Caffeine Demo

While coffee is indeed an important part of many people's lives, it hasn't yet reached the level where wars are fought over it, even if tea constitutes a precedent in this regard. Hence, it would not be so far fetched to imagine a world that revolves around a constant supply of coffee and goes to great lengths to provide the population with enormous amounts of it on a regular basis.

Caffeine is a puzzle game with horror elements that portrays an interesting future, one in which mining stations are built solely for the purpose of producing coffee. Thus, huge constructions float out in the vastness of space, with people working on them and scientists developing new formulas and recipes, in order to come up with better flavors, or more potent effects.

You wake up as a child on one of these stations, which also turns out to be abandoned for some reason and you must explore the entire structure, looking for clues as to where is everyone and what went on before you woke up. As you go along, you stumble into post-it notes, audio logs and various other bits of information, all which offer you some kind of idea about the surrounding environment and the people who inhabited it until recently.

One thing that sets the game apart from the rest of the puzzle/exploration games is the fact that a lot of work went into the level design itself, especially since the sci-fi nature of the environment called for some pretty creative ideas. Hence, the station's insides are very impressive and eye-catchy, not to mention the various subtleties that greatly contribute to the overall atmosphere, such as the fact that the entire station is rotating and the sun illuminates certain areas at fixed intervals.

However, none of these effects would have had quite the same impact it it wasn't for the incredible capabilities of the graphics engine, which is actually the highly-acclaimed Unreal Engine 4. Thanks to the fascinating illumination effects and the smooth shadows, the environments look very convincing and downright hypnotizing at times. Naturally, the textures and the various other special effects are also top-notch, although all of this requires quite the potent computer in order to enjoy properly.

In the end, Caffeine is nothing more than a pre-release at the moment, which means that you cannot really do too much inside the game, other than explore the rooms and read a few bits and pieces that should theoretically connect with the overall story. The horror element is not that obvious yet, since there are very few instances where it interferes with the gameplay.