Californium is the story of one Elvin Green. A writer. The game was first advertised to me as an acid trip Philip K Dick inspired world surrounding Green and the people he comes across.

This is true. Kinda. There are some neat concepts here, but a lot of let down.

Elvin Green starts in his home apartment. You have to type out what is on his typewriter before you can begin. Just the letters mind you, spaces and punctuation will auto type for you. As a touch typist, this slowed me down as I kept expecting to have to press a comma, period, and space.

Eventually you hear a knock at the door and get up to explore the apartment. Read a letter sent to you and start having migraines.

Basically kids, stay off the booze and drugs. Or a Θ Theta character will appear on the TV and some educated voice will begin to speak to and about you. Is this voice Elvin himself? God? Aliens? The person typing these words? Who knows!

Play the game to not really find out!

The actual game involves talking to people around a small section of town. Talking has no dialogue options, you just hear them say things to you. Talking to people will change and open up areas of the tiny map, but should not block any sequence.

I did have a level breaking bug on chapter 3, and changing the order of conversations did fix it for me. Apparently a known issue and looking unlikely to be fixed. Oh well. Once you know the level it does not take long to fix.

The actual game is a hidden object game. You have to find Theta symbols around the map. These require you to be in specific places, and looking in a specific direction.

When correctly positioned, a Theta will light up the area and you have to turn to look and click on it. Done. A TV in the area will count down in Roman numerals with the amount of Thetas left to find in the local area. Such as the Cafe, Publishing house, Apartment, Main Street, and Police Station.

There's a neat reality bubble effect where the next world bleeds through into the current one, and each successive world is more and more warped.

The narrator will talk to you about peeling away reality as you complete each area. Culminating in lining up a projected design to start the next chapter. Slowly becoming more hostile in tone, but never presenting an actual threat.

The downside to all of this is the precision required to make it work.

Elvin has to stand in very specific spots for Thetas to show up. And sometimes that does not even work. A few required me to move around on the spot, or leave and re-enter a building.

Others are triggered if you move the mouse dot over various objects to get them to vanish. But do it in a wrong order, or simply move too fast and you have to start again. There was one that I could only activate if I walked slowly towards it, while facing away from it, then spinning around and hitting left click as fast and accurate as I could!

I'm not sure how many of these are bugs, or just poor choices on how they activate. And I tried several alternative methods and locations to trigger them to no avail.

Thankfully, the game does give you some indication on the tiny Thetas. One as big as a power point (hint hint, one is as big as a power point). Objects in the world will flash in and out of existence. Stepping into the empty spot will force you above them, but there's no neat easter egg as far as I could find.

If you see the flashing items, there's certainly a small Theta waiting for you to click on.

There's some really stylish choices of colour and set design here. Absolutely gorgeous tones. But the puzzle design SUCKS! I spent so much time fighting to get Thetas to show, and Elvin's walk speed is a crawl, that it was hard to enjoy.

I'm torn on recommending this one. I would not rush out and grab it. It's a neat short experience. But a frustrating one to get through.

Game Acquisition: Bundle Stars (Impact 1 bundle)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 20 February 2018
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows 7 or Higher
Processor: Intel Core i3 2.00 GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: DX9 (shader model 2.0)
Storage: 2 GB available space