For over a century, psychological personality tests have sought to unravel the complexities of the human mind. From Freud’s psychoanalytic theories to Jung’s archetypal explorations, these tests aim to quantify and analyze our motivations, emotions, and inner workings.
In more recent decades, the popularity of personality tests has skyrocketed beyond the realm of psychology. Casual online quizzes, workplace evaluations, and even games utilizing these tests have become ubiquitous.
It is in this context that the video game Finis makes its debut. Finis is built around the intriguing Lüscher color test, which purports to reveal aspects of one’s psychological state based on color preferences. Developed in the 1940s by Swiss psychologist Max Lüscher, this controversial test remains hotly debated, but continues to fascinate.
Finis takes the Lüscher test and transforms it into a gaming experience. Players start by selecting colors that correspond to different emotional states and facets of their personality. These choices determine the path they embark on in the game. With 8 color options and 21 different puzzle “multiverses,” Finis promises a journey tailored to the player’s psyche.
In this review, we will dive into Finis to analyze its gameplay, visuals, audio, narrative style, and most importantly, its use of the Lüscher test. We will examine whether Finis offers a compelling and revelatory psychological gaming experience, or whether it falls short of its lofty goals. Strap in for an introspective ride as we explore what this avant-garde title has to offer the world of gaming.
Traversing the Multiverse Through Color and Puzzle
The core of Finis’ gameplay centers around the Lüscher color test and how it shapes the player’s journey. To start, you choose from 8 colored boxes, each representing a different emotional state or personality trait according to Lüscher’s theories. Your initial color selection determines which of the 8 “paths” you will begin, with each path containing tailored multiverses designed around your choice.
Once you’ve picked a color, you are immediately dropped into one of the 21 puzzle multiverses. These puzzles encompass a dizzying array of themes and objectives. One minute you may be decoding military maps and lights signaling in Morse code, the next brewing tea for a dragon or jettisoning bodies into space. While unpredictable, the puzzles do succeed in mentally engaging the player.
However, the lack of coherence between puzzles can feel disjointed. With no connecting thread or escalating difficulty, they come across as randomly generated tests rather than purposefully designed challenges. This makes it harder to feel truly invested in solving them.
Initial playthroughs clock in around an hour or less. While brief, this does allow you to experience the core mechanics and a personality evaluation quickly. However, the brevity means limited time to grow accustomed to the controls. Instructions are nowhere to be found, leaving players to struggle with deciphering the unintuitive control scheme. Interacting with objects and solving puzzles becomes needlessly frustrating, as you fumble between two different action buttons with no guidance. Streamlining the controls and offering some explanation would smooth out this painful learning curve.
In the end, while the Lüscher color test provides an fascinating frame for the gameplay, the puzzles themselves fail to fully captivate. Their randomness and the lack of coherent progression or stakes prevent full immersion. Combined with controls that are obscure and cumbersome to handle, Finis falls short of offering an optimal gameplay experience. More care in designing puzzles and controls would have allowed players to better traverse and enjoy these multiverses.
A Tale Painted in Pixels and Tones
While Finis may falter in some respects, one area where it shines brightly is in its visuals and audio. Each of the 21 puzzle multiverses showcase wildly diverse settings and art styles. One moment you may find yourself in a lush waterworld with vibrant skies, the next surrounded by the stark walls of a spaceship. This visual variety adds excitement and imaginative flair to the experience.
Among the highlights are the futuristic cityscapes, filled with sleek skyscrapers and neon lights contrasted against dystopian decay. The juxtaposition of advanced technology with destruction makes for impactful scenery. Another standout is the sparse, metal confinement of the spaceship interior, converted into a cold, clinical research lab. The striking visuals do an admirable job of conveying distinct narratives and moods wordlessly.
Complementing these visuals is a soundtrack of ambient, otherworldly music. The calming tones match the puzzle-solving vibe perfectly. Rather than aggressive, urgent beats, the audio takes an atmospheric approach. This lets you focus on decoding puzzles while subtle sonic flourishes react to your choices. The music integrates smoothly rather than overwhelming the experience.
However, technical issues do creep in, marring Finis’ otherwise artistic presentation. Reflections may appear distorted and broken. Graphics glitches like textures flickering in and out can disrupt immersion. The game simply feels a bit unpolished and rough around the edges. While the developer’s creativity shines through, lacks the refinement to deliver AAA-quality visuals.
Finis tantalizes more than it satisfies visually. Moments of brilliant scene-setting glow among the glitches, showing the potential for true audiovisual excellence. Smoothing out technical problems would allow the game’s vibrant, imaginative style to glitter consistently across its multiverses. As is, its visual possibilities are only partly fulfilled. But the soundscape envelops you smoothly, letting your mind puzzle away accompanied by hypnotic, harmonious tones.
An Evaluation of the Psyche or a Psychedelic Evaluation?
The cornerstone of Finis’ appeal lies in the promise of a customized psychological evaluation based on your in-game choices. This examination of your psyche comes courtesy of the Lüscher color test. On paper, this represents an intriguing fusion of personality assessment and interactive gaming. So how well does Finis pull off this ambitious goal in practice? The results are mixed.
From the beginning, every color you select is meant to represent some deeper part of your subconscious. Your preferences open one of the 8 personality “paths”, leading to multiverses designed specifically for you. In theory, this path should provide tailored self-reflection and discovery. And on initial evaluation, being categorized down to your core motivations feels uncannily accurate.
Yet upon deeper inspection, the disconnect between your choices and the arbitrary-feeling final assessment becomes apparent. The multiverses themselves lack meaningful coherence to the colors you picked. The puzzles feel randomly generated rather than purposefully constructed around your purported personality traits. With little relation between the worlds explored and summary given, the evaluation rings hollow.
