Kairo

Moby ID: 59050
Windows Specs
Buy on Windows
$0.99 new on Steam

Description official description

Kairo is an adventure game played from a first-person perspective. Without context the protagonist is dropped in a surreal environment with large structures, glowing colours and sinister ambient music. To proceed and discover new locations, environment-based puzzles need to be solved. Controls are limited to movement, looking around and jumping. Interaction can be done by standing on tiles to activate them or by walking into them. There is no HUD. In certain parts it is possible to fall down, but then white squares appear as in a force field and the character respawns at the last location.

The different locations are linked together through portals. Puzzles need to be solved entirely by observing the environment. In a typical situation the player will enter the room and first look around for parts to interact with. By pushing them down and observing changes in the environment, guesses can be made to form sequences of interactions. Rather than random trial and error, clues are provided in the environment through symbols, elements that light up and specific sounds. The game is entirely linear, but larger locations are sometimes split up into different rooms each with their own puzzle that can be tackled in any order. In those cases there is always a pattern in the environment that shows the overall progress.

Not all rooms offer challenges. There are also environments where the player can fool around to play music or a starlab where star patterns can be altered. Even though the structures look ancient, there are futuristic elements through large energy beams and translucent elevators. Some parts of the environment also change based on the player's movement alone, forming or releasing barriers, or assembling or disassembling a monument. There are rooms that provide hints about the context, with glowing TV screens showing locations or mysterious characters. When stuck entirely, up to three hints for each puzzle can be viewed in the menu. They reveal progressively more, but always require the player to figure it out eventually without explaining every single action needed. The game is saved automatically.

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 72% (based on 13 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.4 out of 5 (based on 12 ratings with 1 reviews)

One of the Great Experiences of My Life

The Good
Everything I could name.

The Bad
Nothing I can think of.

The Bottom Line
Absolutely no one knows about this game and it's the best first-person game I've ever seen. Made by this one single English guy Richard Perrin. Exploration, architecture, puzzles, unfathomable alien beauty. The way the musical elements resonate against the visual ones is beyond belief. I don't know where else in life I've experienced depths like this. Some world lost for ever and beyond all hope of retrieving.

There are a few brief glimpses of some sort of a history buried in the game's more secret corners, but they're extremely cryptic and I still haven't been able to piece much of it together myself. Most of the puzzles are of pretty reasonable difficulty and a lot of them are quite easy, but there are a few exceptions. Fortunately there's a hint system you can consult.

Everyone in the entire world has to play this game.

Macintosh · by Brian McInnis · 2023

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  • MobyGames ID: 59050
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: Alaka.

Game added December 25, 2012. Last modified July 16, 2023.