The Turing Test

There are few things I love more in video games than when a developer questions real world morality within the narrative of their game. Bulkhead Interactive does this magnificently in The Turing Test.

The Turing Test strikes an impressive balance between Portal and Planet of the Apes that will keep players blasting through the test chambers in search of more answers.

In 1950, an English computer scientist named Alan Turing conducted an experiment to determine if a machine could exhibit lifelike-like behavior and fool someone into thinking it was human. He believed we would one day create such a being. His quiz later adopted the name “the Turing test.” In the video game bearing the same name, developer Bulkhead Interactive draws heavy inspiration from this antiquated study, and uses it as a narrative and gameplay thesis to keep the player in a perpetual state of examination, either to concoct solutions for elaborate puzzle rooms, or to reflect on the meanin...

It's time to wake up from your cryogenic sleep and rescue your crew members stranded on one of Jupiter's cold and desolate moons. You must venture deep inside a research station where a computer program has been re-configured, ultimately locking you out unless you pass a series of increasingly difficult puzzles. Are you intelligent enough to beat "The Turing Test?"

The Turing Test is a well-made puzzle game that translates well onto the Nintendo Switch. Although its mechanics could be better utilized to create slightly more challenging puzzles in the first few chapters, Bulkhead Interactive started to perfect the formula by the game's conclusion. Meanwhile, the narrative features solid voice acting performances and motivates you to keep playing through the game's slow sections which are few and far between. Bulkhead Interactive did a lot right, and if they take another shot learning from the few mistakes they made, they could have a puzzle masterpiece on...

The Turing Test offers some engaging puzzle gameplay that will keep you entertained for roughly 12 hours. It lacks polish in some areas but as a package is a solid addition to the library of those interested in first person puzzle games.

It’s not Portal. I’m prefacing this entire review with that fact, because I know the conclusion others will jump to, just as I did. What, you’re wandering around a large, linear facility, decorated entirely with white walls, solving puzzles with a gun? Sounds like Portal. It’s not Portal. Indeed, The Turing Test may take inspiration from one of the most legendary first-person-puzzlers of all time, but the logical leaps your brain must take to progress are entirely different from “Thinking with Portals.”

As someone who loves games like Portal and The Witness, The Turing Test definitely scratched that familiar puzzle itch, even if it fails to scratch more than the surface of most of its ideas. Its mechanics are solid but largely unoriginal, and its themes and world-building are genuinely great. And while it never reaches the originality and heights of its inspirations, it still manages to deliver an interesting world with one heck of a twist.

While The Turing Test’s puzzles and the narrative often feel as though they run adjacent without every really connecting, the puzzles are so well designed and fun to complete that I can easily forgive the game’s few shortcomings. If you come to The Turing Test for the puzzles and enjoy the narrative as a separate experience from the game, I think you’ll come away enjoying a very good puzzle game, even if it’s not a classic.

The Turing Test can be quite accurately described as Portal meets Soma, exploring similar ideas of AI and selfhood. The trouble is, I suppose, that both those games did each aspect better.

A playful examination of the relationship between human and machine, and a focused, entertaining puzzler.

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