Humble Games, a studio owned by Humble Bundle and notable for their release A Hat in Time have come out with a new game on Steam. Floor 13: Deep State is a “sequel” to a DOS game, Floor 13 which came out in 1992. The premise of the game is quite unique: you are the head of an authoritative government agency that uses surveillance, illegal searches, interrogation and all manner of questionable tactics to unearth terrorist plots, assassination attempts, and a whole lot more. Although, this is not apparent because the game is completely unplayable.
In fact, I am 100% confident in telling you to not even touch this game, and instead, just go play the original for free online. You will have a much better time, and not waste a dollar of your money.
Don’t get me wrong, the game is not terrible. For the first two hours of my playthrough, I adored the game. I was immediately in love with the gameplay and main pitch of the game. The game had a lot going for it, the graphics were beautiful, the gameplay was unique, the writing was enjoyable, and the game was a pleasure. It was very reminiscent of Papers Please, another unique classic that I really enjoyed. I had a few graphical bugs, but nothing game-breaking. The game throws you in without much explanation, so there is a bit of a learning curve at first. It was somewhat simple to figure out, and before long I was invested in the game. I was excited to play it and experience the whole story, but things soon fell apart. I got a glitch where an entire mechanic of the game disappeared and I could not progress.
Nothing I did would fix it, and I tried everything. I reinstalled the game, searched for help online, checked for updates, etc. All I managed to find was a steam reviewer who had the same glitch as me, but alas no fix. I really loved the game though, so I decided to start a new save file and try again. I tried for three hours to just get through one playthrough but always some glitch showed up.
After my first file reset it all went downhill fast. I could not even manage to get past the tutorial mission without the entire game bugging out every couple of minutes. Usually, quitting and reloading fixed these interface issues, but eventually, a game-breaking glitch will show up and force you to create a new save file. I had to quit and reload the game dozens of times and had a total of five new files. Each new file took only about a half-hour to an hour for it to crash.
I will be the first to say that if the developers fixed all of the bugs that make this game unplayable, I am willing to give this game another chance and would wholeheartedly recommend it. For now, though, the game is unplayable and what more can be said about a game you can’t even play?
The one silver lining is that this game made me aware of its predecessor: Floor 13 developed for Microsoft DOS. Since it is such an old game, you can easily find it to play for free online, and it is quite a unique and enjoyable treasure of a game. I strongly recommend it to anyone who has a soft spot for retro games, or who are fans of unique storytelling. In fact, the old game is superior to this new release in almost every way. The new one has nicer graphics, but the story, gameplay, premise, and pretty much everything else is completely ripped from the original game. Plus, the predecessor actually functions, unlike its brand new shiny Steam counterpart.
That being said, Floor 13: Deep State was a massive disappointment, and much of its massive potential was wasted. However, this led to my discovery of the original game, and then I didn’t feel so bad about hating on the devs for releasing a buggy mess. In fact, the original is an absolute gem that I could happily spend an afternoon playing for free. So I got a satisfying reward, but the same can’t be said for anyone who attempts to play this game. The people who really lost the most are the fans of the original who were waiting on this supposed sequel, which touted having the same development team as the first one almost 30 years ago.
Score: 2 out of 10
Reviewed on Steam