The introspective nature of experiencing realities subjectively certainly encourages thoughtful rumination. But the execution causes the evaluation’s credibility to crumble. Your expectations of revealing insights into your psyche go ultimately unfulfilled.
This unreliable evaluation highlights Finis’ unfinished feel. With focused fine-tuning, the multiverses could better embody the player’s color selections. Constructing puzzles to draw out relevant personality facets would strengthen the assessment’s validity. Expanding the number of paths could provide nuanced rather than generalized results.
As is, Finis only skims the surface of delivering measurable psychological insights. While initially thought-provoking, the evaluation’s meaning dissipates rapidly. Your choices lack the context needed to make a detailed, dimensional deconstruction of your psyche possible.
In the end, Finis offers more of a psychedelic evaluation than a psychologically enlightening one. Flashes of self-discovery perish amidst the disjointed acid trip that is its gameplay. Still, the fact that Finis dares to experiment with psychological gaming at all is laudable. If future iterations remedy itsevaluative shortcomings, its ambitions of delving deep into the depths of human personality may prove well within reach. For now, the most accurate personality assessment may simply be that Finis remains a diamond in the rough.
A Missed Opportunity for Meaningful Narrative
On the surface, the concept of tailored multiverses centered around the player’s choices seems captivating. The sheer breadth of 21 distinct realities to explore, each one customized to your personality, overflows with narrative potential. Unfortunately, Finis stumbles when it comes to fully delivering immersive, satisfying storytelling within those multiverses.
While visually stunning, the scenery lacks meaningful depth to bring these worlds to life. Without characters or text for context, the arresting visuals fail to convey substantive narratives on their own. This forces players to project their own interpretations onto the imaginative but shallow tableaus. Even the overarching narrative grows increasingly muddled and disjointed as players puzzle hop arbitrarily.
With stronger writing and character integration, these multiverses could transform into fully realized realms brimming with storytelling possibilities. Linking the player’s choices to tangible impacts on each universe could heighten investment exponentially. But as is, the visuals alone cannot shoulder the burden of narrative depth.
Consequently, becoming emotionally invested in Finis’ worlds proves challenging. Without logical progression between puzzles or identifiable stakes, players float disconnected above the multiverses rather than immersing within them. Such thin narratives prevent forming meaningful bonds.
Finis clearly harbors tremendous untapped potential for crafting immersive, choice-driven storytelling. But only skeletons of narratives exist where living, breathing stories should. Transforming its stark multiverses into fleshed-out realms, populated with characters and anchored in cohesion, could elevate this game from psychedelic light show to psychologically insightful saga. For now, players must rely more on imagination than narration to journey between its gorgeous but hollow worlds. With refined writing and structure, Finis could evolve into a masterful exploration of narrative possibilities across the multiverse.
Final Reflections on a Game of Reflection
In the end, Finis offers players a decidedly mixed bag. Its standout feature is the psychological evaluation based on the Lüscher color test. The notion of gaining insights into your innermost personality through gameplay remains fascinating, if imperfectly implemented. Selecting colors and receiving tailored multiverses centered around your choices provides an undeniably unique gaming premise.
However, Finis stumbles when it comes to fully engaging the player within those multiverses. While visually diverse, the worlds themselves lack narrative depth to complement their imaginative style. Disjointed puzzles prevent full immersion into each realm. The storytelling simply falls short of its potential.
Yet there is something to be said for Finis’ novelty and willingness to experiment. Its flaws stem largely from overambition rather than any lack of creativity or vision. It lays the groundwork for an entirely new genre of introspective, personality-driven games.
As such, Finis merits cautious recommendation for players seeking unconventional, exploratory experiences. Those drawn to introspective gameplay and interested in interpreting the game’s sparse storytelling through a personal lens may find it uniquely thought-provoking. It rewards open-minded gamers willing to connect its disconnected pieces into a subjective whole.
But players requiring coherent storytelling, polished execution and easily-grasped gameplay should steer clear of this psychedelic head trip. Finis’ rough edges may frustrate more traditional palates. Its conceptual boldness outweighs its actual fulfillment of that promise.
In summary, Finis offers irregularity over polish, novelty over comfort, and experimentation over predictability. For some, unraveling its challenges and mysteries may prove rewarding. Its paradigm-shifting concept might even inspire future games to interweave personality and play more seamlessly. But only gamers with a high tolerance for strangeness and imperfection are likely to fully enjoy unlocking the secrets within Finis’ ambitious but flawed multidimensional puzzles.
The Review
FINIS
Finis offers a mesmerizing glimpse into the future of personality-based gaming, but its rough edges make for an experience that is intellectually intriguing yet often frustrating to play. For open-minded gamers craving innovation, it may satisfy. But clunky controls, disjointed pacing and unfinished storytelling diminish its ambitious vision.
PROS
- Fascinating psychological evaluation premise using the Lüscher color test
- Unique idea to blend personality assessment and gameplay
- Visually diverse puzzle multiverses to explore
- Visually diverse puzzle multiverses to explore
- Atmospheric, complementary musical soundtrack
- Thought-provoking introspective experience
CONS
- Unpolished graphics with technical glitches
- Unclear, confusing controls and interface
- Steep learning curve and lack of instructions
- Puzzles feel randomly generated rather than tailored
- Lack of depth and coherence in puzzle narratives
- Disjointed, poorly executed storytelling
- Arbitrary-feeling personality evaluation
- Brevity of initial playthrough
