The Onkalo Project Review, 1.3 from Steam (as of 2012-12-02)
This is a futuristic themed mod. Two member expedition is trying to solve a secret of Onkalo. Due to cave in, you fall into a room. When you regain consciousness, your partner is missing.
I have mixed feelings about this mod. This mod starts slow. It tries to set up a stage for an abandoned, ancient high tech underground lab, but it is not appealing for me. The corridors just feel too empty. Distances between room are too large, so the whole complex seems too stretched without much content in it. On the other hand, there is a reason given for the emptiness later, and those vast distances will be a plot element later, so perhaps it was just an impression, not really a big flaw. Also, it picks up the pace later, which is indicates thoughtful design (I would hate a mod that would do the opposite: interesting, fast beginning followed by slow and long finish).
Some items are nicely tweaked. If you ever felt that the dungeons you are crawling have too few crystals, you'll love this one, but it may not be exactly what you've expected. There are some new props, which is always nice. Audio recordings with text-to-speech system are nicely done.
There is no magic used in this mod. I don't think you even can use your custom party.
I have never seen some types of puzzles before (the wall problem in engineering was really cool), which is very refreshing.
It took me almost 2 hours to walk through this dungeon, but I've found all secrets. It can probably be speed run within an hour. On the other hand, I'm almost sure that some keys necessary to progress are found in secret rooms.
There is a very simple intro and several endings, but they vary very little. There are quite a few notes here and there that explain various things and create background story.
I've encountered three minor bugs:
1. "Wall is destroyed" printed every time nitroglicerine is used, regardless if the wall is still there or not.
2. Key on level that opens the stairs down opened ony one door, not two.
3. There was a message about invalid spawn location for onkalo_spider, but I forgot to write down exact coordinates. Sorry.
I have mixed feelings about this mod. I like science fiction in general, but it seems a bit out of place for Grimrock. Slingshots and maces found in plasma research lab? Please. It was average experience - no obvious bugs, not too hard, not too trivial, but somehow it didn't appeal to me as a whole. This may be a personal taste, so I encourage other players to try it for themselves.
