I think I have a pretty strong long-term memory. For example, I remember reading Stoner while backpacking in Italy and realizing I particularly liked sad books. I also remember the delicious taste of a Mars Delight chocolate bar. But my short-term memory, wow. Yeah, not so good. And the demo for Disposition, a borderline escape room game where you have to remember how things are arranged in rooms, underscored this point.
In Disposition, you play as one of the test subjects at a mysterious, dystopian research facility. The hallways are bright and white, and the office equipment is straight out of the '90s: usually clunky, usually gray. You need to work your way up the floors of this facility, but to do so, you must pass a series of tests between each elevator ride upward. And these tests involve entering rooms and observing how objects are arranged inside them. When you exit these rooms, the doors lock behind you, and an object falls out: a projector, a red lamp, a screen. It's then up to you to enter an identically arranged room, where some or all of the objects are missing, and place the object where you believe it was before (you do this using a physics-based point-and-click shooter).
Get it right and you're ready to ascend. A new room! More objects, even more difficult memory recall, and increasing paranoia of mind gaps. Get it wrong, though, and… you start from floor zero.
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In my short time with the demo, I miraculously made it all the way to the sixth floor. And that's with the help of a walkie-talkie, whose increasing or decreasing static acts as a guide for where to place objects. It does have a limited battery life, though, so you'll want to use it sparingly. Otherwise, I spent most of the demo meticulously scanning rooms for every little object, only to forget about them the moment doors closed. At times, the game gets really sneaky and starts throwing objects in really random places, like typewriters oddly placed next to doors. I'm curious to see these challenges change over time, as the Steam page states that you'll need to “spot anomalies” and that “these challenges change with each floor you climb.”
There's definitely a story here too, because the failure took me into a hallway and there I saw a guy with a videotape on his head. The narrator on the speaker said they were a long-time employee. Yeah, it's creepy.
Oh, and there's also a timer if you want to compete with others on the leaderboard or challenge yourself. Perhaps there are more timed elements on higher floors, but that's pure speculation and I doubt I'll ever get to that point.
There's no release date for this one yet, but it's expected to be out soon. If you want to try the demo for yourself, you can find it on Steam here .