Volume is a game that would actually benefit from being shorter.

You have about half-an-hour's worth of decent script spread out across several hours of gameplay, and the sense of progression - even with the levels as short as they are - becomes painfully slow. There are many - far too many - points where it's clear the map designer ran out of ideas and chose to simply make something "interesting," which would be fine, except that it breaks the fourth wall along with any sense of urgency in the story.

The story as a whole is quite underwhelming, and the ending is too predictable for the amount of time it takes to arrive. Finally, as a point of personal annoyance for me, there's an achievement for reading every bit of text in the game, and despite my best efforts, it looks like I missed one somewhere in ~7 hours of playtime that I have no desire to repeat.

If you're a big enough fan of stealth that you're interested in this game, you'll probably find the gameplay too shallow to be engaging. If you're a Bithell fan and you're buying it for the story, you'll find there isn't much of one. Overall, this game isn't terrible but is too mediocre for a thumbs-up.

Not recommended.

Volume is a game that would actually benefit from being shorter. You have about half-an-hour's worth of decent script spread out across several hours of gameplay, and the sense of progression - even with the levels as short as they are - becomes painfully slow. There are many - far too many - points where it's clear the map designer ran out of ideas and chose to simply make something "interesting," which would be fine, except that it breaks the fourth wall along with any sense of urgency in the story. The story as a whole is quite underwhelming, and the ending is too predictable for the amount of time it takes to arrive. Finally, as a point of personal annoyance for me, there's an achievement for reading every bit of text in the game, and despite my best efforts, it looks like I missed one somewhere in ~7 hours of playtime that I have no desire to repeat. If you're a big enough fan of stealth that you're interested in this game, you'll probably find the gameplay too shallow to be engaging. If you're a Bithell fan and you're buying it for the story, you'll find there isn't much of one. Overall, this game isn't terrible but is too mediocre for a thumbs-up. Not recommended.