A beautiful, freaky first-person puzzle game that takes place in the virtual reality "memory city" of the protagonist, whose identity is obscured at first but ultimately emerges as the player explores various memory fragments. What appears garbled and contradictory at first transforms into a pleasing, coherent story.

The only story beat that annoyed was the use of the "scary little girl" cliché, but it's forgivable, largely due to the dynamics of the story itself. In short, it makes sense.

The game takes place over three acts, the meat of which is the second act, featuring twelve levels over three stages; within a stage, levels can be visited in any order and abandoned temporarily if a puzzle is too difficult at first.

By and large the puzzles are easy to solve with a little persistence; often the trick is to simply find and figure out which objects in the world are puzzle pieces. I did consult a walkthrough once for a challenge that appeared particularly nonsensical (at the end of the School level) - I sadly stand by that decision as the solution required previous memorization of an image not to be found in the puzzle area itself. There were a few other puzzles that I didn't "get", but which were quickly solvable by "brute force" combination of available elements. Also, there is a series in act three that will require the use of Steam's built-in screenshot function ... or fraps if you get the non-Steam version. This was irksome, but by contrast the great majority of levels are engaging and fun to figure out.

My entire playthrough took just over five hours. A short game, but it's all quality time. If you aren't confronted with a puzzle, you are observing memories and piecing together the story of the central characters or running through the occasional action sequence. These elements are well mixed with good pacing. For the completionist, a couple extra hours might be had combing every level for the collectible memories. I wish I had seen all of them, but I preferred to finish the game rather than essentially "pixel hunt" for every last story clue. Personally, I dig short games.

Overall, I unreservedly recommend Master Reboot. It's worth a few hours of your time to find your way through this weird virtual world and resolve a compelling, sympathetic story.

Also, duckies.

First off I have to say I really enjoyed this game.
It's colourful, the music is eery but well placed. There are a few good jumps - one in particular I didn't see coming so it made it extra special. The story is interesting, and not to hard to follow. Controls are typical FPS and are smooth. (I tried Controller at first but they seemed too slow so recommend keyboard and mouse)

I'm a little puzzled by the metacritic reviews. Clearly those reviewers never gave this game a chance.

Overall I recommend this easily to anyone that likes a good story, combined with some (not to hard) puzzles, in First person. Oh and if you like Rubber Duckies.

I wish I could say I liked this game. But I don't. It's supposed to be some creepy psychological game, but it turned out to be more frustrating than anything. Players aren't given a clue what to do. I was dropped into this world and had to go through all the puzzles and such via trial and error, which was fine. But imagine you need to run away from something but STILL had no clue what you needed to do, thus "resetting" constantly. Okay, so then I figured it out after dying five times, but the whole encounter is based on how quickly you can swivel the camera and click. >.<

It's just a headache of a game that I don't want to play any more.

Wow.

What should I say about this game?

I had been interested in it from the moment I had seen it on Steam nearly a year ago. What had kept me from purchasing it right away was the horror aspect, but that definitely added to the game, rather than detracted from it. I am absolutely glad that I bought and played this game through, and definitely plan on playing through again to unlock the alternate ending.

Master Reboot delivers an artistic experience with a story to match that leaves you eager to play each section and find every secret. This game will leave you wanting to play more of it even after finishing it. Step into the Soul Cloud yourself and learn about the Mysteri Corporation and those involved in it's origins.

Some of the "horror" aspects of the game are predictable, but still managed to frighten me. Besides that the story is constantly compelling and the voice acting is well done. I would rate the game a solid 9 out of 10.

Remember all the feels To the Moon gave you. Cut them by half add 3D puzzle platformer mechanics, a substantial amount of creeepyness and a couple of jump scares here and there and you got Master Reeboot

No words, really didn't expected so much. Really beautiful game with specific and interesting atmosphere, nice and interesting story and way how you play it, also nice and interesting puzzles and some horror too.
In game I feel that developers love creating games and have things to tell, they create a "child" and not a regular gaming program, big thanks for that.
For me it becomes one of the Favorite Indie projects, thanks to developers for so beautiful work.
P.S. - Also sorry for my bad English.

