Agence Reviews

I found this to be an interesting experience and well worth the small asking price. Definitely put me in that contemplating the notion of an infinite universe and the meaning of our existence within it. That said I am coming from a machine learning and AI programming background. Not to mention I'm a fan of short artsy VR experiments. That doesn't necessarily mean you need that background to appreciate Agence, my 6 year old daughter found this fun as well. I do think the game would've been better off if after a each generation a small explanation of what an agent's role was. That would've given incentive to observe multiple generations and note the results. I think that is the point of the game. After a few achievements popped up and I realized what their roles were it was subsequent generations and interactions were more meaningful. All said and done worth $3 though.

Honestly not enough content to justify the price. I tried to figure out anything to do, but there really isn't. I will be interested in this game when there is a community around it. Also, please make it free. 3 dollars is too much.

I gave this a try knowing exactly that it was an experimental program and media and not a video game per se. That being said I just can't recommend it, even at this price. It's an incomplete product that doesn't deliver on its very modest promises, which is too bad because I think the world needs more efforts like this and less Call of Duty.

World record speedrun is RNG dependant on if your Agents fall off in the cutscene. 10/10

I like the idea, but while I can interact with them, a lot of their behaviour seems erratic and doesn't seem to be impacted by my interactions except at the most superficial level. The mechanics are very opaque. I'm not even sure what half of the achievements mean. It seems more like an intellectual exercise in ML/AI and so I'd probably find a paper outlining the behind the scenes more interesting. As it is I just use it like a chill game when I don't want to deal with adrenaline, commitment or thinking to hard. In hindsight I probably wouldn't pay for it again.

This is not a game. Horrible controls. Zero onboarding. I don't know what to do and mostly, I don't care. This is just some bad tech demo trying to sound deeper than it is. I'm not petty enough to refound a 4$ game, but this "game" is not respecting my time. Do something else, go take a walk, watch paint dry.

I read an article about Agence before I bought it, and I thought the concept sounded interesting. I knew this was an interactive movie with AI elements and not a video game, but I was hoping for more of an experience. What it provides is extremely limited and not really worth much. Unless the developers make major enhancements, which their comments indicate are unlikely, don't bother. It's just not very interesting.

I didnt find it fun at all. Too little content to even call it a game. This should be free, becouse it is a 5 min tech demo.

I wasted 45 minutes looking for intelligence. Didn't find any, artificial or otherwise. 5 actors that do nothing but bully each other. Constantly. Trained or not. In the real world, you can watch mono-cellular organisms with more sophisticated behaviours under a microscope. Storytelling is miserably ineffectual. In this movie with minimal external input, the camera regularly takes control to focus on... well, nothing but stupid cartoonish punches, really. And the actors have less evocative power than wooden door knobs. The vapid narrative can go on forever. Until you decide to plant a flower. Which makes the story end after a short while, with no rhyme nor reason. The payoff is nonexistent. Then the pointless cycle will start anew. The one thing the makers insist on, arts-wise, is to force you to watch their 74 company logos, then the poorly voiced intro to their non-story. Every time you launch. Unskippable. And now for something completely different, the interface: The thing starts by asking you to tap onto your PC monitor. Never a good sign. If you'd rather click, you will still have a hard time finding a point of view you'd like, what with the 1 single degree of rotation freedom and no zooming capability. Trying to move an actor/agent will, more often than not, result in it being kicked off the planet and to its death. Better luck next time. I couldn't even find a quit button, and I'm not sure everyone knows about Alt-F4. I think more work was put into tamagotchi. That was in 1996.

[h1]Experienced on Windows Mixed Reality[/h1] You can view my review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/9QuLYMyxLgM The Steam store page description really got me hyped for this game. I was expecting that game, unfortunately, what I got was rather disappointing. It's not a bad game, it just wasn't really interesting for me either. I did 4-5 playthroughs and I want to say the average was 5 minutes long. Each time I did get different results, but none of them were all that captivating. You can move around the AI creatures, you can rotate the sky around to get a better view, or you can plant plants that will change the rotation of the planet. You'll get different results. You can put special AI into each creature or none of them. You can see how they interact with each other or with the plants. On my first playthrough, they all fell to their deaths and I simply got a message that thousands of them had died at the end. That was an inauspicious start to say the least. While I did manage to get most of them to survive on my next playthrough, there wasn't enough variety to hold my interest. Rather than being curious about all the different possibilities, I was numbed by all the sameness. I kept trying, but eventually had enough after about 45 minutes, mostly filled with lackluster & forgettable moments. This is running on the Unity Engine. On my 1060 GTX, I was getting mostly 90 frames per second, although I would get dips to 45 frames per second at times. The interactions are all simple, mostly point and click, and then grab type interactions. I did experience an issue where the game kept taking me in and out of the view of the planet for no apparent reason. I normally like experimental VR type games, but this one just didn't do it for me personally. I think others may enjoy it more, but the AI was more like AD (artificially dumb). Just too simple overall. Didn't make me ask bigger questions like are we ourselves in a simulation or care at all about the story (was there a story?). [b]Rate 5/10. [/b] [quote]If you enjoyed my review, please consider subscribing to my YouTube Channel or joining my Steam Curator group. You can join my Steam Curator Group here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Oculus_WMR [/quote]