again. I’m not sure what the developer has planned for their creation in the future, but this is definitely a place I hope to visit again, even if things weren’t perfect for the first outing.