Dear God, I played this whole game with an xbox controller. I must be out of my mind. It keeps moving to the left or forward ALL THE TIME. I even changed controllers and got the same issue. That said, I lowered my head and decided I will finish this game without a mouse - or at least 95% without a mouse. Why? Originally because I tend to game from my mediorce HTPC in my bedroom on my bed. Then, it became a fully motivated goal to me - I MUST DO THIS. I CAN BEAT IT WITH WONKY CONTOLS. I CAN! Keep in mind i am *not* a very good gamer nor am I fast. Just determined.

I was doing okay until the airplane level. Oh man. Needs a KB & mouse, Needs a KB & mouse. Had to play with both while jumping between controller and keyboard because i wanted to finish with the controller as much as possible.

Then it was not terrible. I mean, I'd start levels immediately walking into walls with my hands OFF the controller but okay. I can do this. Just keep starting and stopping ....over and over. Jumping back all the time. No sweat.

Then, comes the light maze in the dark. AAWRHRRHGHGHGHRH. That probably added an extra hour or two to the gameplay.
Just walking to edges as well as can, only for the controller to suddenly start sidestepping to the right and fall off. That happened so much. Got really good at stopping. and falling. But made it through.

Lastly, the end level. C'mon 3 minutes to finish all that????? I could get everything just fine - 4 of those puzzles no big deal.
The platforming one??? On a controller that moves like a marbles on a plate? Took me about 4 hrs. Always, finishing all the easy puzzles and then stuck on platforming till the clock ran out. When I actually completed that last level - with 30 secs to go mind you - I don't think I've felt an accomplishment like that in quite a long long time. It's no picnic on KB & Mouse, but to know that i did on my xbox controller give me so much pleasure. Like finishing a super hard college course final.

On to the game . Really, everybody has said everything on this already. It's enimatic and throws you in unexplained. There are parts that kind of stick with you and a few puzzles where I said " Oh! Really? That's it?? Did I solve that by accident?" . And there are quite a few of " Oh no. no. no. no. Not like that. Don't do that. That's just mean." Yes, there are some scary bits but it's not really terrifying. The original ideas and gameplay kept me going quite a bit. But it was the challenge of the controller scheme that made me finish it really. I wanted to beat it my way. And I did. Game was good too. My next will be point and click, honest.

Saudade/10

Stunning, wistful low poly dreamscapes. Clumsy writing, sometimes tedious puzzles. But those dreamscapes, man.

This one's hard to rate, but I really can't recommend Master Reboot.
The game has a strong visual concept and underlying story, and the point I liked most about it is that the story, once pieced together, makes sense, and doesn't leave too many questions open, instead of losing itself in self-indulgent generalities like similar games *cough*Dear Esther*cough* did. Master Reboot is plagued by quite a lot of flaws in its execution, from the fumbly aiming to the god-awful and at times pretty annoying sound design (especially the sounds that are endlessly repeated, like Kali's laughter) and the bland music. But these aren't necessarily deal breakers.
Unfortunately, there's the gameplay. Where other story-centric games of the walking simulator variety have wisely chosen to be as free of traditional gameplay as possible, Master Reboot makes you jump through a series of hoops consisting of disjointed puzzles, brain teasers thrown in your way to slow you down. This, for me, made Master Reboot impossible to enjoy. Where I wanted to simply explore the levels, find snippets of the story and immerse myself in the game's atmosphere, it made me complete unrelated and pointless tasks that caused quite a bit of frustration.

A huge dissapointment. The story was thin. Almost all of the gameplay was "wander around and poke at things until something happens". There were a lot of cheap jump scares that quickly turn into annoyances. And to top it all off: timed jumping puzzles. Really. I wish I hadn't wasted my time.

Master Reboot is one of those games with an interesting idea but a poor execution due to a lack of narrative and context. If you're a completionist and happen to find all the rubber ducks, you'll understand the context, but outside of that, this game will only confuse more with its rather poor excusues.

