When I was a plucky young chap, I imagined the future like cartoons taught me to. Flying cars, space houses, and magical technology that makes life easier. As I grow old and tired the future feels less certain, because people can’t be trusted and corruption is everywhere. I still like to imagine peace and sci-fi nonsense is waiting for future generations though, once they sort out all the fascists anyway. D-Topia is a cosy puzzle game about living in an AI controlled paradise, which is sort of what I had in mind without the AI.
You’re a new arrival in D-Topia, and have been assigned the role of Facilitator. A Facilitator’s job is to help the other humans living in this futuristic community, and occasionally do a bit of maintenance on robots having a wobbly. It doesn’t take very long for you to realise that the rules set in place by the AI don’t really take humanity and compassion into account though, and will lead to struggling citizens getting banished and cats being destroyed if you don’t step in. This sounds more dramatic than it really is though, because as long as you do the obvious right thing then people will probably end up happy.
There are a handful of different characters to chat to in D-Topia, all of whom you can make friends with by choosing the right conversation options. There’s the clone girl who is likable but faces some prejudice, a famous artist who was frozen for hundreds of years while a cure for his disease was discovered, and the neighbour you never actually see but texts you about life in AI paradise. It’s fun to get to know everyone, especially when you get gifts like chocolate bars from them.
This cosy game isn’t all about making friends though, there’s also work to be done. While there isn’t actually much of a need to work in this utopian future, the factory ensures that people aren’t left to become lazy with nothing to do. In game terms this means you get given lots of logic puzzles to solve, which feels like a bit on the nose but provides entertainment at least.
The puzzles are all very logic based, and often twists on familiar favourites. One is sort of like Minesweeper, but with different directional hints that change things up slightly. Quite a few of the puzzles are number and maths based, like the line puzzle which gives you a target number to reach with different multiplications and additions to manoeuvre through on the way. Time in the factory is rarely too taxing on the brain, but as a puzzle lover I appreciated the distraction from the story.
After work you’re usually allowed to explore the facility a bit, which is probably the weakest part of the game. By design it’s a fairly clinical setting, and getting around it is way too much of a chore. There’s usually some sort of small issue to deal with before you go to bed and start a new day, and this almost always means slogging from one side of D-Topia to another at a slow pace. You’ll at least get some distractions from friends and randoms along the way if you choose to talk to them, but their conversation is rarely enough to make up for the boring hike.
Whether you’re helping find a cat or changing the weather as your task of the day, you’ll be given a big decision to make. To do this you’ll enter a Brain Meeting, which is essentially a flow chart where you make a moral decision. These are hardly moral quandaries really, but mechanically they’re at least fairly satisfying.
Outside of your job as facilitator, you’ll also be able to spend your hard earned credits at shops. These robot manned stores allow you to buy food so you don’t have to wander home for lunch after work (an absolute must) and also some decorations for your swanky future apartment. There’s no mechanical reason to do this and the objects are added to set locations instead of allowing you to manually decorate, but it’s nice to have some figures on the shelf.
D-Topia is a serviceable cosy puzzle game, but ultimately it’s just a bit slow paced and dull for my liking. Getting around the futuristic world is a hassle, and the story isn’t really exciting or deep enough to mitigate that. The puzzles are perfectly fine, but feel more like something your grandma would do after reading the paper than anything innovative. If you love the idea of a utopian setting with a scattering of puzzles and people then maybe D-Topia will push your buttons, but I’m hoping the future of humanity is a little bit more exciting.
