DEUS EX MACHINA 2

I went in expecting something niche and came out genuinely unsure what genre label to staple on the box, which, in the right mood, is a compliment. Deus Ex Machina 2 is the 2015 sequel to Mel Croucher's cult 1984 ZX Spectrum oddity, one of the first games ever to synchronise gameplay to a recorded soundtrack. The sequel carries that same DNA forward: your entire playtime is spent riding a linear sequence of loosely interactive stages that map the arc of a human life, from fertilisation through adolescence, adulthood, decline, and death. The structure is lifted, consciously, from Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man. That contextual weight is real, and it matters to how you receive what follows. The audio is the centrepiece, and it is legitimately striking. Sir Christopher Lee voices The Programmer, and his presence across the soundtrack lends the whole thing a weight that most games costing ten times more simply cannot buy. The rock album score, written by Croucher, has a darkly playful quality, swinging between absurdist humour and genuine melancholy. It also carries the rare distinction of being the final video game performance released during Christopher Lee's lifetime, recorded before his death in 2015. If you are the kind of person who sits with headphones on and lets a soundscape move through you, there are passages here that will stay with you. Now, the honest part. The interactivity is about as thin as it gets. Each stage gives you a character to nudge using basic WASD movement, asking you to collect or dodge things, with a shifting "degree of ideal entity" score reacting to your choices. But the game completes itself regardless of your inputs. You can set the controller down and the credits will still roll. Community voices are split almost down the middle on whether this is a design philosophy worth respecting or a fatal flaw, and that mixed reception across player reviews reflects exactly that tension. For anyone hoping for meaningful consequence or mechanical depth, this will feel like paying for a screensaver with narration. The visual presentation is also divisive, relying on 3D polygonal chapters that lean rough and jarring rather than intentionally lo-fi. Who is this actually for? Retrocomputing historians, people who love the original 1984 game, fans of avant-garde interactive audio experiences, and anyone who wants to spend an hour inside something that genuinely could not exist outside the medium of games, even if it barely uses that medium. It is not for players who measure value in mechanics, agency, or replayability. Approach it the way you would an experimental short film with a controller attached. If that framing makes you curious rather than frustrated, you are the right audience. If it makes you reach for a refund, respect that instinct.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

Be the first to comment on DEUS EX MACHINA 2.