Basically (and you don't find this out until the end of the game, but I'm also trying to save you money) you play some chick named Madison who invented the "Soul Cloud" with a dude named David or something, I actually already forgot. Anyway, they invent the soul cloud under this company named Mysteri in the year 2026 where technology is supposedly going to be futuristic just like how it was in George Orwell's 1984. Anway, the whole game takes place in the soul cloud where users can place their memories and re-experience them for a limited amount of time. At least that's what I took away from it. This guy David is murdered by someone named Astrid, I never caught the relationship between Astrid and Madison, but I believe they knew each other. Also, Astrid had died four years prior but was brought back to life; don't understand how that works, but alright I'll let it slide. So Madison is in the soul cloud because of some virus that is shown to have been sent to Madison from an anonymous user, the virus basically effed up the cloud, the virus being named a bunch of random letters and numbers.exe. Madison, being so tech smart inventing some crazy idea, opens the virus which infiltrates the clouds servers, deleting people's data. A bunch of stupid people are mad as shown in "tweet" like this one, "i haet teh sole cloude". Yeah, that's right, people in the future are still terrible at spelling.

So that's basically the story, the gameplay involves you, Madison, navigating your own memories just to get to the virus. Basically, the giant library room that becomes this platforming nightmare has the virus which is really just a digital and angry Astrid that you've probably seen throughout the game acting like Alma from the FEAR games. The memories range from your childhood to your romantic feelings with David, rather generic to be honest. Also, the game is supposed to be a sort of horror game, but the jump scares were laughable. I feel like there was supposed to be emotion with the memories, but the emotion was detached due to the lack of narrative mentioned earlier. The Stanley Parable had more emotion.

The graphics were toon shaded without the black edges which were explained in game due to the soul cloud being in the early stages. As George Carlin would say, "Bull-sh!t", the toon shading is a cop out, especially when it doesn't even look good. I mean, at least Gearbox makes Borderlands look awesome. This was rubbish. It doesn't help when the devs make an excuse of in game graphics being toon shaded and then the actual memories are 2D flash animated or puppet pinned from After Effects. You'd think that the memories themselves would be detailed 3D considering that they're taken from the human's mind? Think of the film Final Cut starring the late, great Robin Williams. The memories that he works with are fully realized and completely real, in the flesh. The 2D is such a cop out, what rubbish.

The music and sounds were the only good thing, as they were both evidently creepier than the game itself. And even then, the sounds had some weird mixing.

4.0/10

Obviously I would not buy a game if I didn't think I was going to enjoy it but some times you hit upon a game like this that far exceeds your expectations. The stylised graphics and soundtrack work together to create an awesome creepy atmosphere. The gameplay is mostly simple yet extremely satisfying puzzles with a few other bits and pieces thrown in here and there for variety. The story is great and hidden throughout the levels are more bits of information, this way of feeding you the plot bit by bit and allowing you to piece it all together is very engaging. I have two minor complaints. The first play through only took about 4 hours and it left me wanting more. The second complaint is musical puzzles; I am tone deaf and these puzzles were pretty much impossible for me. Regardless of that I can heartily recommend this game.

One minute scary jhorror girls are bursting out of lockers, next minute I'm arranging the solar system in the right order. I... think I like it?

Cons:
-Gameplay and puzzles are too simple. Basically a mixture of basic platforming and puzzles that ask you to click the use button until they're solved.
-The game feels unfinished. Some environments look well polished with thought put into it, but most are bland and blocky.

Pros:
-Creepy ambience and unique plot.

More of an interactive story than a game. It's short, but I'm glad it was considering there isn't much substance. Interesting experience. If it looks interesting to you, I would highly suggest waiting for it to go on sale.

The biggest problem with this game is the puzzles, and they are the crux of the gameplay. The sound and atmosphere are nice, but the environments are tiny and barren so there isn't much to be had there. Half the time you're either scouring boring levels for something hidden or spamming the action key trying to get something to work. For example, there is one puzzle where you need to find a rectangle. Yep, lots of detail there, and when you use it with a certain object, the object grows to be very tall so you can get... a triangle! The puzzles have little to do with the overarching plot of the game. Overall I'm pretty unimpressed.

Visual were very pretty, but some of the puzzles and level design just got to be very infuriating.

