Audio
The Bradwell Conspiracy is like a who’s who of British celebs - Jonathan Ross, Charlie Brooker- it actually threw me a little. On the whole, though, the ambience of Bradwell Electronics, combined with the subtle original score and some solid voice acting combines to be a delight on the senses.
Visuals
From an artistic concept standpoint, The Bradwell Conspiracy is outstanding, but it's constantly marred by a dodgy frame-rate.
Playability
The Bradwell Conspiracy is a game that nails the concept somewhat but fails on execution, let down by some fiddly controls.
Delivery
A fairly arbitrary puzzler that's complemented by a great narrative and some cool, unique mechanics. It’s a short affair, but don’t let that put you off.
Achievements
They're alright. Far too many collectibles for our liking, though. Most are connected to story progression, while two 150G achievements are related to a choice between dogs and cats.
October 11, 2019
Set in a high-tech lab with a disembodied voice that follows you around, playing a silent character who has a super sci-fi-esque matter 'gun' tasked with solving puzzles, you’d be forgiven for assuming I was talking about Valve’s popular puzzle game, Portal. I am, in fact, talking about Bossa Studios’ new first-person puzzle game, The Bradwell Conspiracy. You know this, because you've clicked on something that said 'The Bradwell Conspiracy review', so clearly you already knew I wasn’t talking about Portal, because that would be kind of weird. But Bossa’s latest game is something that shares a ridiculous number of elements with Portal, yet is somehow nothing like it. The inspirations are obvious, though.
In The Bradwell Conspiracy you play the aforementioned silent protagonist during the summer solstice in the not too distant future, at the launch of Bradwell Electronics’ innovative Clean Water Initiative. As things are always the case in weird utopias with supposedly well-meaning tech companies, things are not quite as they seem, and you'll soon find yourself trying to escape after a catastrophic incident and end up unravelling a… wait for it… CONSPIRACY! Who'd have thought?
It feels odd for me to have sat here and lamented silent protagonists just last week in our Code Vein review, but in The Bradwell Conspiracy, because of how you communicate with disembodied voice Amber (alluded to earlier), it actually works perfectly. Especially when you send her random photos of nothing in particular just to troll her.
In essence, The Bradwell Conspiracy is a puzzle game at its heart, one in which you use your Substance Mobile Printer – which can take and absorb matter from the game-world to recreate items – to solve fairly arbitrary puzzles. That’s not to say it’s not fun, it’s more to say it’s a touch on the easy side and anyone looking to be challenged will be hugely disappointed. Luckily, the game’s narrative and world-building is actually really well delivered, with captivating environments and an intricately woven plot. It’s like a walking simulator with some light puzzling to keep you from romping through it in an hour or so.
Bradwell is a game that has a lot of really cool and unique ideas – the SMP matter gun, for instance – but the delivery isn’t quite on par with the concept. For instance, the matter gun can be really finicky at times - I frequently found myself struggling to get the precise placement of objects, which would often cause frustration. Also, the frame-rate isn’t exactly ideal. It’s not very smooth, let’s put it that way. The waypoints can be a little lacking at times too, which, in fairness, proved to be only a minor concern.
As far as pick up and play experiences go, The Bradwell Conspiracy is an enjoyable page-turner with some really neat ideas and a truly interesting narrative that you’ll manage to finish within the space of an evening. It’s like a trashy sci-fi short-story, in that you’ll pick it up, romp through it and enjoy your time doing so, but once it's all wrapped up, you’ll probably never look back. Not a classic by any stretch of the imagination, then, The Bradwell Conspiracy is nonetheless an experience that is well worth your time.