A quick analysis of Scot Osterweil's four freedoms and five principles for games in Master Reboot, 2013. By Denise Moraes Pinho

1. My analysis is about Master Reboot a puzzle and psychological horror game released in 2013. The
history develops into a futuristic virtual world where the spirit or consciousness of dead people
can be kept alive and even receive messages from living relatives. You wakes up confused in this
world where strange events begins happening. Everything indicates that system has been
corrupted by something evil, and what should be a kind of heavenly limbo becomes an afterlife
nightmare full of frightening apparitions. You're without your memories, and have to solve puzzles
while run away from these evil apparitions in order to recover them from the defective system.
Four Freedoms analysis
Freedom to explore: I think there is a low exploring experience. There are some factors that
allows me to affirm this. For instance, everywhere you goes there's a kind of virtual grid for
preventing map exploration, it keeps you always in the same road forward.

2. Puzzles too keeps you in a low exploring experience. As a general rule there are only one answer
for puzzles, or if you needs remake one or wants to play again; you find the same old puzzle with
the same old answer. For instance, the piano puzzle into school's memories. There is only one
music for trying. I think its very simple for a musical puzzle. There could be different songs for
testing player's musical habilities.
A positive exploratory detail are these ducklings with memories and additional messages; you can
find them hidden in scenery. You have the option for search them or not without harming your
progress in the game.

3. Freedom to fail: There is a huge freedom for fail in this game. All puzzles can be redone as many
times as necessary.
Freedom to identify: This is a horror game, which aims to mess with psychological and scare. So
this works a lot with the identity. There wouldn't be afraid feelings if you don't stand into
character's identity, and for this reason camera is in first person position.
Freedom to effort: There is an alternation between quiet and scary narratives, easy and
difficult puzzles . But, there's a kind of "frozen" narrative, where you don't have choices besides
following the set path. You don't have freedom to choose when you'll game harder or not when
inside a memory. The only choice you have is which memory you play before, and which you play
later ... but in the end you have to play all of them anyway.
(These are the doors where you enter for recovering your memories. Each memory has different
puzzles for solving.)
Five Principles For Games Analysis
Interesting decisions: Well, in every puzzle game you have to make some decisions in order to
solve puzzles. In this game I think these decisions are interesting only in order to test all the

4. possible answers before find the correct one. But as I'd said previously: A puzzle will always have
the same answer, you'll never have more than one path to solve a puzzle, you'll naver have the
choice for solving puzzles in different orders and with that change something in game's narrative.
There're some decisions, but they are very few interesting. What makes Master Reboot a very
monotonous game intersected by frightening scenes. On truth I don't think this is a well designed
game, so that I bought it on Stem release and never played until the end. I lost interest on it
quickly.
Consequence to those decisions: The consequence of those decisions are in order to proceed in
game storyline. There are very few decisions where you can find a different types of consequence
than solve a puzzle or not; and if solved, proceed, if not, retry it. I can tell that the few really
interesting decisions you can make, with interesting consequences, are all about the ducklings
search, for instance, in school memory there is this duckling over the cabinet; you can pass it
through your path or you can get close to cabinet and get caught by an apparition. It's your
choice and there is an interesting consequence, there is a scary moment in consequence of your
decision.

5. Feedback: Each puzzle has a different feedback system. On the musical puzzle you have
immediate feedback. If you made it wrong you listen a messy sound, if you made it right you have
a cutscene where a system is activated.
In the painting classroom you don't have feedback if you made it wrong. You have to try it
indefinitely till make it correct. This is too bad because you have no clues what to do, and have no
feedback if you are doing it wrong. You have a feedback only when do it correctly, so you have a
cutscene where a system is activated.

6. Clearly defined goals or rules: There are clear defined rules and goals inside each puzzle
resolution, but the main goal is very unclear. You solve many puzzles and play many memories
without knowing the reason. While playing you are kept confuse about your purposes in-game. I
read a review where they say you know the game goal when you finish it, it's about knowing why
you 're dead. But I think that's not a good idea to keep player confuse about his/her goals along
the game. It ends up being unexciting.
Underlying system: This game is about a virtual alternative universe where dead people's
souls/consciousness can be kept alive in a virtual sistem. In this sistem all person's memories are
stored and they could live in a afterlife virtual paradise, but the system has been corrupted by a
virus. You are a person who has just died and had you consciousness transferred to the system
that you find out being quite different from a paradise, it's more about a haunted limbo full of
appearances and corrupted parts. Now you must solve different puzzles in this psychedelic and
scaring world in order to recover your memories one by one. Each memory room is a different
scenary where you need to solve that puzzles and face scary things in order to have some glimpses
about some important things that happened in your life. The main goal you discover only at the
end.