A very beautiful, sweet little game.

It's an unusual storytelling style, but you will love it if:

- you enjoy looking at beautiful images of nebulas, planets, and stars
- you enjoy a calming, meditative game where you will wonder about the story as it develops
- you are okay with an exploration game with no puzzles, no need to restart/no risk of dying
- you feel affection for cute robots, left alone in space without their makers
- you are interested in unconventional gaming experiences
- you are a genetically modified human, and you need to find Earth or humanity will go extinct

Short, casual, atmospheric, pretty, and a bit touching. If you like that and some space exploration, give Opus a go. Playing Normal Mode over Story Mode I think is the better way to go, it's not very difficult at all, and scanning the cosmos for stars and planets is really cool and fun.

Star searching + storytelling? This might be the first game that ever blend these two together!
I think I am one of the lucky ones who get to try OPUS before launch date. Definitely unexpected gameplay-wise and a little bit hard to describe, kinda like Where's Waldo but a lot more interactive, and you'll get lost in space, a lot. I like it since it neatly blends storytelling together to something different from any other games I've played before.

I recommend everyone to choose a night when none of your friends invited you for dinner, situate yourself in a dark dark room, and slowly sink into the galaxy and forget about everything else. The story is a little bit sad so you might shed some tears.

a Sci-fi Indie Adventure game that will have you exploring, and seeing, the stars differently. I found Opus today, and of course played until I’d 100%ed the game. Though there are 31 achievies, they all come pretty normally through the story. By the time I’d finished the story, I had surveyed over 500 stars, which is the achievement just before the highest of 1000. But, I still had to locate a final supernova and a moon of one of the planets, along with the last 500 stars to survey, so that final count took a little grinding.

Narrative:
Story rich in a tantalizing and sentimental mystery, you are immersed in this charming tale of dreams, or goals. The title comes from the Latin phrase “Magnum Opus,” or “Great Work.” You start in a spaceship as a robot named Emeth. I’m totally unsure if that name comes from some Easter egg, or maybe it’s an acronym. But, two scientists are aboard with you and they are searching for the planet Earth, which was the origin of the human race, according to myth. They are growing doubtful they’ll find it, if it ever really existed, before they are too late to save mankind. The story presupposes that the gene pool has decayed to the point that survival is not expected. They need to return to Earth to collect more of their original genes. The robot is motivated by the female scientist to continue searching, despite the growing pessimism of the male scientist who is aboard with them. Then a power outage occurs, Lisa and the other scientist disappear, and a hologram of Lisa guides or assists Emeth in his search to find the missing planet Earth.

Story Mechanic:
Opus takes a single game mechanic that is also present in the new Stellaris, by Paradox Studios, and does it even better. Lisa, the female protagonist, has programmed Emeth to operate Opus’s telescope. Opus is the large ship they are inside. When you turn on the telescope, you are gazing at the stars and you are able to scan in search of habitable planets matching the characteristics of Earth. Meanwhile, the hud overhead displays tabs for your target coordinates, target section/sector, target zone, & filters needed. Just beneath the display of tabs is a button for the Earth Locator, which functions to guide you to each of your missions and sub-missions, target planets & stars to explore.

The Earth Locator gives you clues to help you locate where the target star will be. You watch the display on your telescope and follow the degrees of rotation to calculate where you are, and where you need to be to find the target. This is comparable to flying an airplane by Instrument Flight Readings (IFR.) But, if you pay attention to the tabs at the top, each one lights up or turns off as you enter a zone or sector matching the description for your target, making it possible to just pilot “by the seat of your pants” as they say in Visual Flight Readings (VFR,) or flying by sight. If all the tabs are lit up, then you’ve found the right area. Also, a hint button will appear far right that will point you in the general direction, and you won’t find it too difficult.

Comparisons:
Other than the comparison to Stellaris in the way you explore the stars, I find this game reminded me very much of Firewatch. In Firewatch you were given realistic navigation tools to find your way around a map of the forest. Opus does likewise, but you’re searching through the galaxy. Also, Opus has an immersive mystery story much like Firewatch. And, it keeps you engaged until you finish the game.

