It is atmospheric, creepy and the puzzles are creative and varied enough to keep you engaged beginning to end
Titanic: A Space Between immerses you in a compelling time-travel mystery set aboard the ill-fated RMS Titanic. But this is not just the Titanic you know. No, this is a weirder and creepier Titanic and you must uncover the secrets behind a missing time traveler while desperately trying to escape the sinking ship.
The atmosphere here is not only tense as you are inside a sinking metal coffin, but also because there are darker and interdimensional creepy things trying to stop you at every at every step of the way. You take the role of Hendrik van Eden, a time travel investigator tasked with finding Diana, another time traveler who vanished during an expedition to the Titanic. However, you also see and get to experience Diana's point of view as she's also trying to complete her original task too. If you are someone like me, you will really appreciate all of the time travel tropes and shenanigans this game throws at you. That's all I am going to say as if I continue, I would be entering into heavy spoilers territories.
In addition to its intriguing storyline, Titanic: A Space Between delivers a truly immersive gameplay experience. You will carefully pick you way through the luxury liner, solving puzzles while avoiding the steadily rising water levels and cosmic horrors. You will move from the boiler rooms where you shovel coal into the engines up to the deck and then make your way from the ornate Grand Staircase to the cramped crews' quarters
Hendrik is equiped with a tiny gadget that you use as a flashlight to illuminate your way in the dark hallways, as a tool to unscrew vents and whatnot and also as a sorta light gun to dispel any horrors that are out to get you. Yeah, it creepy and the game got me good, like scared shitless, a couple of times. Diana, on the other hand, has a glove equiped with a camera that you use to take a photos and see things in the environment, plus you can also use it as a flashlight. This sinking Titanic is dark and most of the creepines comes from you not being able to see all that well and that is made even creepier as the flashlight for both characters is limited and you'll need to keep it charged by finding batteries in the dark halls and rooms.
Puzzles are not challenging, but they are nicely designed as you'll have to pickup and interact with physics objects in order to solve and pass most them. Now, while this is an indie title that punches well above its budget, at the end of the day, it is still an indie title made by just two guys, so there's a good amount of jank you'll have to deal with. Things like objects you pickup might get stuck in the environment and if you drop them they might fall under the map or you can easily soft lock the game if you break the sequence of a puzzle etc. While these problems do not ruin the game, they can still break the immersion.
Visually, the game looks good running on the Quest 3. It's a little bit more darker than I would have liked, but on the other hand I understand it as helps with the whole creepy atmosphere. The game has voice acting and while the handlers and Diana's voice actors do a fairly nice job for the most part, Hendrik's is not that good. Still, overall it's fine and as I said previously, it punches well above its budget. In the main menu, there's also an Exploration Mode, which I guess allows you to wander through the environments and sorta experience what walking through the Titanic might have felt like, but that is currenlty locked and did not unlock after I finished the game. Maybe it's coming in a future update once it's ready, we will see.
I really like a good time travel narrative and I am really happy to say that Titanic: A Space Between delivers on that front. It is atmospheric, creepy and the puzzles are creative and varied enough to keep you engaged beginning to end. I do recommend this game. Thanks for reading!
The game was reviewed on a Quest 3 using a review copy provided by the developers. Titanic: A Space Between is available on Meta Quest and later coming to PSVR2 and PCVR.
