Pairs

Characters are very important in a story, regardless of how complex the world or how engaging the plot. It’s easy to relate to characters of they are designed with flaws, fears and weaknesses, given the fact that no one is perfect. On the other hand, it’s important for them to be special in one way or another, because it’s not much of a story if the main character is a regular Joe that ruins everything he touches.

Pairs is an interesting sci-fi visual with multiple routes and eight different endings you can reach, depending on the choices you make along the way. The sci-fi elements make the whole thing feel very surreal and strange, which is not at all a bad thing. However, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, especially when it comes to the aliens and the mutants that are part of the story.

Speaking of which, you can choose to play as one of the four available characters, each one of which has different goals and interests. Hence, the alien pursues the heart of a human, while the young man will try anything in order to bring his parents back to life. Depending on what you decide to do along the way you can reach one of the eight possible endings, so the replay value is definitely decent.

The writing is actually pretty good for the genre, especially when you consider the weird concepts that come into play. Hence, even if there are mutants and aliens in there, the story as a whole makes sense and you can make heads and tails of the dialog most of the time. Granted, there’s still the occasional awkward expression or dubious sentence that doesn’t make too much sense.

As far as the graphics are concerned, on the other hand, everything is more or less as you would expect from an indie production. Hence, the character design is fairly nice, albeit a tad too stiff sometimes. More work could have gone into the backgrounds, especially when it comes to colors and level of detail, because some environments look and feel empty.

In the end, Pairs is certainly a unique game when it comes to the story, and the characters are worth exploring as well. Hence, the multiple routes and endings should be enough to keep you busy for quite some time.