The developer, Team Signal, is an indie company that has a few mobile games thus far. I checked out a couple of them myself and found both Earthworm Alchemy and Hyper Square fun and free on my phone.

Pros:
Story Rich
Engaging & fun mechanics you’ll love
Graphics are nicely done in a cartoony style, No bugs or glitches
Could be fun for any age gamer
Decent Soundtrack
Great price at $8.99

Cons:
It is one simple aspect of exploration, but it does that extremely well.
No strategy/ quite linear gameplay
Requires meticulous patience for scanning a thousand stars.
Final game section has major flashing lights that may be problematic for some

No Spoilers Here! I think the best way to play this game is to go into it spoiler free. So, I’ll leave my review at this.

I'll say first that I've been a supporter for the original OPUS on mobile, so I am very glad to see the game got released on Steam with various enhancements, and willing to play and finish it again on my PC.

From a PC game point of view, you might feel like it is just a twist on the hidden-object genre, with some memorization elements. And if you'd bother to check a little bit more you'll also find out the game last no longer than 2 hrs for average players. But in fact that's exactly part the point of this game:

For a novel, fresh experience & gameplay in games, you don't absolutely need 50hrs of play time or super innovative, convoluted, unseen or complex mechanics to achieve those. There are all kinds of interesting short and interesting games in the indie scene right now that you won't regret paying 5 or 10 bucks on them. For 90 ~ 120 minutes of the gameplay, OPUS provides a quite touching, and even deep, philosophical experience, if you know what you are looking at.

I am an avid space-themed media junkie, so the astronomical side of OPUS also highly interests me. But there's a thin layer of somewhat deceiving sugarcoat there, if I may say so. The scientific detail or the accuracy of terms and descriptions in the game sometimes doesn't add-up, even though improvements have already been made since the mobile version. But again, that's not really the point.

I am going to boldly claim that the game's astronomical / science aspect is only there to support it's narrative, just like Interstellar (YES, THAT CHRIS NOLAN MOVIE) -- even more, the central idea of OPUS can actually draw a few parallel comparison from Interstellar directly.

You know right from the beginning of the game, that hundred of thousands years into the distant future, human race has somehow forgotten its origin, and Earth has long become a myth. And one important character in game totally doesn't believe there is even an Earth at all. Just like in Interstellar, the general public has long "disapprove" the idea that human has been to the Moon and beyond, and no one believe in any of those grand idea anymore.

Of course, I am not really claiming that a small indie team can produce something that really rivals a worldly-acclaimed award-winning Hollywood movie, nor does it take as serious an approach to science as the Nolan film to cover its philosophical / spiritual ideas, but it's already an effort very rarely seen in games, in my opinion.

To say anything more about the narrative or story about OPUS would be a huge spoiler for the game itself, so I'll stop here. I only hope that my review can help you look into the game a little bit more, before you start nitpicking its problems. The game is not expensive, it will not cost you a lot of time and energy, the gameplay is smooth and I think the difficulty curve is just right for this kind of experience. So by all means try it out for yourself!


EDIT: typo

I played through the story (Normal mode) in like 90 minutes, just so you know what you are getting. I think it amounted to a 70% completion from what the game told me.

I much like the theme of a robot trying to complete a task it was given by its master in the absence of said master/mother. It had a lot of potential for exploring the development of human like AI in the event of isolation. But the story left me wanting.
With the characters in question it feels like the movie "AI", only instead of facing and overcomming challenges while trying to find your mom, you sit in a room and point at numbered dots on a map while someone else tries to find your mom.

All in all it still was a nice experience though and had some good atmosphere, art and interface designs.
The price seems a bit much considering the playtime, but I have payed more money on food with less entertainment value.

OPUS: The Day We Found Earth is a unique take on the Scifi genre where you play the role of a childlike robot who is trying to complete his creator's goal of finding mankind's planet of origin, Earth. Using The ship OPUS' telescope and with help from the ship's A.I. Lisa, you search across a forgotten galaxy going through different sectors and look at hundreds of differnt star systems and planets in your quest to locate Earth.

