Sanity: Aiken's Artifact Demo

The future is always portrayed with flying cars and the like, while humans seem to have given up on fashion for good and decided to use the most uncomfortable things possible as clothes. However, some writers do a good job at envisioning a plausible future, and it doesn’t take too much, except imagination and a few good ideas when it comes to technology.

Sanity: Aiken's Artifact is a top-down action game in which you get to see a world where psychic abilities are a reality, and people manage to use their minds in order to move objects, levitate, or even cause a lot of damage. Not only that, but even the main character is one of these people who possess psionic powers, which means that you get to use them at will and experience being a superhuman.

Story-wise, everything starts when a scientist manages to tweak the human brain and use a serum to unlock its potential. As such, people who are injected with this serum gain extraordinary abilities, such as the ones mentioned before. However, an organization by the name of Eye of Ra is constantly trying to put an end to this, for ethical reasons. Naturally, you play the role of the psionic man who’s tasked with eliminating the organization.

Although the game itself is not exactly bad, there are no major breakthroughs to make it memorable, while the story is pretty dull as well. Hence, all you get to do is talk to people, explore tight environments, and sometimes use your psionic arsenal to deal with a few enemies. The main campaign is not even that long, which makes the overall experience somewhat disappointing.

However, there are some good ideas in it as well, which certainly feel nice once you get to witness them. Hence, making use of the psychic abilities is certainly a lot of fun, especially when it comes to dealing with enemies. The graphics quality was more than decent at the time of its release, even if the camera had a few problems and there were some bugs that had the potential to kill the mood.

All things considered, Sanity: Aiken's Artifact could have done a lot more with what it had at its disposal, especially when it comes to gameplay. However, the developers seem to have limited themselves and played it safe, which in turn resulted in a pretty boring experience, overall.