Developed by Storm in a Teacup, this game isn’t bad… but it’s not good either.

As a massive Bioshock fan, when I spotted Close to the Sun on Game Pass and saw the trailer, I downloaded it straight away. Sadly, the only real similarities to Bioshock are that a man with immense wealth builds a place where industry and science can thrive without restrictions, the story takes place at sea in a highly advanced setting for its time, it’s played in first-person, the fashion is late 19th century, the architecture is early 20th-century art deco, and—if you count Bioshock Infinite—it involves time travel.

Close to the Sun follows Rose, a journalist who receives a letter from her sister, a theoretical physicist working for Nikola Tesla, asking her to come visit ‘Helios’—a massive ship built by Tesla so that the world’s top scientists can focus on developing new technology, free of political and moral constraints.

However, when Rose arrives, she discovers that the researchers aboard Helios have tried to harness time as an endless energy source—creating anomalies and energy leaks that let creatures from another dimension slip through and wreak havoc, killing nearly everyone onboard.

I won’t spoil the ending in case you fancy playing it, but I’ll tell you what I thought of the story. I think Close to the Sun had a great and original premise (the time creatures, I mean, not creating some sort of Rapture II), but the writers didn’t know how to make the most of it, leaving a ton of loose ends. For instance: who’s the bloke running around with a knife? Why were Tesla and Edison racing to outdo each other, and why did they hate each other so much? Why even bother mentioning spies if they’re completely irrelevant to the plot? What happened to Tesla in the end—did he die? What happened to the energy creatures, and why do they even exist?

Sure, maybe not all those questions are essential—but it still bugs me that a game with this much potential ended up being so middling. It could have been a Bioshock-level masterpiece, and it fell extremely short of it. Hell, not even a single jump-scare got me, either. That might sound like a minor thing to you, but if you market your game as “horror”, shouldn’t it actually make you sweat a bit at least?

Now, things I did enjoy: the core idea of the story, the artwork (duh!), and the concept (again, nothing new) of creating a space where the brightest minds can come together to collaborate without limits, fully equipped and unbothered by politics or red tape.

I wouldn’t call this a bad game, but definitely a lukewarm one. Rose is a strong character, but ultimately ends up flat—and so does her genius sister, who really deserved more screen time. Including historical figures should’ve resulted in a richer and better-grounded story. And pitting Tesla and Edison against each other with no backstory? Ugh. That’s just a wasted opportunity.

In sum, the number of loose ends left dangling really knocks points off this title. Maybe comparing Close to the Sun to a masterpiece like Bioshock is a bit unfair—but if you’re going to take this much inspiration from Bioshock’s atmosphere, storytelling, and style, then you should put in the effort to make something worthy of that comparison. I mean, there’s no way the devs weren’t thinking of Bioshock while working on this, right? Right?

So tell me—did this title fool you too, making you think it’d be amazing because of its Bioshock vibes? What do you make of the criticisms I’ve mentioned here—am I overreacting? And if you haven’t played it yet, are you still going to? Let me know in the comments.

To play it, visit Steam Deck, GamePass/Microsoft Store, PlayStation or—surprisingly— Nintendo Switch.