Pros:
- Easy to learn controls
- Great story that keeps you interested in it.
- Memoriable (kind of) Charaters
- Nice grahics and music
- Unique gamplay mechanics
- A huge area to explore with the telescope
- You end up finding Earth in the last place you thought to look
- No bugs or Glitches that I found

Cons:
- The story while great, leaves some to be desired, also the game ends on a cliff hanger
- The game is short, only being 90 mins long at least, whether that's a good or bad thing is up to you



Overall OPUS is a great game and I defently recommend you play it if you get the chance. I give it an Earth Simularity of 96.74627 out of 100. <-- See what I did there.

This is one of those games that have a lot that most AAA doesn’t: A solid story, charismatic characters, simple playability and a goal that you share with your digital self. Each gameplay is short, about 2h, but work as intended. The game is surprising, pleasant and has an awesome sound-track.

This is one of those games that make me proud of having a PC and being allowed to have this experience.

Enjoy ;)

OPUS is a wonderful experience, and I highly recommend it. The story isn't flawless, but it did succeed in nearly bringing me to tears, which is still something only a few games have accomplished - and it achieved that in under an hour and a half. If you're not someone who inherently hates iOS ports, you'll find something to love in OPUS.

That being said, I'm much better at writing criticisms, and I do have a major gripe with the game. When starting the story, you are prompted to choose between "Normal Mode" and an easier "Story Mode": Normal Mode promises to hold your hand less, while Story Mode promises to carry you through the story as painlessly as possible. So I chose Normal Mode, of course, but then it never actually felt like the game let my hand go. The story progresses by scanning specific planets, which the game points you directly towards - it points you to a general area where the star can be found, and the star is always the brightest one there. Even when those areas become larger, the game provides you a means to narrow the search down to a handful yet again, meaning you can realistically complete the game without ever scanning a "wrong" system, even on your first playthrough.

As soon as you scan one planet, you are immediately told where the next one is. First, this raises a lot of serious questions about the plot - how did they ever have trouble finding Earthlike planets when they're so helpfully mapped out for you? But even purely as a gameplay mechanic, I believe it genuinely detracted from my experience. More than anything, it actively discouraged me from exploring the actual map: the characters are constantly pattering about how they desperately need to scan the next planet, and the next planet is always right in front of you, so what kind of jerk would make them wait so you can go look for that supernova you just found out about? It also makes the whole scanning mechanic seem completely pointless; if you ever scan an incorrect planet, you feel like you've only wasted your time (more on that in a moment). I would have much preferred a mechanic where you would be told an even broader area to scan in, and you would need to randomly scan planets in the area to find clues to the next candidate - a reason to actually make you want to look around. As it stands, by the time the story gets to the "we're now desperate so we need to look fast" section, I didn't really feel much pressure, since I had felt pressured to rush the story scans from the very beginning.

And about scans being pointless: why on Earth is there an achievement for scanning 1000 systems? As mentioned, you'll probably get through the story with barely over 25 scans, and extra scans up to that points were already a waste of time; what's the point in asking players to sit around for 2.5 hours clicking on star after star, just so they can see the "that's not Earth, stupid" message pop up hundreds of times? I really wish developers would stop adding achievements that may as well read "do a boring and repetitive task over and over and over for us."

Closing statements on OPUS: Did you miss the first paragraph? Go buy OPUS, it's a beautiful, if brief, title. I only criticize it so much because I'm an obnoxious prick, and I believe giving games a free pass on critique just because they're indie or because they're iOS ports is fairly patronising.

I don't think it was worth the asking price. It's like a hidden object game that has an arrow pointing to your next object. At least 10 minutes of the 90 minutes play time was simply being shunted back to the ship screen after every find, watching a progress bar, and then having to go back to the telescope mode. The majority of the sparse dialogue amounts to either "I'm gonna do it!" or "When is mommy coming home?", and reads like a children's book. Mildly atmospheric, but compares poorly in that regard to walking simulators.