Bithell Games have put out several relatively small and simple but inventive titles over the past decade. Thomas Was Alone, possibly, remains their best known, but it’s hardly an example of what they “usually do”, as there seems to be no “usual” for the team. That said, they’ve made several visual novel-ish adventure games, like the really inventive Subsurface Circular that I’ve enjoyed several years ago, and Tron: Identity fits the same general description. Except, it’s simpler to a flaw.
The title really plays like a visual “choose your own adventure” tale, where you get to investigate a mysterious explosion as a detective-like program inside The Grid. And it’s mostly focused on dialogues with other programs, during which your choices may affect their opinion of you and lead to slightly different outcomes of the story. Game also has simple but relatively okay puzzle mini-game about matching numbers or symbols during “defrag” and occasionally you might also see optional interactive spots that unlike more lore. And really, it seems like the main focus of the title was trying to build a story in the world of Tron, which… I mean, it feels like an attempt to “build the universe”, except Tron has never really worked as a “franchise” so far despite several attempts. And my personal favorite entry remains the now seemingly non-canon Tron 2.0 anyway…
Not that the writing in Tron: Identity is bad – as seems to be the case for all Bithell Games titles, the storytelling is solid and reading the descriptions and dialogues feels satisfying. It’s just that – the universe doesn’t really have enough to be interesting on its own, despite the attempts and the story feels rather uneventful, despite its implications in the end. Lots of things happen and you have influence on many of them, but it’s around 2 hours of gameplay which is not enough in this case to start truly caring about anything what’s going on. Maybe some hardcore Tron fans will love it, but for me it was more of a “neat” game with really good soundtrack and cool style. That I will probably not remember after a while.