Wales' tale might swim in simplistic textures and jerky movements (down to occasional axe combat that channels Minecraft, of all things), but even the sunny memories reek of the macabre. It's not as though Master Reboot isn't disturbing enough on its own. Completing these usually yields some insight into the mythology or the protagonist's identity as a benefit, but the constant expectation of the little girl's pop-ups dampens the pleasures of finding them. Sometimes, however, the puzzles tried my nerves, as in the case of a memory that forced me to drive into oncoming traffic, or one that made me recreate an image from memory when I hadn't seen the parent image in an hour or more. Elsewhere, I'd find a rubber duckie detailing the laughably poor math performance of our heroine. One puzzle might make me repeat a short succession of notes on a keyboard another might see me rearranging the rides in a spooky playground. "Scram, kid," I'd say, "I'm workin' here." And I generally enjoyed the work, too. Seren's supposed to be Ring-style nightmare fodder, but her repeated antics reduce her to a virtual Dennis the Menace without the Baby Boomer one-liners. Alas, she's a wolf with gummy-bear teeth: if she catches you, the system reboots, and you're back almost where you were before. At times she outright chases you, forcing you to play hide-and-seek amid the seats of an empty jetliner. Open a locker in a memory of your elementary school, and boo, she performs her best jack-in-the-box impression. But she grows bolder still, even to excess. Or did you? At times I'd look back a second later only to find her gone, and the chill would prompt me to flick on the lamp on my real-world desk. Take a quick look in a darkened classroom, and you might see her two gleaming eyes in the dark. A security program named Seren.exe haunts your steps in the form of a little girl, evoking both Agent Smith and Half-Life's G-Man, and she's most effective at dishing out heebie-jeebies when you catch her in the corner of your eye. Despite the best efforts of overused sound effects and screeching violins, it doesn't always deliver. A scavenger hunt in the vein of Gone Home may serve as the Master Reboot's skeleton, but developer Wales Interactive wraps it in a creepy ambiance better suited to Amnesia or Huntsman: The Orphanage. Echoes of the deceased's consciousness waft through the circuitry, allowing the living to leave messages for them in the form of (yes) glowing rubber duckies. This is the Soul Cloud, a databank where loved ones can plug in to the memories of dead friends or family members, letting them relive key moments in the deceased's life as though they still walked the Earth.
Lacking hints or tutorials, its encourages dreamlike fumblings by forcing you to learn its tricks by chance amid scenes and environments that shift as easily as tracks on a music player, all through the eyes of a female protagonist who discovers the method behind the broken images only by reading scraps and studying photos. Much like the Wachowski siblings' 1999 film (or Plato, for that matter), Master Reboot prompts us to question reality.
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