One Stressful Cooperative Experience

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is a fairly unique cooperative game. Each player has role - one who is the bomb defuser (interacting with the many modules on a bomb), and one who reads from the manual (interpreting and communicating information for each module). There is a nice variety of modules that are introduced, and some nice challenges thrown at both players throughout the course of the game.

The visuals are basic but clean (and most importantly, clear). This allows for the bomb defuser to easily identify the next module that he/she decides to tackle. Besides the bomb itself though, there really isn't much to look at/interact with in the game.

The music is pretty simple and only really occurs in the main menu and in the background (subtle during early parts of the round, loud during the later parts). There are lots of sounds for the many parts of the bomb, which adds to the stress and chaos of the game, but it doesn't ever become a cacophony of noises that distract the player (unless certain elements of the game world like an alarm clock or "needy modules" start to go off).

The controls are super simple and involve only a few mouses clicks. Everything was very responsive and easy to navigate in game. However, there are some issues when it comes to the manual and the theme of the game itself...

I played this game with my girlfriend and we had a lot of fun, but we found ourselves constantly frustrated with the game as well. This had to do with the hard-to-decipher bomb manual that each player must learn. Some tasks are easy, but some are much more involved, and these take a while to get used to. During this period, you'll lose over and over again, which can get really annoying. the times that we did finally beat a stage or figure out a module tended to be overshadowed by the journey to understand each concept, and this diluted our experience a fair bit. The bomb manual is also hard to navigate through a file itself, and even some minor workarounds led us to still have frustrating moments.

While the game is definitely fun for the most part and very unique, I think many players might find the game to get old around the end of the fourth level set, since you are finally done learning each bomb module for the most part. Only those really looking for a challenge would want to continue, since I think the gameplay gets a bit stale and the puzzles get more and more annoying to work with. I think if there were more minigames are something to unlock besides more levels, it would be much more interesting to try and get through more of the game.

Overall, I can Recommend this game. Its a very solid title that delivers a very unique cooperative challenge/experience, and there is a good amount of challenging content for those willing to put up with a bit of repetitive gameplay. The game's intrinsic learning curve and challenge was both a pleasure and pain to experience, but the lack of meaningful late game content or unlockables, as well as the ratio of frustation to fun, kept my rating from rising any higher when it was all said and done. It's definitely worth checking out, but I wouldn't expect more than a handful of hours before both players get a bit tired of the mechanics.


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[h1] Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes [/h1] [b] One Stressful Cooperative Experience [/b] [b] Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes [/b] is a fairly unique cooperative game. Each player has role - one who is the bomb defuser (interacting with the many modules on a bomb), and one who reads from the manual (interpreting and communicating information for each module). There is a nice variety of modules that are introduced, and some nice challenges thrown at both players throughout the course of the game. The visuals are basic but clean (and most importantly, clear). This allows for the bomb defuser to easily identify the next module that he/she decides to tackle. Besides the bomb itself though, there really isn't much to look at/interact with in the game. The music is pretty simple and only really occurs in the main menu and in the background (subtle during early parts of the round, loud during the later parts). There are lots of sounds for the many parts of the bomb, which adds to the stress and chaos of the game, but it doesn't ever become a cacophony of noises that distract the player (unless certain elements of the game world like an alarm clock or "needy modules" start to go off). The controls are super simple and involve only a few mouses clicks. Everything was very responsive and easy to navigate in game. However, there are some issues when it comes to the manual and the theme of the game itself... I played this game with my girlfriend and we had a lot of fun, but we found ourselves constantly frustrated with the game as well. This had to do with the hard-to-decipher bomb manual that each player must learn. Some tasks are easy, but some are much more involved, and these take a while to get used to. During this period, you'll lose over and over again, which can get really annoying. the times that we did finally beat a stage or figure out a module tended to be overshadowed by the journey to understand each concept, and this diluted our experience a fair bit. The bomb manual is also hard to navigate through a file itself, and even some minor workarounds led us to still have frustrating moments. While the game is definitely fun for the most part and very unique, I think many players might find the game to get old around the end of the fourth level set, since you are finally done learning each bomb module for the most part. Only those really looking for a challenge would want to continue, since I think the gameplay gets a bit stale and the puzzles get more and more annoying to work with. I think if there were more minigames are something to unlock besides more levels, it would be much more interesting to try and get through more of the game. Overall, I can [b] Recommend [/b] this game. Its a very solid title that delivers a very unique cooperative challenge/experience, and there is a good amount of challenging content for those willing to put up with a bit of repetitive gameplay. The game's intrinsic learning curve and challenge was both a pleasure and pain to experience, but the lack of meaningful late game content or unlockables, as well as the ratio of frustation to fun, kept my rating from rising any higher when it was all said and done. It's definitely worth checking out, but I wouldn't expect more than a handful of hours before both players get a bit tired of the mechanics. [h2] Final Verdict: 8/10 (Great) [/h2] If you enjoyed this review, feel free to check out my curator page for my thoughts on a variety of other games! https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/curator/37542043-ADHD-Reviews/