Tacoma

Today I’ll be looking at the game Tacoma, made by Fullbright. With only two published games at the time of writing, Fulbright seems to have already found their comfort zone in the world of narrative video games. Fullbright’s first game, Gone Home, was released in 2013 to mixed reviews. Some praised its narrative, commending the company for not shying away from adding a meaningful and somewhat controversial story to their experience. Others found that Gone Home was lacking in gameplay, and made some crucial mistakes in execution. Tacoma, Fullbright’s second game released in 2017, takes the gameplay formula of Gone Home, and brings it to the start, looking into the future in a typical science fiction setting. A big sci-fi fan myself, I was excited to see what the company had learned from Gone Home’s mixed reviews.

Tacoma’s gameplay is almost identical to that of Gone Home, representing a typical walking simulator. There is no true gameplay involved in most walking simulators, the game instead being more like a simulation of walking through a particular environment, given the name. While Tacoma falls into the category of a walking sim, there is a little gameplay to be found between the corridors of the Tacoma space station, the titular setting of the game. Throughout the station, the player will find different activities that the crew of the station, our cast, would use to occupy their time. I wound up spending my fair share of time investigating the dart board and pool table, which are both fully playable in game. The addition of a zero gravity basketball court was also a fun distraction that acted as a sort of minigame. The problem arises in the fact that all of these are two player activities at least, and Tacoma is a strictly single player game. I would have loved to jump into the game with a friend and played a pickup game of basketball in space, but the game doesn’t allow for it. The saving grace in the way of gameplay comes through the game’s achievement system. The player can be awarded different achievements for completing tasks such as making a three point shot in basketball, or unlocking all of the locked doors in the station. The achievements don’t have any effect on the gameplay, but they do give the player something to strive for other than simply finishing the story. On the whole, I give the gameplay a 6/10. There’s nothing special being brought to the table here, but a few nice touches add some much needed distraction from the heavy story.

If Tacoma has a true driving factor, it’s the story being told. Fullbright is a company that stresses story in their games, and the crew of the space station Tacoma has quite the story to tell. I don’t want to spoil the fun for anyone who might still want to give the game a try, so I won’t be covering any big plot details or the ending of the game. But as a quick summary, the player is in the seat of a contractor by the name of Amy Ferrier, who is tasked with recording data on the now abandoned space station Tacoma and its six member crew. Throughout the game, the player gets to know all six members of the crew intimately. They form a cross section of representation that allows for very interesting insight when things start to head south. The core of Tacoma’s story is the crew members, their relationships, and their process of learning about each other, and themselves, when they face an imminent threat. Another key character in the story is Odin, an artificial intelligence that is in charge of helping the crew run the station to the best of his ability. Throughout the game we learn quite a bit about Odin, and a few other AIs in the universe of the game. A familiar sci-fi trope raises its head when the player is confronted with having to decide just how close to human an AI can become. The story also has quite a twist at the end that, though expertly foreshadowed a few times throughout the game, went right over my head, making the pay off feel deserved. I’ll give Tacoma’s story an 8/10. It’s not wholly original in its inspiration, but it does take a cue from great science fiction literary works, using the bizarre setting to teach the player a lesson about the real world and themselves. I genuinely enjoyed uncovering the truth and learning about the lives of the crew members. In a way, the game has different stories for each of them that tie into the overall theme, adding a nice touch that separates the game from a story that can be told on paper.

So the gameplay in Tacoma is a bit less than exciting, but the story more than makes up for that. The truly interesting facet of narrative driven games is how the two come together. A good game and a good story are more than capable of existing on their own. Tacoma does a pretty good job of integrating the story with the gameplay. Since the gameplay is mostly walking around exploring the space station, Fullbright realized that they needed to pay close attention to their environmental storytelling. They did an excellent job making the space feel lived in, with things like written notes between the crew members and doodles found on desks serving a dual purpose of making the station feel more real, and adding more information to the narrative. Additionally, there is a unique gameplay mechanic that is only used when discovering story threads. Since the crew members are no longer present, they are represented as Augmented Reality silhouettes of themselves. As the player watches these silhouettes move around the station and talk with each other, they often pull up their own AR desktops. Functioning like smartphones of the future, each crew member has their own desktop that they see in augmented reality, allowing them to browse the internet, text, call each other, and perform other functions. The player is presented the opportunity to explore the records of each crew members AR desktop as well. This play mechanic is only used to further the story, and feels almost like taking a look into someone's phone. It’s personnel, but as Amy Ferrier, it is the player’s job. The excellent environmental storytelling, and the inclusion of a mechanic that acts exclusively to further the story give Tacoma an 8.5/10 on its integration of story and gameplay.

In summation, Tacoma is far from a perfect game. If you want a game that will give you unlimited freedom, I’d suggest looking elsewhere. In Tacoma, you can even jump. But you can uncover a unique and intriguing story akin to one found in certain sci-fi books. As a player, I felt like I really was a part of this world, which is what a good video game should do. There were moments where I was forced to act, and wished I could make my own choices, but these were resolved by the end of the story, and I understood why I couldn’t be allowed to choose. Player choice is beyond important, and Tacoma offers little. But it does offer a fun ride, and in insightful look into one of many possible futures.