The Turing Test is a first-person puzzle game developed and published by BULKHEAD. You are awakened abruptly from cryo-sleep in orbit above Europa. Tasked with finding the rest of the missing crew, you fly to Europa’s surface to investigate. Once there, you find a series of puzzle rooms designed to prevent robots from advancing into the base as well as the corpses of some of your friends. Can you find everyone else before it is too late? And what is the helpful AI TOM hiding?

In The Turing Test, you play as Engineer Ava Turing, who must use her Energy Manipulation Tool to solve puzzles. By solving puzzles you advance through the base as well as the narrative. Each puzzle is positioned as a ‘Turing Test’, serving as a logic challenge that an artificial intelligence would be unable to solve. Gameplay wise, the puzzles revolved around energy orbs that can be shot or sucked up by your Energy Manipulation Tool. They are used to power on machines that help you reach the desired platform and open the locked door. While you solve the puzzles, TOM, your AI companion gives you lore about what has happened as well as philosophical musings on humanity and biological thinking. 

As a story experience, The Turing Test is quite enjoyable. I especially love the set-piecing and visuals for the areas outside the puzzle rooms. One of the first scenes where you land a small space shuttle on Europa from the orbiting station, was one of the most creative and interesting sequences of space flight that I’ve seen. While you don’t have control of what’s going on, the visual world building and storytelling was really impressive. The puzzles also had an interesting spin to them in terms of their in-world functions and mechanics, which I think some puzzle games struggle with.

I have seen The Turing Test compared to Portal, and I think that is an apt comparison. The design definitely seems inspired by the Portal experience, though with a more serious tone. It is a first-person puzzle game, with the main puzzle mechanic involving shooting orbs around sterile, testing rooms. Once again, the comparison makes sense. However, the concept executes less successfully than Portal.

While relatively novel, the puzzles are repetitive. And often boring. The rooms felt unimaginative, especially compared to the intriguing rooms placed in between different chunks of levels. The puzzles weren’t especially hard but could feel tedious. When they are so similar to each other, it also decreased my patience. It sucked to walk into a series of ten puzzle rooms and feel like half of them were more or less the same puzzle.

However, one of my biggest issues was this is one of the first non-VR games that made me nauseous. I had to stop after about 2.5 hours (halfway through the game) because the game was making me unwell. Almost every room had multiple flashing lights, which usually don’t bother me. However, the way the character moved and looked around contributed to the sickly feeling. Additionally, there was a near constant buzzing noise of the energy particles and doors opening and closing rhythmically. I had to play in thirty minute chunks to reduce my nausea, but I decided it just wasn’t worth finishing for me. 

Overall, I can see why people like The Turing Test. It has a strong narrative and unique puzzle system. However, it was not a good game for me. I also found the price point of $20 on Steam to be high for a game with a playtime of around 6 hours and so many sensory issues. If you like puzzle games and aren’t bothered by flashing lights or repetitive sounds you will probably like the game. You just might want to wait for a sale! (2.9 / 5)