It's alright. I porbably would have liked the story more if I could understand it, the sound was low and distorted (not due to glitches, on purpose) and I couldn't maek out any of the speech in some very important scenes. It's some kind of horror, but not particularly scary horror. Not quite psychological either. I can't pin down what it is but it was engaging enough for me to sit down and play it all the way through. It's a very short game, might take you 2-3 hours to beat. The puzzles are all EXTREMELY simplistic, most of the time you'll just be going through the motions to find out little tidbits of story told through photograps, notes, emails, and satanic glyphs on the wall, all presented "Gone Home" style... but with ducks. The game has a strange fixation with ducks. I don't know what it means, some kind of in-joke with the developers, maybe. The game explains it as some sort of device for people in a simulation to store data in, but why ducks? There are plenty of conspicuous cubes laying around, why not those?

This game is one hell of a mixed bag. Maybe it wasn't for me, but lots of people seem to really love it and it was alright. It's not super expensive either, so really the only way to find out if it's for you is to give it a shot.

This game is definitely something interesting.
The premise is very interesting, with an online cloud-system where dead people's memories are stored, and the story is also very intriquing, as you uncover more of your memories and figure out not only what is going on, but also who your player-character is.
The art-style during gameplay is very visually pleasing and fits the game well, and while it's quite obvious that the drawn cutscenes aren't very proffesional, they do the job of telling a good story.
The sound design is also really great, as the songs in the background and the various sound effects that appear really make the atmosphere, and as the game is a lot about atmosphere, the art-style and the sound design deliever perfectly.
Not to mention, the ending credits-song is really good. It is a great song to end the game with.
The gameplay is also quite fun, as you do different puzzles, and while there are some puzzles that can be quite frustrating to figure out, most of the puzzles are quite fun to figure out.
Seren.exe, the creepy girl-character that follows you, is at first quite creepy and I definitely got a shock when I first enqountered her, and she definitely fits the creepy atmosphere. However, as the game goes on, her presence can be quickly discovered by the players, and when she isn't killing, but just staring at you creepily, her effectiveness becomes a lot less scary, as I definitely made some jokes in my head about her just standing in the corner not doing anything.
Overall, a worthwhile game that has a interesting premise and some great atmosphere. It is quite short, but if you like this sort of game, you'll probably get your money worth.

Great game. Interesting puzzles and spooky, futuristic setting with a bit of psychedelic things.

I'm stuck on the final boss and completely frustrated, but I still can't say that I don't recommend this game. It's that damn partial controller support that plagues me. My d-input controllers have permanent button inversion and my xbox controller auto sidesteps making the random platform elements borderline impossible. If there was an ingame option screen I could probably just switch to keyboard and mouse (I need to invert the mouse) but no, I have to start the whole level over again. Anyways:

Scale: 1=despised 2=negative 3=could go either way 4=positive 5=loved

Game design: 4/5 The game itself is pretty simple. Run round in the dark and find clues to the story. It mixes elements of survival horror (I wouldn't call this an exclusively survival horror game though, very little can actually hurt you), puzzles, platforming, hidden object. It's actually a good mix, and despite my beef with the platforming, the game itself doesn't feel broken. Perhaps a bit dated. 3D navigation is a bit clunky, and some of the puzzles don't make any sense (but are still easy), but none of it actually gets in the way of gameplay. Maybe you could call this game "casual horror"?

Tone: 3/5 The largest problem with the game is it's selection of advertised screenshots. It has some cool and haunting imagery, but like the game play, there ir a mix of styles present. There are weird little cutscenes at the end of each level that look like they were made in Flash. The impression of the game is a bit different than what is actually there, granted that it is difficult to present a game with this much variety. It simply might not be the epic horror mystery that you are looking for. The concept is great, but the story is overly simple and a bit confusing. I don't know if the game intends to keep you guessing about which girl is which, but I'm still getting them mixed up. I can nitpick more but ultimately it doesn't interfere with the experience that much. I really want to enforce that this game is actually quite casual, don't expect anything mindblowing and you should enjoy it.

Personal skew: 2/5 I'm not mad anymore, and might attempt that last level again. Hardcore gamers will find this game easy and possibly laughable, I don't think that most will feel it to be a waste of time, but some definitely will. Casual gamers will get the most out of this, especially if you're interested in horror games but don't want to be overwhelmed.