Artificial Nexus is a brand new mystery visual novel from Melbourne-based developer Too Many Teeth Studios. Following on from their 2023 horror adventure The Many Deaths of Lily Kosen, this new foray ups the ambition. Instead of being purely a visual novel, it also has intriguing puzzle solving, readable delving, and a mystery to unravel. Dishing up a story of a corporate tragedy and technology gone wrong, it’s an exciting tale to work through. Better yet, it’s available now.
You are Susan, a green-haired amnesiac who wakes up in an office facility building for the tech company known as COEUS (Computing Operations for Electronic User Systems). Not quite sure how she got there or what’s going on, she stumbles upon rogue robots that have gone hostile, odd computers and a labyrinth of locked office doors. Your salvation of escape is employee Hank, talking with you through the intercom and coaching you through the building’s halls. The catch is he’s locked away in a room, and the two of you must work together to get out.
What ensues is a series of puzzles as you work out how to disable the electronic lock that has trapped Hank away. This means a lot of perusing through instant messages between employees on their computers, finding not just solid worldbuilding but breadcrumbs and clues to puzzles that await. You can find not-so-clever ways employees have set up passwords for themselves, disgruntled messages between colleagues and, in a lot of the company, a growing disdain for the incompetent AI the IT and management department have set up in the hopes of helping them complete tasks. They yell and argue with the chatbot in the company’s equivalent of Slack or Microsoft Teams. As someone whose day job is working in a corporate setting, seeing everyone around them embrace AI and ChatGPT, it’s painfully real storytelling.
As an immersive sim lover, I love to delve into people’s computers in video games, learning as much as possible about them, sleuthing in the back ends of files saved and emails or communications sent. Artificial Nexus is a really good example of utilising all the information you find for puzzles. There are bonus optional folders to find in computers locked behind a password teased through a series of readables and codes across multiple computers. One that was a real brain teaser was when I was tasked with collecting a disc to store data on. Based on a long message chain detailing what CD type is used for what purpose, I had to engage in a good old-fashioned logic puzzle, resulting in finally getting the right disc with the right data storage size, file type and colour.
Artificial Nexus is an admirable and really solid visual novel because it goes for a lot more than the developer’s prior entry, but also respects the importance of scope. Unlike Lily Kosen, there’s voice acting this time around, and though it’s not fully voice-acted, there’s enough there to build a charming rapport between Susan and Hank. She’s a bit ditzy and clueless as she’s rediscovering just about everything in the world again following her amnesia, including even simple menial things like what a paper clip is. Light combat encounters have you clicking on crosshairs as they appear on a robot that’s flanking you to keep them at bay.
A little bit the Zero Escape series, a little bit, well, a lot of other visual novels, Artificial Nexus is a fun romp with enough interesting mystery threads to pick apart. Though the space is overabundant with titles to check out, genre nuts will find this to be yet another worthwhile venture to add to the library.
Artificial Nexus is available now on PC. If you love Melbourne dev, visual novels or mystery games, you should damn well check it out.
About the Author
Charlie Kelly
She/Her, They/Them
Charlie loves her video games as much as she loves dumb, charming JRPG protagonists: probably way too much. You can often catch her spending too much time being emotional over LGBT stories in games. She also thinks Yakuza 6 is the best one.
