Dead Synchronicity Review

Developer: Daedalic Entertainment GmbH
Price: $4.99
Version Reviewed: 1.1
App Reviewed on: iPad Mini Retina

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Overall Rating:

Dead Synchronicity is dark. Really, really dark. Set in a world that has been mostly wiped out by a mysterious thing called The Great Wave, leading to martial law and some terrible suffering, it’s a bleak existence. You’re a man suffering from amnesia, but unlike other games you’re not here to liberate the world - you just want to survive.

This is done through exploring the land and solving various puzzles. At times, it’s a little sick, suck as when you’re mutilating a corpse in order to set the man up in the case of a murder. It’s consistently well written though, and really quite enticing. This doesn’t feel like a by the numbers tale, instead sticking in your memory for a while to come.

Where Dead Synchronicity struggles is with its puzzles. At first, they seem logically designed, with simple touch controls enabling you to combine objects without much hassle. In time though, these puzzles become increasingly obtuse or require a lot of backtracking. For every time that something makes perfect sense, another puzzle will befuddle you.

Dead Synchronicity also suffers from a very abrupt conclusion. It just ends. There’s no hint of it coming or a ‘To Be Continued’ message, leaving you wondering what’s going on and whether there’ll be any resolution in the future. As the ending is a game’s last chance to stick with you, it feels unsatisfactory and disappointing, which belies the rest of the game. Dead Synchronicity deserves to be remembered for taking a shot, not for feeling a little cheap with its conclusion.

It’s a mixed bag for Dead Synchronicity then, but one I’d still be tempted to recommend. Its story is distinctively dark and like little else out there, despite initially seeming predictable. Just don’t expect to appreciate it without a little suffering along the way, and try to be ready for it to end abruptly.