Developed and published by Steel Crate Games in 2015, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is an innovative downloadable multiplayer puzzle game that involves working with other players to defuse a virtual bomb before it explodes, as the title implies.
Based upon the Unity game engine, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes offers procedurally generated scenarios. In the game, you will be using bombs that can be disarmed with the use of a manual read by another player to the person defusing the bomb.
How to Download Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
You can download the game for Xbox One, PS4, OS X, Android, Nintendo Switch and Windows. To start your download click on the button below the review. You can also download the game’s original soundtrack. Separately or in a bundle.
The Game Review
Though initially a virtual reality only game, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is now available on all platforms and in traditional viewing formats. As a VR game, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes was quite groundbreaking on Windows and later Android smartphones, offering a glimpse at what kind of gameplay concepts could be implemented using virtual reality settings.
While a relatively novel gameplay concept when using VR as its platform, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes nonetheless borrows from hallowed traditions of gaming such as the Myst and Zork titles on the PC.
For those that may not remember, in the early of days of PC CD-ROM game titles, things like Myst and Return to Zork showed off the capabilities of the new storage medium, particularly when it came to displaying graphics. No longer confined to text-based worlds, these early PC titles made heavy use of pre-rendered backgrounds and video footage.
One common theme that tied these titles together?
The use of puzzle solving as a central and core gameplay element. Much is the same case with Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.
The one advantage Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes has over other games is that the tasks are procedurally generated and thus variate from play session to play session, an advantage older tech never had. This makes each game novel and tense. Because the title relies so heavily on tension, this is a good thing because it would otherwise be hard to maintain interest.
Of similar interest to modern players is the inclusion of the cooperative element. Just as the defusion sequence will change so too will the instructions that lead to that goal. This brings in another element of cooperative multiplayer that some games claim to emphasize but is really nothing more than window dressing: teamwork.
More than anything, each bomb puzzle is a test of how well the two players work together towards a common goal. This becomes more and more important as the puzzles become increasingly difficult.
Specialization then becomes a necessity, such as in MMORPGs wherein some players choose a DPS class while others prefer to be a Healer or Tank. Though in theory players can switch back and forth between roles in Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, the game rewards mastery of a particular position and doesn’t lend itself to switching roles on the fly.
